SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean commission found evidence that women were pressured into giving away their infants for foreign adoptions after giving birth at government-funded facilities where thousands of people were confined and enslaved from the 1960s to the 1980s.

The report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Monday came years after The Associated Press revealed adoptions from the biggest facility for so-called vagrants, Brothers Home, which shipped children abroad as part of a huge, profit-seeking enterprise that exploited thousands of people trapped within the compound in the port city of Busan. Thousands of children and adults — many of them grabbed off the streets — were enslaved in such facilities and often raped, beaten or killed in the 1970s and 1980s.

The commission was launched in December 2020 to review human rights violations linked to the country’s past military governments. It had previously found the country’s past military governments responsible for atrocities committed at Brothers. Its latest report is focused on four similar facilities in the cities of Seoul and Daegu and the provinces of South Chungcheong and Gyeonggi. Like Brothers, these facilities were operated to accommodate government roundups aimed at beautifying the streets.

Ha Kum Chul, one of the commission’s investigators, said inmate records show at least 20 adoptions occurred from Daegu’s Huimangwon and South Chungcheong province’s Cheonseongwon in 1985 and 1986. South Korea sent more than 17,500 children abroad in those two years as its foreign adoption program peaked.

Ha said children taken from inmates at Huimangwon and Cheonseongwon were mostly newborns, who were transferred to two adoption agencies, Holt Children’s Services and Eastern Social Welfare Society, which placed them with families in the United States, Denmark, Norway and Australia. Most of the infants were transferred to the agencies on the day of their birth or the day after, Ha said, indicating that their adoptions were determined pre-birth.

KUSHINAGAR: A man in Uttar Pradesh was reportedly forced to "sell" his three-year-old son to cover hospital fees and secure the release of his wife and newborn child, according to officials. The incident, which caused widespread outrage, led to the arrest of five individuals, including a couple who took the child.

Harish Patel, a daily wage worker from Barwa Patti, sought medical care at a private hospital for his wife's delivery. When he was unable to pay the hospital bill, the hospital staff refused to allow his wife and newborn to leave.

Desperate for funds, Patel agreed to a fraudulent adoption arrangement for his three-year-old son in exchange for a few thousand rupees on Friday. Once the police were informed, they promptly launched an investigation and arrested five people: middleman Amresh Yadav, adoptive parents Bhola Yadav and his wife Kalawati, a fake doctor named Tara Kushwaha, and a hospital helper, Suganti.

Additionally, a police constable who allegedly neglected to act on the case has been removed from active duty and reassigned to police lines. Fortunately, the child was safely rescued and has been reunited with his parents, according to Superintendent of Police Santosh Kumar Mishra.

Three years ago, Laurie Carey from Birmingham, Ala., would admire videos of the little boy she was set to adopt from China, as he said "mama" and "baba" while looking at photos of Carey's family.

But this week, she faced the painful reality that she may never hear those words from him in person. The hardest part has been not knowing how her adoptive son is doing.

"We want answers," Carey said. "We wonder what the kids who had pictures of us and videos of us, do they think that, 'Oh I've been abandoned again?' "

Carey is one of the hundreds of families whose hopes to adopt a child from China have been dashed this week with the ending of China's international adoptions program. The Chinese government said the only exception will be for families who are adopting the children or stepchildren of blood relatives in China.

The government adjusted its policy to be "in line" with international trends, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Thursday, according to Reuters. "We express our appreciation to those foreign governments and families, who wish to adopt Chinese children, for their good intention and the love and kindness they have shown," Ning said.

New Life in the bookstore!

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When did Kathalijn's life really begin? In 1988, when she appeared as Kalawati in

India was born? In 1990, when she came to the Netherlands as an adoptee

Indonesian syndicate allegedly bought and sold babies on Facebook

Police in Indonesia busted a baby-trafficking ring that bought newborns on Facebook and sold them to foreigners in Bali.

Police said the “well-organised” syndicate operated in Depok city of West Java, about 27km from capital Jakarta.

The infants were bought from parents for less than £800 on Facebook and sold to foreigners in Bali at four times the price, police said, adding the traffickers also worked on “pre-orders”.

Colorado mother objects to court-ordered reunification therapy, claims it is harmful and abusive

A retired Aurora police sergeant faces criminal charges for raping his daughter and continually sexually assaulting her and his two adopted daughters, but he remains free from custody while his ex-wife is in jail for objecting to court-ordered reunification therapy meant to repair his relationship with two of his sons.

The mother, Rachel Pickrel-Hawkins, said the reunification therapy by Christine Bassett, a licensed marriage and family therapist, has been harmful, abusive and counterproductive. For now, the mother has custody of the couple’s minor children, and they are living in a domestic violence shelter. She said that she has arranged for family members to care for her children when she goes to jail.

The mother said Bassett has supported the efforts by her ex-husband, Michael Hawkins, to gain sole custody of their two youngest sons, now 10 and 13, and has psychologically tortured the children along the way.

“The very last visit with her, I told her, ‘This man now has formal criminal charges for sex assault on children and child abuse, and you need to know this,’” Pickrel-Hawkins said of one encounter with Bassett before a reunification session with the children that the father attended. “She went into the room, and the very first thing that my boy said that she told them was, ‘We need to make progress, and today you need to tell your father that you forgive him.’”

A-Buddy is a subsidiary of Adoption Support Center, supported by volunteers and managed by thecoordinator. Adult adoptees are trained to provide a listening ear to othersadoptees. This volunteer organization also organizes activities and shares storiesadoptees via the website and social media.a-Buddy wants to be a place where adult adoptees (both the buddies themselves and the callers) feel at homewhere they find the recognition and understanding they lack elsewhere.a-Buddy is currently looking for a coordinator to temporarily replace the current coordinator.

Most international adoptions to Finland are from Thailand and South Africa.

Adoptions in Finland decreased by six percent in 2023 compared to the previous year, according to Statistics Finland on Friday.

In total, 252 adoptions occurred in Finland last year.

Adoptions in Finland have been dropping for years. Since 2010, the number of adoptions has decreased by 48 percent.

In the past twenty years, more than eleven thousand children have come to the Netherlands for adoption. Anyone who deals with adoption from abroad can become curious about that which has always remained unknown. Karlijn went with her mother to look for her biological grandmother.

The adventure begins early with Karlijn's curiosity about her mother's background when she is in her early twenties. "She is of Indonesian descent and adopted. I always asked her a lot of questions about her biological family in Indonesia ; I was always so curious! But she couldn't tell me everything about it either, because of course she hadn't been told much either." Fueled by Karlijn's many questions, her mother thinks: if I ever want to get in touch with my biological mother, I shouldn't wait too long. "The older you are, the greater the chance that she might no longer be there. That's why we started looking."

The preparation

The search began in 2018. “We found a foundation that stands up for the interests of adoptees, specifically from Indonesia . They also have many contacts there.” That foundation organizes all kinds of events where adoptees from Indonesia can meet each other.  They also have searchers in Indonesia who start searching for biological family of adoptees throughout Indonesia. A searcher started following the trail based on the information on Karlijn's mother's papers. The searcher approached village elders and placed calls in Facebook groups. One such call was responded to: Karlijn's grandmother had been found. Before they knew it, within three months, contacts were made and my mother took a DNA test with my possible biological grandmother. 

When you have more than two parents

Multi-parenthood is an important basic idea in adoption. It means that more than one or two parents or educational figures are important in the lives of children and young people and it makes it possible to acknowledge all parties involved in adoption, if they so wish and with the nuance that each situation is viewed individually.

What does multi-parenthood in adoption look like in practice? If contact is established between adoptive parents, adopted child and first parents from or shortly after the adoption, how does this take shape? And how does everyone experience this? In this collection of stories, various people involved in adoption testify about their 'open adoption'.

The Story of Eunique

My name is Eunique and I was born in Haiti . I was barely 8 months old when I came to Belgium. My adoptive parents already had a biological son who was 3 years older.

My biological parents gave birth to 5 daughters , of which 1 daughter did not make it. This death made my uncle fear for the lives of his 2 daughters and therefore decided to give them up for adoption .

When I was born, my family was still in the same circumstances and there was no one in the family who had the means to take over the care . Since my uncle had already given up both his children and my parents had already lost 1 child, they wanted to do everything they could to keep me alive . So my parents decided to also give me up for adoption.

Contact with biological family