Sierra Leone adoption scheme sparks controversy

News APA24 April 2019 | 17:14

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A soldier with the U.S. Army adopted six children in 2000 and sexually abused them for years until one daughter reported the abuse in 2017, according to an indictment filed recently in a federal court in North Carolina.

Daniel Kemp and his wife Shanynn Kemp were arrested last year by New York State Police, each charged with several counts of sodomy related to the abuse in Jefferson County, New York, according to police. Daniel Kemp was based at Fort Drum in Jefferson County when he adopted the children, the FBI said in the indictment.

One of the victims told investigators “it happened so many times she was unable to quantify how many times she was abused,” according to the federal indictment filed in the Eastern District of North Carolina.

That victim told investigators the abuse began when she was 12 or 13 and the family was living in Clarksville, Tennessee, near Fort Campbell, according to the indictment. When the abuse stopped with her, Kemp began abusing another girl the FBI described as “mentally disabled,” the FBI said in the court filing.

The abuse came out in April 2017 when one of the victims, a senior at a high school near Fort Bragg in North Carolina, told school officials and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Command that her adopted father had been abusing her for years, according to the indictment.

Back in 1953, New Zealand was rocked by an enormous scandal when a group called the Motherhood of Man Movement were caught running a baby farming scheme.

The movement was originally set up to help unwed mothers, but it turned out its chair and treasurer had been forcing the women in their care to give up their babies to rich donors and they were pocketing the cash.

The scandal led directly to the foundation of New Zealand's modern adoption laws.

Ione Cussens is the curator of Papakura Museum, who has written an academic paper on the scandal.

Motherhood of Man was established in 1942 by a woman called May Harvey, she says.

In a recent flurry of articles, the National Council for Adoption asserts that the State Department is responsible for the plummeting number of intercountry adoptions. They are wrong. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

There are a multitude of reasons international adoptions to the United States and all other receiving countries have declined. Foreign governments have moved, in many cases, to bolster their own child welfare programs. But as they make progress they have also become concerned about what they increasingly view as lax practices by U.S. adoption service providers (ASPs) and inadequate regulation by federal and state child welfare agencies.

The unfortunate practice of unregulated custody transfer, more commonly referred to as “rehoming,” has become the focus of major concern for sending countries, as well as the State Department. Guatemala, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Nepal have all closed their intercountry adoption programs due to concerns about child trafficking as well as rehoming and other questionable practices by ASPs. The U.S. Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted more than one ASP for criminal activity, but concerns remain.

Russian adoption is a particularly troublesome issue. Russian children have been overrepresented in child fatality and abuse statistics. In one notorious rehoming case, an American adoptive mother put her Russian adopted son on a flight back to Moscow with a one-way ticket.

Ultimately, Russia’s closure was out of the State Department’s hands when Russia chose to close intercountry adoptions in retaliation to U.S. Congress’ passage of the Magnitsky Act.

Ireland has an extensive history of systemic human rights abuses of women and children, encompassing multiple institutional settings and spanning most of the 20th century: Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools and the non-consensual practice of symphysiotomy in hospitals.

The legal responses of the state have been fragmented, generally narrow in approach, and often the subject of censure from various UN Treaty Bodies (see Concluding Observations on Ireland by CAT 2011, 2017, HRC 2014, CESCR 2015, CEDAW 2017), with consistent recommendations to the effect that there must be independent and thorough investigations, prosecution of perpetrators, and adequate redress – i.e. access to justice. However, while Ireland has been increasingly criticised regarding historical abuses of women, the specific issue of historical practices of illegal adoption has not been scrutinised to the same extent.

Therefore, the recent Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children regarding her visit to Ireland is noteworthy due to the detailed concerns expressed by the Special Rapporteur regarding historical practices of illegal adoption (in Mother and Baby Homes and related institutional settings).

The Special Rapporteur stated that not enough has been done “to provide information, accountability and redress” to those who suffered abuse in such institutions (Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene Laundries) and “to those who were adopted in a manner that would amount to sale of children under international law”.

In this manner, the Report draws much needed attention to the issue of historical practices of illegal adoption, while also offering a further indictment of Ireland’s poor legal responses to its history of systemic abuses of women and girls, building on the repeated recommendations of UN Treaty Bodies.

Ireland has an extensive history of systemic human rights abuses of women and children, encompassing multiple institutional settings and spanning most of the 20th century: Magdalene Laundries, Mother and Baby Homes, industrial schools and the non-consensual practice of symphysiotomy in hospitals.

The legal responses of the state have been fragmented, generally narrow in approach, and often the subject of censure from various UN Treaty Bodies (see Concluding Observations on Ireland by CAT 2011, 2017, HRC 2014, CESCR 2015, CEDAW 2017), with consistent recommendations to the effect that there must be independent and thorough investigations, prosecution of perpetrators, and adequate redress – i.e. access to justice. However, while Ireland has been increasingly criticised regarding historical abuses of women, the specific issue of historical practices of illegal adoption has not been scrutinised to the same extent.

Therefore, the recent Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children regarding her visit to Ireland is noteworthy due to the detailed concerns expressed by the Special Rapporteur regarding historical practices of illegal adoption (in Mother and Baby Homes and related institutional settings).

The Special Rapporteur stated that not enough has been done “to provide information, accountability and redress” to those who suffered abuse in such institutions (Mother and Baby Homes and Magdalene Laundries) and “to those who were adopted in a manner that would amount to sale of children under international law”.

In this manner, the Report draws much needed attention to the issue of historical practices of illegal adoption, while also offering a further indictment of Ireland’s poor legal responses to its history of systemic abuses of women and girls, building on the repeated recommendations of UN Treaty Bodies.

Ukrainian surrogate mother is legal mother of the child

A Ukrainian carries a child out for a couple from NRW. The registry office in Kiev registers the Germans as parents, genetically they are. The BGH decides differently.

According to German law, a woman can not register as a mother of her child, who has been delivered by a Ukrainian surrogate mother, to the registry office. Only one adoption is possible, as emerges from a published resolution of the Karlsruhe Federal Court of Justice (BGH). (Az. XII ZB 530/17)

A German couple from North Rhine-Westphalia, whose child had been delivered by a Ukrainian surrogate mother, had filed a suit. Surrogacy is prohibited in Germany.

The BGH referred in this connection to a provision in the Civil Code. Thus, the mother of a child is "the woman who gave birth". The Karlsruhe judges confirmed with their decision a decision of the Higher Regional Court Hamm.

On Thursday, April 25, there will be an opportunity to experience an experienced aid worker in Brovsat.

At a senior gathering at Brovst Baptist Church, Jessie Rosenmeier from Aalborg will talk about her long life as a relief worker in several different places around the world. She will do so at 2 p.m. in the Baptist church.

Jessie Rosenmeier has sometimes been compared to Mother Teresa, whom she also met as a young woman in India.

The focus has always been on street children and children without parents in India, but also in other places around the world.

The last chapter of Saroo Brierley’s life is perhaps the only portion that the general public aren’t yet privy to. After all, the first 31 years went out for public consumption when he penned his tell-all memoir A Long Way Home in 2013, and when British actor Dev Patel took his story not only to the big screen, but to the Academy Awards, too.

But what of everything that came after the happy ending? Well, that thirst to know what has become of Brierley – the Indian child who got lost so far from home that he wound up rehoused in Tasmania, only to go in search of his real mother two decades later with only a faint memory and Google Earth as guidance – can now be satiated. “I’m writing another book,” he tells The National. “It will be the sequel, and Mum’s writing the prequel.”

The sentence is rattled off, just like that, as if each of its components aren’t huge, lifelong achievements for most people. Oh, and there’s one more thing: his story is also being developed into a stage show.

Brierley, now 37, is in the capital this week for the Abu Dhabi International Book Fair, alongside other renowned authors flocking in from across the globe, such as Ben Okri and Ziauddin Yousafzai, the father of Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. The guest of honour this year is India, which is particularly poignant for Brierley. The impending additions to his oeuvre have not yet been officially announced, so he is understandably coy with the finer details.

What he is certain of, however, is how his story will end. “It will finish off with finding my father. I know where he is, but I just haven’t had the strength to finalise that point. It’s an individual thing that you do by yourself, there’s a lot of soul searching.”

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