A return trip to the country of origin

A return trip to your country of origin can be a life-changing experience. Based on the personal stories of adoptees and insights from (still limited) scientific research, we offer a glimpse into what such a return trip can mean for adoptees and the considerations that may play a role.

Reasons to travel back

Adoptees' reasons for traveling back home vary widely and vary from person to person. Some want to get to know the country and its culture better or visit tourist spots. Others seek out places and contacts listed in their adoption records, or hope to reconnect with their first family.

For many, it is also a way to gain more insight into their background and identity – to see with their own eyes where their story began.

The babies were then purchased for 11-16 million Indonesian rupiah (approximately NIS 2,260 to NIS 3,300).

Police in Indonesia uncovered a massive baby trafficking ring and rescued six infants about to be sold, according to BBC News Indonesia. All the babies were around a year old.

The ring has sold at least 25 babies, 12 male and 13 female, to buyers in Singapore since 2023 and authorities have now arrested 13 individuals connected to the trafficking ring in Pontianak and Tangerang.

"The babies were first housed in Pontianak and had their immigration documents arranged before being sent to Singapore," West Java Police's director of general criminal investigation, Surawan, told BBC News Indonesia.

JPost Videos

Sexual violence is a terrible inevitability of any war-zone. Lejla Damon was born of rape during the Bosnian war. She speaks to the Mirror about finding her birth mother and discovering her roots

Smuggled across a border at just nine days old, Lejla Damon knew little of her birth mother. But as she grew up, she discovered that her beginnings were rooted in conflict.
Speaking to exclusively to The Mirror, Lejla tells me she is a child of sexual violence carried out during the Bosnian war. We spoke about the first time she met her birth mother and returning to Bosnia, where staff at the maternity unit knew her story before she did.
Lejla was born on Christmas Day 1992 in war-torn Bosnia. Her mother had endured an horrendous ordeal. Lejla’s birth mother, who we will not be identifying here to ensure her privacy, was held for seven months in a school at the beginning of the conflict. It was during this time that she was repeatedly raped and tortured.
She said: “The premise of it was to impregnate and hold on to the women for as long as possible knowing that they wouldn't be able to get an abortion and then let them go when they were too heavily pregnant.” She explains that the aim of this was “to change the genetic makeup of a society.”
So when the two journalists who would go on to become Lejla’s parents met her birth mother, she was in a state of extreme suffering. Dan and Sian Damon were in Bosnia to report on the conflict for a British news broadcaster, when they interviewed Lejla’s birth mother.
In that video interview, Lejla tells me that, her mother said: “I would become like the men that raped her and that if she held me that she would strangle me.”

Talking to me now, she says she has enormous sympathy for her mother. She explains: “It takes courage to give your child up for adoption no matter what you went through… she allowed me to have an incredible life full of extreme privilege.”

Growing up in the UK, Lejla said she felt, like all kids, the intense urge to fit in with her peers. But when in primary school, her class were tasked with creating an ‘About Me’ Powerpoint slide, she came to know more about her roots.

Specially selected for you by the FD editorial team: six articles from the past week that are more than worth reading this Sunday.

This weekend

An uncrackable chip, the trenches of Poland and a plea for a new Thorbecke    

Hippe markten, braderieën, zomerfestivals en kofferbakverkopen: in de zomer heeft bijna elk dorp en elke stad er wel eentje. Het dreigt wat veel te worden. 

Failed sale of waste management company AEB costs Amsterdam hundreds of millions

The capital has converted €222.3 million in loans into shares and provided a €180 million loan. The municipality had previously abandoned its hope of selling AEB.

### Goed om te zien dat u mogelijk anderen inspireert met onze journalistieke content. We vragen u enkel voor persoonlijk gebruik onze content te kopiëren, om geen inbreuk te maken op onze Algemene Voorwaarden. Vraag anders naar onze bedrijfslicenties via klanten@fdmediagroep.nl ###

22 juli 20:17
Tandartsen naar de rechter vanwege onvrede over tarieven

Jan BraaksmaMaarten van Poll
In het kort
Tandartsen en orthodontisten vinden de nieuwe maximumtarieven voor hun sector te laag.
Eerder maakten psychologen al met succes bezwaar tegen het besluit van de toezichthouder.
Een hoogleraar verwacht na jaren van bescheiden prijsstijgingen meer van dit soort rechtszaken.

Tandartsen en orthodontisten vinden de nieuwe maximumtarieven voor hun sector te laag. Foto: ANP
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A 14-year-old girl sought to change her surname from her father's to her mother's in the birth certificate following her parents' divorce. 

The Calcutta High Court has directed municipal authorities to issue a revised birth certificate to a minor girl, allowing her to replace her father's surname with her mother's. 

A Bench of Justice Gaurang Kanth held, "The identity of a child, including her surname is an integral part of her personal development and autonomy. Courts have consistently held that when the change in name or surname does not adversely affect any legal or statutory right of a third party and is sought in furtherance of the child's best interest, such change ought to be allowed. 

In light of the above facts and the applicable legal position and having regard to the welfare of the minor child, which is of paramount consideration, this court is of the view that prayer of the petitioner deserves to be allowed.

Last summer, when “Susan” landed at Gatwick Airport from Nigeria with a newborn baby in her arms, she expected to return quietly to her family life in West Yorkshire. Instead, she was arrested on suspicion of child trafficking. Now, her name sits at the heart of a disturbing Family Court case that has exposed one of Nigeria’s most insidious exports: baby farming.

According to BBC, Susan, whose real name has been withheld to protect the child at the center of the case had been living in the UK since June 2023 with her husband and other children. She worked as a care worker and had legal residency. Before leaving for Nigeria, Susan told her GP she was pregnant. There were no signs of pregnancy, and blood tests revealed a tumor and not a baby. Despite doctors’ concerns, she refused further treatment and clung to an unlikely story: her pregnancies had always been undetectable, and this one was no different.

In June 2024, she left the UK, claiming she wanted to deliver the baby in Nigeria. Weeks later, she returned with an infant girl, “Eleanor.” But the narrative she spun quickly fell apart.

When DNA tests showed no biological link between the baby and either Susan or her husband, her explanation pivoted: it was an IVF baby, she claimed, that is conceived with donor egg and sperm. To prove her story, she submitted shaky documentation: a forged IVF record and a suspicious birth certificate from a Nigerian hospital. The accompanying photos, taken in what appeared to be a delivery suite, were blurry and inconclusive.

The woman in them was faceless. One photo featured a naked woman with a placenta between her legs. “Someone had given birth,” said the Nigerian doctor who signed the document. “It just wasn’t Susan.”

Amsterdam - The swimming pool intern suspected of raping eleven young children came to the Netherlands from Haiti as a child, where his adoptive parents raised him. He was involved with numerous organizations and regularly excelled.

According to the Public Prosecution Service, twenty-year-old JL abused fourteen children between the ages of 4 and 6 during swimming lessons between the end of August and the beginning of December last year in Zelhem, Gelderland.

According to the indictment, eleven victims were raped, as emerged on Tuesday during an initial preliminary hearing in the Zutphen court.

L. turns out to be an athletic young man. He was involved with several clubs in his region, such as the Achilles gymnastics club in Hengelo. He was already a great talent as a young teenager. A local media outlet wrote about the athletic young man after a competition: "J. was in top form that day; it was as if he could perform magic. Everything just worked out."