SPRINGFIELD, Mo. (KY3) -

A Dent County woman who pleaded guilty to a criminal charge in the death of her adopted daughter in 2020 will spend the rest of her life in prison.

Aa Tiko’ Rujux-Xicay and mom Laurie Stern explore issues of belonging, privilege, race and class in the podcast series “All Relative: Defining Diego.”

Laura Yuen Laura Yuen @LAURA_YUEN

Whether Aa Tiko' Rujux-Xicay would ever meet his birth mother was never a question.

Since he was a toddler, his white adoptive parents in St. Paul brought him back to his home village in Guatemala every two or three years so he could bond with his birth family and stay close to his roots.

His mom and dad, Laurie Stern and Dan Luke, named their child Diego. They made sure he learned Spanish. They bought him traditional clothing from his homeland. Laurie, a veteran journalist, felt conflicted about international adoption, but believed by arming her family with information and awareness, she could address it.

Sociologists uncover government guidelines on adoption as a source of recent social history.

What is a good childhood? A long, protected and materially secure childhood is a social reality in Germany as well as a normative pattern. Its core elements are taken for granted – currently, for example, the constant presence of at least one parent (preferably the mother), freeing the children from work and, of course, promoting the personality of the child, above all through education. Even if this pattern may differ culturally and socially, it is certainly the parents who are primarily responsible for a good childhood. "Good parenting" could be empirically represented by surveys, by evaluating the countless parent guides or by retrospective surveys of how children experienced their parents.

Alexandra König and Arne Niederbacher have now found a completely different approach: the adoption agency and the associated task of finding the best parents for a child. Although the current legal situation imposes narrow limits on the procedure, these primarily concern the question of who may apply to be adoptive parents at all. For the subsequent mediation of parents and child, on the other hand, the "Recommendations for adoption mediation" provide guidance for the responsible authorities in determining the "best parents". These recommendations have been published since 1983 by the Federal Working Group of State Youth Welfare Offices. They are now in their eighth edition. In these 40 years, the normative concept of good parenting must have changed in line with changes in society, according to the authors' assumption. So what separates the best parents of the 1980s from today?

The personality of the parents becomes the central criterion

The year 1976 was decisive: since then, the best interests of the child have been the decisive criterion in adoption practice. It was no longer the child's "adoption suitability" that was tested, but the suitability of the parents. The age of the adoptees has been falling since then, and today there is an increasing demand for babies. The “incognito adoptions” that were common in the past are becoming rarer, and with them the desire to be able to fake biological parenthood to the outside world. Now it's a matter of matching the child's special needs and the parents' ability to meet them. The placement authorities are faced with a very difficult task: they almost always have to make a decision before the child and the adoptive parents even meet. There are always far more applicants than children. And newborns in particular must be placed as quickly as possible.

KYIV, Ukraine — When Katie-Jo and Christian Page decided last winter to host a Ukrainian orphan in their home through the nonprofit Host Orphans Worldwide, adoption wasn't actually on their minds.

"We decided it wasn't something that we were going to be able to do just based on the travel aspects and financial reasons," 30-year-old Katie-Jo Page, from Snohomish, Wash., says.

But then they met Mykyta — an 11-year-old with blond hair and lively hazel eyes from the Zaporizhzhia region in southeastern Ukraine. Page describes him as fun, joyful and a "good older brother" to their three young daughters.

The family started the process to adopt Mykyta on the second day of his stay.

"We just felt like he was a part of the family and he was meant to be in our family, so we knew we'd do whatever it took to make it official," she says.

THE HAGUE

Following the news that a number of participants in the Spoorloos program in Colombia are not linked to the correct biological family, there are signs of unrest among adoption organizations. Stichting Wereldkinderen, the only Dutch organization with a permit that mediates in adoptions in Colombia, has received three questions, says director Jeroen Jansen when asked. According to Inez Teurlings of the Interland Adopted Foundation, some adoptees are concerned after the revelations about the mismatches.

"It causes unrest. For example, there are questions about whether some DNA tests have been performed correctly. Cheap tests only test on four points, others on twenty. We find the latter tests more reliable, but they are a lot more expensive, around 400 euros," said Teurlings. "There must also be a hearing about Edwin Vela's actions." Furthermore, according to Teurlings, the way in which Spoorloos presenter Derk Bolt reacted was poorly received in the community. Bolt said on talk show Khalid & Sophie on Wednesday evening that he continues to believe in the discredited fixer.

According to the World Children's Foundation, the broadcast of the Scammers Addressed program, in which the mismatches come to light, can "lead to emotions and questions among people who feel connected to adoption in general or adoptions from Colombia in particular, from whatever role." , according to a message on the website. Jansen does not want to comment further "on the nature of the reactions we receive, since they are of a personal nature".

Collaboration

DELFT - According to Jody Bernal, the television program Spoorloos should have put on the robes, after it became clear that adopted children were linked to the wrong parents in the program. The singer and DJ himself came to Delft from Colombia when he was six months old, the country where there is now much to do. He has seen for some time that things are going wrong in the search for biological parents of adopted children: 'It has been rumbling for years.'

In recent days there has been much to do about the Spoorloos program of the KRO-NCRV. The program is said to have used a rogue 'fixer' who often led the children to the wrong parents. Jody Bernal, herself an adopted child, tells in the radio program Menno in de Afternoon of Omroep West that there have been rumors about errors in the television program for some time.

The program is said to have knowingly used a rogue intermediary in Colombia, who linked children to the wrong parents. Bernal is also originally from Colombia and reacts shocked. 'If you are adopted, I myself was three months old then, you are looking for your roots. It must be terrible to be told years later that it's not right.'

Stories have been going on for a long time

The singer, known for his hit 'Que Si, Que No' from 2000, finds it intense that last night's program Spoorloos declared to Khalid and Sophie that they still have faith in their 'fixer', even after it appears that mistakes have been made. Something that according to Bernal is not possible. 'It has been rumbling among adoptees for some time. The bell has been ringing for some time and we often heard that certain stories would not be correct and the matches would not be correct.'

Following the news that a number of participants of the 'Spoorloos' program in Colombia have not been linked to the correct biological family, there are signs of unrest among adoption organizations. Stichting Wereldkinderen, the only Dutch organization with a permit that mediates in Colombia adoption, has received three questions, says director Jeroen Jansen when asked. According to Inez Teurlings of the Interlandelijk Adoptees Foundation, there are concerns among some adoptees after the revelations about the mismatches.

"There are questions about whether some DNA tests have been performed correctly"

"It causes unrest. There are questions whether some DNA tests have been carried out correctly. Cheap tests only test on four points, with others on twenty. We think the latter tests are more reliable, but they are a lot more expensive, around 400 euros," said Teurlings. "There must also be heard and heard about Edwin Vela's actions."

Furthermore, according to Teurlings, the way Spoorloos presenter Derk Bolt reacted poorly in the community. Derk said on Wednesday evening in talk show Khalid & Sophie that he continues to believe in the discredited fixer.

The broadcast of the program Scammers Tackled , in which the mismatches come to light, can, according to the Wereldkinderen foundation, 'lead to emotions and questions in people who, from whatever role, feel connected to adoption in general or adoptions from Colombia in particular'. , according to a message on the website. Jansen does not want to comment further 'on the nature of the responses we receive, since they are of a personal nature'.

Friends Annick (37), An Sheela (42) and Sheela (41) lead different lives, but have one thing in common: all three are adopted from India. and they know what you struggle with if you don't know exactly where you come from. “Adoption is not always a fairy tale.”

Recognition and recognition

“Recognition and recognition. That's what I find with An Sheela and Sheela and all those other adopted kids from our Facebook community. For example, if I say, "I don't know exactly who I am," they know exactly what I mean. It is something that binds us. What do you run into if you don't know who your biological parents are? How does it feel when the start of your life is unclear and what you know about it may be based on lies? What are you struggling with then? They are things we discuss when we see each other on meeting days.” Annick is speaking. In 2008 she was only fifteen when she wanted to meet other adopted children. Together with her mother, she founded the Facebook group Adoptie Schakel, for children and their parents adopted from India. Initially a friendly group that exchanged messages and saw each other now and then, years later it became a more serious community. On which members post messages and photos, but which also organizes and undertakes all kinds of things.

The club got more and more members, from the Netherlands and Belgium. At a certain point, Annick was no longer able to manage everything on her own. In 2017 she asked An Sheela to help, a year later also Sheela. The three of them try to take the Facebook group to an even higher level. Together they organize meeting days and information evenings about DNA tests, for example. The three also fight against illegal adoption in their home country of Belgium. Despite their adoption stories being completely different, the trio feels connected to each other and to the members of their community.

Annick: “In the fourteen years that I have been working on this, the adopted children from then have grown up. Many have started families or have now made a roots trip to India. Sometimes they find what they are looking for, but often it is impossible. India is a huge country and the government discourages adopted children from looking for their biological parents. It's simply not done. The moral is: let the past rest.”

News and comment from the 14th European Forum on the rights of the child in Brussels

The 14th European Forum on the rights of the child took place between the 27th and the 29th September 2022 in Brussels. Hope and Homes for Children was among the few organisations invited to attend in person. The forum covered topics crucial for our work such as

child participation

children in armed conflict

and addressed important EU policies, including

What if after years of searching you finally find your biological parent(s), but afterwards you are told that it is not the case after all. It happened to participants of the Dutch TV program "Spoorloos". Noëmi Plateau also testifies that such a search is difficult and emotional in "Late". "All my life I felt a kind of mourning and loss. Something I've lost, but don't know."

There was a lot of commotion in the Netherlands when it became known there that the popular program “Spoorloos”, which has been looking for lost relatives for more than thirty years, has linked at least two people to the wrong biological family. That's what investigative journalist Kees van der Spek of a competing channel told on Monday evening at the table at Eva Jinek. The program makers of "Spoorloos" paid a Colombian intermediary for research work and that's where things went wrong.

A painful story that the Flemish Noëmi Plateau can also speak about. When she was one and a half years old, Noemi was adopted from China. Last year, together with her adoptive sister Anéline, she went in search of her biological parents in the program “We are family” by Lidewij Nuitten. A quest that started with hope.

"I wanted to find my biological parents for a long time", Noëmi begins her story in "Late". Ultimately, that search starts at the age of 25 with sending her DNA to all kinds of DNA databases. Six months later, there was suddenly a result.

"We found your birth father. The DNA was a complete match with you," she heard via an online conversation with someone in China. "As big as the shock is for you, it is for him too," continues the woman on the other side of the world. A message that hit the adopted Noemi with great intensity.