I have just sent an open letter to the President of the European Commission, Madam Ursula Von Der Leyen, asking for an investigation to be opened in France and Romania on illegal adoptions since the 1980s. I invite all adoptees from of a so-called illegal adoption to write to the President of the European Commission.

Open letter to Madam President of the European Commission

Madam President Ursula Von Der Leyen,

My name is Maria Cotoara, I am of Romanian origin born under the dictatorship of Ceausescu and adopted by a French family in the 80s. I refuse to use my French first and last name because my identity was stolen without my consent. My birth certificate is false, since my first name and official name do not appear anywhere, as well as the identity of my biological family which is part of my genetic heritage. Like many adoptees, I felt like "a pawn" in my own story.

Because I grew up in a nest of lies, of "unspoken" in my daily life. These lies are everywhere, in our files, in our identities, in our stories, in our abandonments since I was told, and my adoptive parents, that my birth mother had passed away. It took me over 10 years to look for her and find her by chance. She was not dead. The Romanian authorities told her I was dead. My mother, who was in a situation of precariousness placed me in a nursery but never wanted to abandon me. She did the necessary to come and see me every day, management prevented her from doing so and forced her to sign an act of relinquishment before I was transferred to another city (400 km from my hometown) and another institution without her consent.

In the past, children were auctioned off, which today is considered completely reprehensible. Today, children are instead sent around the globe as commodities.

The National Board of Health and Welfare in Sweden has provided figures on the mental illness of foreign adoptees, which show that almost every 20th foreign adoptee has attempted or committed suicide. Among those who committed suicide were many women. Sweden is the country that has received the most children per capita, but there is no talk of the mental illness that flourishes among them, even though in other cases Sweden is good at seeing the child perspective.

The media usually retrieve their data from research reports, but rarely interview the real experts. the adoptees abroad themselves! You almost get the feeling that we are an imbecile sheep cook who can not bring our own case. The children who are adopted are spotted as an order item in someone's almanac and then transported around the world! In Sweden, there is something called Adoptionslån and anyone who is a member of Adoptionscentrum can take out such a loan to be able to adopt children!

In my eyes, you take out a loan to be able to buy a house or a car, but certainly not children, and what happens if the prospective adoptive parents fall into the debt trap?

The children are completely lawless in this context as the states do not respect the children's rights, nation and family relations. The Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN's so-called human rights that apply to other children do not apply to adoptees abroad. These are cold facts and are a sign that the decision-makers lack knowledge in the psychological process that is forced on these children.

Breaking: Writ Of Habeas Corpus Not Maintainable Against Judicial Order Of Magistrate /CWC Sending Minor Victim To Children Protection Homes:Allahabad

A Full Bench of Allahabad High Court on Monday held that an order passed by a Judicial Magistrate

or Child Welfare Committee sending victim to women protection homes/child care homes cannot

be challenged or set aside in a writ of habeas corpus. Subsequently, the Bench also observed that

the detention of a corpus in such child care homes cannot be treated as an illegal detention.

INTERVIEW WITH BENOIT VAN KEIRSBILCK, Director of DCI-Belgium

Benoit Van Keirsbilck, Director of DCI-Belgium and former President of the DCI Movement, has been elected as a member of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), in November 2020. He is the first-ever Belgian to be elected to this Committee. Mr. Van Keirsbilck has a 35-year career dedicated to the promotion and protection of children’s rights at the national, European and international levels.

He has been a leading force for campaigns to release children deprived of liberty and advance access to justice for children. He was a member of the Expert Group in charge of the drafting of the Council of Europe Guidelines on Child-Friendly Justice. In this interview, Gemma Cavaliere, from the International Secretariat asks Mr. Van Keirsblick the current challenges and future perspectives as newly elected member of the CRC.

In your opinion, what are the most pressing issues for children’s rights in 2021?

I do not think I will be very original here. We know that COVID-19 will affect children’s rights in 2021 and the years to come. Nevertheless, it is important to stress the fact that children’s rights have not always been considered a priority during the COVID-19 pandemic. In national lockdowns, for instance, the right to education was easily sacrificed in many countries, with the closure of schools and leisure centers for children and youth.

The Netherlands has decided to shorten adoptions from abroad. This is due to insufficient supervision of situations such as child theft, child trafficking and unethical conduct by officials. This is a very drastic measure for future adoptees.

In this Dutch Desi episode we talk to Minakshi Baigum . Who was adopted as a child from the Indian orphanage 'Bal Anand'. Minakshi has been looking for her parents, her family and her entire history for 14 years.

The topics discussed during this episode are her adoption process, her emerging company: Adoption Advice Bureau NL and her view on the drastic measure.

Interviewed by: Alyssa Bhawanidin

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Sweden was a driving force in creating the international adoption movement.

The political unity was total - adopting became a matter of course.

This is the story of how Swedish governments have acted to increase adoptions to the country.

Patrik Lundberg

Text

The Vidyagiri police in Dharwad have arrested six persons, including a couple, over the alleged sale of an infant and remanded them in judicial custody.

The arrested have been identified as Bharati Manjunath Walmiki, 48, Ramesh Manjunath Walmiki, 48, Ravi Bhimsen Hegde, 38, Vinayak Arjun Madar, 27 — all from Dharwad — and Vijay Basappa Negalur, 41, and Chitra Vijay Negalur, 37, residents of Udupi.

According to the police, the accused had given a hand loan of ?50,000 to a couple and had demanded ?1,50,000 in return. The couple could not pay back the amount and the accused forcibly made them sell their one-month-and-ten-day-old baby boy to an unidentified couple for ?2.5 lakh and had taken back their money. Subsequently, the distraught mother complained to the police on Friday about the incident.

Payment for custody

Following this, the police arrested the six persons. The infant has been entrusted to the custody of the Child Protection Committee in the district. The couple from Udupi had allegedly paid money to get the child’s custody.

They are called 'donor children', the approximately 40,000 Dutch children who were born until it was banned in 2004 thanks to anonymous sperm donation. The great secret that is still jealously covered up in many families has almost been overtaken by time. The DNA tests that are accessible to everyone are the big game changer .

Her mother asked her whether she could come to Amsterdam at the end of July 2020. Something had to be discussed. Something that was not suitable for over the telephone. And they had to be four of them: Marilien, her brother, her mother and her father.

That was something that had not happened for thirty years, with 'the whole family' - as it is called - in one room. Whatever had to be told could never be as bad as that, I thought. The four of us in one room, we hadn't done that for a long time. ' Marilien (52) has always been funny, her brother Steven (50) too.

She had a valid excuse: corona, especially if, like Marilien, you work and live with the family in Ireland. A trip to Amsterdam had meant quarantine on her return for two weeks. Could it really not be over the phone? No, it really couldn't be over the phone, said her 83-year-old and very spry mother, but she didn't have to worry either. It was not a disease, no one was going to die for the time being. It had to do with family history. What could this be, Marilien and Steven wondered.

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More than 20 High Court cases in relation to illegal adoptions have been launched and are at “an advanced stage”, it has emerged.

Dublin solicitors Coleman Legal Partners has now issued 14 cases in total, while Navan-based firm Cosgrave Solicitors represents clients in nine other cases.*

Cosgraves secured substantial damages for Tressa Reeves and her son Andre Donnelly in 2018, while Coleman Legal Partners lodged a case last year for Belfast man Patrick FitzSymons, whose parents handed him to the Catholic church agency St Patrick’s Guild in the 1960s, which then arranged for him to be adopted by a couple in Co Antrim. Mr FitzSymons’s case was formally launched in January 2020.

He sought damages for personal and psychological injuries and exemplary damages for “actionable conspiracy, deceit, malicious falsehood and infringement of constitutional rights”, relating to the alleged forgery of birth documents.

St Patrick’s Guild has so far declined to nominate lawyers to defend the case. Norman Spicer of Coleman Legal Partners said his firm has secured a judgment in default of appearance against St Patrick’s Guild in four cases of the 14 so far and more are due before the courts in the coming weeks..

During the last cabinet term, Minister Hugo de Jonge was 'system responsible' for youth care. A headache file, about which he barely informed the House for three years and in which the new decentralized health care system turned out to be indomitable. Silent and inglorious, De Jonge left the portfolio at the end of last year, on which he manifested himself as an alderman in Rotterdam. Youth care is in crisis. 'Thinking that it will all work out on its own, I just don't believe in that anymore.'

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