This week, the Court of Appeal in The Hague ruled in favor of Dilani Butink in the case she had brought against the Dutch state and the Stichting Kind en Toekomst. The case had previously been time-barred, according to the court. She was proven right on appeal.

The case in brief

Dilani Butink was born in Sri Lanka in 1992 and adopted shortly afterwards by her Dutch adoptive parents. She has not been able to find her biological parents on the basis of her adoption papers. After Zembla television broadcasts in 2017 about abuses during adoption from Sri Lanka, she held the State and the Foundation liable. Dilani states that her adoption was made carelessly, leaving her in uncertainty about her origin and the circumstances under which she was given up. According to her, this is a violation of her fundamental rights and the State and the Foundation have acted unlawfully because of the role they played in the realization of the adoption.

Invocation of prescription expired/unacceptable

The court upheld the appeal of the State and the Foundation to the statute of limitations in 2020 and rejected Dilani Butink's claims. In the appeal, the State dropped the limitation defence. The Court finds the Foundation's appeal to prescription to be unacceptable. This allowed the case to be dealt with substantively.

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.

In February 2021, the investigative report of the Joustra Committee exposed the abuses surrounding intercountry adoption. An immediate adoption stop was the result. Shanthy (30) is a victim of illegal adoption. “Who says my life in Bangladesh would have been less happy? Less wealthy, I'm sure, but I would have grown up in my country, with my family.”

This interview was previously published in Flair 27-2021.

Shanthy (30) is team leader in mental health care and single. She found out that someone was hired to play her biological mother at the time.

Adopted

“'Here's your biological mother,' I was told when I was seven years old during a visit to Sri Lanka. I looked at the woman who wanted to grab me and immediately felt that it wasn't right. She was not my mother, I felt that so very strongly. I later told my adoptive parents. They didn't know what to do with it. The man who had helped with my adoption at the time had actually told her that this woman was my biological mother. Why would he lie about that?”

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WTVG) - After the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, the topic of adoption has taken the spotlight.

So at what point does a biological father lose the right to contest an adoption? That’s the question before the Ohio Supreme Court.

At the end of the day, the case before the Ohio Supreme Court is all about deadlines and the rights of a biological father.

It involves a girl who was 17-years-old at the time she got pregnant and her then 18-year-old boyfriend. She told him early on she wanted to put the child up for adoption but he disagreed. Eventually they ended their relationship. He tried to keep in touch but her family cut off communication.

The baby was born about a week early and was almost immediately placed with a couple looking to adopt that child. 17 days after the baby was born, the biological father found out. He immediately filed with Ohio’s putative father registry, which gives unmarried men the chance to get parental rights. The only problem is that the deadline to do that is 15 days after the child is born.

Forty-three older orphans and children in foster care from Colombia will visit the United States, and nine will stay in the DC region for five weeks.

Kidsave, a 501(c)(3) non-profit, works to help older kids in foster care and orphanages find families and lasting connections with caring adults. Summer Miracles, Kidsave’s international hosting program, brings children who have little chance of finding an adoptive family in their home country to the United States.

The goal of the hosting program is to find these older children a forever home. Since 1999, 80% of the children who traveled with Summer Miracles have found adoptive families, according to Kidsave. The ages of the kids traveling this summer range from 9-16.

Virginia takes first place in the country for the worst percent of children who age out of foster care without being adopted, according to the Children’s Home Society of Virginia, a non-profit adoption service. According to Washington state-based Partners For Our Children, teenagers account for less than 10% of all adoptions, leaving many older foster care and orphanage children without a home or family and leaving them vulnerable as they enter adulthood. This age range is at great risk for homelessness and unemployment, and many fall victims to crime, trafficking and incarceration, according to Kidsave.

Mary Buelow and Nate Messer are Loudoun County residents who are hosting siblings, 11-year-old Krista and 13-year-old Jean. Kidsave describes Krista as a committed student with an upbeat attitude, and Jean as a passionate, charismatic, and responsible teenager.

THE OIREACHTAS CHILDREN’S Committee has recommended that the Government scrap the six-month time limit in its planned redress scheme for survivors of mother and baby homes and county homes.

Under the current proposals, all mothers who spent time in an institution are eligible to apply for redress, but a person who spent time in an institution as a child is only eligible if they spent at least six months there.

The six-month rule was widely criticised when the details of the scheme were announced last November – with experts saying it did not consider “the impact of early trauma“.

In a significant development, the Committee has now formally intervened and called for the six-month rule to be scrapped.

David Kinsella, a survivor of St Patrick’s Mother and Baby Home in Dublin and long-time campaigner, told The Journal he is “delighted” with the news and “hopes the Government will listen”.

More than 800 children have died in state-run specialised adoption agencies since 2018, according to official data. Of these, most are below two years old, officials said, painting a tragic picture of neglect.

The main reason for the fatalities, they explained, is “unsafe abandonment”, including children being found with dog bites and so vulnerable they can’t be saved.

Breaking up the numbers, the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) said in response to multiple RTIs filed by PTI that 118 children, 104 of them below two, died in state and Central Government-run agencies in 2021-22.

In 2020-21, the number was 169 and in 2019-20 it was 281. In 2018-19, 251 children died in the agencies, according to the data.

Of the total 819 children, 481 were girls and 129 those with special needs, defined as those who have some type of disability and require exceptional care and extra help.

All of their married life, Andrew and Bridget Olsen have dreamed of having four kids. They envisioned for themselves a family of both adopted and biological children.

Now, 15 years into their marriage, they are closing in on their goal. The couple adopted at birth their daughters Halley, 11, and Mady, 9, and have their biological son, Layne, 7. The Mankato area couple has been on an adoption waiting list for their fourth child for 2½ years.

“Our vision was to have a beautiful family, and that’s what we have,” Andrew said.

The couple went through Catholic Charities of Southern Minnesota for Halley’s and Mady’s adoptions, and are using the agency again for their fourth child. They are one of 10 families on a waiting list for adoption, with more families wanting to adopt than there are babies to adopt.

Catholic Charities of Southern Minnesota specializes in domestic infant adoptions and also does home studies for international adoptions.

The Mark Gitenstein interview:- "[Putin] totally underestimated the unity between the two largest democratic systems in the world"

The US ambassador to the EU spoke to The Parliament Magazine about his close friendship with US President Joe Biden, his time as ambassador to Romania and the high level of collaboration between the EU and the US

“There has never been a time in history where there has been this level of collaboration between the European Union and the United States,” Mark Gitenstein, the United States ambassador to the European Union, tells The Parliament Magazine.

“I spent a lot of time talking to previous US ambassadors to the EU [and] other experts on the EU and the United States. And people say it’s never been more united.”

US President Joe Biden has made repairing American ties with Europe a key part of his foreign policy since entering the White House in early 2021, following the tempestuous years of the Donald Trump administration.

When Anouk (42) and her partner think she cannot have children, they decide to adopt. Now her (adopted) daughter is in the middle of puberty. Every puberty is intense, but for Anouk it increasingly evokes feelings of guilt.

“I feel guilty about the adoption.”

My girly dream came true

“Nine years ago, my partner and I adopted our daughter. To be honest, at the time we thought I couldn't have children, so our choice was quickly made. We immersed ourselves in the adoption process and were soon allowed to hold our daughter in our arms. Indra was two years old when we adopted her from India. Later I unexpectedly became pregnant with twins, so suddenly my girlish dream came true. I always wanted to have a big family. Have breakfast together at a large table; I had that loving picture in my head.

That my dream came true was great, and the first years I lived on a pink cloud. Now, nine years later, things are a little less rosy than I had hoped or expected. Indra is very curious by nature. For example, she was still very small when she once heard the church bells ringing. She asked if she could go and see where the sound was coming from. I thought she was going to walk to the garden, so without hesitation said she could go. Moments later, I panicked. She had gotten the garden gate open and was already walking towards the end of the street. 'I was allowed to watch, wasn't I?' was her innocent reply.