Aboriginal stolen children 'were used in leprosy tests'

By Rachel Shields

Thursday, 17 April 2008SHARE PRINTEMAILTEXT SIZE NORMALLARGEEXTRA LARGE

The Australian government has launched an investigation into claims that aboriginal children seized from their parents during the 1920s and 1930s were secretly used as guinea pigs for leprosy treatments.

The allegations surfaced at a Senate inquiry this week into plans to compensate the "stolen generation" of aboriginal Australians who were taken from their families as part of a government programme.

Opinion

Fostering interest

By: Brian Douglas

Foster care - which is available throughout Europe including in Romania - is a viable option for children in need of care; moreover, it is preferable to national adoption

Posted: 16/04/2008

From Center for Adoption Policy:

April 16, 2008. A Surprising Backer of Intercountry Adoption Efforts. We all know the work of J.K. Rowling. Less well known is the fact that Rowling is a leading financial backer of Lady Emma Nicholson's Children's High Level Group initiative. With Nicholson, Rowling serves as the Co-Chair of the CHLG board of directors and raised $3, 000,000 by donating new "wizarding" stories. We salute any effort to help institutionalized children. However, we completely disagree with the CHLG's rejection of Intercountry Adoption as an alternative for unparented children. We are also puzzled by the CHLG's embracing of "care in the community,"a programmatic approach which has had disastrous consequences in Britain, where it was originated. More Information.

Rise in institutionalized children linked to'Madonna-style' adoption

LIVERPOOL, UK – 7 April 2008: Psychologists at the University of Liverpool say that ‘Madonna-style’ inter-country adoptions are causing a rise in the number of children in orphanages.

Researchers found that EU countries with the highest rates of children living in institutions also had high proportions of international adoptions. This did not reduce the number of children in institutional care but attributed to an increase. The study highlights that in countries such as France and Spain, people are choosing to adopt healthy, white children from abroad rather than children in their own country who are mainly from ethnic minorities.

This process has been labelled the ‘Madonna-effect’, so-called after the singer’s high-profile adoption of a young boy from Zambia in 2006. Statistics show that the media attention surrounding this case contributed to an increase in the number of international adoptions, but at the expense of local orphans.

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) - An Argentine couple and a former army officer were convicted on Friday of charges related to the illegal adoption of a political prisoner’s baby during the 1976-1983 military dictatorship.

In a landmark ruling, the federal criminal court sentenced Osvaldo Rivas to eight years in prison, his wife Maria Cristina Gomez to seven years and retired army Capt. Enrique Berthier to 10 years.

The three were charged with kidnapping and hiding Maria Eugenia Sampallo, and falsifying her birth certificate. Berthier was accused of providing the baby, who was born to a woman held in a political prison, to the couple.

It was not immediately clear on which charges each of the three was convicted.

Sampallo is the first of Argentina’s “children of the disappeared” to take legal action against her adoptive parents. Civil plaintiffs can bring charges in criminal court under the Argentine system.

Pune, April 02

Taking the form of a rather touching tale yet uncannily resembling a filmy saga, a seven-year-old boy fled his home in Ahmednagar after hearing that his parents were planning to send him to a remand house. He also dragged his four-year-old sister into the chaos of busy streets, crowded buses and thronging trains. Fortunately, having boarded a bus from Pune to Solapur, the siblings were noticed and handed over to Solapur Childline, who contacted Society of Friends of the Sassoon Hospitals (SOFOSH) here in Pune on March 23. At SOFOSH, after a day's play and acquaintance, attempts to find out their parents' whereabouts, through cajoling, began.

Madhuri Abhyankar, Head of SOFOSH, said, “The boy wasn't ready to divulge his address, obviously afraid of his fate upon encountering an angry father. He kept leading us astray around Pune Railway Station. But later he gave out the real address – Daund.” Three SOFOSH's volunteers left for Daund and made enquiries about missing cases in police stations and railway stations. After some persuasion, the boy said his paternal aunt resided in Daund. The aunt, away in Mumbai, was unavailable that day but upon her return was approached by the police and readily identified the children as her nephew and niece. She informed the children's parents in Ahmednagar that the children had been found. It turns out the doting parents had been frantically looking for the missing children, having even published a plea for help in a newspaper.

The parents also had some difficulty procuring the children from the child welfare committee, as they couldn't provide any proof of the fact that the children belonged to them. But all was well in the end as the parents managed to provide enough proof.

The sad part of the story is that such incidents — children running away from their homes — is rampant in poverty stricken families such as these with both the parents working and hence wishing to put some of their children in remand houses of sorts. “We are incessantly approached by such parents, burdened by several children, asking us to house some of their children until they turn eighteen,” said Deepika Maharajsingh, a committee member of SOFOSH, “We plan to counsel the parents of the found children regarding diet, upbringing and discipline and instigate them to be self-reliant.”

It was very important to note how South Koreans are reacting to the murders of Korean adoptees Ethan, Seth, Mira and Eleanor Sueppel because it really has become an international issue. But a few things should be clarified about my article in the April 1 paper, “Sueppel deaths add to Korean adoption debate.” Everything I wrote was factual (of course!), but a Marion woman called me today to chew my ear on the inaccuracy of the story’s second headline, which I didn’t write. She was also not pleased that I had to leave some facts out of the story due to space restrictions.

This woman and her husband adopted some children from South Korea a few decades ago, so she is familiar with the issues surrounding adoption that the country has struggled with since the mid-1950s, when international adoptions first started. The exportation of their children is a very sensitive issue for the people, she said, one of which they are not proud, adding “Boy, if this article makes it over to Korea they’re going to be hopping mad.”

With that second headline on the story, that could be true. It says, “Despite tragedy, Korean official says push is on for more adoptions,” but that isn’t accurate. Susan Soon-Keum Cox is NOT a Korean official — she is the vice president of public policy and external affairs for Holt International Children’s Services, based in Oregon (in fact, she was adopted from Korea as a baby by an American family). And there is a push for more adoptions to be done domestically in South Korea, but NOT internationally as the headline would lead you to believe.

I can’t do much about the headline, however, since it was written by an editor after I turned my story in. I will, however, go into more detail about the “missing facts.”

I knew from speaking to Ms. Cox that last year marked the first year domestic adoptions in South Korea outpaced international adoptions. Early this morning, I received a reply to my e-mail to Kim Stoker, representative of Adoptee Solidarity Korea, a South Korean group working to unite all Korean adoptees and push for more domestic adoption. Her response sheds some more light on the situation.

Parents facing criminal charges want their troubled adopted teen from Panama back

Published by Panama Guide at 8:30 pm under Panama News

By Nancy Cambria ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH EDWARDSVILLE ? The mother said her daughter hid the steak knives everywhere: under sofa cushions, in the folds of curtains, between mattresses, in the piano bench, the dog's toy basket. She found them about the same time her teenager ? once a tiny 3-year-old they adopted from a Panamanian orphanage ? carved an obscenity in her wrist and concealed the wound under a sweatband laced with safety pins. The girl harbored other secrets. Kathy Rhoten, of Edwardsville, said she realized that her daughter, then 13, had been hoarding hundreds of pins and needles in her pillowcases, threading them in the hems of her clothes and lining her pockets. (more)

"You name it, if it had a sharp edge, I found it hidden in my house," said Rhoten, who coped with her daughter's increasing disobedience and rages: lashing out with fingernails, pricking herself and classmates with tacks, stealing and lying. Rhoten had already packed up boxes of gifts and heirlooms because her daughter was destroying them during arguments. Her daughter poured cleaning chemicals on carpets and loosened the slats on the ceiling fan, causing one to fly, Rhoten said.

"We were frightened, very frightened," Rhoten said.

SEOUL, March 27 (Yonhap) -- A South Korean adoption agency said Thursday that it had seen no signs of any problem with the American couple who adopted the four Korean children found dead this week, calling the deaths of the entire family "unimaginable."

"We are shocked and dismayed. I can't find words to describe it," Hong Mee-kyung, a director of overseas adoption at Holt Children's Services Inc. in Seoul, said. "Considering the personalities and the attitudes they have shown, it's unimaginable."

U.S. police found the children and their adoptive mother, Sheryl Sueppel, 42, dead Monday morning (U.S. time) at their home in Iowa. Police believe their father, Steven Sueppel, 42, killed his wife and the children before taking his own life. His car was found destroyed in a single-vehicle crash, in which the driver died, according to local reports. The driver could not be immediately identified because of the fire, they said.

Local reports linked the murder-suicide to Sueppel's financial woes. He was charged last month with embezzling nearly US$560,000 from his former employer, Hills Bank and Trust, and with money laundering.

The children's birth mothers will not be notified unless they ask. They were all young, single mothers at the time of the children's births, the agency said.