Roelie Post

A word of caution.

The Hague Adoption Convention is pro-adoption biased.

And conflicts with the UN Convention on the Rights of the child.

HAC was created because UNCRC renders intercountry adoption as good as impossible (art 21b).

The circumstances in which biological parents give up an adopted child sometimes do not match what the adoption file states, researcher Atamhi Cawayu in Bolivia noted. 'Adoption services have too much reliance on paperwork.'

A couple in rural Bolivia had a seventh child in 2008, a girl with a medical condition. According to her adoption file, the parents decided to give up their daughter because of their economic situation.

The Flemish Atamhi Cawayu, himself adopted from Bolivia, went to talk to the father for his doctoral research, which he recently defended at Ghent University. 'The man was shocked when I told him that his daughter had been adopted by a Dutch couple. The father thought all along that his daughter was living with a lawyer in Santa Cruz.'

'He was told that the childless lawyer could pay much more attention to the sick child and that she also had the money to do so. He said to me, “It wasn't really what I wanted. It wasn't my first choice. Who wants to give up their own child?''

Kidnapped

It has been six months since Nataly last saw her boys, and now the 50-year-old mum is facing Christmas without them

Since then she’s fought in courts to get her boys home but faces Christmas without them.

As she climbs into bed each evening, Nataly Anderson whispers goodnight to her two little boys.

But she can only mouth the words to their photos as her nine-year-old twins have been taken, against her will, to live in Croatia by their father.

It has been six months since Nataly last saw Luke and David (both names changed), and the 50-year-old is now facing Christmas without them.

GHENT -

The Ghent court convicted a Bulgarian woman on Monday for inhumane treatment of her child. She sold her baby for 5,000 euros to a couple from Ghent. The prospective parents were prosecuted by the public prosecutor's office, but were acquitted because they were misled.

“The court mainly wants to send a social signal with the ruling. Not only towards the Bulgarian woman, but also towards anyone who would want to profit from the birth of a biological child by trading it for profit," the verdict said.

The Ghent court sentenced the woman in absentia on Monday to ten months' suspended prison sentence. The woman sold her child to a couple for 5,000 euros. The court ruled that she treated her child as a commodity and should be punished for that.

The facts date from 2020. The Turkish couple from Ghent had wanted to have children for a long time, but due to a medical problem with the woman, they were unable to become pregnant. Through Bulgarian acquaintances in Belgium they came into contact with the woman, who was six months pregnant at the time.

23-year-old Patrik Dam was addicted to taking hard drugs and engaging in extreme sex. Now he is warning others.

WARNING: This article contains violent depictions of drug abuse, sex and abuse.

He had the crack pipe in one hand while the other swiped desperately on the phone. For days he had been looking for the next man he could sell himself to and thus get another fix.

It was in those days that 2.5 years of violent abuse of so-called 'chemsex' – i.e. sex on hard drugs – culminated for the then 22-year-old Patrik Dam.

When TV 2 Echo meets him a year later, he finds it difficult to remember the details and what happened on which day, but when you sit across from him, there is no doubt that the period stands as a living nightmare in his memory.

The children of British women who joined the ISIS terror group are being returned to the UK and put up for adoption, it has emerged.

At least ten children are said to have been repatriated from detention camps in Syria. Those that have been repatriated are understood to be mainly orphans of unaccompanied minors.

Among them were two siblings whose British mother is believed to have been killed in northeastern Syria in 2019. Their father, who is not British, is understood to have been captured and is currently in a detention camp for foreign fighters, The Sunday Times reports. 

The Syria-born siblings were repatriated last year and are said to be living with foster carers in south-east England and are set to be adopted, despite one set of grandparents that do not live in the UK being willing to care for them. 

Campaigners say that this offer was rejected by the local authority that is responsible for the children in Britain.

The French Office for Illicite Migration of Minors has registered the complaint from the French/Romanian adoptees. 

The adoption agency DIA, which is appointed by the Danish state, has paid support to their representative in Madagascar in violation of the rules, despite raised fingers. Risk of child trafficking, law professor assesses.

For six months, the Danish Appeals Board asked the adoption agency Danish International Adoption (DIA) to tighten up and adjust according to the rules. 

Yet the DIA chose to ignore the pointed fingers and stick to an illegal practice in the African island nation of Madagascar.

This is shown by over 400 pages of correspondence between the Danish Appeals Agency and DIA, which Danwatch has gained insight into.

Specifically, it is about the adoption agency's so-called adoption assistance for a number of orphanages in the poor island state. According to the rules, this kind of financial support must be paid to the Malagasy authorities, but DIA has chosen to give the money to their representative on the island instead, who has bought food and other necessities for the orphanages

When Guillermo Gómez (above) was a boy, in the mid-1980s, he was lying in bed next to his mother at their home in Buenos Aires, when she asked him a strange question: “What would you do if one of these days, when I’m working, a woman comes along and tells you she’s your mother? Would you run away with her?” Guillermo didn’t understand. How could he have another mother? Tears welled in his eyes. “I’m not going anywhere,” he whimpered. “You’re my mother.”

Lawsuit comes after proposed B.C. class action alleges abuse at Salvation Army’s homes for unwed women

Following a proposed class-action lawsuit against the Salvation Army over its role in operating homes for unmarried mothers until the 1980s, the charity has launched its own lawsuit against child and family services agencies in Manitoba, alleging they breached their duty of care to the women who lived in the homes. (Sokor Space/Shutterstock)

Two years ago, a proposed national class action lawsuit filed against the Salvation Army alleged the Canadian charity took advantage of unmarried soon-to-be mothers who lived in the organization's maternity homes — and allegedly coerced them into placing their newborns up for adoption.

Now, a Manitoba lawsuit filed by the Salvation Army alleges that in that province, it's some child and family services agencies who bear responsibility for any coercion during adoptions.