---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: ACT

Date: Mon, 22 Aug 2022 at 10:57

Subject: UNCRC Acquis

To:

Tens of thousands of children have suffered the collapse of both their birth and adoptive families. Their pain has largely existed in the shadows, shielded from broad public view and the dominant narrative of a happily ever after.

Though most adoptions remain intact, a USA TODAY investigation found more than 66,000 adoptees ended up in the foster care system between 2008 and 2020. That is an undercount. Many states are bad at tracking adoption failure. And some adoptions break outside the child welfare system’s view, when youth informally move in with other people, are privately readopted, return to their birth countries or live on the streets.

After these adoptees’ adoptive families fractured, they used their experience as fuel to improve the system for others. Here are their stories:

Explore the series: ‘A broken system’ leaves tens of thousands of adoptees without families, homes

Matthew Peiffer

As a baby, Daniëlle Schipper (38) was adopted from Colombia. Despite her happy childhood and warm bond with her adoptive parents, she began to suffer from depression around the age of 19. In 2009 - Daniëlle had just become a mother - a floodgate of unprocessed grief opened and she developed a severe depression. "I weighed only 49 kilos and had suicidal thoughts."

'Looking back, I've struggled with my adoption since I was a teenager,' says Daniëlle. “But at the time, I didn't reach the right door for help. When I was again bothered by this all-consuming miserable feeling at the age of 23, I went to my doctor. He prescribed antidepressants and after a few weeks of feeling even worse, it started working happily. The sharpness of the miserable feeling disappeared, but I also felt different, flatter than before. I took that into the bargain because anything was better than a depression.'

'I became a mother and a floodgate of unprocessed grief opened'

'I had no identity'

Daniëlle's life goes on for a number of years until things really go wrong in 2009. 'I became a mother and together with this wonderful event, a floodgate of unresolved grief opened. I struggled with the true story of my adoption, which I had not been told until I was 14. My adoptive parents then told me that I had no identity in Colombia and therefore had received the passport of a deceased child: Beatriz. She was supposed to be adopted by my parents but died before that time.

(CNN)Jimmy Amisial was walking through Gonaives, Haiti, on his way to a New Year's Eve party to ring in 2018 when he spotted a large crowd and approached it.

"When I got to the place where the people were making noise I saw a baby," said Amisial, 22 at the time and visiting his homeland on a break from school in Texas. "It was in a pile of trash crying, and there wasn't a single soul who wanted to do anything about it."

While the locals were afraid to touch the infant because they feared the child was either cursed or evil, Amisial said, he nervously picked him up.

"He had no clothes on. He had fire ants crawling all over him because he's been there for a couple of hours. When I picked him up he immediately stopped crying."

A bond was made and now, more than four years later, Amisial is trying to make fatherhood official by formally adopting the boy he has not let go of since that night.

MUMBAI: A 25-year-old woman, unwed when she gave up her son up for adoption last year, ran into a trafficking ring when she wanted the boy back after she got married to his father. She has been forced to approach courts for custody of her year-old baby, reports Rebecca Samervel.

Julia Fernandez, who 'facilitated' the adoption, was arrested earlier this month with an alleged aide Shabana Sheikh for trying to sell a newborn girl for Rs 4.5 lakh.

The Ulhasnagar woman moved the civil court last week to "recover" her son from a Malad couple who had taken him from Fernandez. In a plea submitted through Edith Dey and Mikhail Dey, the mother sought the court "to direct the DCP, ACP and senior police inspector of Bangur Nagar police station, to assist her in recovering her child from the respondents (adoptive parents) who are living within the jurisdiction of Bangur Nagar police station."

The plea will come up for hearing on August 24. The mother said that due to personal and financial difficulties, she was unable to raise the baby and was advised to approach one Julia Fernandez. The mother said that Julia informed her that she had an NGO and would help look after the baby until things settled down and she was in a state to take back the child. The mother said that Julia facilitated adoption of her baby son and informed her that the adoptive couple was wealthy and would look after him well.

In March this year, the civil court had rejected the plea by the Malad couple to be declared the adoptive parents of the boy. The biological mother had told the court then that her husband and she wanted their son back. However, the mother said she never received custody of her child despite the court's orders. "Despite the rejection of the adoption petition, the respondents did not return the baby and are till date illegally holding the custody of the child," the mother's plea said. The mother said that her husband and she had tried to contact the couple several times, through Julia, however, she kept giving excuses and later began threatening to complain to the police.

MUMBAI: A 25-year-old woman, unwed when she gave up her son up for adoption last year, ran into a trafficking ring when she wanted the boy back after she got married to his father. She has been forced to approach courts for custody of her year-old baby, reports Rebecca Samervel.

Julia Fernandez, who 'facilitated' the adoption, was arrested earlier this month with an alleged aide Shabana Sheikh for trying to sell a newborn girl for Rs 4.5 lakh.

The Ulhasnagar woman moved the civil court last week to "recover" her son from a Malad couple who had taken him from Fernandez. In a plea submitted through Edith Dey and Mikhail Dey, the mother sought the court "to direct the DCP, ACP and senior police inspector of Bangur Nagar police station, to assist her in recovering her child from the respondents (adoptive parents) who are living within the jurisdiction of Bangur Nagar police station."

The plea will come up for hearing on August 24. The mother said that due to personal and financial difficulties, she was unable to raise the baby and was advised to approach one Julia Fernandez. The mother said that Julia informed her that she had an NGO and would help look after the baby until things settled down and she was in a state to take back the child. The mother said that Julia facilitated adoption of her baby son and informed her that the adoptive couple was wealthy and would look after him well.

In March this year, the civil court had rejected the plea by the Malad couple to be declared the adoptive parents of the boy. The biological mother had told the court then that her husband and she wanted their son back. However, the mother said she never received custody of her child despite the court's orders. "Despite the rejection of the adoption petition, the respondents did not return the baby and are till date illegally holding the custody of the child," the mother's plea said. The mother said that her husband and she had tried to contact the couple several times, through Julia, however, she kept giving excuses and later began threatening to complain to the police.

Julie Bindel, one of Britain’s best-known radical feminists, has written a savage critique of commercial surrogacy in Prospect, a progressive magazine. Bindel is a “political lesbian” and has campaigned for many years against prostitution, pornography, and rape, and more recently against transgenderism. Here are a few paragraphs from her article, “Why commercial surrogacy is little better than the sex trade”.

I’m concerned about all children born to surrogates. None of the protections that reputable adoption agencies put in place before parents are approved such as criminal background checks, mandatory participation in adoptive parent preparation classes, assurance that the adoptive families are medically, financially and mentally stable and comprehensive home visits, are required. Although some surrogacy clinics may do these checks, there is no legal requirement for them.

Surrogacy is exploitation whether it is carried out for profit or altruism. The harm to surrogate mothers is well documented, especially now that former surrogates are speaking out about their experiences. The law should reflect this, and outlaw all formal surrogacy arrangements. The surrogates themselves—lured in by the promise of money, and by suggestions that surrogacy is altruistic, and they are “helping a family”—should never be criminalised, but the brokers and other profiteers should.

The buying and selling of women’s bodies for reproduction is supported by many on the left—a notable exception to their usual critique of capitalism. In fact, surrogacy in the US is celebrated and seen as little different to purchasing an airline ticket. The women in the system have no name, no voice, no identity. The state allows the trafficking of their reproductive system, with a high risk of maternal mortality, protecting only her right to be paid. The surrogacy trade is similar to the sex trafficking and mail-order bride industries—in that the female body, in one way or another, is the merchandise for sale.

.

Woman who facilitated adoption, which was legally rejected, was later arrested for being child trafficker

After news reports on a woman, Julia Fernandez appeared that she was a child trafficker and sold infants, a mother moved a civil court, seeking to get her baby back from a couple with whom Fernandez had facilitated the adoption of the petitioner's infant.

The mother, an Ulhasnagar resident, had purportedly borne the child out of wedlock and had come in contact with Fernandez who convinced her for adoption. She had now married the father of the child.

In her application against the adoptive parents filed before a city civil court, she had sought that they be directed to return her baby. Her plea stated that she was unable to raise the infant due to personal difficulties. And, Fernandez facilitated his adoption to the couple, saying they are wealthy and her son will be well looked after.

Accordingly, she said the couple also filed an adoption petition in court. She said during the adoption proceedings, her husband informed the court that they did not want to go ahead with giving up their son for adoption. Accordingly, in March last year, the court rejected the couple's adoption petition. The mother said that despite that, the couple has not returned the child and are illegally holding his custody.

Fake Lawyer Case: Madras HC Directs Bar Council To Verify Advocates' Antecedents Before Permitting Them To Hold Posts In Statutory Committees

The Madras High Court has directed the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry to verify the antecedents of lawyers

before they are permitted to hold significant positions in the statutory committees.

The direction was made while dealing with a habeas corpus petition by a mother seeking production of her 17-year-old

adopted son, whereby the Court had come across a 'fake lawyer'.

They were born in South Korea, Brazil, Australia, Rwanda and Sri Lanka. They were all adopted. All grew up in France. And today, they tell each other.

Une histoire à soi , a feature-length documentary written and directed by Amandine Gay, in theaters from Friday August 26, for a rare time, gives the microphone to the main stakeholders in matters of adoption. Not the adoptive parents, even less the institutions, but indeed the children… grown up. A step back which makes it possible to propose, beyond the intimate, a downright political angle to the discourse.

“We come from somewhere. We are the fruit of a prior history. We all come from someone”, said one of them, analyzing his career.

“The idea is to show that adoption is not a limited moment in time,” explains the director in an interview. “But let it last a lifetime. »

An idea in tune with the times, exploited earlier this year by Nicolas Ouellet in his web series You come from where , then next year by Phara Thibault in his autobiographical monologue Chokola , on the boards of the Little Unicorn.