Patna: The state’s first kinship adoption order was issued on Friday, with Patna district magistrate (DM) Chandrashekhar Singh granting adoption orders for three children under the new guidelines based on the Union ministry of women and child development’s 2022 recommendations.Previously, adoption procedures were handled by family courts, but the new laws now authorise the DM to issue final adoption orders. This change is aimed at reducing procedural delays and expedite adoption processes. “The fresh arrangement under the new adoption system has been made to ensure the kids and children get new families and homes at the earliest. The district administration will provide all possible help to the families who want to adopt orphaned children,” the DM said.Singh cautioned that adopting children without following the procedures outlined in the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, amended in 2021, and the Adoption Regulations 2022, is illegal and punishable. “Anyone found doing so could attract a jail term of three years or a fine of Rs 1 lakh or both,” Singh said, adding indulging in the sale or purchase of children is a serious crime that could lead to rigorous imprisonment for five years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh.The DM said any information regarding orphaned or lost children should be reported immediately to the child line service at emergency helpline number 1098 or 112, the nearest police station, the child welfare committee, or the district child protection unit. “Failing to do so may attract a fine of Rs 10,000 or a jail term of six months or both,” Singh added.On the same day, adoption orders were issued for three children – two girls and one boy. “The first girl, rescued from Khagaul (Danapur) when she was just 15 days old, was adopted by a couple from Telangana. The second girl, also rescued from Khagaul (Danapur) at just three days old, was adopted by a couple from Bangalore.

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.

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.

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.

SANTA ANA — 

In a decision that could bolster the rights of surrogate mothers in California, an Orange County judge ruled Thursday that a surrogate mother is the legal parent of the baby girl she bore for a couple who are now divorcing.

Surrogate mother Elvira Jordan, who has seen her 10-month-old daughter only four times since the child went home from the hospital with Robert and Cynthia Moschetta, will be permitted to visit the baby three days a week until the judge decides on permanent custody arrangements.

Jordan said she would seek primary custody of her daughter, who is now living with Robert Moschetta in Lakewood. But Jordan said she would allow visitation by Cynthia Moschetta, who raised the baby for the first six months of life and now has no legal rights to the child.

“I’m overwhelmed, I’m happy,” said Jordan, a 42-year-old mother of three other children. “I want her to be all of the time with me--full custody.”

Árný Aurangasri Hinriksson was among those who received the Order of the Eagle, as it is usually called, from the President of Iceland in Bessastadir on June 17.

She received a Knight's Cross for her work on behalf of adopted children and has helped around 35 Icelanders who have searched for their origins in Sri Lanka.

She moved from Sri Lanka to Ísafjörður in 1983, and there she is often called Auri. She then moved to Iceland with her husband Þóri Hinriksson, but he died in 2017. 

"It was not a conscious decision on my part to pour myself into looking for parents of adopted children in Iceland. Thirty years ago, people came to me and asked me for help in finding the parents of their daughter they had adopted from Sri Lanka. Little by little, this started to happen and there were more issues that I came to. To begin with, I was asked about this by people who had adopted the children, but later, when the adopted children grew up, they themselves started asking me for help when they wanted to know more about their origins," says Auri in an interview with Sunndagsblaðir Morgunblaðinn adding that over time the inquiries she received came from more countries. 

"I have not been able to attend to everyone who has come to me. On the one hand, this takes a lot of time, and on the other hand, it is costly. I tried to handle a few cases a year, but when I stopped working, and had finished my studies, I took on more cases. It also played a role in the fact that I began to spend more time in Sri Lanka and being there, more results were also achieved. I have done all this at my own expense, and of course you have to think about how much time and money you spend on this."

Korea's domestic adoption system bars international couples from becoming adoptive parents

By Lee Hyo-jin

This July marks a significant milestone for British national Thomas Pallett and his Korean wife surnamed Kang: seven years of unsuccessful attempts to adopt a child in Korea.

The couple, who live in the southeastern port city of Busan, have faced persistent rejections from local adoption agencies, which primarily cite Pallett's British nationality as the obstacle. They got married in Korea in May 2019, with Pallett obtaining an F-6 marriage visa that grants him permanent residency.

“Our discussions on adoption began in July 2018 even before we were married. When we first met, I was 35 and my wife was 40. We knew having our own child could be difficult,” Pallett said in a recent interview with The Korea Times.

The Dallas Morning News
September 16, 2001
Edition: THIRD
Section: RICHARDSON
Page: 1R

Adoption Opponents Respond

1

Baroness Nicholson Calls Adoption “Human Trafficking”

As expected, anti-adoption forces have come out swinging against the memorandum created by the Romanian Office for Adoptions (ORA), recommending that certain children be allowed to find families outside Romania.

The article below was run by the Romanian-language newspaper Gandul on Friday, October 16th. Thanks to Peter Heisey for providing the translation.

Guatemala's president on Friday offered an official apology to one of the many families whose children were taken away and adopted abroad in a multimillion-dollar black market.

Osmin Tobar and his brother J.R. were seven and two years old when they were picked up by officials in a poor district of Guatemala City in 1997, ostensibly for having being abandoned.

Tobar was adopted by a family in the US city of Pittsburgh. His brother suffered a similar fate, although his whereabouts are unknown.

"On behalf of the state... I apologize publicly for the events of which you were victims," President Bernardo Arevalo said at an event in Guatemala City.

The state's role in the incident "has no justification," he added.