ISS Greece, an adoption agency which once catered to thousands of foreigners who wanted to raise Greek children as their own, is now in the process of digitizing their records.

The organization, which once sent many thousands of children abroad during much harder times in Greece, now focuses its efforts on finding children for childless Greek couples.

Grecian Delight supports Greece

But decades of sending babies and young children abroad to live, in the US and other Western nations, are chronicled in their records. And soon that information will be digitized and searchable by those who want to discover their roots.

“Our organization is one of the oldest NGOs in Greece, initially catering to refugees from Asia Minor (Turkey) in the ‘20s,” its director, Despina Oikonomou, explains.

A son of former President and Taoiseach Éamon de Valera facilitated illegal adoptions in the 1950s and 1960s, according to a new documentary.

Professor Éamon de Valera Jr is said to have helped arrange for four children to be illegally adopted into the same house.

Evidence has also emerged showing he arranged antenatal appointments for a woman who was not pregnant.

This allowed her to pretend the child she was illegally adopting was hers.

Prof De Valera is one of three doctors named in a documentary being broadcast tonight who are alleged to have facilitated such adoptions.

The ISS has been hiding in plain sight in the history of private international law since the 1920s. Anyone lucky enough to visit ISS-USA’s archives at the University of Minnesota would be astonished by ISS’s extensive engagement with virtually every aspect of transnational family law. During the first half of the 20th century the ISS left no stone untouched in an effort to devise an international socio-legal framework for cross-border family maintenance claims. It lobbied scholars, consuls, employers, national legislators and international organizations; its global network of social workers worked together to inform women living abroad when their husbands attempted to file divorce proceedings in the U.S.; it experimented with entirely new and imaginative legal arguments to convince U.S. courts to assume jurisdiction over foreign women’s maintenance claims against their husbands living in the U.S.; and it submitted expert evidence to the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations.

Unbeknownst to contemporary private international law scholars, the report sent by Ernst Rabel to the League of Nations on cross-border maintenance claims had in fact been commissioned by the ISS and based almost entirely on its case files. The entire project on cross-border maintenance claims was in fact the brainchild of Suzanne Ferriere, ISS’s General Secretary until 1945 and thereafter its assistant director and one of only three women on the International Committee of the Red Cross during WWII.

In the 1930s the ISS was involved in the debates on the nationality of married women at the League of Nations. Unlike other feminist organizations, which were skeptical of the League’s attempt to conceptualize the issue of married women’s nationality as a conflict of laws question, the ISS offered an analysis of its case records precisely to press the League to become more conscious and more precise about the conflict-of-laws dimensions of the issue of married women’s nationality. It continued to press for legal aid for foreign citizens, to help foreigners bring inheritance and property claims either in the U.S. or in their countries of origin and to press U.S. and foreign courts to co-operate with each other in cross-border family law matters.

In between the two World Wars several ISS social workers were responsible for the relocation of Jewish children to the U.S., devising new rules on cross-border guardianship and adoption almost from scratch. After the Second World War ISS personnel collaborated with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in setting up cross-border adoption and guardianship standards for displaced unaccompanied minors. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., ISS members petitioned the US Congress to raise the quota for adopted children and to disallow adoptions by proxy.

Most of the issues the ISS had been working on in the first half of the 20th century belonged to an unchartered private international law territory. With modest funds, ISS branches often engaged in detailed legal research projects. Among many other gems, ISS USA’s archive contains numerous article clippings, extensive correspondence and research inquiries sent to universities, legislators or other social workers in an attempt to piece together private international law concepts and techniques that were unknown even to legal practitioners and scholars at the time.

Standing up for your ideals and doing the right thing against all negative forces, that's how D66 party leader Sigrid Kaag is inspired by the mother superior of a children's home in Bethlehem. That is also the reason that she is adding sister Sophie to the gallery of honor of the Museum for Democracy of De Nieuws BV .

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Whenever a new documentary once again peels back the layers of secrecy, shame and deception that were for decades a defining feature of life in Ireland, the biggest shock is that there is no shock. We all know that this is how things have always been done here: the truth quietly placed in a bottom drawer, terrible deeds waved through with a wink and a nudge. The faces change. The story is the same.

And so while the wrongdoings chronicled in RTÉ Investigates: Ireland’s Illegal Adoptions (RTÉ One, Wednesday, 9.35pm) are obviously heinous, the documentary ultimately lands with a predictable thud. Of course, religious institutions facilitated illegal adoptions. And yes, obviously, the State was complicit in what was essentially a child-laundering conspiracy on an industrial scale. Have the now grown-up victims received justice? What do you think?

The sheer scale of the scandal documented in Aoife Hegarty’s report is hard to take in over the span of a single sitting. Indeed, if this otherwise peerless film has a flaw, it is that it might have been better served by airing in instalments.

I’ve seen dogs that were purchased and the people selling the dogs being more concerned about how the dog was doing than the nuns were

There’s just too much. One case that stands out is that of Mary Dolan, who describes receiving sensitive information relating to her illegal adoption from a Tusla social worker in a hotel lobby. (In a statement, Tusla said it would “engage with” and “apologise to” the “small number” of people who received news about their birth parents in inappropriate settings.) Later she was told she had a birth sibling, living in the United States. They met over the internet and bonded. A DNA test subsequently revealed the initial information had been incorrect: they were not related at all.

Tahiti, March 3, 2021 - After the unexpected general acquittal pronounced on February 25 by the criminal court against two couples in the context of an adoption carried out out of procedure, Tahiti Infos details and explains the reasons for the judgment.

On February 25, the Papeete Criminal Court released the biological parents of a little girl born on September 29 and the couple who had tried to adopt her by freeing themselves from the procedure. This decision had strongly reacted to public opinion in view, in particular, of the requisitions for firm prison taken by the public prosecutor during the hearing against three of the four accused.

Of the three offenses for which the four accused were prosecuted, as authors or accomplices, the criminal court began, in the reasons for its judgment of February 25, by addressing that of the “offense of provocation to abandonment”. of a child ”which was reproached to the adoptive couple. It emerged from the investigations carried out by the investigators that between September 16 and October 10, the two men had paid medical expenses (gynecological, dental), as well as amounts related to "food expenses" and shopping for. the start of the school year for a total amount of 114,000 Fcfp. Refuting any idea of ??a consent “provoked” by a “financial donation” or the “promise of some benefit”, the court considered on this point that “in any event, the nature of the expenses, exclusively related to food and accommodation of the biological family and to the health of the mother and the unborn child as well as their limited nature ” did not allow them to be regarded as “ undue material gain. ” He considered that these sums were intended only to participate “ in the preservation of health and to provide for the nutritional needs of the mother and of their children."

Full and complete agreement

On the fraud, that is to say the falsification of the act of early recognition and the birth certificate, the court affirmed that if it emerges from the investigation that one of the two members of the couple adopting had recognized the child of whom “he knew not to be the biological father” , the latter, by recognizing the little girl as his own, had pursued “no other goal than that of assuming the consequences of the bond of filiation thus created, in particular the obligation to provide for the maintenance and education of this child within the framework of the exercise of parental authority. ” The court also noted that this recognition was carried out with“The full and complete agreement of the biological father and the biological mother with regard to whom the maternal filiation remains established” and that therefore, this recognition did not “constitute a punishable forgery” .

The ISS has been hiding in plain sight in the history of private international law since the 1920s. Anyone lucky enough to visit ISS-USA’s archives at the University of Minnesota would be astonished by ISS’s extensive engagement with virtually every aspect of transnational family law. During the first half of the 20th century the ISS left no stone untouched in an effort to devise an international socio-legal framework for cross-border family maintenance claims. It lobbied scholars, consuls, employers, national legislators and international organizations; its global network of social workers worked together to inform women living abroad when their husbands attempted to file divorce proceedings in the U.S.; it experimented with entirely new and imaginative legal arguments to convince U.S. courts to assume jurisdiction over foreign women’s maintenance claims against their husbands living in the U.S.; and it submitted expert evidence to the Child Welfare Committee of the League of Nations.

Unbeknownst to contemporary private international law scholars, the report sent by Ernst Rabel to the League of Nations on cross-border maintenance claims had in fact been commissioned by the ISS and based almost entirely on its case files. The entire project on cross-border maintenance claims was in fact the brainchild of Suzanne Ferriere, ISS’s General Secretary until 1945 and thereafter its assistant director and one of only three women on the International Committee of the Red Cross during WWII.

In the 1930s the ISS was involved in the debates on the nationality of married women at the League of Nations. Unlike other feminist organizations, which were skeptical of the League’s attempt to conceptualize the issue of married women’s nationality as a conflict of laws question, the ISS offered an analysis of its case records precisely to press the League to become more conscious and more precise about the conflict-of-laws dimensions of the issue of married women’s nationality. It continued to press for legal aid for foreign citizens, to help foreigners bring inheritance and property claims either in the U.S. or in their countries of origin and to press U.S. and foreign courts to co-operate with each other in cross-border family law matters.

In between the two World Wars several ISS social workers were responsible for the relocation of Jewish children to the U.S., devising new rules on cross-border guardianship and adoption almost from scratch. After the Second World War ISS personnel collaborated with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in setting up cross-border adoption and guardianship standards for displaced unaccompanied minors. Meanwhile, back in the U.S., ISS members petitioned the US Congress to raise the quota for adopted children and to disallow adoptions by proxy.

Most of the issues the ISS had been working on in the first half of the 20th century belonged to an unchartered private international law territory. With modest funds, ISS branches often engaged in detailed legal research projects. Among many other gems, ISS USA’s archive contains numerous article clippings, extensive correspondence and research inquiries sent to universities, legislators or other social workers in an attempt to piece together private international law concepts and techniques that were unknown even to legal practitioners and scholars at the time.

"I don't see any need for an adoption break in Flanders for the time being." Flemish Minister of Welfare Wouter Beke said this in the Flemish Parliament on Tuesday. Earlier this month, the Netherlands decided to suspend intercountry adoption altogether following a damning report about the system.

According to the report, the Dutch government has fallen short of looking away from bad situations for years. This includes the forging of documents, the abuse of poverty among the birth mothers and the relinquishment of children for payment or coercion.

According to Minister Beke, however, you cannot simply compare Flanders with the Netherlands. He points out that the start-up of international adoption channels in Flanders is different from our northern neighbors. “In the Netherlands, adoption services can have themselves accredited in the country of origin without a prior investigation by the government. In Flanders, the Flemish Central Authority (VCA) conducts a preliminary investigation and an adoption service must be given permission to start in a specific country. ”

In addition, the minister says, every new cooperation requires advice from the Federal Central Authority, Foreign Affairs and other relevant partners. "The cooperation is thoroughly investigated and certainly also whether the principles of the Hague Convention are respected, as well as our legislation and that of the country of origin."

In addition, the services are only allowed to start with a limited number of trial files after approval. According to Beke, as much as possible is visited on site, except during corona, to check all information against the reality on site.

NAGPUR: Ending an interesting legal battle over a 6-year-old boy’s

custody between two couples, the Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court

allowed the child to remain with his adoptive parents while dismissing the

case filed by his biological parents, who are from “poor background”. The

child was born out of an extramarital affair of his biological parents on

A sample review of adoption agency records in which births were registered illegally will be published by the Department of Children in the coming weeks.

It includes findings of illegal adoptions from St Patrick's Guild in Dublin between 1946 and 1969.

The Department has confirmed that 151 cases of illegal birth registrations have been discovered.

This is an increase in the original finding of 126 cases when the review began three years ago.

Some of those whose births were illegally registered and who were adopted from St Patrick's Guild have recently been informed.