A Texas woman who was a program manager at an Ohio-based international adoption agency pleaded guilty today in the Northern District of Ohio to schemes to procure adoptions of Ugandan and Polish children by bribing Ugandan officials and defrauding U.S. authorities.

According to court documents, Debra Parris, 69, of Lake Dallas, engaged in a scheme with others to bribe Ugandan officials to procure adoptions of Ugandan children by families in the United States. These bribes included payments to (a) probation officers intended to ensure favorable probation reports recommending that a particular child be placed into an orphanage; (b) court registrars to influence the assignment of particular cases to “adoption-friendly” judges; and (c) High Court judges to issue favorable guardianship orders for the adoption agency’s clients. In her plea agreement, Parris also admitted that she continued to direct the adoption agency’s clients to work with her alleged co-conspirator Dorah Mirembe, after knowing that Mirembe caused clients of the adoption agency to provide false information to the U.S. State Department for the purpose of misleading it in its adjudication of visa applications.

According to court documents, in a second scheme, after alleged co-conspirator Margaret Cole, the adoption agency’s Executive Director, learned that clients of the adoption agency determined they could not care for one of the two Polish children they were set to adopt, Parris and her co-conspirator took steps to transfer the Polish child to Parris’s relatives, who were not eligible for intercountry adoption. In her plea agreement, Parris also admitted that after the child was injured and hospitalized, Parris agreed with her co-conspirator to conceal their improper conduct from the U.S. State Department in an attempt to continue profiting from these adoptions.

Parris pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and commit visa fraud in connection with the Uganda scheme, and conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the Poland scheme. She is scheduled to be sentenced on March 9, 2022. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Trial against Cole is scheduled to commence on Feb. 7, 2022. Mirembe remains at large.

The government has made a “dog's dinner” out of its redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes, such as St Peter's in Castlepollard.

That's according to Paul Redmond, chairperson of the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors (CMABS), who was born in Castlepollard in 1964.

An estimated 34,000 people will qualify for a payment under scheme, while 19,000 will also qualify for an enhanced medical card.

All mothers who spent time in a home will be eligible for a payment. A minimum payment of €5,000 will be made to mothers who spent three months or less at an institution and rises based on the length of stay, with a maximum payment of €65,00 for those who spent ten years or more.

Mothers who engaged in work during their stays will also be eligible for a separate payment, starting at €1,500 for those who worked for between three and six months and going up to a maximum payment of €60,000.

The Stormont executive has agreed to set up a public inquiry into institutions for unmarried mothers in Northern Ireland.

The proposal was one of a series of recommendations ministers were urged to adopt after a panel's report.

On Monday, Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill told the assembly all steps would be put in place "as quickly as possible".

That will include setting up immediate redress payments to survivors.

'A momentous day'

THE GOVERNMENT HAS unveiled the details of an €800 million redress plan for 34,000 survivors of mother and baby homes and county homes.

The scheme will provide financial payments and a form of enhanced medical card to “defined groups in acknowledgement of suffering experienced while resident” in a mother and baby institution or county institution.

All mothers who spent time in a Mother and Baby Institution will be eligible for a payment, which will increase based on their length of stay.

All children who spent six months or more in an institution will also be eligible for payment based on their length of stay, as long as they did not receive redress for that institution under the Residential Institutions Redress Scheme (RIRS).

Many survivors have this evening criticised this specific time limit, saying the length of time a child spent in an institution does not equate to the impact it had on their lives.

THE CABINET IS due to sign off on a long-awaited redress plan for survivors of mother and baby homes and county homes today.

Minister for Children Roderic O’Gorman is bringing the proposals to his Cabinet colleagues this morning ahead of an official announcement this afternoon.

Survivors are eagerly awaiting the details of the scheme after numerous delays. The plan was originally due to be finalised by the end of April.

The scheme is estimated to cost hundreds of millions of euro. O’Gorman has written to a number of religious orders involved in running the institutions, asking them to contribute to the fund.

In its final report in January, the Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes recommended that women should have spent at least six months in an institution prior to 1974 – when the Unmarried Mothers’ Allowance came into effect – in order to be eligible for redress.

Asking people who want kids why they don't "just adopt" is a common refrain but actual adoption in Australia isn't all that common.

Just 334 adoptions were finalised in 2019-20.

So why don't more adoptions happen and what's really involved in the process?

Why are there so few adoptions in Australia?

There are a few reasons for this and we have to look at the three types of adoption to understand why.

'CARA Extremely Callous In Complying With Court's Directions, Unnecessarily Harassing Adoptive Parents': Delhi HC Summons CEO, Member Secretary

The Delhi High Court has observed that the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA)

has been extremely callous in its approach towards compliance of a judicial order,

requiring the authority to frame guidelines for inter-country adoptions under Hindu

Adoptions & Maintenance Act (HAMA).

In 1992, Honduras suspended its international adoption program when it was uncovered that babies were kidnapped, taken to "fattening centers" and then placed for adoption once they made weight. One such center was run in the home of a top aide to US-backed Pres. Rafael Callejas.

10:21 PM · Nov 16, 2021

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ABSTRACT

Most academic studies and public debates about transnational adoption prioritise the experiences of adoptive parents and the voices of professionals, but the perspectives and voices of birth families are rarely heard. I address this shortcoming through a critical analysis of the transnational adoption system by exploring the narratives and experiences of Nepali birth families. Drawing on a 14-month ethnographic study, I explore how birth families’ search for their children illuminates the concept of ‘agency-in-waiting’ and opens up new possibilities for thinking critically about the politics of adoption and the experience of ‘waiting’. The invisibility of birth families in scholarship about adoption belies the fact that many birth families actively search for the children they lost to adoption. This research makes visible the power inequalities that shape family policy and opens new avenues for deconstructing hegemonic narratives that exist in transnational adoption by focusing on birth families’ narratives.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my deep gratitude to all the families who have opened their hearts to me and shared their painful experiences. Susan Frekko provided feedback on this manuscript and edited the English.

Disclosure Statement

The Tuam Babies Family Group is “sceptical” of Minister Roderic O’Gorman’s pledge that a mass exhumation will go ahead at the former Galway mother and baby home next year.

Members claim the children’s minister is being “opportunistic and reactive” as he made the pledge following the broadcast of The Missing Children documentary on RTÉ One last Tuesday.

Annette McKay, whose sister Mary Margaret died at the Tuam mother and baby home in Co Galway, said the minister was “out of touch” if he truly believed exhumation could go ahead next year.

“There are a number of issues with what Roderic O’Gorman said. First of all, who is in charge of the exhumation? Is it gardaí, a coroner? Legally, that has to be decided,” she said.

"There is an ongoing criminal investigation by gardaí. That must be considered. Has it been? Ideally, we would like to see a coroner appointed to oversee this next step. But all of this will take considerable time.