Safe in dad's arms again
By Karyn Maughan
Falsely accused of being an abusive and mentally unstable drug addict, Jose
Williams nearly lost his baby daughter to an adoption to which he was fiercely
opposed.
But the 26-year-old refused to give up on his first-born child and, after the claims
made against him by his baby's mother and the Abba Adoption agency were shown
to be baseless, he won his nearly nine-month-long battle to obtain custody of the
little girl on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, he and his daughter played "aeroplanes" together in the garden of
the family home. He grinned with delight, and she chuckled as he swung her around.
Earlier in the day, in an apparent about-turn, Abba - which had earlier wrongly
branded Williams as an aggressive man who abused his baby's mother and had
argued that his daughter should be put up for adoption - recommended to the
Pretoria Children's Court that he be given custody.
The Children's Court agreed and awarded Williams custody for a two-year period,
during which he will apply for permanent custody of his daughter in the Pretoria High
Court.
Williams, who is preparing to lodge a complaint of unethical and unprofessional
conduct against Abba with the SA Council for Social Service Professions, now
wants to ensure that no parent ever has to "go through what I did".
Speaking to The Star at the Kensington, Joburg, home that he shares with his
mother and sisters, Williams sat with his eight-and-a-half-month-old daughter
nestled in his lap. The little girl regularly fixed her gaze on her father - who shares
her birthday with her - and beamed.
In the month since her father was allowed to remove her from the state baby home
where she spent the first seven months of her life, the little girl has gained 2kg.
"It scares me so much that I could have lost her," Williams said.
"If I hadn't been able to raise money for a lawyer and had the loving and supportive
family that I do, I don't know what would have happened. My daughter could be
living with a family on the other side of the world. I thank God that she is here with
me."
Williams' ordeal began two months before his daughter was born, when the child's
mother approached Abba and asked them to arrange for the adoption.
According to the baby's mother, this was because the agency had helped her when
she fell pregnant at 17, and she wanted them to arrange that the same couple who
adopted her previous baby be given Williams' child.
But Williams was adamant that he would never give up his daughter - and it was
then that his troubles began.
Williams is now hoping that his planned complaint to the council will shed light on his
daughter's foiled adoption and expose the allegedly unlawful conduct that nearly saw it succeed.
His complaints against Abba include the following:
Under the new Children's Act, an unmarried father can acquire full parental
responsibilities and rights if he consents to be identified as the child's father or has
contributed to the child's upbringing or maintenance. All of these conditions apply to
Williams.
While Abba manager Katinka Pieterse earlier insisted to The Star that the
adoption of Williams' daughter was immediately halted when he indicated that he
opposed it, Williams insists that Abba social worker Leoni Greyling informed him
there was "nothing I could do" to stop the process.
Records from Steve Biko (formerly Pretoria) Academic Hospital reveal that
Greyling used a "Form 4" document to take Williams' daughter and place her in a
place of safety affiliated with Abba after her birth. In the document, Greyling
claimed she would obtain Williams' consent for the removal. She never did.
Williams and his mother, Heloise Sequeira, learnt of his daughter's birth a week
after it happened, when Greyling sent them an SMS. They later drove to the
Pretoria Children's Court, where Sequeira said she discovered the April 16 court roll
and found a reference to her granddaughter's hearing as an inter-country adoption.
Pieterse insists that the hearing was a "child in need of care" case.
On the day of a crucial June 17 hearing into his daughter's future, Williams
claims he received a phone call from Greyling in which she told him that he was not
required to attend because it was "final" that the child would be adopted. She later
wrote in a report that Williams had failed to show up at the meeting.
In another report, Greyling stated without any proof that it was "clear that the
biological father did abuse the biological mother before and during her pregnancy".
Williams' lawyer has obtained proof that Pieterse responded to international
queries about The Star's article on Williams' plight by claiming that Williams was a
drug addict. Drug test results obtained by Williams - and seen by The Star - show
that he does not use drugs. Pieterse said she does not recall sending the e-mail.
Backed by SMS evidence, Williams also claims he was denied the right to visit
his daughter over a two-month period.
In response to e-mail queries from The Star, Pieterse denied any wrongdoing on
Abba's part, insisting that all issues related to Williams' daughter had been dealt
with in a legally correct way.

Williams case has twist
Events have taken a bizarre twist after The Star first published an article about Jose
Williams and his plight, in which the magistrate handling his daughter's case denied
that the infant had ever been the subject of any adoption proceedings and refused
to comment any further.
The Star had simultaneously also asked Abba Adoptions manager Katinka Pieterse
to confirm or deny that the magistrate in question, Sarie Snyman, had previously
travelled overseas with Abba. She declined to do so and suggested that "you follow
that up with her".
Snyman then wrote a letter to Williams' attorneys, which was also placed in Baby
T's court file, in which she stated: "Myself as commissioner has received
threatening phone calls from a Johannesburg newspaper, after I refused to give out
any information for publication regarding this matter. After this, I received constant
anonymous phone calls, which I experienced as threatening and most upsetting."
Snyman has refused to explain her claims to lawyers for The Star, which was the
only newspaper to write about Williams and his battle for his daughter. Nor has she
laid any charges related to the alleged threats. - Karyn Maughan

Girls from tea garden areas are being trafficked and forced into surrogacy. A ban on commercial surrogacy under the new law, say experts, may help the illegal practice prosper.

Darjeeling/Jalpaiguri/Siliguri: The frantic calls rained down on a chilly December day. The eighteen year old girl who’d called anti-trafficking expert Amos Tsering said had run away from the house where she’d been confined by a couple whose baby she was carrying. The girl was not formally commissioned by the couple to be a surrogate; nor was there any agreement: She had, simply put, been sold.

Human traffickers have operated for long in the districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri and Alipurduar in North Bengal, that share international borders with Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh, with Assam and Bihar nearby. But the business of trafficking young girls has acquired a new focus in recent years. They call it ‘bhade ki kokh’. And it feeds the relentless demand for babies from childless couples across India.

The girl who called Tsering was working in a local beauty parlour, when she met a man who promised her a job with a better salary. Taken to an undisclosed location, she was subjected to artificial insemination a month later. Then, she was handed over to the house of the couple. Six months pregnant, she finally succeeded in escaping.

After being rescued by the local NGO, the 19-year-old is now married and leading a normal life with her baby. The agent and the couple, however, are still absconding.

The Hague Conference is well known for its work on the International Adoption Convention in 1993. This intergovernmental institution currently brings together 89 member states, including France. Its lawyers mainly deal with issues of private international law. They draw up international conventions which the member states decide to ratify, or not.

In 2015, the Hague Conference created a Group of Experts to establish international parentage laws for children born from surrogacy, a practice which is banned in many countries.

This Group of Experts entitled “Parentage/Surrogacy” includes officials from the Ministries of Justice, lawyers, academics, as well as some associations who contribute as “observers”, such as the UNICEF. The group only met 9 times in 7 years and extremely succinct reports are available on their website.

The ICASM (International Coalition for the Abolition of Surrogate Motherhood) has been denouncing these meetings for years. According to the coalition “working to harmonize national laws on filiation for children born from surrogacy, boils down to legitimizing surrogacy and encouraging it on a world scale”. Since 2020, the ICASM has been denouncing the fact that “The Hague Conference (HCCH) is working hard to regulate surrogacy. This is a real blank cheque to the globalized surrogacy trade, mostly in the poorest countries of the world.” Since 2020, the ICASM has been countering with a “Draft International Convention for the Abolition of Surrogacy”.

The same outcry can be heard from the “CoRP”, (COllective for the Respect of the Person). “You cannot claim to protect a child by endorsing a practice whereby he is bought and sold, treated as an object and cut off from his origins,” asserts its president, Ana-Luana Stoicea-Deram. As co-author of the book The Markets of Motherhood (2021), Odile Jacob aims at the most powerful lobby of American reproductive clinics in The Hague.

Recognition of parenthood in foreign surrogacy

What is the legal situation in Germany? What do we have to consider in the case of surrogacy abroad? How is parenthood legally recognized in Germany in surrogacy cases?

1. The ban on surrogacy

Surrogacy is forbidden in Germany.

According to Section 1 Paragraph 1 No. 7 of the Embryo Protection Act (ESchG), it is a criminal offense to carry out artificial insemination on a woman who is willing to leave her child to a third party permanently after the birth (surrogate mother) or to her to transfer a human embryo.

Lucknow: A 35-year-old woman was arrested for allegedly torturing and inflicting injuries on the private parts of her six-year-old adopted daughter.

The accused, Poonam, was arrested late Wednesday night.

The victim’s father, Ajay Kumar, informed the police about the incident and rushed the girl to a private hospital where she is undergoing treatment. Kumar owns a food cart.

Station house officer (SHO) Thakurganj, Hari Shankar Chandra told reporters that the couple did not have any child of their own and Poonam claimed that Kumar had ‘adopted’ the girl six months back. However, she was not happy with his decision and would often misbehave with the girl.

Kumar told police that his wife used a kitchen thong and then put the hot oil on the victim’s private parts.

We are a family from Denmark, we live in a city between Frederikssund and Roskilde.
 
On this page, I will tell about our experiences on our adoption of our girl Natasha, who comes from the orphanage BalVikas in Mumbai, India.

                
 
We have had some experience around Natashas behaviour and ways to respond to that has surprised us and I will tell about that here. 

My husband and I adopted two children from India. The first was the adoption in October 2001, when we had our boy Nicklas. He comes from the Orphanage Preet Mandir in Pune in India.
The second adoption was in 2004 when we took home our girl Natasha from the orphanage BalVikas in Mumbai, India.
 
We took home our daughter in September / October. 2004, and there she was 2.7 years , she is 6 years today. Already the first time we saw her, we were concerned. Natasha was the pushed hard to us with a push in the back, which we believe was unnecessary and totally inappropriate, given the first time be meeting her new mother and father and be placed in front of strangers who not only is completely different by look, but also speaks quite incomprehensible., That in itself is hard and scary enough for a child.
Then we have a girl who was emotionally and socially disturbed, she seemed very scared. She sat with the tongue out of her mouth and like suck on it and she remained deadlocked and sealed inside itself and eye contact she would not.
When you are orphanage child, this behaviour may be likely, when you are exposed to being "torn" away from your known location and from the people, which you have  been with and linked to, it could be a normal behavior, but this behaviour continued a long time after we came home to Denmark. I with my professionalism (I am a social worker in a kindergarten) to say that a normal child of almost 3 years, will very rapidly be curious to new things and toys, it was certainly not our girl.
 
Back home in Denmark took our surprise on. Our girl showed a behaviour that were most curious, we believe.
When we had to put her to bed, she screamed and showed a fear, both in body and voice, which I can not describe, she was to terrify to her bed and to close her eyes and sleep.
 
It was also quickly very clear to us that our girl had been exposed to some unpleasant on the toilet. We could not get her out on the toilet, she simply hold on to the dorframe and screamed and screamed.
When Natasha was playing in her room, we had to not close the door, she could /would not be alone if we closed the door, or would go out of the room she screamed and wept.
 
Our girl could also take on, to lie down on the floor, we had some times get to her, after we had put her, as she lay down on the floor and slept with his pillow and quilt inside under a table, that she has in her room, which is showing, with all clarity that we do not like, perhaps even fear her bed.
 
It was also quickly evident to us that our girl has been subjected to fierce scolding and that she has been beaten on the BalVikas. If we reproves her, and raise our voice, so she keeps for the ears and works very scared and we can look at her body language that she "expects" to be beaten.
 
Another thing which surprised us a lot, was that our girl was terror-stricken by men, for us it seemed as if she expected something "not good" or even hurt, when a man came into the same room.
 
Something that Natasha also has had problems with since coming home, is to feel her needs / herself.
She can eat and eat and drink and drink, she has no stop in relation to label "I do not need more, now I'm sated"
Similarly, she does not notice when she is dead tired and need sleep. She "running" out there, with 180 per hour and can not "fall"
Another thing is that Natasha is fearless, she does many "dangerous" things she does not think consequence of what can happen. She can find to climb up on a book shelves at the top, to get something and she does that by taking a table, then a chair and then she crawls up ... without thinking that she might fall down. She is very spontaneous and can actually "persuaded" to anything

INDORE: A woman allegedly inflicted burns on the private parts of her nine-year-old adopted daughter as a punishment for bedwetting in Madhya Pradesh's Indore, police said on Monday.

An offence has been registered against the 40-year-old woman under sections 294 (abusing), 323 (manhandling) and 324 (voluntarily causing hurt by dangerous weapons or means) and 506 (threatening) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), MIG police station in-charge Ajay Verma said.

The accused woman is a close relative of the victim and had adopted her, he said.

The woman had inflicted burns on the child's private parts as a punishment for wetting her bed at night, the official said, adding that no arrest has been made so far in the case.

Meanwhile, Child Welfare Committee (CWC) president Pallavi Porwal said the girl had sustained serious burn injuries on her private parts, some hair on her head had been uprooted and there were nail injury marks on her body.

A MUM has revealed that she regrets adopting her daughter and feels like she is just babysitting someone else's child.

The mum of three said that she was told by doctors it would be difficult for her to conceive, so, after going through IVF for her first born, decide to adopt a daughter instead of having to go through treatment.

Taking to Reddit, the mum revealed: "We adopted this beautiful baby girl whose parents were too young to raise her themselves. I

"I loved her so much and treated her no different but I've never had the feeling she's my own.

"I often feel like I'm babysitting someone else's child.