Stories of Sri Lankan adoptees in far-flung lands searching for their biological families always tug at our heartstrings. Their quest to find out their biological parents and possible siblings is an innate desire some of these adoptees have as they long to know more details about their origins. Perhaps they want to feel their mother’s hug or just ask them why they were given up for adoption. Whilst many have experienced love and stability thanks to their adopted families, there are a fair few who have ended up facing a lifetime of “what ifs” because they have had negative adoption experiences.

Recently Sebastian Jensen an adoptee of Sri Lankan origin who lives in Denmark struck up a conversation on Social Media. He longs to find his birth parents and to be reunited with them.  Adopted at the age of 2 years and 9 months by a Danish family, and named Claus Frank Anderson, he changed his name to Sebastian Jensen in 2007. 

According to the frayed Sri Lankan birth certificate that he has in his possession, Sebastian believes that he is possibly 47 or 48 years old. His name on his Sri Lankan birth certificate is simply listed as Thirukumar and his place of birth is Telpallai. His adoption was processed at the Juvenile Court in Bambalapitiya in 1977 and it states that at the time of his adoption, Sebastian was a resident at the Prajapathi Children’s Home in Panadura. 

Sebastian says his initial adoption went wrong. The first family that adopted him in Sri Lanka, who are named on his adoption papers separated 12 days after returning to Denmark with Sebastian. However, he alleges that this separation was hushed up because one of the people who was instrumental in his adoption did not want any negative stories to affect the adoptions that were taking place between the two countries. 

His adoptive parents were Danish. His adopted father was a dentist (who did some social service with the Lions club in Sri Lanka) and his adopted mother was a homemaker who between the years of 1977 and 1998 was helping children at a place called Evelyn Nursery in Kandy, a nutrition centre in Trincomalee and another centre in Hikkaduwa. 

The picture book of the K family.

The youth welfare office takes a family's children into care. The parents defend themselves, saying there is no reason for this. Your file shows: There are many reasons. But are they enough to separate parents and children from each other?

By Franziska Wunderlich

On October 23, 2021, the Frankfurter Rundschau published an article with the headline: “Children taken by the police in the morning – family fights for custody”. In one picture, a couple of parents hold a photo of their children up to the camera. Five smiling faces, next to a self-made snowman. 37-year-old Yvonne K. and 44-year-old Waheed K. look deeply affected. According to the article, the youth welfare office had taken their children Arian (15), Mattheo (13), Leon (12), Noemi (7) and Grace (6) away from them about three months earlier. The parents' lawyer is quoted as saying that the authorities' actions were completely excessive and disproportionate.

Wow! What a day! 

On Friday 3 November 2023, I spent 4 hours in a mediated session with one of the organisations who accepted responsibility for my sexual abuse by my adoptive family. This was enabled as a direct result of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Sexual Abuse. My claim took approximately 2 years and on 8 Nov 2022, my claim was accepted by 2 of the 3 institutions that I had nominated: the Lutheran church and the Australian Department of Home Affairs (Immigration). A victim can elect if they wish to have a Direct Personal Response (DPR) or not in which the apology is given to us face to face. I chose to hear their apology directly.

The role of the Lutheran church in my sexual abuse is that they had assessed my adoptive parents and given them permission to adopt a child from overseas. This adoptive family went on to sexually abuse me over many years from as early as 5 years old until I was 14 years old. In August of 2020, I had finally been brave enough to report my multiple abusers to the police.

In April 2023, the police case against my adoptive father ended. He did a deal with the prosecutor in exchange for reduced charges, of which he then went on to plead guilty to only 1 of the 4 charges, that charge was termed indecent assault, the other 3 charges were related to the many instances across various years. He is now on the Sex Offender Registry for the next 8 years. The other males (family / extended family) whom I reported to the police were let off due to being minors at the times of the crimes and due to the difficulty of proving their intent at that age. One of those had already suicided years earlier.

Providing me firstly with financial compensation showed me in action that the Lutheran church took my hurt seriously. Apologising and listening intently to what I needed to say .. wow! If only my adoptive parents had done what I’d asked for years while I had waited and stayed in the relationship, hoping that we’d be able to deal with the past. I had asked numerous times over 2 decades to take us to professional help, to help the family heal. But they never did. My adoptive father apologised a couple of times in letter and in person, but that was it. Towards the end, when I asked for financial compensation he declined stating he “didn’t believe in blood money”. What we ultimately needed was something like this royal commission process that allowed me to be compensated as an action, followed by a process of truly hearing, listening, reflecting, and connecting.

After 70 years of more than 200,000 cases of overseas adoption, Korea is still grappling with the question of whether a person’s right to know the truth about their beginnings overrides their parents’ wishes to remain forgotten.
 
“Confidential, that is what everybody keeps telling me,” says Fanny, a French adoptee who asked to be identified only by her first name. “This is about my story, yet no one can give me the right information.”
 
Fanny, adopted by a family in France when she was only a few months old in 1982, has returned to Korea multiple times in search of her birth family.

She is joined by at least 3,000 others who did the same between 2019 and 2021.
 
But more than half of them were given the same answer in their search: The records of their biological parents were either lost or confidential.
 
In Korea, privacy laws give the parents the right to remain confidential, even after adoptees file an official request to the government for information about their birthparents, hoping to learn more about their beginnings.
 
And despite years of work by some adoptees and local advocates to convince lawmakers otherwise, Korea is about to pass another law allowing parents to remain anonymous when registering the birth of their child. 

 
“Every single person should know exactly where they came from,” said Ami Nafzger, founder of G.O.A.L., an NGO based in Seoul that has assisted adoptees in their search since 1997, and Adoptee Hub in the United States.
 
“It wasn’t our choice to leave the country,” she said, speaking from her experience of being adopted to the United States when she was four. “It wasn’t our choice to lose the language. It wasn’t our choice to lose our identity and our entire family history. The people passing these laws are not thinking about what it would be like if it were them.”
 
 
 

Despite receiving death threats, Israeli-origin Dr Michelle Harrison dedicated her life to providing safe space and a future to orphaned girls.

With continued bomb blasts and strikes leading to loss of life, property and basic resources, the ongoing conflict between Palestine and Israel has resulted in the killings and abduction of hundreds of children from both the countries.

While ceasefire remains a distant dream, Kolkata-based Dr Michelle Harrison, who has Israeli origins, says with anguish, “It is a nightmare for everybody. In this war, children are being used as pawns, held hostage, and ultimately, orphaned.”

A few decades back, Dr Michelle came to India to adopt a child. Being a single mother, she only had the option to do so from either here or Central America. In India — home to at least 30 million orphans — she saw how children are subjected to human trafficking and abduction. 

This, she noted, was however not a result of some war but due to the apathy of child welfare organisations. 

An Australian woman seems to have had all the required documents to bring a baby delivered by surrogacy in Greece back to Australia.

The Georgian national and the facility she gave birth in have been at the centre of an international baby trafficking storm since August.

The Neonatal Unit of the General Hospital of Chania on the Greek island of Crete is accused by the Greek authorities of having been involved in baby trafficking.

The accusations included the exploitation of 169 women from countries Ukraine, Romania and Georgia, forcing them to be surrogate mothers or egg donors. The trafficking syndicate is also accused of illegal adoptions and fake IVF treatments.

According to reports by flahnews.gr, the Australian woman at the centre of this case “presents a difficult legal case”, as the authorities have yet to verify the identity of the biological parents. So, the baby remains officially “unidentified” but is otherwise in excellent health.

The Tuticorin Diocesan Association had its Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration suspended or cancelled back in 2015. The suspension came following adverse reports from intelligence agencies and subsequent inspections and investigations by government authorities. The Ministry of Home Affairs, led by Shri Kiren Rijiju at the time, suspended the FCRA registration of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, along with two other NGOs. Furthermore, their respective bank accounts were frozen.

At the time of the FCRA registration suspension, the primary reason cited by the Indian government was the alleged involvement of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association in “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” This led to the release of a public statement by the Home Affairs Ministry on March 4, 2015, through the Press Information Bureau’s official portal, titled “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” Shri Kiren Rijiju Ji’s response in the Rajya Sabha was cited as the basis for this release.

Continued Receipt of Foreign Funds And Its Misuse and Diversion

Despite the suspension and subsequent cancellation of the FCRA registration, the Tuticorin Diocesan Association has continued to receive foreign funds, amounting to Rs. 44,507,214, into its Bank of Baroda account at the Tuticorin branch. It is noteworthy that a significant portion of these foreign funds is earmarked for activities related to the welfare of children, maintenance, and construction of orphanages, among other purposes.

The Tuticorin Diocesan Association had its Foreign Contribution Regulation Act (FCRA) registration suspended or cancelled back in 2015. The suspension came following adverse reports from intelligence agencies and subsequent inspections and investigations by government authorities. The Ministry of Home Affairs, led by Shri Kiren Rijiju at the time, suspended the FCRA registration of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association, along with two other NGOs. Furthermore, their respective bank accounts were frozen.

At the time of the FCRA registration suspension, the primary reason cited by the Indian government was the alleged involvement of the Tuticorin Diocesan Association in “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” This led to the release of a public statement by the Home Affairs Ministry on March 4, 2015, through the Press Information Bureau’s official portal, titled “NGOs using Foreign Funds for Anti-National Activities.” Shri Kiren Rijiju Ji’s response in the Rajya Sabha was cited as the basis for this release.

Continued Receipt of Foreign Funds And Its Misuse and Diversion

Despite the suspension and subsequent cancellation of the FCRA registration, the Tuticorin Diocesan Association has continued to receive foreign funds, amounting to Rs. 44,507,214, into its Bank of Baroda account at the Tuticorin branch. It is noteworthy that a significant portion of these foreign funds is earmarked for activities related to the welfare of children, maintenance, and construction of orphanages, among other purposes.

This subsidiarity rule has provoked debate
about its implications for the best interests
of the child. Some middle ground in that
debate is expressed in the Hague’s Guide
to Good Practice:

1. This matter is placed before me for directions in view of unusual circumstances, which would be set out hereinafter.

2. The petitioner - Joseph Eleouet, a national of France, of France, has filed this petition in this Court on September 8, 1983, under the provisions of the Guardians and Wards Act, 1890, for his appointment as guardian for the person of a female minor by name Alisha. The minor was an inmate of Shraddhanand Anathalaya, which is a public Trust registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950. The relief sought by the petitioner was supported by the rustees of the Sharddanand Anathalaya.

4. In spite of the order passed by this Court, the petitioner is unable to take custody of the minor child and to carry the said child with him to France, the place of residence of the petitioner. The petitioner is prevented from taking advantage of the order of this Court in view of certain proceedings adopted under Section 41-A of the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950 before the Joint Charity Commissioner, Nagpur, and it is now necessary to advert to those proceedings.

5. One Smt. Pushpa w/o Shashikumar Pradhan has instituted Application No. 6 of 1982 before the Joint Charity Commissioner, Nagpur under Sec. 41-A of the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950, against the Trustees of the Shraddhanand Anathalaya, and the Superintendent of the said Anathalaya. The applicant had made several allegations against the Trustees about Trust, failure to account for the funds and has sought certain directions from the Joint Charity Commissioner as regards the finances and accounts of the Trust. In the application, and allegation is made that the Trustees are indulging in giving the minor inmates of the Trust in adoption to the foreigners and that is in contravgention of the provisions of the Trusts Act. The proceedings are resisted by the Trustees and the hearing is adjourned from time to time. The proceedidngs came up before the Joint Charity Commissioner on April 16, 1983 and it appears from the order passed by the Joint Charity Commissioner that he was not merely impressed but was carried away by certain adverse reports appearing in the newspapers about the Trust giving its minor inmates in adoption to the foreigners. The order passed by the Joint Charity Commissioner indicates that the Joint Charity Commissioner posed a question as to whether in each and every case of adoption the governing body is required to consider the case and approve the adoption. The Deputy Charity Commissioner made numbner of observations about how, in his judgment the adoption should be carried out, but it is not necessary to make any reference to those observations because the jurisdiction to appoint guardian is vgested in this Cpourt and the Charity Commissioner need not have made any such observations in respect of matters over which nhe had no jurisdiction. Be that as it may, what has created problem for the institution is an undertaking given by the Advocate for the Anathalaya and recorded by the Joint Charity Commissioner in paragraph 11 of the order. The relevant portion reads as under:

8. A mere perusal of the Section makes it crystal clear that the Charity Commissioner can give direction to the Trust or to the Trustees if he finds that the property of the trust is in danger of being wasted, damaged, alienated or wrongfully sold etc. It hardly requires to be stated that the inmates of the Shraddhanand Anathalaya cannot to treated as the property of the Trust. Surely, the Charity Commissioner should have exercised more care before giving directions in pursuance of the undertaking given by the Advocate for the trustees and preventing the operation of the orders passed by this Court. The High Court has exercised the powers under Section 7 of the Guardians and Wards Act for the benefit of the minor inmates of Shradhanand Anathalaya and the Advocate for the Trustees by giving an undertaking and the Joint Charity Commissioner by accepting the same has defeated the order of the High Court, which was passed for the benefit of the minor.