Forum: WACAP adoption red flags non disclosure

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----

Von: ichild@yahoogroups.com [mailto:ichild@yahoogroups.com] Im Auftrag von cnbstrempler@comcast.net

Gesendet: Montag, 28. August 2006 18:49

An: ichild@yahoogroups.com

Betreff: [ichild] (unknown)

My wife and I are nearly through the process of adopting siblings from India, a boy named Mani, and a girl named Uma who is deaf. They are currently located at Guild Of Service, Chennai. The US Agency we are working with is WACAP. When we started this process 20 months ago, we were told that the children were 4.5 and 6.5 years old. We were also told that Uma had a “speech problem”. Later we were told that she is profoundly deaf. We could see that the children were older and when our daughter started her period last year we knew she definitely was older. The Indian Dr attributed the “precocious period” to a thyroid condition. No one from either agency would tell us how old they thought the children were, but we speculated that they might have actually been 7 and 10 at the time (which would make them 8 and 11 now). Our US Dr here, after warning us that it’s difficult to judge agreed with our estimation.

In addition, we had asked if we could have the children interviewed about what they remembered from their “previous life” since we thought that Mani would have been about 4 when picked up (if he is 9, now as we are currently thinking he would have been 6 when picked up) and might be able to tell us something (Uma, although older, doesn’t speak). What we received in response was the Indian caregiver’s observations about them in the classroom and their perceptions of the children, but no direct accounts from Mani at all. When we enquired about this we were told that the boy didn’t really remember anything.

On Aug 10th we were told that Uma received her US visa to travel, on Aug 21 we were told that Mani received his.

On Aug 24th we were told that the US consulate Dr had performed an exam on her Aug 1st, had raised objection to the fact that Uma’s birth certificate indicated that she was only 8 and appeared older. They did a bone scan which returned results indicating Uma is 16-18 years old.  I have no idea how she could have received her visa if the Dr had this objection.

After we requested subsequent interviewing of the children again, it turns out that Mani told the story of how their father was an alcoholic who beat their mother and one day fell down drunk, hit his head on a rock and died. Their mother then hooked up with a younger man and they both started beating the children, and then they ran away.

Needless to say, this new information shocked us terribly. Especially since we are due to travel on 9/2.

Does anyone have experience adopting older children with this kind of background? Or any other thoughts?

Sorry for the long winded post,

Chuck Strempler

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]