It's believed half a million British women were persuaded to give their babies up for adoption in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.

Campaigners from the Movement for an Adoption Apology want the government to acknowledge that many women may have been coerced into giving up their babies against their will, and apologise.

Those women have lived with the heartache ever since, and many never saw their children again.

These are their stories.

Jean's story

HYDERABAD: As the number of Covid cases are increasing by the day, the city is also witnessing many cases of children losing their parents to Covid-19 and illegal adoptions.

Keeping the situation in mind, Telangana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights has urged people to take up adoption only by following legal procedure. It has asked officials to stay alert to curb illegal adoptions.

The Commission has asked all District Collectors to consider it as a high priority task and instruct the authorities concerned to circulate the information on ‘legal adoption’ in all departments, among NGOs and the general public.

Stating that illegal adoptions can result in child trafficking, TSCPCR officials cautioned people not to engage in such practices, and added that there was a systematic process for the same.

Abuses regarding adoption still occur today, the Joustra Committee recently noted. The substantiation of that claim is brief, responds the AdoptieVereniging Gereformeerde Gezindte (AVGG).

"Almost unchanged" is the "fraud-sensitive system" of adoption from abroad, even after the stricter regulations in 1998. That is what the investigation committee states in a letter that Minister Dekker sent to the House of Representatives last week. The list of sources that the researchers included as evidence for their claim has raised eyebrows among adoption organizations.

According to the AVGG, that list shows once again that there is "insufficient basis for the firm decision" to suspend adoption from abroad for the time being, says chairman Martin van Dam. As an example, he cites the “signs of abuse” from South Africa, where his own adopted children come from. The evidence that Joustra provides for this is a series of parliamentary questions that were asked because children from that country were not allowed to be adopted by non-Christian or gay couples. “Improper management,” say the researchers. Van Dam, however, refers to it as a 'normative framework' that has since become obsolete.

Fraud-prone

With the claim that the adoption system is "fraud sensitive", the committee is giving an "incorrect representation" in Van Dam's eyes. He calls the suggestion that adoption creates a market of supply and demand is unjustified. “Abroad people look for a solution for the child, not so much for the parents. For example, one first finds out whether there is a place in the immediate family circle or living environment where the child can go.”

SAUK COUNTY (WKOW) -- A River Valley School District teacher is now facing charges for allegedly sexually assaulting a child in the 1990s.

Michael J. Hill is facing three charges for first degree sexual assault of a child.

Melisa Trejo says she was that child, and she says Hill adopted her from Colombia in 1987. Trejo wanted to share her story because she says she's tried to for the past 30 years, but no one has listened.

"I've been praying for a miracle, because really, I just -- I didn't ever see it happening," Trejo said.

She said she's not interested in vengeance, but rather justice from events that have left her scarred for decades -- and that she has worked for decades to bring to light.

„Mager bewijs voor misstanden adoptie”

Anne Vader

20 mei 2021 18:31

Van Dam.?beeld RD, Anton Dommerholt

Van Dam.?beeld RD, Anton Dommerholt

There really is no convincing evidence that adoption abuses are still taking place, the intermediary agencies say. According to them, the fact that they could take place is not enough reason to stop adoptions.

Mediation organizations that oppose an intercountry adoption stop. It may not sound very surprising. Nevertheless, the four organizations that supervise adoptions from abroad in the Netherlands kept silent when the caretaker cabinet decided in February to stop intercountry adoptions . Consciously, says Sanne Buursink of the A New Way foundation, on behalf of all of them. Because if the Joustra Committee, whose investigation was the basis of that decision, had reason to believe that abuses such as tampering with documents and even child trafficking are still occurring, they first wanted to know exactly what the investigators were based on. “We work every day to do everything as carefully as possible,” explains Buursink. "But we thought, maybe we have a blind spot."

Yet the organizations are still speaking out strongly about the issue this week . They also find the additional information that the Joustra Committee sent to Minister Sander Dekker (legal protection) wafer thin this week.

The Joustra Committee gives some sixty examples which, according to the researchers, demonstrate that abuses still occur around intercountry adoptions. Why are you not convinced?

Buursink: “The sources cited by the Committee to substantiate that position often date from a completely different era. They relate to countries that at the time the abuse took place had not yet ratified the Hague adoption convention (an international convention in which stricter rules for intercountry adoptions have been established, ed.), But have now done so. Or they are not even related to the abuse to which the committee has linked them. ”

Sun Hee Engelstoft, who was born in Busan in 1982, was 4 months old when she was flown to Denmark to meet her white adoptive parents.

Her biological mother had given her up for adoption, and through no choice of her own, she became part of the large adoption exodus: more than 210,000 babies have been sent overseas for adoption since the end of the Korean War in 1953.

Engelstoft recalls that although she was the only Korean in her village, she has had a good life living in the midst of nature. She also lived for three years in a refugee camp in Botswana in the 1980s where her parents were volunteer workers.

"I have a strong bond with my adoptive family. I loved school, but I was always an outsider. When I would walk down the street, my schoolmates would touch my hair because it was dark and different from theirs. Overall it was a beautiful, but isolated time," she said during an interview with The Korea Times, Monday.

Having attended several schools for photography, she was accepted to the prestigious National Film School of Denmark, where she graduated in 2011.

The temporary stop on foreign adoptions must be given up immediately. To that end, Karen Gregory, mother of two adopted children herself, wrote an open letter to outgoing minister Sander Dekker. 'There is so much more transparency now than back then', she says in the section Where is Waldy? in News and Co.

International adoptions have been suspended since the beginning of this year , in response to the report by the Joustra Committee on the Dutch adoption culture and the role of the government. According to the committee, the Netherlands has been too passive in the adoption processes in the past. The supervision would have been inadequate and no action was taken in the event of abuses that came to light. This concerns abuse of poverty, falsification of documents or biological parents who have had to give up their child under duress or for payment.

She does not deny that there have been abuses. 'Too many people looked away at the time and that is disgusting,' says Gregory. Nevertheless, she pleads for reversing the adoption ban. 'The adoption process now can no longer be compared with the process of thirty or forty years ago.' According to her, there are now many more rules, information courses and checks. Adoptive parents are now also monitored for a while by the Child Care and Protection Board.

Transparency

She herself is the mother of two adopted children from the United States. Her children's biological parents remain involved and there is a lot of transparency. When children are orphaned or abandoned, this transparency is not always self-evident. Nevertheless, Gregory thinks that adoption should continue here too. "It is the best child protection measure there is," says Say. 'Growing up in a children's home or foster care system is in most cases a worse option for children.'

Every international adoption in British Columbia is provided through an adoption agency — the external review will probe how adoption agencies are licensed and monitored, as well as how international adoptions are carried out.

The B.C. government is calling for an external review to assess how inter-country adoptions are carried out.

With every international adoption in British Columbia provided through an adoption agency, the external review will also be tasked with probing how adoption agencies are licensed and monitored.

“Over the past decade, international adoptions have decreased, as more countries are choosing to keep their children within their own borders and closer to their home culture,” said a spokesperson for the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

At the moment, adoption agencies manage their own funding, metrics for success and operating decisions. When it comes to licensing, the provincial director of adoptions runs them through a three-year process consulting on complex cases, reviewing closed files and investigating complaints.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development issued a notice on Monday urging the general public to “refrain’’ from circulating messages on social media for the adoption of children who have been orphaned due to Covid-19.

Raising concerns that such unregulated “adoptions” could even lead to child trafficking, the ministry had earlier written to states asking them to monitor such activity and also ensure that such orphaned children be produced before District Child Welfare Committees. The Ministry has since issued such alerts regarding the matter on several instances.

In the public notice issued today, the ministry had said, “…If any child is found to have lost parents to Covid, with no one to look after them, the child ought to be produced before the District Child Welfare Committee within 24 hours.” The notice also said that information regarding such children could be shared on the child helpline – 1098.

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