Borny gaat op zoek naar zijn Roemeense familie | Spoorloos16 Jul 2019

Yanien was abducted as a child and adopted: "I am signed for life"

Yanien (49), mother of three daughters and married to Johan (49) was abducted from her native Indonesia as a 9-year-old girl and sold for adoption to a Dutch family. "I will never be able to accept what has been done to me."

Yanien: “My first memories are from when I was six or seven years old. I lived with my four brothers and our parents in a small, elongated house in a neighborhood where poor and rich lived together. My father was a civil servant. We didn't have a lot of money, but we got along well. We didn't know any better. But then my father died in a motorcycle accident. I can still see his body lying under a white sheet on the floor of our house. We were not allowed to cry from our faith, so that his spirit can find its way to heaven. My mother held me, I didn't understand. "

Crisis time

“A crisis time arrived. My mother had a hard time losing my father. She couldn't possibly take care of five children and work at the same time, so that's why I was taken to my grandparents with one brother. My oldest brother was with my aunt and the second oldest brother stayed with my mother with my younger brother. I had lost my safe haven. Later I lived with my uncle and aunt for a while and I went to school there. I missed my mother and brothers terribly. When I was about nine years old, I came home to look after my two younger brothers while my mother was working. I didn't go to school anymore because there was no more money, but I was already happy that we were together again. ”

Abandoned children from Romania

With the fall of the communist regime in the 1990s, Romania opened up to international adoptions in a chaotic, unchecked context. Then, in the 2000s, to be able to join the European Union, the country introduced new, far more restrictive rules to stop abuses. As a result, thousands of children are still abandoned, but can no longer be adopted.

Reporter:

Fanny Lépine

Country:

As the European Union has expanded eastward, hundreds of thousands of children have been turned into orphans in all but name. They grow up without their parents, who have no choice but to work in rich, Western European countries for a lack of job options back home.

Nicoleta's mother is happy to see her daughter. "How did math go?" she asks. "Good," her daughter responds. "I'm going to tutoring again later. The teacher said he'll pick me up. Have you cooked anything?" "No, but I'm about to make something to eat," the mother says.

Nicoleta stares at the screen of her smartphone. The two of them are separated by 2,500 kilometers (1,553 miles). They're talking over WhatsApp. Ileana Tanase, 37, is calling from London. The 14-year-old Nicoleta is sitting on her bed in her room in Scarisoara, a small town in the county of Bacau in eastern Romania.

They talk for a few minutes about school, food, work and the weather. In the next room, Nicoleta's younger brother Andrei is playing a game on his phone. The 11-year-old doesn't like to talk on the phone; he's a bit introverted. "Kisses," Nicoleta's mother says. "Give Andrei and grandma and grandpa a kiss for me." "I will. Bye, mommy;" the daughter days. Then they both hang up.

Daily conversations over WhatsApp, rarely longer than a few minutes. That's been Ileana Tanase's relationship with both of her children for the past three years. A relationship held together by shaky videos and hastily typed messages punctuated with emojis. It's the digital simulation of a normal life.

WARANGAL (https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/topic/WARANGAL) RURAL:

It’s a curse they live with. The girl child in Warangal

Rural — where only 870 females are born per 1,000 males — is so unwanted that selling her is an accepted norm here, if a tribal

woman fails to abort the foetus. Apart from selling the baby girl, infanticide is also a harsh reality in this part of the world —

largely made of thandas and inhabited by Lambadas.

Most adult adopters are satisfied with their lives

Intercountry adoption evokes both positive and negative responses and the discussion penetrates far into policy. Distance and adoption are major interventions in people's lives. Negative reports about adoption often dominate the media. But does this picture reflect how most of the 40,000 intercountry adopters think about their adoption? To clarify this, a questionnaire study was conducted in 2016 into the satisfaction of a large, varied group of intercountry adoptees in the Netherlands.

Because adoptive organizations, adoptive parents and organizations for adopted persons cooperated, a varied group of adopted persons could be heard: those who are critical of adoption, those who are positive about it and those who do not usually appear in the media. A scientific article about the results of this research has now been published in the magazine "Adoption and Fostering".

Satisfied with their lives

A large group, 1155 intercountry adopters, adopted from 32 countries between 1961 and 1998, responded. And guess what? Despite the often difficult start, the vast majority of adult adopters can build a life that they are happy with. They were even slightly more satisfied with their lives than the average Dutch population.

HUGER, South Carolina — The U.S. Department of Justice says a South Carolina couple tried to get around overseas adoption rules by telling immigration officials a baby they adopted in the Philippines was their biological child.

The State reports federal prosecutors indicted 24-year-old Stephanie Jean Locker and 46-year-old Gerald Vincent Locker Jr. on charges of conspiracy and making false statements in a passport application.

The two were living in Japan in 2014 while Gerald Locker served in the Marines.

A Justice Department release accuses Stephanie Locker of saying she’d learned she was pregnant while on vacation in the Philippines, five days before the baby’s birth.

Records allege the two tried to circumvent adoption processes by passing off the Filipino child as their biological baby.

Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, WCD Minister Smriti Irani gave data according to which the highest number of deaths of children have been reported from Uttar Pradesh. These deaths occurred across 19 specialised adoption agencies in the state.

As many as 776 children, including 124 in Uttar Pradesh, have died at specialised adoption agencies in the last three years, the Women and Child Development (WCD)Ministry said Friday.

Responding to a question in Lok Sabha, WCD Minister Smriti Irani gave data according to which the highest number of deaths of children have been reported from Uttar Pradesh. These deaths occurred across 19 specialised adoption agencies in the state.

Children legally free for adoption are provided residential care at specialised adoption agency(SAA), which are run by both state governments and NGOs.

"As per the Child Adoption Resource Information and Guideline System (CARINGS), 776 children have reported to have died in SAAs during the period from 2016-2017 to 2019-2020 (up to July 8, 2019)," Irani said.

Kazakhstan: Suspension of Intercountry Adoptions Continues

Last Updated: July 12, 2019

The Kazakhstan Adoption Authority, the Ministry of Education and Science (MOES), confirmed to the U.S. Central Authority that the suspension on intercountry adoption between the United States and Kazakhstan remains in place pending submission of all outstanding post-adoption reports (PARs). While the MOES has continued to issue certificates of authorization to Adoption Service Providers (ASPs), the suspension applies to all U.S. ASPs.

Timely submission of PARs is critical to our ongoing efforts to resume intercountry adoptions between the United States and Kazakhstan. Compliance with Kazakhstan’s PAR requirements will contribute to an understanding of the positive impact that intercountry adoption has for children from Kazakhstan who are living in the United States.

Adoptive parents of Kazakh children are requested to submit outstanding PARs as soon as possible. The MOES requires that PARs include adoptive parents’ names, each adopted child’s name and date of birth, and the region from which the child was adopted, as well as recent photos of the child, including family photographs. PARs should also include information about each of the following:

Taking note of the big racket of illegal sale of children for adoption existing in many parts of the country, a court here has urged the authorities to make it an offence punishable under the Indian Penal Code.

Noting that no steps have taken by the government on the 20-year-old recommendations of the Law Commission for making a legal provision to cover the cases where a woman and child is sold, the court said that there exists an urgent need and a valid justification to extend the scope of legal provisions.

Additional Sessions Judge Kamini Lau observed that childrens are sold in adoption market, terming it as "Baccha Baazar" for children like for potatoes, tomatoes and onions and a "big racket of illegal sale of children for adoption exists in many states".

"I am pained to observe that even after 20 years of the above recommendations of the Law Commission of India the recommended amendments are yet to be deliberated upon by those who have been entrusted with the responsibility of framing the laws in this country," she said.

"In this background, I reaffirm the recommendations of the Law Commission of India (Supra) and hold that there exists an urgent need and a valid justification to extend the scope of legal provisions so to cover the cases where a woman or a child is sold whatever be the immediate or ultimate objective of the transaction," the court held.