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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

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.’”

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

Age can prevent adoption in Poland 0 that's the conclusion drawn from the story described by Karolina Kijek of "Gazeta Wyborcza." Today, 50-year-old Edyta is trying to adopt 2-year-old Malwina, whom she has been raising as a foster family since the girl was one month old. So far, without success.

Edyta met Malwina* when the girl was a month old. The child was in an incubator. Edyta had gone through three unsuccessful attempts to become a foster parent, as reported in Karolina Kijek's article in "Gazeta Wyborcza" titled "Edyta Has Been Malwina's Mom for Two Years. Officials Want to Take Her Child Away Because She Is Too Old". The woman had completed foster parent training at the Municipal Social Welfare Center. "I openly said I was 48 years old and wanted to pursue adoption. No one objected" - she said in an interview with the journalist.

Attempts to Adopt in Poland: "Noticeable Bond" Loses to Age Difference

The one-month-old girl came to Edyta two years ago. The court terminated the biological parents' rights at the end of 2022. That's when Edyta could begin the adoption process. She filed her applications with the family court and the Wrocław adoption center DOPS. This office must issue an evaluation and opinion, as emphasized by "Gazeta Wyborcza".

Officials at the center questioned Edyta during a meeting about why she was seeking adoption and observed how the child behaved around her. In the documents, they wrote:

PANAJI

A joint team of the North Goa Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and the District Child Protection Unit inspected a Child Care Institution (CCI) in Assagao, operated by El-Shaddai, following directions of the Bombay High Court at Goa.

During a hearing of a suo motu Public Interest Litigation (SMPIL) on Wednesday, the Bench ordered an immediate inspection of the institution at 3:30 pm and a report to be submitted by Friday. Following this directive, a team was formed to hold the inspection.

Advocate General Devidas Pangam informed that the CCI is not registered and is allegedly housing children without orders from the CWC.

“We proposed to the High Court to conduct an inspection of the CCI, which was accepted. The team visited the premises to assess the situation, including the conditions in which the children are kept. An inspection report will be submitted on Friday,” Pangam told the media, after the hearing.

The gang targeted women through closed groups on social media, exploiting those who were struggling to provide and care for their children.

Hanoi:

Police in Vietnam have arrested more than a dozen people in connection with a baby smuggling ring that trafficked 16 newborns across several cities and provinces in the country, state media said Wednesday.

Sixteen men and women have been taken into custody for trading the babies aged between three days and three months old, according to the official newspaper of Ho Chi Minh City Police.

The gang targeted women through closed groups on social media, exploiting those who were struggling to provide and care for their children.

In the search for biological family, the field workers play a very important role. Due to the geographical distance, the different language/culture and the number of cases we work on, it is practically impossible to follow all leads without help.

That is why we use local people for this. They come from the region, speak the language/dialect and can therefore more easily generate the much-needed trust.

Shapla has partnered with Lef4Life in Bangladesh, and their students will follow leads, conduct interviews and hopefully solve many cases successfully, under our coordination.

On November 21st, the time had come. The first part of the training. It was a very interesting day with a lively discussion about adoption and its history in Bangladesh.
Part two was about Shapla. Who are we, what do we do, what services do we offer. What was important here was what processes do we have; accuracy and reliability are very important in searches (we want to prevent things like a well-known TV program).

After the theoretical part was completed, it was time for practical exercises.

10 Years Later, Still Fake?… Ministry of Welfare Begins Audit of Adoption Record Computerization Project

The Child Rights Protection Agency (formerly the Central Adoption Agency) under the Ministry of Health and Welfare has been carrying out the ‘Adoption Records Computerization Project’ since 2013 to collect and computerize adoption records scattered across private organizations. The purpose is to permanently preserve adoption records in the private sector by integrating them into a public institution and to increase adoptees’ access to information.

However, suspicions have been raised that this project, which has been in progress for about 10 years, has been managed poorly. It is said that everything from basic record scanning to the process of uploading data to the online system has been handled poorly. It has been confirmed that the Ministry of Health and Welfare has also identified the related issues and has begun an audit of the Child Rights Protection Agency regarding the ‘Adoption Records Computerization Project’. Previously, Newstapa conducted the <Overseas Adoption and Money> project to identify the structural problems of overseas adoption in the 1970s and 1980s. Through this, we have reported in depth on cases of overseas adoptees who were unable to find their information due to the barriers of adoption agencies. The adoption records computerization project of the National Institute of Child Rights, a public institution, was started to help adoptees find their roots, but it is being revealed that it has been carried out haphazardly. Newstapa plans to track and report on the reality of the adoption records computerization project that has been carried out for the past 10 years. Adoption records computerization project 10 years… Suspicions finally surface Adoptees usually do not stay in one institution after being separated from their original families and adopted into another family. In the case of overseas adoptees in the 1970s and 1980s, they were admitted to child welfare facilities that were formerly called orphanages, and then sent to institutions that arranged overseas adoptions such as Holt Children’s Welfare Association, where they were finally adopted. This means that there can be records from multiple institutions for one child. Welfare facilities and adoption agencies each create records in different forms. This is one of the reasons why adoptees have difficulty finding their records. The adoption records computerization project was implemented for the purpose of integrating and managing records scattered across individual facilities. This project was first started at the Central Adoption Center in 2013. After the Central Adoption Center was integrated into the Child Rights Protection Center in 2019, it was run by the Child Rights Protection Center for a total of 10 years until 2022.

Adoption records containing personal information about children, circumstances of admission to facilities, and information about biological parents are more than just records to overseas adoptees. Adoptees said, “If there was a problem, the Child Rights Protection Agency should take responsibility,” and “(the agency) should quickly step forward and explain (what happened).” <Overseas Adoption and Money> Project Collection.

From 2013 to 2022, the Child Rights Protection Center computerized the records of 86 closed child welfare facilities for 10 years. The project was not implemented in 2023 and 2024. Starting next year, records from adoption agencies such as Holt Children’s Welfare Association and the Korea Social Service Association will be mandatorily transferred to the center.

However, ahead of the mandatory transfer of records from adoption agencies such as Holt Children’s Welfare Association next year, suspicions have been raised that there were overall deficiencies in the adoption record computerization project that the Child Rights Protection Center had been conducting for 10 years. It is pointed out that there were overall problems with the project, such as scanning errors, non-compliance with guidelines, and insufficient system uploads. Newstapa confirmed the details through the testimonies of multiple relevant parties. This is the first time that the problems with the adoption record computerization project that was conducted for 10 years have been reported by the media.