The agreement on the SSA funds has been published on the website of the Ministry of Social Affairs, Housing and the Elderly .

It appears from the text of the agreement that 12.6 million will be set aside. DKK for investigation of the international adoption agency to Denmark:

"The world of adoption has changed over time, and not least in light of the requirements that have become more stringent over time, there is an ongoing focus on suspicions of illegal circumstances, especially in relation to adoptions carried out back in time. Funds are therefore set aside to map the historical development in international adoption mediation to Denmark in the form of an impartial study of the international adoption mediation from the ten countries from which most children were adopted to Denmark in the period 1964 to 2016. The purpose of the study will be to provide information that supports the adoptees' right to know their own history. The investigation is not carried out with the aim of concluding whether the specific adoptions took place on an illegal basis, and therefore the investigation will have the character of a historical investigation and not a legal assessment 2025-2027."

DIA drew attention to the need for an investigation in a request to Social Affairs and Housing Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil in September.

A sweet 8-year-old creature, a victim of domestic violence at the Kallithea Police Department , experienced an unimaginable adventure a few days ago . The 8-year-old girl was kept in the Department from the afternoon until the next morning, and was forced to sleep fasting in the AT yard on plastic chairs and in a corridor.

According to the foster parents of the 8-year-old girl, the Service Officer claimed that he could not find anyone in the prosecutor's office to indicate further actions, so the child was detained in the Department.

As kallitheaonline.gr reports , it has not yet been clarified why someone was not informed immediately to pick up the 8-year-old girl so that she would not spend the night at Kallithea Police Station. At the same time, according to the same information, no one cared to offer the little girl a meal, and her foster parents and biological mother were all incarcerated and could not get out.

At the same time, sources from the Prosecutor's Office report that a verbal prosecutorial order was given to notify a person in the family environment to pick up the child from the Department, which was not done until the next day.

Lara van Barneveld (48) from Enschede always found great comfort in a fairytale story about her adoption. That was based on what the orphanage had said about it. But a few years ago Lara discovered that things were very different. Now she does everything she can to find her biological mother. Her hopes are pinned on an advertisement in the newspaper.

"My adoptive parents were told that the orphanage staff in India opened the door in the morning and saw a box on the sidewalk. In the box was me, a cute baby barely a day old," says Lara. “And when I was little I imagined that I was the daughter of an Indian princess who for some reason couldn't keep me.”

But when Lara speaks to other people from the same orphanage, she finds out that they have all been told the same story. "That story is not correct, because we could never have all been found in a box in front of the orphanage." Since then, Lara has been searching with all her might for her biological parents in India.

Mistakes are often made when adopting from abroad because the system is susceptible to fraud. A well-known example of this is the story of the adoptive nun Gertrudis Kuijpers. She is accused of hundreds of illegal adoptions :

Lara van Barneveld (48) from Enschede always found great comfort in a fairytale story about her adoption. That was based on what the orphanage had said about it. But a few years ago Lara discovered that things were very different. Now she does everything she can to find her biological mother. Her hopes are pinned on an advertisement in the newspaper.

The Tuticorin Diocesan Association had its Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration suspended or cancelled back in 2015. The suspension came following adverse reports from intelligence agencies and subsequent inspections and investigations by government authorities. The Ministry of Home Affairs, led by Shri Kiren Rijiju at the time, suspended the FCRA registration of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, along with two other NGOs. Furthermore, their respective bank accounts were frozen.

At the time of the FCRA registration suspension, the primary reason cited by the Indian government was the alleged involvement of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association in “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” This led to the release of a public statement by the Home Affairs Ministry on March 4, 2015, through the Press Information Bureau’s official portal, titled “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” Shri Kiren Rijiju Ji’s response in the Rajya Sabha was cited as the basis for this release.

Continued Receipt of Foreign Funds And Its Misuse and Diversion

Despite the suspension and subsequent cancellation of the FCRA registration, the Tuticorin Diocesan Association has continued to receive foreign funds, amounting to Rs. 44,507,214, into its Bank of Baroda account at the Tuticorin branch. It is noteworthy that a significant portion of these foreign funds is earmarked for activities related to the welfare of children, maintenance, and construction of orphanages, among other purposes.

The Tuticorin Diocesan Association had its Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration suspended or cancelled back in 2015. The suspension came following adverse reports from intelligence agencies and subsequent inspections and investigations by government authorities. The Ministry of Home Affairs, led by Shri Kiren Rijiju at the time, suspended the FCRA registration of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, along with two other NGOs. Furthermore, their respective bank accounts were frozen.

At the time of the FCRA registration suspension, the primary reason cited by the Indian government was the alleged involvement of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association in “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” This led to the release of a public statement by the Home Affairs Ministry on March 4, 2015, through the Press Information Bureau’s official portal, titled “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” Shri Kiren Rijiju Ji’s response in the Rajya Sabha was cited as the basis for this release.

Continued Receipt of Foreign Funds And Its Misuse and Diversion

Despite the suspension and subsequent cancellation of the FCRA registration, the Tuticorin Diocesan Association has continued to receive foreign funds, amounting to Rs. 44,507,214, into its Bank of Baroda account at the Tuticorin branch. It is noteworthy that a significant portion of these foreign funds is earmarked for activities related to the welfare of children, maintenance, and construction of orphanages, among other purposes.

An Australian woman seems to have had all the required documents to bring a baby delivered by surrogacy in Greece back to Australia.

The Georgian national and the facility she gave birth in have been at the centre of an international baby trafficking storm since August.

The Neonatal Unit of the General Hospital of Chania on the Greek island of Crete is accused by the Greek authorities of having been involved in baby trafficking.

The accusations included the exploitation of 169 women from countries Ukraine, Romania and Georgia, forcing them to be surrogate mothers or egg donors. The trafficking syndicate is also accused of illegal adoptions and fake IVF treatments.

According to reports by flahnews.gr, the Australian woman at the centre of this case “presents a difficult legal case”, as the authorities have yet to verify the identity of the biological parents. So, the baby remains officially “unidentified” but is otherwise in excellent health.

After 70 years of more than 200,000 cases of overseas adoption, Korea is still grappling with the question of whether a person’s right to know the truth about their beginnings overrides their parents’ wishes to remain forgotten.
 
“Confidential, that is what everybody keeps telling me,” says Fanny, a French adoptee who asked to be identified only by her first name. “This is about my story, yet no one can give me the right information.”
 
Fanny, adopted by a family in France when she was only a few months old in 1982, has returned to Korea multiple times in search of her birth family.

She is joined by at least 3,000 others who did the same between 2019 and 2021.
 
But more than half of them were given the same answer in their search: The records of their biological parents were either lost or confidential.
 
In Korea, privacy laws give the parents the right to remain confidential, even after adoptees file an official request to the government for information about their birthparents, hoping to learn more about their beginnings.
 
And despite years of work by some adoptees and local advocates to convince lawmakers otherwise, Korea is about to pass another law allowing parents to remain anonymous when registering the birth of their child. 

 
“Every single person should know exactly where they came from,” said Ami Nafzger, founder of G.O.A.L., an NGO based in Seoul that has assisted adoptees in their search since 1997, and Adoptee Hub in the United States.
 
“It wasn’t our choice to leave the country,” she said, speaking from her experience of being adopted to the United States when she was four. “It wasn’t our choice to lose the language. It wasn’t our choice to lose our identity and our entire family history. The people passing these laws are not thinking about what it would be like if it were them.”
 
 
 

Wow! What a day! 

On Friday 3 November 2023, I spent 4 hours in a mediated session with one of the organisations who accepted responsibility for my sexual abuse by my adoptive family. This was enabled as a direct result of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse. My claim took approximately 2 years and on 8 Nov 2022, my claim was accepted by 2 of the 3 institutions that I had nominated: the Lutheran church and the Australian Department of Home Affairs (Immigration). A victim can elect if they wish to have a Direct Personal Response (DPR) or not in which the apology is given to us face to face. I chose to hear their apology directly.

The role of the Lutheran church in my sexual abuse is that they had assessed my adoptive parents and given them permission to adopt a child from overseas. This adoptive family went on to sexually abuse me over many years from as early as 5 years old until I was 14 years old. In August of 2020, I had finally been brave enough to report my multiple abusers to the police.

In April 2023, the police case against my adoptive father ended. He did a deal with the prosecutor in exchange for reduced charges, of which he then went on to plead guilty to only 1 of the 4 charges, that charge was termed indecent assault, the other 3 charges were related to the many instances across various years. He is now on the Sex Offender Registry for the next 8 years. The other males (family / extended family) whom I reported to the police were let off due to being minors at the times of the crimes and due to the difficulty of proving their intent at that age. One of those had already suicided years earlier.

Providing me firstly with financial compensation showed me in action that the Lutheran church took my hurt seriously. Apologising and listening intently to what I needed to say .. wow! If only my adoptive parents had done what I’d asked for years while I had waited and stayed in the relationship, hoping that we’d be able to deal with the past. I had asked numerous times over 2 decades to take us to professional help, to help the family heal. But they never did. My adoptive father apologised a couple of times in letter and in person, but that was it. Towards the end, when I asked for financial compensation he declined stating he “didn’t believe in blood money”. What we ultimately needed was something like this royal commission process that allowed me to be compensated as an action, followed by a process of truly hearing, listening, reflecting, and connecting.

I am a Chinese intercounty (International), transracial adoptee. I reunited with my biological family five years ago, going on six years soon. Some days it still feels surreal and other days it feels like I have always known them.

Six years ago, if you had asked me when my birthday was, I would have said December 5 with an uncomfortable feeling; a painful reminder of my unknown past. Now I answer the same question with a pause, wondering whether or not to share that my birthday is July 16. If you had asked me six years ago how many siblings I have, I would have said half the number I now know to be true.  

As a child, and even in my teenage years, I was told (and believed) that if I was still in China, I probably would not have made it through school. I would not have the same opportunities I have in America. I might have been hidden or, even yet, may not be alive. I would not have had access to some of the medical care I needed. I was told that being deaf, I would have been rejected by society. I would have been poor, simply because my family was assumed to be poor, and I would not have a “successful” or “happy” life. I wrestled with this supposed “truth” and “luck” I had over the years.

The questions I had and beliefs I held continuously changed through different seasons of life. I did not have the language to express the complexities of my thoughts, and I did best when all of my feelings were tucked away and hidden. Sometimes, I could only hold anger because there was no other identifiable feeling. I often became numb and would find myself conforming to the statements around me: “lucky”, “chosen”, “grateful”, “fortunate”, “blessed” and so on. I would agree with a smile, though internally I did not necessarily concur with these beliefs. In other seasons of life, I missed, grieved, and carried the weight of these many ambiguous losses alone. 

  The experience of the unknown often leaves uncertainty, anxiousness, fear, and confusion. As a child, the unknown and undisclosed were not concrete thoughts or information. The inconsistent answers about my birth parents and my past were all I had to make sense of why I was here. My understanding of my past was based on many different theoretical situations, intentional/ unintentional assumptions, and imaginary scenarios of what might have possibly happened. There were a few documents containing almost no helpful information. Not even my birthday was known to be correct.

Former social worker Thea Ramirez has developed an artificial intelligence-powered tool that she says helps social service agencies find the best adoptive parents for some of the nation’s most vulnerable kids

Some are orphans, others seized from their parents. Many are older and have overwhelming needs or disabilities. Most bear the scars of trauma from being hauled between foster homes, torn from siblings or sexually and physically abused.

Child protective services agencies have wrestled for decades with how to find lasting homes for such vulnerable children and teens –- a challenge so enormous that social workers can never guarantee a perfect fit.

Into this morass stepped Thea Ramirez with what she touted as a technological solution – an artificial intelligence-powered tool that ultimately can predict which adoptive families will stay together. Ramirez claimed this algorithm, designed by former researchers at an online dating service, could boost successful adoptions across the U.S. and promote efficiency at cash-strapped child welfare agencies.

“We’re using science – not merely preferences – to establish a score capable of predicting long-term success,” Ramirez said in an April 2021 YouTube video about her ambitions to flip “the script on the way America matches children and families” using the Family-Match algorithm.