The recently closed adoption agency Danish International Adoption bent the rules to avoid breaking the convention and ended up separating two siblings. "An assault", assess experts

A pair of siblings only had each other, now they have to grow up in separate countries with a thousand kilometers between them.  

The separation could possibly have been avoided. For many months, Danwatch has investigated what has been going on behind the walls of Denmark's only adoption agency, Danish International Adoption (DIA), which recently closed after several problematic cases. 

Today we can now reveal how, within the last few years, DIA has delayed an adoption, so that the two siblings today have to live a life separately. 

An internal DIA email correspondence in Danwatch's possession shows that the DIA did not work to find a solution to keep the children together after they were informed that the children were to be separated.

A U.S. man who founded an orphanage in Haiti was charged Monday with traveling from Miami to the Caribbean country to have sex with underage children after spending over a decade dodging accusations that he abused minors in his care.

Michael Karl Geilenfeld, 71, who was arrested Saturday in Denver, had even won a multimillion-dollar defamation lawsuit in a Maine federal court against an advocate who accused him of sexually abusing boys at his orphanage in Haiti. Geilenfeld had also been arrested in Haiti on the very same allegations that landed him in a Port-au-Prince jail amid the defamation battle —only to have the case dismissed by a judge when some of his alleged victims were a no-show in court.

Geilenfeld is expected to have a detention hearing in federal court in Denver on Thursday, and will later be flown to Miami. A federal grand jury has indicted him on a charge of traveling to Haiti from Miami International Airport “for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person under 18.” Geilenfeld is accused of traveling to the country between November 2006 and December 2010, when he was operating the St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince. He founded the orphanage in 1985.

The alleged sex-tourism offense, investigated by Homeland Security Investigations and the FBI, carries a possible sentence of up to 30 years in prison.

The family raised a few concerns about the fact that Freddie told a lot of lies, but were told it was nothing to worry about

FOR most parents the idea of giving up a child is unbearable. But for Ian* and Rachael Meade* it was their only option.

They had dreamed of being parents for years but were unable to conceive and decided to adopt.

So they were delighted when, in 2014, they brought home brothers Freddie, eight, and Finn, four.

But eight years later the fairy tale had become a nightmare and the couple had to make the heart-breaking decision to return Freddie to care.

Committee: Social Committee

Meeting date: 22-02-2024

Start time: 1 p.m

End time: 14.00

Venue: Proviantsalen, Provianthuset

SEOUL: Born as Yoon-hwa in South Korea in 1974, she became Petra Zwart of the Netherlands at the age of one.

Her adoptive Dutch family provided a warm and welcoming home to both Zwart and her biological brother, who was adopted at the age of five.

Even so, Zwart recalls finding it difficult to fit in as a child, due to her East Asian appearance being different, “like an ugly duckling”.

She and her brother are among the nearly 170,000 babies that South Korea has sent overseas for adoption since 1953.

The Directorate for Children, Youth and Families believes that if adoptions are not temporarily stopped, the Norwegian authorities must step in and take more control.

MUST CLEAN UP: Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe has taken on the task of cleaning up Norwegian adoption practices. 

The Directorate for Children, Youth and Families (Bufdir), which is the professional authority in the adoption field, believes that there is a real risk that illegal adoptions may occur. They have therefore recently recommended to the minister a  temporary halt in all adoptions . 

If the minister does not follow Bufdir's recommendation, Bufdir proposes three alternative measures. 

Among other things, they will check documents in each individual case. They also propose that an adoption should only be carried out after direct cooperation between the countries' state administrations. And that requirements for soundness and legal certainty are clarified to a greater extent than today.

The fact that it is not possible to adopt from abroad for the time being is not the same as abolition, says Lene Myong, who believes that one must take a fundamental stand against transnational adoption as a phenomenon.

Now it's over with adoptions from abroad - at least for a while. The last international adoption center in Denmark, Danish International Adoption (DIA), announced on Tuesday last week that they are turning the key. It comes after the organization has been notified that the last five countries they mediate adoptions from will be suspended for a period of time. On 14 December last year, the Board of Appeal suspended adoptions from South Africa because it was suspected that the adoptions were not taking place according to the rules.

Lene Myong is a professor at the University of Stavanger, has researched transnational adoption and is herself adopted. She believes that there should be a political confrontation with adoption from abroad.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s presidential office said Monday it approved a request by the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission for a one-year extension after investigators sought more time to examine human rights violations linked to past military governments, including the widespread falsifying of child origins that fueled a foreign adoption boom in the 1970s and ‘80s.

In granting the request for an extension through May 2025, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol acknowledged the need to “restore the honor of those who were unjustly victimized during our past history and those who sacrificed for the sake of the country,” said Hwang Sang Moo, senior secretary for civil and social affairs.

Commission chair Kim Kwang-dong is expected to announce the extension after a meeting of commissioners on Tuesday. While Kim had the nominal authority to extend the mandate by up to a year, the decision depended on the consent of the government, which would have to approve its budget.

Kim last month said a one-year extension beyond May 26 of this year was crucial because investigators are struggling to handle the thousands of cases.

Kim highlighted the investigation into the cases of 367 Korean adoptees from Europe, the United States and Australia who suspect their biological origins were manipulated to facilitate their adoptions. Some have asked the commission to look into abuse they say they experienced at South Korean orphanages or under the care of their foreign adopters.

What do you do when an NGO has a monopoly on a central service and does not deliver?

When Minister of Social Affairs and Housing Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (S) announced on Tuesday an indefinite halt to international adoption to Denmark, it gave rise to a number of questions.

Many of them cannot be answered here and now, but one of the most interesting starts from the fact that adoption is a rare, if not unique, phenomenon: a central service that has until now been 100 percent NGO-driven.

It is an area that civil society has had a monopoly on. And the interesting question is about much more than adoption.

You can put any service into the equation and ask: What do you do when the only provider of a service is a civil society organization that is no longer able or deprived of the right to provide it?

Actor Shakeela was attacked by her adopted daughter in her house in Chennai on Saturday. 

The actor filed a complaint with the Kodambakkam police. In her complaint, Shakeela said she and her lawyer Soundarya suffered injuries during the tussle with her adopted daughter 

Sheethal. Sheethal is Shakeela's brother's daughter and was raised by the actor as her own child.

Sheethal, as per reports, initially left the house after a fierce fight broke out between her and Shakeela. The actor then informed her lawyer who arrived at her house to resolve the issue. By then, Sheethal had returned to the house along with her birth mother and sister Jameela and started attacking Shakeela and the lawyer.

While Sheethal hit Shakeela with a tray, her birth mother bit the lawyer Soundarya's hand. Following the incident, Shakeela filed a complaint with the police. Sheethal also filed another complaint against the actor in the same police station. The police said they will analyse the CCTV visuals and register a case after they conduct a further inquiry