Imagine for a minute that you don’t know who your mother is. Now imagine that you are that mother, and you don’t know what became of your daughter.

Imagine the questions that the daughter would live with on a daily basis. Why did my mom give me up? And imagine that mother, possibly plagued by regret, and very likely thinking of her lost daughter.

For Janine Vance and her sister, Jenette, these are not imaginings, but everyday life. Adopted into the United States from Korea when they were very young, the two women have next to no information about their original family, and very little detail about the circumstances of their adoption. In order to answer her own questions, and those of other adoptees not only from Korea but around the world, Janine has spent years researching the questionable practices of adoption agencies. She has written books on the topic, and formed a support network for those in similar situations. She calls her research and the collection of resulting books that also includes her memoirs, The rEvolutionary Orphan Collective.

Doubtless there are legitimate providers of children from other countries to the United States for adoption by U.S. parents. Yet what Janine suspects, is what her research points to: an adoption machine that hints at human trafficking, evangelical agendas, and, at the very least, taking children from those less advantaged to give to the more advantaged—for a profit.

“The primary concern I have about the current adoption procedure for children, whether from Asia or Africa, or anywhere in the world, is that it is based on secrecy in order for it to be effective and profitable,” explained Janine. “It has been created by various churches and based on shame. It has exploded into a network known as the Evangelical Orphan Movement and used as an effort to proselytize to other people’s children. It generates massive amounts of money for profiteers or adoptioneers. It ignores the rights of children as enshrined in the original intent of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child…Korean children are not the only children exploited by the industry, but…there are several mass child migration schemes that have plagued communities, particularly organized by various religious entities, starting as early as 1618. It continues today because no one knows the crisis exists.”

Four-member committee to conduct spot verification of family applying for adoption

KOCHI: In a move aimed at preventing fraudulent practices in the adoption process, Kerala government has brought in an additional layer of screening and approval process for childless couples to adopt children in the state. This process is in addition to the existing tight procedures put in place by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development through its statutory body Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) in 2017.

As per the new screening process, a four-member committee that includes a local anganwadi worker will conduct a detailed probe into the whereabouts of the family based on the home study report prepared by an approved adoption agency.

“Earlier, approval for adoption process was given based on the home study report prepared by the approved agency. Kerala government has introduced another level of verification process wherein a four-member committee has to conduct a detailed inquiry based on the home study report and approval is given only if they find the details mentioned in the report correct,” said a senior officer of state Social Justice Department.

District Child Protection Officer Shina said the additional level of verification was introduced by the state government to prevent fraud committed by a few unregulated orphanages under the cover of adoption.

Inés Madrigal, who was taken from her birth mother in 1969, has located a second cousin thanks to a US company, and says that she has “completed the puzzle that is my life”

The first woman to be recognized by the Spanish courts as one of the country’s so-called “stolen babies” revealed today that she has managed to locate her biological family after 32 years of searching. Thanks to a DNA database in the United States, Inés Madrigal has been put in touch with a second cousin, who informed her that her biological siblings were also searching for her.

Over the last decade or so, it has emerged that during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco, a network of nuns and doctors at certain hospitals had taken babies from poor families or single mothers and given them to wealthy parents unable to conceive. The irregular scheme is thought to have been in operation until 1990, well after the death of Franco in 1975 and the return of democracy to Spain in the late 1970s.

In October last year, the Madrid Provincial Court found that Eduardo Vela, a retired doctor who is now 86, was the perpetrator of the three crimes of which he had been accused in Spain’s first “stolen baby” trial: child abduction, faking a birth, and falsifying childbirth records and other official documents relating to Madrigal. However, he was not given a prison sentence or any other kind of punishment on the basis that the statute of limitations on the offenses had expired.

At a press conference in Madrid today, Madrigal described finding her “true family” as a “triumph,” although the news for her is bittersweet as she has since discovered that her biological mother died in 2013 at the age of 73.

CARRIZO SPRINGS, Tex. — As he stood before reporters in a newly opened emergency shelter for unaccompanied migrant children, the chief executive of the contracting firm that could be paid up to $300 million to run the facility was far from thrilled about the task before him.

“I hate this mission,” Kevin Dinnin, head of the San Antonio-based nonprofit BCFS Health and Human Services, said on Wednesday in this remote Texas town. “The only reason we do it is to keep the kids out of the Border Patrol jail cells.”

The Carrizo Springs shelter opened on June 30 to help alleviate cramped conditions in Border Patrol processing facilities, where people were recently seen sleeping head to toe on concrete floors, often lacking access to hot meals, showers and proper medical care. The shelter will be able to hold up to 1,300 teenage children, though it currently has just over 200.

Although reporters who visited the shelter Wednesday saw the children only briefly during a tightly controlled tour, conditions in Carrizo Springs appear far better than those in the Border Patrol stations. Children could be seen playing soccer outside, attending classes in groups of around 30 to 40 and making phone calls to their families.

The facility is a scattering of dormitory buildings, trailers and tents that were once housing for oil field workers. Children’s artwork — drawings of cartoon characters, flags and paper flowers — decorated the walls of their sleeping quarters. Lighted soccer fields allow children to play at night and avoid the harsh summer heat.

30 years after the end of Ceausescu's regime, the imprint left by the dictator's pro-natalist policy remains strong in Romania. Many abandoned children still live in unsuitable placement centers today. A new law, supported by CARE and its local partner SERA, could be a game-changer.

CARE and its local partner SERA are participating in the implementation of this law which will make it possible to provide children with a real home.

© CARE

Towards the gradual closure of placement centers

In 2018, more than 54,000 children were still under state protection. The vast majority grow up with professional foster mothers and foster families, and a third live in residential centers. Despite the government's efforts to favor family-type solutions, 9,000 children are still growing up in centers unsuited to their needs.

The Supreme Head of the Adoption Agency was presented as everyone's father

Five years ago, a girl was born at the social welfare society's hospital in Gangnam, South Korea. Maria Fredriksson suddenly got her in her arms during a revolutionary visit when she just started searching for her roots.

The country where no one can take root.

In 1972, I was adopted from South Korea. For most of my life I have actively ignored my country of birth, but in 2014 I decided to visit it for me almost mythical country where I was born. I'm not the traveler, why I tried to find some sort of arranged group trip with the finished program.

I was happy when I was advised in an adoption forum to contact the Swedish adoption organization Adoptionscentrum, which was able to communicate with its Korean partner the adoption agency Social Welfare Society (SWS), which annually arranges a return trip for adults adopted. SWS has passed adoptions to Sweden since the Swedes began adopting from the country on a larger scale and in recent years have begun arranging lavish group trips under the name of "Welcome home - Motherland tour".

The Union government will push for the passage of three crucial bills in this session of Parliament.

Re-introduction of three previously lapsed bills, the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act 2015, the Anti-Trafficking Bill and POCSO Amendment Bill is high on the list of priorities of the government, sources said.

The Anti-trafficking Bill was passed in Lok Sabha but lapsed as it could not be introduced in the Rajya Sabha in the last session before the Lok Sabha elections. The bill faced much resistance from the opposition in the Rajya Sabha over certain provisions; the opposition wanted it to be first referred to a select committee of Parliament.

In July last year, the Ministry of Women and Child Development had introduced the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Bill 2018, under which the district magistrate was empowered to issue adoption orders instead of district courts. It was introduced in the Lok Sabha on August 6, but could not be passed in either House.

As per the proposed amendments to the JJ Act, the district magistrate’s role will be widened to oversee and monitor implementation of the entire adoption process, effectively making it the appellate and monitoring authority of the district-wise adoptions carried out by the State Adoption Resource Agency (SARA).

MUMBAI: The crime branch on Saturday rescued two more babies and arrested four more persons in a child trafficking racket it

had unearthed last week.

Among the four new arrests was a woman who was a go-between.

Last week unit 6 of the crime branch arrested a gang of four women, including a private hospital-coordinator-cum-owner of an

IVF consultancy, Bhagyashree Koli, for selling baby boys born to poor couples for as high as Rs 5 lakh.

Gemma Givens was adopted from Guatemala in 1990 when she was 4 months old. As Gemma grew older, she began to feel a deep emptiness. “I felt like I was foundationless, or that I was floating, or I was a ghost, or I was a genetic isolate, which, in a way, I was,” Gemma says. It would lead her to Guatemala, where her search for her birth mother would reveal the corrupt business of intercountry adoption and inspire Gemma to create an international community of Guatemalan adoptees, Next Generation Guatemala.

Now, at 28, Gemma manages the Host Family Program UC Berkeley’s International House. Gemma says working with students, who are from all different countries, speak different languages and practice different faiths, has helped her to become a better leader for her community of Next Generation Guatemalans.

Read a transcript of Fiat Vox episode #57: “Staffer’s search for birth mom reveals dark history of Guatemalan adoption”:

Gemma Givens: I think adoption was sort of like, “This is your life: privilege and education and things that wouldn’t have been available to me in the same way in Guatemala.” But that, “What’s done is done. This is it.”

[Music: “Building the Sled” by Blue Dot Sessions]

PERSBERICHT TEVREDENHEID GEADOPTEERDEN

Persbericht 9 juli 2019

Meeste volwassen geadopteerden tevreden met hun leven

Interlandelijke adoptie roept zowel positieve als negatieve reacties op en de discussie dringt door tot ver in het beleid. Afstand en adoptie zijn zware ingrepen in het leven van mensen en door de internationale context is het risico van onrechtmatigheden ook groot[1]. Vanuit de media overheerst vaak een negatieve berichtgeving over adoptie. Maar weerspiegelt dit beeld de werkelijkheid? Zijn de meesten van de 40.000 interlandelijk geadopteerden ontevreden met hun adoptie? Om hierover duidelijkheid te krijgen, initieerden de organisatoren van de EurAdopt[2] conferentie in 2016 een onderzoek naar de tevredenheid van een grote, gevarieerde groep interlandelijk geadopteerden in Nederland. Het wetenschappelijk artikel over dit onderzoek is deze maand gepubliceerd.

Doordat zowel adoptieorganisaties, adoptieouders als organisaties voor geadopteerden meewerkten, kon een gevarieerde groep geadopteerden gehoord worden: geadopteerden die kritisch zijn ten opzichte van adoptie, geadopteerden die er positief tegenover staan en geadopteerden die meestal niet in de media komen. Over de uitkomsten van deze vragenlijst is nu vanuit het Instituut Pedagogische Wetenschappen aan de Universiteit Leiden een artikel verschenen in het tijdschrift ‘Adoption and Fostering’.