NAGPUR: A 16-year-old rape survivor’s two-month-old

daughter was allegedly sold off for Rs90,000 by a relative, on

the pretext of giving her in adoption. The baby, sold on

Tuesday, was traced by cops from Kotwali police station on

Thursday following day-long effort and much drama.

Trudy Scheele-Gertsen was forced to give up her son in 1968 because she was a single mother and is asking for recognition of what happened. About 15,000 Dutch women went through the same ordeal between 1956 and 1984

Ten days after giving birth to her son in February 1968, Trudy Scheele-Gertsen, a 22-year-old Dutch girl, left the foster home for single mothers run by Catholic nuns where she had kept him. Although she was without the baby, she was not going to abandon him. A nursing student, she wanted to pick him up as soon as she got a job and a house, but she didn't see him again for 48 years. Her parents did not want her back with the child, who she named Willem Jan, and despite their repeated protests she was forced to put him up for adoption. Trudy is 75 years old today and is one of about 15,000 women - called distant mothers.- who went through the same trance in the Netherlands between 1956 and 1984. This Friday she has sued the State in court for what happened: she wants it to be recognized that she was pressured by the authorities to give up her little one. The State Attorney argues that the case has prescribed and the pressure exerted could also be social and not only from the Administration.

"What happened is an indelible trauma, and the recognition that it was not our fault is a way to cope," said Trudy Scheele-Gertsen emotionally before the judges. “We were disqualified as people for not offering what was considered a stable family to the child, and there is a general feeling of guilt among those of us who go through this. Loneliness, because society separated us, and it is something that continues to happen today. For example, with women who are assaulted and blamed for what has happened to them. This should not prescribe ”, she added, already made a sea of ??tears. Years later, she had access to his complete file, where the Child Protection Service “tells a story that is not mine. It is assured that I did not go to see the child, and that I was in a meeting and signed the documents renouncing him from the beginning; and it is not true ”, he pointed out. He signed them years later, and to find out what happened to his son he had to ask his permission when he was of legal age to read thenotes corresponding to its adoption . She married and has three other children, and although she has been reunited with her firstborn, the pain is still alive.

Her lawyer, Lisa-Marie Klomp, has alleged that the State is responsible for this forced resignation because “it had an obligation to protect the mother, but she was excluded due to the fact that she was single. The mother and child were abandoned through the Protection of Minors, which prevented me from recovering the child with documents and a story that my client does not recognize as hers, ”he indicated. In 2017, the Dutch Radboud University published a study at the request of the Ministry of Justice, which estimated 15,000 Dutch children adopted in their own country between 1956 and 1984. Its conclusions indicated that “pressure from doctors, families of single mothers , social workers and other instances of the sector could be so strong that it prevented keeping them together ”.

Unheard stories

I give birth to myself through creation. (Amandine Gay)

Starting from an intimate testimony concerning her birth under X and her adoption, Amandine Gay draws the thread of a large, historical phenomenon with multiple challenges: transnational and transracial adoption. In A Chocolate Doll (La Découverte, 2021) , an essay crossed by Afro-feminist and decolonial theories, she addresses not only the historical context of international adoption but also its political context.

It is easier to get into political subjects that are sometimes very controversial by going first into the lived experience. (Amandine Gay)

Adoption cannot be considered a detailed subject over time. (Amandine Gay)

Looking back on her childhood and adolescence, Amandine Gay discusses the challenges that adoption poses to adopted people and their adopting families: dealing with uprooting, the search for identity that results from it, systemic racism and sometimes contradictory belonging. to two different communities.

An adoption break proposed by Minister of Welfare Wouter Beke , in which the intercountry adoption system had to be thoroughly revised, has not materialized. What will remain of the package of recommendations that should make adoption fraud-free remains to be seen.

Tens of thousands of foreign adopted children

What once started as an act of charity soon derailed into outright child trafficking.

Since the 1950s, tens of thousands of children have come to Belgium through international adoption. Their exact number is unknown. Until 2005, children with whom parents do not share a genetic link could be registered as 'own children'. Many adoptions also happened with the help of an uncle father in Verweggistan and were therefore not registered. How many adoptions took place will therefore always remain a mystery. What once started as an act of charity soon derailed into outright child trafficking.

In the 1970s, those first adopters were joined by pacifist hippies whose lifestyle suited them to save colored children. It was the backpackers who returned home with a load of didgeridoos under their arm after a trek through India.

Trudy Scheele-Gertsen became an unmarried mother in the 1960s and, like thousands of others, was forced to give up her child for adoption. She now holds the Dutch State liable for what was done to her then. Does the case have any chance of success?

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Four years after she and her husband were originally arrested, a Hunt County woman received a lengthy prison sentence after being found guilty of using her adopted children as slave labor in a puppy mill operation.

Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Thursday morning that Barbara Barrett of Greenville has been found guilty of Continuous Trafficking of a Child in Hunt County and received a sentence of 99 years in jail.

Barrett and her husband, Jeffery Barrett, are accused of abusing and neglecting their adopted children while forcing them to work in a puppy mill attached to their home. Both were charged with Continuous Trafficking of Persons. Paxton’s Human Trafficking and Transnational Organized Crime Division assisted the Hunt County District Attorney in prosecution of Barrett.

As of Thursday morning prosecution was only proceeding against Barbara Barrett. Both had pleaded not guilty.

Prosecution on the felony indictments is under the jurisdiction of the Texas Attorney General’s Office.

Marathon day yesterday at the UN headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

Morning of meetings with the Belgian member of the Children's Rights Committee, Benoit Van Keirsbilck, as well as the representatives of Child Rights Connect, a umbrella organization bringing together a large number of NGOs and associations campaigning for children's rights.

Intense afternoon, during our hearing by the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances, where the issue of children stolen at birth to be offered for adoption was on the agenda.

Mariela Sr – Coline Fanon ( Racines Perdues – Raíces Perdidas ) testified to her fight and her moving story. Abducted at birth in Guatemala, she was declared dead, then sold for adoption in Belgium to parents who were unaware of this odious traffic.

For my part, I presented the motion for a resolution that I tabled in the House and which aims to give all those concerned in Belgium the status of victim and to begin an in-depth investigation into these illegal adoptions.

The pontoon does not often go to the water

PATRICK ANDRÉ DE HILLERIN THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2021, 1:02 AM

Zoom

The pontoon does not often go to the water

Raluca Turcan found time, in her busy schedule, to participate on September 22, 2021 in the fast cutting of the inaugural ribbon of a pontoon / itinerant center for treating children with disabilities in the Danube Delta. The pontoon in question was arranged by the SERA Foundation, with money from the sponsor Penny (Rewe Group), about 120,000 euros, and from European funds. The pontoon was also included in the documents of the European-funded project "Always in the family - a project to reduce institutionalization, the risk of separation and to ensure local recovery services for children in Tulcea County", a project with a total value of 5,954,979.39 lei.

If one was to dive into Indian English literature, one would probably come across Bhisham Sahni’s renowned short story – Pali. Set against the backdrop of the partition of India, Pali narrates the story of a young boy (the titular character) who gets accidentally separated from his family as they leave from the then newly formed Pakistan and make their way to India.

Stranded and scared, Pali desperately tries to find his parents at the railway station and hopes to return to the safety of his family. He is soon found by a man who sells chinaware for a living. The man takes pity on the boy and brings him home to his wife. The kind couple then decide to adopt him and raise him as their own. Though this story touches on the many political aspects of the partition like religion, love, loss, and family, it also explores the emotion of belonginess in adopted children.

In India, there is a taboo around the concept of adoption. Firstly, our society puts immense importance on the idea of a woman conceiving and giving birth to a child. Since times immemorial women are repeatedly conditioned to believe that one of the most important purposes of their being is to give birth to a child.

Women are taught that failing to comply with this expectation will put a stain on their “femininity” because motherhood is positioned as the ultimate role that “completes” a woman. The inability to bear a child is considered to be a ‘curse‘ and often renders the lady socially ostracized, as well as branded ‘inauspicious‘. The reinforcement of this idea puts enormous pressure on women who face difficulty in conceiving.

All these beliefs and perceptions are something families who have adopted kids have to deal with all the time. But it is paramount to recognise that these choices are entirely personal, and nobody is allowed to dictate what type of family is a “true” or “real” family. A family is made of similarities and differences. It is composed of arguments and agreements

Today a bicameral meeting was held on the rights of children and adolescents whose objective was to carry out an informative meeting about the Single Registry of Aspirants to Guard for Adoptive Purposes , that is, they were in charge of analyzing and debating the alignments about the processes and records that are needed to finalize an adoption .

Paola Vessvessian , national deputy for the province of Santa Cruz, began by announcing that within that meeting there was the presence of the National Director of the single registry of aspiring guardians for adoptive purposes , Gustavo Herrero , whose purpose was that that person can tell about the situation of the adoption system in Argentina. Therefore, she gave the floor to him.

"We have proposed to work from now on fundamentally to improve the process, that is the intention we have," Herrero began by saying. And he explained that they promoted different meeting spaces for several years where they give informative talks for families or interested people who have not had contact with adoption "to dispel myths and clarify doubts."

"We make available to the community a program of counseling and accompaniment to families in a period of bonding, custody, and adoption, because many times they need it and we as a State must assume that responsibility," he continued. And he added that a data that is fundamental is the reduction of half the files in the database: "we believe that it is due to multiple factors, economic, the pandemic, among other reasons."

He also commented that adoptive availability is "wide", that is, people already approach the adoption system with a lot of prior information. "In the public calls, we asked ourselves if they worked, in addition to the adoption issue, on the different family models that we have in our society," he added.