What was supposed to be a two-year moratorium in 2001 has turned into an indefinite ban on the adoption of Romanian children by foreigners, denying many the chance of a better future.

Mandi Rodger, a US social worker, was volunteering with orphaned and abandoned children in Romania when she met a small child with Down syndrome who lived in a Bucharest orphanage with around 40 other children.

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Following the publication of our article "Ethiopia's Adoption Scandal: Did the Good Samaritans sin only through negligence?" "In our June 2021 issue, the adoption agency Les Enfants de Reine Miséricorde sent us the

Chat 29 Jun 2021

The newspaper Causette (June 2021) seriously calls into question our adoption organization "The Children of the Queen of Mercy (ERM)" by titling "adoption scandal in Ethiopia" and by publishing testimonies of particular cases, concerning adoptions in Ethiopia carried out through us.

Certain elements of the report reveal a profound ignorance of adoption procedures. Body authorized for adoption by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ERM's mission is in strict compliance with the legal requirements in force at national and international levels as well as in the highest ethics. In Ethiopia as in all countries, the decision to make a child adoptable is the sovereign responsibility of the authorities. Only these authorities can establish, after investigation, the history of the child and decide to offer him for adoption. These are the documents that are given to the adoption agencies and the adoption agencies are not allowed to exercise any control. All ERM adoptions have been adjudicated by the Addis Ababa court and are fully legal. In addition, the whole is monitored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and adoptions are submitted to French justice. Ethiopian law does not allow abandonment of a child (except in the case of parents with AIDS). This is why parents have sometimes been able to pretend to be dead or missing, without the knowledge of the authorities and without our knowledge, in order to allow an adoption, in this country where no social assistance is available for a family in distress. Ethiopia's lack of civil status has facilitated such practices. The decision to give a child up for adoption is no less real and has been verified in almost all cases where the biological family has been found. ERM is bound by the secrecy imposed by law and cannot therefore provide concrete answers to the cases described by Causette.

ERM has always been vigilant and continuously improved its practices over the years: insistence on collecting children's stories from social services; end of adoptions of children from Addis Ababa orphanages after discovery of anomalies; exchanges with the Ethiopian authorities who have changed their procedures; setting up sponsorships to find local solutions whenever possible (today still 1070 Ethiopian children are sponsored); organization of “return to Ethiopia” supervised trips with adoptees (around 100). ERM was approached by adoptive families saying that their children were telling them about biological parents who were still alive. Gilbert Bayon, then president of ERM, took the initiative from 2004, through his many trips, to research the Ethiopian origins of adopted young people in an attempt to re-establish the truth and transmit to families the information he had obtained on the spot. This is how ERM found Julie Foulon's biological mother in 2007 and informed her adoptive parents. The Causette newspaper allowed itself to be diverted from the truth by this young woman whose testimony is in total contradiction with the evidence at our disposal. How can we imagine that its members would have mobilized with so much energy to help the reunion with biological families if ERM had something to hide in the scandal of which it is accused?

Between 1990 and 2017, 1,575 Ethiopian children were adopted in France through an approved association, Les Enfants de Reine de Miséricorde. In a book published in 2020, one of them, Julie Foulon, denounces irregular and even illegal adoption procedures. On May 26, 2021, several families and adoptees filed a complaint against ERM for breach of trust and fraud.

One morning in August 2017 in her Parisian studio, Julie Foulon, 20, logs into her Facebook account where a message from a stranger awaits her. “Hello Julie, I am Gertrude. I'm looking to get in touch with you. Do you know a lady in Ethiopia named Askale Mekonnen? »Julie's heart stops beating. This name is that of her biological mother, whom she left in 2003 when she was adopted, at the age of 6, with her little sister by a Norman couple. This contact with an intermediary from the Ethiopian diaspora confirms what Julie strives to explain to her adoptive parents since she can speak French: no, contrary to what is indicated in the adoption documents, her biological mother is not deceased. Worse still, Julie learns after having joined her biological mother by Skype through Gertrude: Askale had been looking for her daughters since the year of their separation and found their new names by accident, by dint of imploring the Social Affairs office of Dessie, in Ethiopia, where she lives, to hear from them. A stranger, white, ended up going to her house and providing her with a photo of her daughters. On the back of the photo, their new French name.

This reconnection in 2017 and the Skype exchanges that followed shake Daniel and Chantal Foulon, to whom the little girls had been presented as orphans. Everything seemed to be in order in their eyes when they concluded, in 2003, the adoption procedure for their daughters. Having received their approval, they approached an organization authorized for adoption (OAA) in Normandy, Les Enfants de Reine de Miséricorde (ERM), established in Ethiopia and Burkina Faso since the beginning of the 1990s. August 19, 2003 , after having paid 10,000 euros for the operating costs of ERM as well as for the costs of proceedings in the country, the Foulons go to Roissy airport to pick up Sara, who will become Julie, and her little sister from 4 years old, whose first name will also be changed. Growing up, Julie turns out to be a difficult child, especially with her mother. The young girl refuses to forge a relationship with her and for good reason: in her heart, the place of a mother is already taken by the one left behind. How could such a mistake happen? How could the existence of a biological mother fall by the wayside in the context of a full and transnational adoption, strictly supervised in France? How could such a mistake happen? How could the existence of a biological mother fall by the wayside in the context of a full and transnational adoption, strictly supervised in France? How could such a mistake happen? How could the existence of a biological mother fall by the wayside in the context of a full and transnational adoption, strictly supervised in France?

For Julie Foulon, this fourteen-year separation remains a suffering, which she expresses at the age of 22 in Sara et Tsega? 1 , an autobiographical book mixing memories and fiction published in May 2020. "I hesitated to publish it, recounts -her for Chat. But I said to myself: “Do it, because there are bound to be other adopted people in your situation.” »She was not mistaken: the book had the effect of a small bomb in the middle of the adoptees of Ethiopia, where it passed from hand to hand. Quickly, she received many testimonials from people between 20 and 40 years old, like her adopted through ERM and who, too, had strong doubts about the conditions in which their adoption took place. Biological parents declared dead but still[…]

Adopted children are allowed to search for their parents and there is a lot of understanding that they want to do this, but the State is not responsible for paying for this search. This is apparent from the vast majority of responses to a Radar poll about compensation for the search for biological parents. Of the 852 responses, 691 are against financial compensation from the State. 128 of the respondents do think that compensation should be made and 33 people do not know or have certain conditions under which this compensation must take place.

The NOS recently reported that the Dutch government does not intend to offer financial compensation to adoptees who want to look for their biological parents. This is apparent from the rejection of a liability claim by lawyer Dewi Deijle. She argues that the Dutch State is legally liable for abuses in adoptions from abroad.

Ban on intercountry adoptions

Intercountry adoptions have been in the news a lot lately. These were banned after the Joustra Committee ruled that too many abuses had taken place. 'The Dutch government has failed to act by looking away for years', said outgoing Minister of Legal Protection Dekker when the new ban was announced.

Juris Dewi Deijle believes that there should therefore be a compensation fund for adoptees who want to find or have sought their biological family. However, Minister Dekker did not agree. 'Extremely disappointing', says Deijle.

It’s the story that shames Britain – a quarter of a million unmarried mothers made to give up their babies. Now they, and the children callously wrenched away, want justice. Here, five victims reveal: The cruel legacy of forced adoption

Every night, Alison Devine used to lie in bed planning how she would escape with her baby son. At 17 she’d fallen pregnant after a one-night stand with a ‘Jack the Lad’.

And when she started to show at six months, she was swiftly packed off to an unmarried mother and baby home called The Haven, run by the Baptist church, in Yateley, Hampshire. It was 1961.

At night she could hear the babies cry in the nursery, but wasn’t allowed to go to them. ‘I often thought I’d just take a pram and do a bunk with him,’ she says. ‘But they had someone on guard at the nursery door, and anyway, I thought they’d catch me and lock me up.’

Alison was one of an estimated quarter of a million pregnant women and girls — almost all unmarried and under the age of 24 — who, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, were sent away to have their babies at a network of church-run homes that stretched across the UK.

(CNN)There could be a new princess in Disney's royal court.

Nearly two decades after Sarah Culberson discovered that her father was the chief of a village in Sierra Leone, the West Virginia native's life story could finally come to the big screen.

Culberson, who is biracial, was put up for adoption in 1976 at just a few months old, and was raised by a White family, the Culbersons, in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Her biological father, Joseph Konia Kposowa, is from Sierra Leone and is chief of the royal family of the Mende tribe in Bumpe, Sierra Leone, which makes Culberson a princess. Her biological mother was White.

The discovery "gave me a deeper sense of my identity as being someone who operates and straddles two different worlds and cultures," Culberson told CNN. "Learning about my history in Sierra Leone, my family, community, country, that makes a huge part of who I am."

Romania

The Need

After the fall of communism in 1989, the former Eastern Bloc country of Romania opened its doors to outsiders – including those to its 650 state orphanages. Here, over 100,000 children were found living in horrifying conditions – the outcome of a workforce growth scheme instituted by former Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Ceausescu’s policies included denial of birth control and fines for childless women. As a result, many poor Romanian families ended up with more children than they could support. For these children, Ceausescu offered a place in state institutions.

Romania has made great strides in the past 20 years, including the closure of nearly 100 orphanages between 2002 and 2003. In 2005, Romania passed a law prohibiting placement of children under 2 in institutions, unless they were severely disabled. And in 2007, the formerly communist country joined the European Union. However, over 2 million people continue to live in poverty and thousands of children remain in institutions. With few employment prospects at home, many parents leave their children in alternate care while they seek work elsewhere in the EU.

In the late 1980s, several thousand institutionalized children contracted HIV through unscreened blood transfusions. Today, Romania has the largest population of HIV-positive youth in Europe.

While helping Peruvian police with an investigation in the early hours of the morning, forensic genetics expert José Lorente was struck by the sight of children milling around in the streets of the country’s capital without their families.

“I asked the police what the children were doing up so late,” he said. “Some were lost, some had disappeared, they said, but there was nothing they could do to identify them. This got me thinking.”

Professor Lorente wondered if DNA could help reunite these children with their families – and the idea for DNA-ProKids was born.

The programme uses our unique genetic footprint to trace thousands of missing children around the world. Some have been stolen from their parents and trafficked for sex or as slave labour, others sold in illegal adoptions, and some lost in hospital mix-ups.

Now, 20 years after Professor Lorente’s flash of inspiration, DNA-ProKids works with governments in Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Thailand, Brazil, India and Malaysia.

You don't have to be brother and sister, you can also become one - as the book As brothers and sisters shows. It also allows a forgotten group to speak: the biological children in adoptive or foster families, who have their own problems.

Language can sometimes be revealing. For example, for Jadrickson (16) Koen (17) is just his big brother. And for Koen, Jadrickson is just as naturally his brother. But Koen's older sister, who has already left home, he calls his foster sister again. While Jadrickson is actually a foster brother too, but calling him that feels too distant. Koen: “We grew up together. Jadrickson came here every other weekend since I was five. I have a different kind of connection with him than with friends or with my foster sister; more familiar, more natural. I don't think it would feel any different if he were a biological brother. No, that would really be the same.”

Jelmar (17) and his adoptive sister Yulotte (15) also sometimes run into language issues. That's how people ask Jelmar: isn't that your 'real' sister? And when it comes to the other two Chinese adoptive girls in their family: are they all 'real' sisters? Jelmar: “That word 'real' feels judgmental and not so respectful – if I'm honest. Like having real and fake sisters. To me they feel like real sisters, but people don't mean it that way. We are not biologically related, no.” Yulotte adds: “That 'real thing' gives a certain distrustful feeling. Like it's not quite right. While: I've spent almost my entire life with this brother, what would be fake about that?"

When we think of a brother-sister relationship, we naturally think of two people who share the same parents and the same gene package. But you can also feel like brother and sister if you don't have that biological relationship, as the book Like brothers and sisters – growing up together in an adoptive or foster family shows.

Jelmar and Yulotte. Image Photo: Lilian van Rooij

Clad in black and bursting with happiness, Jamila Qadir tightly hugs a baby girl wrapped in a white sheet. The child is bright pink and her head appears large in proportion to her scrawny little arms and legs that jerk back and forth. Qadir gently rocks her with one hand and tries to feed her from a bottle with the other.

Together, they made the perfect picture of mother and daughter.

Qadir seems unsure of how to express how much joy the child has filled her with; it is the first time her house has been transformed into a family home. She had been desperately wanting a child for more than 15 years, and her dream has finally come true through her new adopted daughter. In the space of a single minute, she kisses her baby girl more than ten times.

Over a decade of built-up anger and distress have now melted away with the child’s arrival, she says, remarking that she would otherwise by dead.

Their bond seems as strong as that between any parent and their biological child.