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Adoptees: 'Adoption is not synonymous with child trafficking'

The government is opting for the easy way by temporarily stopping adoption, adoptees say. Attention must be paid to the positive stories and opportunities to change the system.

By stopping adoption, the government is avoiding its responsibility and going for 'the easy way'. That is the opinion of the Interlandelijk Geadoptijven (SiG) Foundation, which, according to board member Inez Teurlings, represents 'the silent mass of adoptees'. They believe that the debate about adoption is now being conducted too one-sidedly, because only the negative experiences are highlighted.

Not a synonym for child trafficking

“Adoption is not synonymous with child trafficking,” says Teurlings. “It is much more than that. It is logical that, after the report of the Joustra Committee, it is mainly the abuses that are central and that you hear the voices of the victims the loudest. But that is a one-sided story. Many adoptees are doing very well. ”

The SiG calls the temporary stop 'extremely undesirable' and 'unnecessarily harmful'. “To conclude without proper substantiation that it is not possible to develop a new adoption system is a shame for Dutch democracy,” the foundation said in its statement. She calls for an assessment per file whether there are sufficient grounds to continue the adoption.

After court grants custody of 5 children to couples facing charges, CWC files appeal in Bombay HC

Child Welfare Committee (CWC) has filed an appeal before the Bombay High Court stating that “such a precedent will affect future adoptions in the state of Maharashtra and the whole country”.

A few months after a city civil court granted the custody of five children to couples facing charges of purchasing them, the Mumbai suburban Child Welfare Committee (CWC) has filed an appeal before the Bombay High Court stating that “such a precedent will affect future adoptions in the state of Maharashtra and the whole country”.

At the centre of the legal process are five children, who were allegedly sold by their biological parents to the couples, then “rescued” by the Mumbai police, sent to adoption homes where they spent over a year, only to be reunited with their adoptive parents again last year.

In 2019, the Mumbai police crime branch had booked six couples, along with staffers of IVF centres, nurses, surrogate mothers for allegedly being part of a crime where six boys aged between 18 months and seven years bought from biological parents belonging to poor families were sold to the couples. The couples, some of whom were arrested, maintained that they were victims too and were made to believe by the other accused that they were legally adopting the children. The parents claimed that their alleged actions should not lead to trauma of separation and disruption to the children who were sent to adoption homes after being rescued.

The CWC, however, refused to grant them even temporary custody of the children in 2019, stating that it “cannot encourage the practice of illegal adoption”. In October last year, the city civil court said there is no evidence to show that the couples had sought to adopt the boys with any ulterior motive or bad intention and allowed them to be their legal parents.

Aude: a survivor tells us about the forgotten crash of the children of Vietnam

DOSSIER MIDI LIBRE - In 1975, an American airlift, bereaved by a fatal accident, exfiltrates 3,000 orphans from Vietnam. A survivor and a novelist, Audoises by adoption, recall this incredible episode.

Saigon, April 4, 1975, 5.30 pm Shortly after takeoff, an American military transport aircraft Galaxy C - 5A, aboard which nearly 300 Vietnamese orphans were crammed into the Mekong Delta. From the shattered carcass of the device, which shattered into several parts, only a few dozen children emerged alive. The others were ejected when the aircraft lost its rear door in flight, or drowned, in the shoe boxes slid under the seats where they were supposed to travel.

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Aude: a survivor tells us about the forgotten crash of the children of Vietnam

Just before the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975

What is it with Ofsted regulating adult adoptee support in the UK?

In August 2020 I said I was writing an article about Ofsted and the barriers to accessing therapy as an adopted person in the UK.

The response to that tweet confirmed I was not alone in my own confusion around:

Who can offer adoption counselling? Do they need to be registered with Ofsted, and - if so - why?

Does the UK government and Ofsted know that this layer of regulation is adding to the barriers adoptees face in getting support? Some are having to take other routes to therapy, including cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) which can have a neutral or even negative effect when it comes to adoption issues. And even more worryingly, some adoptees said they are at breaking point, they have self-harmed and had suicidal ideations.

Why are non-Ofsted registered therapists required terminate support if they later find out that someone they are treating is adopted? Not nice for anyone, particularly an adopted person who may struggle with trust and making attachments.

Anitha Clemence was put to sleep and flown to Sweden: "Terrible"

When Anitha Clemence was to be adopted from India, she was put to sleep and flown asleep to Sweden. She was 2.5 years old and is unsure of what really happened.

"I had no idea who those people were," says Anitha about the first meeting with her adoptive parents.

Hear her emotional story of how her adoption went and her feelings about it.

Anitha Clemence was adopted from India to Sweden when she was 2.5 years old and is unsure of what really happened. She knows that she was put to sleep in India and flew asleep to Sweden. At Arlanda, she met her adoptive parents for the first time. "Can you do this to a child? It is terrible and I think everyone who has children feels that ", she says.

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'I felt a strange grief when I found my birth mother': Jackie Kay on The Adoption Papers

The poet explains how researching her history led her to tell the story from three perspectives: the birth mother, the adoptive mother and the daughter

In one way, I’d been writing the poems in The Adoption Papers for my whole life. I’d been making up an imaginary birth mother and father with my adoptive mother for years, since I was a kid. She would say of my birth father: “I’m picturing a Paul Robeson figure, Jackie, perhaps with a bit of Nelson Mandela mixed in.”

In another, I started writing the book when I was pregnant. It’s difficult when your writing infiltrates your life and vice versa, difficult to work out what actually happened and what didn’t. Your imaginative life is your reality.

I remember in 1988, after I attended, for the first time, a Caribbean writers’ conference in central London. I was 26. I lived off West Green Road in Tottenham, with three other lesbians. My housemate Gabriela Pearse, also a budding poet, drove me across London in her red Citroën Diane. I remember arriving at the large, beautifully tiled foyer where the Jamaican poet Jean “Binta” Breeze was performing her astonishing poem about mental illness, “Riddym Ravings”. I was transfixed by her voice and the voice she’d given to the radio, lodged inside her like a baby.

There were academics and writers there from all over the world. Gabriela had told me there was a free spot where anyone could offer to read. I got up on the stage and read two poems called pragmatically, “The Mother Poem One” and “The Mother Poem Two”. One was in the voice of the birth mother and one in the voice of the adoptive mother. Perhaps it was the sight of me stood there with my big pregnant belly, but the poems to my surprise got a wonderful response and people kept coming up afterwards – Italian, French, Trinidadian and American delegates as well as British – asking where they could get them. They couldn’t get them anywhere because they weren’t published.

Social Democrats vote unanimously to push government towards clear redress scheme for Mother and Baby Home survivors

THE SOCIAL DEMOCRATS have passed a motion to push the government to set out a redress scheme for Mother and Baby Home survivors at its national conference this afternoon.

The motion sets out the party’s plan to call on the government to prioritise measures that address the concerns of survivors, including legislative change around access to personal information and records.

The Social Democrats voted to call on the government to set out “how they will introduce a proper redress scheme, in close consultation with survivors, and ensure the religious order contribute significantly and appropriately”.

The party has also committed to asking the government to set out how it will ensure proper investigations into the issues raised by the Commission of Investigation’s report, protection for burial sites, and the establishment of a dedicated criminal justice unit and human-rights compliant coroner’s inquests and exhumations.

The motion garnered strong support, with 235 members voting to accept it and no votes registered in opposition.

'My adoptive mother didn't want me'

Rasika Bos grows up in Sri Lanka. The family is very poor. When Rasika is three years old, her mother dies. Rasika's father blames her mother's death for reasons that are unclear. From that moment on, she is severely abused by him.

At the age of five, Rasika and her sister Niluka are adopted by the Dutch couple Bos. Everything seems to be changing for the better. But later she learns that her adoptive mother had not wanted her at all. She only wanted the younger sister, who was still a toddler at the time. Because her husband was too old to adopt just the younger sister, she had to take Rasika in.

Strict

Fortunately, Rasika gets along very well with her new adoptive father. But her adoptive mother is very strict and even mean to Rasika. She regularly has to eat with her back to the family because her mother does not want to look at her. Or she is sent to bed without food because her mother thinks Rasika did not try her best in swimming lessons.

Depression

In search of biological parents, Brazilian changes rule of adoption in the Netherlands

Patrick was taken from Brazil by a newborn, by a Dutch couple who could not have children; 40 years later, Dutch government recognizes mistakes and suspends international adoption

BRUSSELS

Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto(https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/autores/ana-estela-de-sousa-pinto.shtml)

There were so many lies, lucky strikes, setbacks and perseverance that the

story of Patrick Noordoven, 41, will become a book in Holland. This month, two new

With the campaign "Everyone a Max", Child Focus wants to be a person of trust for every child

Child Focus, the Foundation for Missing and Sexually Exploited Children, is launching the "Everyone a Max" campaign. The organization wants children to choose an adult who they trust 100 percent - a Max - whom they can turn to with all their problems. In this way it can be prevented that children run away or develop psychological problems, for example.

Child Focus is confronted with an average of 3 new disappearances of minors every day, 80 percent of which are runaways. There were also 300 cases of child sexual exploitation last year, both online and in the real world.

The organization is convinced that if children could go to an adult to talk about things that are not going well - for example in the home situation - the step to run away could be avoided.

Children often stand alone

CORONA CRISIS