It’s the story that shames Britain – a quarter of a million unmarried mothers made to give up their babies. Now they, and the children callously wrenched away, want justice. Here, five victims reveal: The cruel legacy of forced adoption

Every night, Alison Devine used to lie in bed planning how she would escape with her baby son. At 17 she’d fallen pregnant after a one-night stand with a ‘Jack the Lad’.

And when she started to show at six months, she was swiftly packed off to an unmarried mother and baby home called The Haven, run by the Baptist church, in Yateley, Hampshire. It was 1961.

At night she could hear the babies cry in the nursery, but wasn’t allowed to go to them. ‘I often thought I’d just take a pram and do a bunk with him,’ she says. ‘But they had someone on guard at the nursery door, and anyway, I thought they’d catch me and lock me up.’

Alison was one of an estimated quarter of a million pregnant women and girls — almost all unmarried and under the age of 24 — who, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, were sent away to have their babies at a network of church-run homes that stretched across the UK.

(CNN)There could be a new princess in Disney's royal court.

Nearly two decades after Sarah Culberson discovered that her father was the chief of a village in Sierra Leone, the West Virginia native's life story could finally come to the big screen.

Culberson, who is biracial, was put up for adoption in 1976 at just a few months old, and was raised by a White family, the Culbersons, in Morgantown, West Virginia.

Her biological father, Joseph Konia Kposowa, is from Sierra Leone and is chief of the royal family of the Mende tribe in Bumpe, Sierra Leone, which makes Culberson a princess. Her biological mother was White.

The discovery "gave me a deeper sense of my identity as being someone who operates and straddles two different worlds and cultures," Culberson told CNN. "Learning about my history in Sierra Leone, my family, community, country, that makes a huge part of who I am."

Romania

The Need

After the fall of communism in 1989, the former Eastern Bloc country of Romania opened its doors to outsiders – including those to its 650 state orphanages. Here, over 100,000 children were found living in horrifying conditions – the outcome of a workforce growth scheme instituted by former Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Ceausescu’s policies included denial of birth control and fines for childless women. As a result, many poor Romanian families ended up with more children than they could support. For these children, Ceausescu offered a place in state institutions.

Romania has made great strides in the past 20 years, including the closure of nearly 100 orphanages between 2002 and 2003. In 2005, Romania passed a law prohibiting placement of children under 2 in institutions, unless they were severely disabled. And in 2007, the formerly communist country joined the European Union. However, over 2 million people continue to live in poverty and thousands of children remain in institutions. With few employment prospects at home, many parents leave their children in alternate care while they seek work elsewhere in the EU.

In the late 1980s, several thousand institutionalized children contracted HIV through unscreened blood transfusions. Today, Romania has the largest population of HIV-positive youth in Europe.

While helping Peruvian police with an investigation in the early hours of the morning, forensic genetics expert José Lorente was struck by the sight of children milling around in the streets of the country’s capital without their families.

“I asked the police what the children were doing up so late,” he said. “Some were lost, some had disappeared, they said, but there was nothing they could do to identify them. This got me thinking.”

Professor Lorente wondered if DNA could help reunite these children with their families – and the idea for DNA-ProKids was born.

The programme uses our unique genetic footprint to trace thousands of missing children around the world. Some have been stolen from their parents and trafficked for sex or as slave labour, others sold in illegal adoptions, and some lost in hospital mix-ups.

Now, 20 years after Professor Lorente’s flash of inspiration, DNA-ProKids works with governments in Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Thailand, Brazil, India and Malaysia.

You don't have to be brother and sister, you can also become one - as the book As brothers and sisters shows. It also allows a forgotten group to speak: the biological children in adoptive or foster families, who have their own problems.

Language can sometimes be revealing. For example, for Jadrickson (16) Koen (17) is just his big brother. And for Koen, Jadrickson is just as naturally his brother. But Koen's older sister, who has already left home, he calls his foster sister again. While Jadrickson is actually a foster brother too, but calling him that feels too distant. Koen: “We grew up together. Jadrickson came here every other weekend since I was five. I have a different kind of connection with him than with friends or with my foster sister; more familiar, more natural. I don't think it would feel any different if he were a biological brother. No, that would really be the same.”

Jelmar (17) and his adoptive sister Yulotte (15) also sometimes run into language issues. That's how people ask Jelmar: isn't that your 'real' sister? And when it comes to the other two Chinese adoptive girls in their family: are they all 'real' sisters? Jelmar: “That word 'real' feels judgmental and not so respectful – if I'm honest. Like having real and fake sisters. To me they feel like real sisters, but people don't mean it that way. We are not biologically related, no.” Yulotte adds: “That 'real thing' gives a certain distrustful feeling. Like it's not quite right. While: I've spent almost my entire life with this brother, what would be fake about that?"

When we think of a brother-sister relationship, we naturally think of two people who share the same parents and the same gene package. But you can also feel like brother and sister if you don't have that biological relationship, as the book Like brothers and sisters – growing up together in an adoptive or foster family shows.

Jelmar and Yulotte. Image Photo: Lilian van Rooij

Clad in black and bursting with happiness, Jamila Qadir tightly hugs a baby girl wrapped in a white sheet. The child is bright pink and her head appears large in proportion to her scrawny little arms and legs that jerk back and forth. Qadir gently rocks her with one hand and tries to feed her from a bottle with the other.

Together, they made the perfect picture of mother and daughter.

Qadir seems unsure of how to express how much joy the child has filled her with; it is the first time her house has been transformed into a family home. She had been desperately wanting a child for more than 15 years, and her dream has finally come true through her new adopted daughter. In the space of a single minute, she kisses her baby girl more than ten times.

Over a decade of built-up anger and distress have now melted away with the child’s arrival, she says, remarking that she would otherwise by dead.

Their bond seems as strong as that between any parent and their biological child.

A total of 2,431 families want to adopt children, while there are only 161 children available for adoption in Georgia, reports local media outlet Interpressnews (IPN).

The Agency for State Care and Assistance For the [Statutory] Victims of Human Trafficking told IPN that 125 of the 161 children have severe disabilities.

The agency also notes that by June 2021 seven adoption cases had been successfully completed in the country. One of the seven was a child with disabilities.

An individual wishing to adopt a child must be a permanent resident of Georgia.

The age difference between the adoptive parent and a child must not be less than 16 years.

A week after registration of FIR against a Meerut-based couple for their involvement in illegal adoption of a Karnal woman’s child last year, the Karnal police have failed to reunite mother with her son

A week after registration of FIR against a Meerut-based couple for their involvement in illegal adoption of a Karnal woman’s child last year, the Karnal police have failed to reunite mother with her son.

Jyoti, 28, who is a farm labourer living in a rented accommodation with her two kids in Kunjpura, has alleged that police is not taking the issue seriously.

“A week has passed since registration of the FIR but no efforts were made to bring my child back,” she alleged. “Since the last nine months, I am forced to live away from my son,” she added.

As per the FIR, Jyoti alleged that on September 18 last year, her baby was taken from her by a Meerut-based doctor couple on pretext of giving him better treatment as he was facing respiratory problems.

Adoptions from abroad may continue when it comes to brothers and sisters of children who have already been placed in the Netherlands. Intercountry adoptions have been suspended, but an exception will be made for this group, the outgoing minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) has decided after a question about this from the SGP in the House of Representatives.

In a letter to the House, Dekker writes that he considers the importance of placing brothers and sisters together very important, because "this protects the original family relationship between brothers and sisters as far as possible". He does point out, however, that the usual rules and conditions for an adoption procedure do apply in these situations.

Dekker suspended the adoption of children from abroad in February after an alarming report from a committee that had investigated the adoption system. This revealed serious and structural abuses, such as child trafficking, fraud and corruption. Because this could possibly still be the case, Dekker immediately stopped the adoptions.

An adjustment of the adoption system is currently being considered. The number of adoptions has steadily declined over the past thirty years. In the 1980s there were still more than 1,000 adopted children each year, in 2019 there were only 145.

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Kolkata: Cops at Bowbazar police station have registered an

FIR against fake adoption posts on under

the stringent IT Act, Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of

Children) Act and the Disaster Management Act. A special

team has been formed to probe the case.