CHENNAI: Mary was one-year-old when she was adopted from India and taken to Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1973. The memories of her initial days in Sweden are hazy, but she remembers her parents telling her that she was a difficult child. Her white mother’s blonde hair and blue eyes never appealed to young Mary, and her immediate response to seeing her near her was fear, which grew as aversion. Mary says, “I was longing for my mother. I was screaming all the time, I was terrified. I would dream about my biological parents, especially my mother.” Tormented by estrangement at a very nascent phase of childhood and growing up in an unpleasant environment, aloof from her native, she had a very lonely life.

This adoptee in Sweden grew up hearing that her mother had died during child birth, her grandmother was unfit to take care of her, and thus she was adopted. A compelling truth as it sounds, and it became her reality. But as she grew older, her reality was upended when people started saying that she did not look like her white parents. She says, “People would ask me where I am from and say that I did not look like them.” Her adoptive mother’s thoughtless comments about her brown skin bespoke her ignorance and little knowledge on various skin colours, but were excruciating memories for her. They were reminders ingrained in the mind of the little girl that she did not belong in Sweden. They grew like monsters in her head.

Left hanging between two countries: with biological roots in India and her cultural baggage entrenched in Sweden, the now 52-year-old Mary Rhedin scrambled to lead a peaceful life in an adopted country, amid discreet racism.

Coping mechanism

Well, narratives of inequality, discrimination, and oppression have been an integral part of our discussions, in personal spaces, academia, and extensively in public spaces. Stories are ways of immortalising people, their experiences, and their memories. They are important, they need to be passed on and spread across, and they need to hold more space, after all, they are as powerful as mass protests, slogans, and revolutions. Traumatised and crushed by the weight of her life with the whites, she also sought respite in writing as she did not think there was a space she could have for an honest discussion. She set her sights on a journey: a search for her roots.

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. 

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.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-08-26/reynolds-calls-for-ban-overseas-adoptions-after-investigation/104252812?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=link&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2USRMwTdxNBaBL0WoInx4J4DzwMmTMea4jwMXzseU07-6Zahvt2oncy_A_aem_5MR5EupG5DYZup9pfaMnxQ

The government should freeze all intercountry adoptions and sever ties with its South Korean adoption partner, according to a senator representing Australia on an international human trafficking taskforce.

The call comes following a Background Briefing investigation that found the Korean adoption agency — Eastern Social Welfare Society (ESWS) — falsified documents while sending thousands of children to Australia in the past.

Scores of adoptees say they've grown up unaware they had siblings and believing they were orphans, only discovering as adults that their original paperwork was falsified.

An insider who worked at ESWS in the 1970s and 1980s alleged that bribes were paid to hospital workers in exchange for babies.

Police disguised as monks found politician Juhi Chowdury hiding near the Nepalese border after a 10-day manhunt.

A prominent Indian politician has been arrested for allegedly masterminding a child trafficking ring.

Juhi Chowdury, a leader of the women's wing of the country's ruling BJP, was found near the Nepalese border in West Bengal.

A CID source said four investigators disguised as monks, acting on a tip-off about her location, detained her after tracking her mobile phone.

Police claim she was the key player in a "baby trafficking racket" that sold children for tens of thousands of pounds to other parts of India and overseas.

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.’”

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

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Report from Sujata