After retiring from swimming, the Paralympian began researching her origins. This led her to her birth family – and to uncover the shocking difficulties facing other disabled children

As a child, Ellie Simmonds would fantasise about what her birth mother might be like. In her wildest visions, maybe her birth mother was a rock star, or famous, or extraordinary in some other way. “You never think as a seven-, eight-year-old, that you’re actually going to meet your birth mum,” she says. It turns out that the woman knew exactly who the baby she had given up was – and that the child was the famous and extraordinary one. When Simmonds, then just 13, competed at the 2008 Beijing Paralympics, and won two gold medals for swimming, her birth mother put the pieces together: her name, her age, the details of her life that were becoming public. In February this year, they met for the first time.

Simmonds has made a powerful and very moving documentary – I sobbed throughout – about tracing her birth family, which also highlights the shocking difficulties faced by disabled children waiting to be adopted. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case for Simmonds, who has achondroplasia, or dwarfism – she was adopted within months of being born – but it remains the reality for many other children.

She began the process just over a year ago; the time felt right. Her retirement in 2021 after the Tokyo Paralympics – a career that saw her win five Paralympic gold medals and countless world titles, and break several records – had given her the time and space to think about life beyond swimming. But the end of her career as an athlete when she was still in her 20s (she is now 28) had also shaken her identity. If she wasn’t a swimmer and champion Paralympian, she thought, then who was she? It was a question that became even harder to answer when so much of her own life was a mystery to her.

Where did her warmth and chattiness, or her beautiful blue eyes – all strikingly radiant characteristics when we meet in a rather dull office – come from? Her love of animals, especially horses? Her competitiveness and determination? Mostly: what was going on for her birth mother that meant she decided, when her daughter was just two days old, to place her for adoption?

The letter delivered to Måns Clausen brought startling news. It advised the Swedish actor that his biological mother in Ethiopia, long presumed dead, was alive and searching for him.

After a few months of correspondence and phone calls with newfound relatives, the actor flew from Stockholm to Addis Ababa to see his birth mother for the first time since his adoption as a baby by a Swedish couple.

“That was a surrealistic experience! It was wonderful, of course,” Clausen said of their reunion three years ago, starting at the airport in Addis Ababa. Now 46, he recalled his mother “was a stranger to me. But for her, I was, of course, her child. She had been looking for me for years.”

That revelatory letter to Clausen came from Beteseb Felega-Ethiopian Adoption Connection (BF-EAC). The nonprofit organization operates a program, including a website, that reunites Ethiopian-born adoptees with their biological relatives. Clausen’s younger half-brother saw its online search database and contacted the organization on his mother’s behalf; he also was at the airport when they reunited.

BF-EAC is the idea by Andrea Kelley, an American. She and her husband, who live just outside Kansas City, Missouri, adopted their two children from Ethiopia, bringing home a son in 2000 and a daughter in 2002.

Over time, Kelley became aware that many birth families “were searching for their children, but there was no way for us both to meet,” she said in a phone interview. She and her husband were able to find their daughter’s biological family in 2004 and have visited several times. They have not had success with their son’s, whose “mother could have been searching for him and I would have no way of knowing it,” Kelley said.

Accustomed to adoption search databases in the United States, “I just decided to make one for Ethiopia,” she said.

Helped by an adoptive mom with strong tech skills, Kelley invested countless hours and $3,000 to launch BF-EAC in 2014. Since then, the organization – registered with the Ethiopian government as a nonprofit – has reconnected more than 200 adoptees with their Ethiopian relatives. More than 1,000 other cases remain active in the registry, with adoptees or their birth relatives seeking connections.

The database posts information – such as birth dates, names of the children or relatives, photos – provided by Ethiopian birth families, adoptive parents or adoptees themselves. Once a likely identification is made, Beteseb Felega contacts the subject of the search – as it did with adoptee Clausen. If that person confirms a match, he or she can provide a letter and photos for Beteseb Felega to deliver. The organization will interview the Ethiopian family, providing a detailed report to the adoptee and providing follow-up as needed.

Access to the online database is free. Sometimes, an adoptee or adoptive family will want an on-the-ground search in Ethiopia, for which Beteseb Felega charges the adoptive side. There is no cost to Ethiopian families, Kelley stressed.

“Most of the people that did give up their kids were the poorest,” she said. Many were told, by adoption agencies and intermediaries, that their children were being sent abroad to get an education and other opportunities and would return as adults.

Foreign adoptions banned

Ethiopia banned adoptions by foreigners in early 2018, citing concerns about mistreatment of children abroad – including the 2011 death of an Ethiopian child at the hands of her adoptive U.S. mother. In recent decades, the Horn of Africa nation has become one of the biggest source countries for international adoption – including to the United States. Many children have also found homes in western European countries and Canada.

With the ban, “the issues of Ethiopian children adopted abroad were sidelined and no one was concerned about sustainable communication and the connection between birth families and adoptees,” said Wubshet, one of Beteseb Felega’s three social workers in the Horn of Africa country. He asked that his full name not to publicly disclosed, so that he could speak more freely and avoid extra pressure on searches. Wubshet said federal and local governments, along with police, decline requests for most files.

“The bureaucracy is tough,” added Habtamu, another social worker. “Some institutions did not want to collaborate with us” in providing documents vital to a search, even when the social workers provided letters of legal authorization from adoptive parents or adoptees. But, he added, “I also need to acknowledge those who helped us” in the government and adoption agencies.

An official with Ethiopia’s Ministry of Women, Children and Youth Affairs told VOA that the ministry and other governmental organizations are doing the best they can to help with reconnections.

“When people from foreign countries ask us for help, we usually look into our record vault and provide them with the needed information,” said Belete Dagne, director of child protection. “When Ethiopian families request us about adoptees, we also try to help them by collaborating with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ethiopian embassies based in foreign countries.”

He estimated that some 70,000 Ethiopian children had been adopted by foreigners since the 1960s, many in the 1990s after HIV-AIDS ravaged the country and left many without parents. Dagne said up to 2,000 children are adopted each year by Ethiopian families.

Dagne also said his office has received requests about adopting children orphaned in conflicts in Tigray and other parts of Ethiopia. “It is our responsibility to protect the safety of these children,” he said. “We are discussing how to support the children with regional governments.”

Some resistance

Challenges with reconnection go beyond governmental institutions and missing documentation. Sometimes, adoptive parents or adoption agencies don’t want to help, Kelley said. “They do not support the child’s right to know his/her history and the Ethiopian family’s right to know that their child is alive.”

Amarech Kebede Richmond hopes to change that thinking. She was adopted in 2010, along with a younger biological sister, by a family in the U.S. mid-Atlantic state of North Carolina. With her parents’ support, she was reconnected to her birth family through Beteseb Felega and visited them in Ethiopia in 2016. Now she serves on the organization’s adoptee advisory board.

“I encourage adoptees to look for their families,” said Richmond, a 22-year-old student at the University of North Carolina’s Greensboro campus. She acknowledged risks of frustration and disappointment, but added, “It’s a process that’s worth it” in terms of identity.

Clausen, in Sweden, said he keeps in touch with his biological family through periodic phone calls.

Reconnecting families can be life-changing, Habtamu said.

He spoke of Ethiopian women who, after giving up their children, were “living in shame.” Reunification made them feel “like they are new moms. Some of them even told us that they feel like they are revived from the dead.”

Beteseb Felega plans to expand its services. Those include introducing a DNA database to speed identification so other adoptees can experience the “surrealistic” feeling of a reunion.

Date:

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 10:57:56 +0545

From:

 "Ellie Skeele" <adopt_from_nepal@yahoo.com>  Add to Address Book  Add Mobile Alert

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According to a press release, the Italian couple adopted the orphan boy through the legalised adoption process by duly following the CARA norms

THE HINDU BUREAU

A six-year-old orphan boy, who has been staying in the town-based ‘Sishugruha’ for the past couple of months, was adopted by a childless couple from Italy in compliance with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) procedures.

According to a press release, the Italian couple adopted the orphan boy through the legalised adoption process by duly following the CARA norms.

The boy was handed over to the couple under the aegis of the Department of Women Development and Child Welfare in the presence of Karimnagar Collector Pamela Satpathy at the conference hall in the Collectorate here on Monday afternoon.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Arun Dohle <arundohle@gmail.com>
Date: Tue 10. Apr 2018 at 17:58
Subject: Post adoption / India / ISS - international social service
To: Roelie Post <roelie.post@gmail.com>
 

See page 16

The Arrow of God Community Children’s Home in Onitsha has been closed down over allegations of illegal adoption and selling of children.

The Anambra State Commissioner for Women and Social Welfare, Ify Obinabo,   led security operatives to seal off the structure on Wednesday, after a report and documentary by Fisayo Soyombo made the rounds on social media and local television .

The report also accused  the state Ministry of Women and Social Welfare of involvement  in an illegal adoption of a baby girl alongside one of her registered homes in the state.

A new born baby was among about 20 children   recovered from the orphanage operator, while the founder and the employees had fled and are currently at large.

The children recovered were between the ages of one and 17 years; ten boys, nine girls, and a newborn baby.

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. - In a theatre in St. John's, N.L., a murmur spreads through the audience as people timidly raise their hands. They have been asked if they saw their own stories reflected in the film they just watched — "A Quiet Girl."

The National Film Board documentary by Montreal director Adrian Wills follows him as he searches for his biological mother in her home province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Each step closer to his mother takes him deeper into the history of adoption in the province, where many unwed pregnant women in deeply Christian towns surrendered their babies to be brought up by someone else.

"What people said to us afterwards was, 'My God, this is my cousin's story, this is my sister's story, this is our story,'" Wills said in a recent interview after screenings in central Newfoundland. "It was really emotional ... so many people want to tell you their stories."

Many more of those stories need to be told, said Anne Sheldon, who runs a Facebook group called Newfoundland and Labrador Adoptees. Each month there are many new posts from adopted people born in the '50s, '60s and '70s, looking for their biological family members in Newfoundland. The group has more than 14,000 members.

UDHR75: Revitalising the universal commitment to all children’s rights,

with and for children

Date: 12th December - 12:30 - 2pm (90 min) (Hybrid event)

Location: Room XXI, Palais des Nations, Geneva and online

“The motivations of Western countries in this approach originally stemmed from a generous desire to help abandoned children in distress. But in our industrialized countries, international adoption has today often become a response to the lack of adoptable children and the infertility of couples (…). A sort of belief in a right to adopt is spreading among public opinion, with, as a result, the creation of a real adoption market.” This extract is taken from the Report “For respect for the rights of the child in international adoption” published by the Committee on Social, Health and Family Affairs (Council of Europe) on December 2, 1999.

The 8 December 2023 , the Federal Council presented the results of the second study by the Zurich University of Applied Sciences entitled “Indicative elements of illegal adoptions of children from 10 countries of origin in Switzerland, from the 1970s to the 1990s” . We can read there: “The documents consulted in the specialized files reveal a dissonance between the postulate of consideration of the good of the child, on the one hand, and the practice on the other hand, the latter having often been guided by others interests than those of adopted children. This gives children object status. It is not uncommon for them to be spoken of as if they were commodities, for example using the term "child importation" or, more subtly, when adopting parents express wishes as to the characteristics of the child they wanted to welcome.”

What do the 24 years between these two declarations tell us?
First of all, it takes a generation to change a “mentality”. A generation for the passing of time, but also a generation of adoptees now adults and capable of bringing the debate to the public square. 
It would be wrong to say that nothing would have happened during all these years: the entry into force in Switzerland in 2003 of the Hague Convention on international adoption, the establishment of a federal central authority, the strengthening of control over adoption intermediaries, have significantly increased the regulation of international adoptions. These national measures, to which are added those taken by the States of origin and international bodies, have considerably modified the landscape of international adoption, to the point that it now represents only 10% of its historical maximum ( more than 40,000 international adoptions recorded throughout the world in 2004). 

This long time is also symptomatic of the complexity of a fictitious filiation, based on law and not on blood, which summons buried personal and social values, hidden political and geopolitical issues, and elusive fragmented responsibilities. This complexity must lead to nuance and respect for everyone, in particular by avoiding shortcuts. In his report yesterday, the RTS journalist declared “in total, 8,000 children were adopted illegitimately between 1970 and the end of the 90s”. This type of allegation is, on the one hand, unfounded: the study clearly states that “to draw up this inventory, we did not consult individual files, but only specialized files kept in the federal archives”. Talking about system failures does not mean that all files are affected, and even less so that they are affected equally. On the other hand, it is about respecting adopters and adoptees who may not be concerned, who also form families and who do not all feel the need to question their history.

Finally, if the decision of the Federal Council to revise international adoption law must be welcomed, the previous report "Search of origin for adopted persons" published on November 15, highlighted the shortcomings of the current system with regard to means necessary for professional support of original research. It is now necessary to understand the issue of adoption in a global vision that includes past and future, national and international, adoptees and adoptive families.

Déclaration de Mme Rama Yade, secrétaire d'Etat aux affaires étrangères et aux droits de l'homme, sur la réforme de l'adoption, notamment la création d'un réseau des volontaires de l'adoption internationale, à Paris le 28 juillet 2008.