Studies

1968 to 1971

lic. Nat. oec. in Paris and Basel

1971 to 1975

Studies: Social service work/ Psychology in Luzern and Fribourg

My name is Radhika, and I was adopted from India when I was 17 months old. My birth mother gave me up when I was 10 months old, and I was in an orphanage for 7 months before being adopted. For the majority of my life, I have shoved anything related to my adoption down so far that I couldn’t feel the pain. But it’s all coming up and has overwhelmed me to the point that I feel lost. I am now a 25-year-old living in South Dakota going through so many emotions revolving around being adopted: grief, loss, anger and sorrow.

Growing up I didn’t deal with the trauma of losing my birth parents because, well, I was adopted and had a family. But I hated the fact that I was different from my adoptive family. Except for my brother who was also was adopted from India, they were all white. But my brother wasn’t biologically related so I felt like an outsider. To be honest I still feel like that to this day.

I hated my skin color, oh how I hated being brown! I hated it so much that I would wear long-sleeve shirts and pants to just hide my skin. I did this up until my high school years. I also hated my name, I hated the fact I was from India. I would act like I wasn’t from another country. I literally hated EVERYTHING about myself. All I wanted was to fit in with my family and the town I lived in. But that was damaging, and I am still recovering from the pain I put myself through. I am saddened looking at it now, as an adult. That little girl definitely did not deserve that.

I was 12 when I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, depression and anxiety. Along with being adopted with trauma, it felt like too much. Though I had a family, I felt alone. All of this impacted my life into being either good or bad. There were no in-betweens. After being diagnosed with my mental illness, I began hating my birth mom even more than I already did. Back when I was 12, all I saw was how she had given me up. I felt like I hadn’t been good enough for her and she hadn’t loved me. And the realization that she may have given me a mental illness made me even angrier and more resentful toward her.

I began therapy sessions soon after and this resentment became a large part of it. Though it seemed pointless to talk about, I began to understand how traumatic it was for me. A child that needed unconditional love had been given up. Though my memories before being adopted are shaky, the emotions that the trauma left behind remained.

CogMiddy

Mazel Toy!

A Detroit

native has

another

DUPAGE COUNTY, Ill. — A West Chicago couple is finally back together with their family after they were stranded in India while picking up their adoptive daughter.

The couple was stuck in India for 21 days while their two other children were waiting for them back in Illinois.

“We’re very excited to be home, a little tired, but we’re glad to be home,” Chris Santa Maria said.

“Basically we got there March 1. We were moving along with the adoption paperwork and then in the middle of it this lockdown occurs and everything shuts down. Once the lockdown came in, we weren’t able to travel at all,” Chris said.

India announced two different dayslong lockdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19 while the couple was there.

He has lived most of his life in the U.S., but criminal record makes him ineligible for asylum

Samuel Jonathan Schultz, a legal resident of the United States, fears the worst if he is sent back to India, a country he left at age 3 when he was adopted by a West Valley City woman.

The 25-year-old knows little about the nation of his birth, speaks only English and believes he would have to live on the streets there, according to court documents. As a Christian in general, and a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in particular, he believes he will be targeted for persecution.

But immigration authorities are unconvinced. Based on his two felony car-theft-related convictions, the federal government wants to send him packing to one of the world's poorest nations.

On Wednesday, the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals that ordered him removed from the country.

In the wake of the statewide child trafficking racket that was recently unearthed, a woman who was adopted as a child by a Swedish couple after being abandoned by her biological parents 28 years ago, now wants to find out if the process was legal and without any corruption.

Suya, now known as Julia Gärdefäldt was born on March 19, 1984 to a poor family from the south-western fringes of Kolkata. She contracted tuberculosis when she was four years old and her father, Babu Biswas, who was a mason was unable to pay for her treatment. He left the child at an orphanage Society For Indian Children’s Welfare, Ashirwad, in south Kolkata where she was kept for about two years before a Swedish couple adopted her.

Julia was the third of the four children of her parents. Her mother, Sandhya Biswas, now bedridden with a severe ailment spoke to DNA saying that if possible she would want to meet her daughter. “Her father had kept her at the orphanage by convincing me that she would be taken care of there and given proper medical attention. I had never thought that she would go away to a far away country. If she returns now, we would like to find out who was responsible for her adoption and whether it was done legally or not, given all the scams which are being unearthed now,” she said. After her husband's death, Sandhya now lives with her brother Sahadeb Bor. Her son and Julia’s brother Raju Biswas and his family too live with her. The two other daughters have been married off.

Julia, on the other hand, also spoke to DNA from Sweden and said that she was interested in returning and finding out the facts of her adoption. “Along with the legal aspect of my adoption, I would also want to meet my biological parents and family who had abandoned me owing to an ailment,” she said.

Julia was taken to Lyseki, a small town on the Swedish West Coast and later in Örebro, initially in 1990. “I don’t want to name my adoptive parents because they soon got estranged. I have grown up with the feeling that no one wants me because I had been abandoned thrice – Once by my biological father, once by my adoptive father and the third time by the person who I had fallen in love with and had borne a child with in 2010,” she said. Julia at the moment lives with her daughter in Antonia.

They lived in children's homes or were taken away from their mothers immediately after birth: 20,000 Chilean children were adopted to Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly illegally. For the victims, the consequences are traumatic, to this day.

"My adoptive mother and father told me that my biological mother allegedly left me in the hospital and fled to Argentina," reports Ruth Corinna Stein. "Then I was taken to various foster families, put in the children's home in La Unión, from where I was adopted."

The place where Ruth Corinna Stein lives seems like a paradox to her story: Homberg (Efze) in North Hesse is pure idyll. A gentle, hilly landscape envelops the well-preserved medieval town, in which half-timbered houses are lined up.

The 36-year-old can be called by her middle name Corinna. Long, dark hair frames her friendly face. She was adopted from southern Chile when she was three years old. She learned that from her adoptive father when she was six, she recalls. "We were sitting in his office or in her office, in any case we were sitting in one of those rooms, and then he suddenly said to me: Listen, we're not your real parents, there's your biological mother, who is you didn't want to, and that's all I know. I thought so, they were white, I was always completely brown, and people always questioned who your mum and dad are. And then someone once brought a stupid saying about you don't belong here."

Brought to Germany at the age of seven

Kalle and Erik from Stockholm had known for some time that they wanted to be parents. Adoption felt like the best alternative. Biological connection has never been of any relevance to either of the two and they believed that adopting a child would mean helping someone in need to a safe and stabile home. The only problem was that it has always been almost impossible.

– We had heard of a gay couple in Denmark who had managed to adopt from South Africa, but that was the only example where two men had adopted at an international level, completely without ties to the country in question, Kalle and Erik write in a blog post.

Previously, when same-sex couples have adopted internationally in Sweden, it has always involved one of the parents being a citizen of the relevant country.

– Then, it's a case of domestic adoption, says Kalle Norwald.

New legislation in Colombia

Abraham Maddison believes little has been done to support people who were adopted out under forced adoption practices since the apology by Julia Gillard.(ABC News: Stephen Opie)

A decade on from a historic apology to thousands of Australians affected by the forced adoption era, survivors have headed back to Canberra to push for the support they say they were promised, but never received.

Key points:

Julia Gillard made the apology 10 years ago today

A host of support services were pledged and delivered at the time

Non-Orthodox families will be able to adopt non-Jewish children more easily, as adoption standards will now be made "in the best interest of the child."

After 20 years of legal dispute, non-Jewish children in the Israeli child services system will no longer be prioritized for Orthodox Jewish families over non-Orthodox families, so that they can undergo Orthodox conversion, the High Court of Justice ruled on Sunday.

Non-Orthodox families will be more able to adopt non-Jewish children, as adoption standards will be on a case-by-case basis “in the best interest of the child,” said the court. The state agreed to the new standard.

“The child’s best interests include their concrete needs, past, characteristics and difficulties,” read the statement.

The result of a protracted battle in the Israeli courts