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

Patrick Madden was raised as an only child in the Bronx by his adopted Irish father and Irish American mother, but only learned about his Irish birth family in January 2023 at the age of 63.

Patrick Madden, who was given up at birth in Dublin and adopted by an Irish American couple in New York, has recently discovered his long-lost Irish family and learned that he is the eldest of eight siblings.

Madden, who was raised as an only child in the Bronx by his adopted Irish father and Irish American mother, only learned about his birth family in Ireland last January at the age of 63.

Madden told IrishCentral that it was "no big surprise" when he learned that he was adopted because he didn't look anything like his adopted parents but said he did not have a birth certificate, which made it very difficult to find any information about his birth mother.

It also made it next to impossible for him to obtain an Irish passport, even though he was born in Ireland to Irish parents and subsequently raised by an adopted Irish father.

There was a lot of fuss about Spoorloos because the tracking program had linked many participants to the wrong family members. Thanks to Spoorloos, Mabel Nummerdor (49) did find her real French father, but she still gives presenter Derk Bolt (67) and his investigation team a big kick. Why?

Last year, crime journalist Kees van der Spek revealed in his RTL 5 program Kees van der Spek, scammers tackled that the KRO-NCRV program Spoorloos had gone wrong countless times – many participants who were looking for their 'lost' relatives had been to the wrong people linked. After the TV broadcast, more mistakes were made and a media storm ensued.

Displeasure

These so-called mismatches came about through the corrupt intermediary Edwin Vela, on whom presenter Derk Bolt and his editors blindly trusted. Just as the failed 'family reunions' of the tracking program have faded into the background, former participant Mabel Numberdor expresses her displeasure with the search for her biological father.

Cheated

Inaya Sadik Khan was nine when her truck driver father died.

Initially studying at a BMC school, she graduated in Commerce,

mastered in Management Studies and now is an assistant vicepresident with an MNC. She lives with her highly paid chef

husband and 11-year-old son at an apartment in tony Cuffe

Parade.

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Fiom is the center of expertise in the field of unwanted pregnancy, distance & adoption and related questions. The starting point of working at Fiom is the right of self-determination of unwanted pregnancies and the right of a child to know where he or she comes from and to grow up while retaining its own identity. Fiom offers information and help with unwanted pregnancies, aftercare in the field of adoption and guides people in their search for biological family in the Netherlands and abroad. We also manage the KID-DNA Database, which enables a match between a donor child and an anonymous donor. We do all this with approximately 80 passionate employees from our offices in 's-Hertogenbosch and Houten and from our home workplaces.

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A petition by the Freiburg association "Stolen Children - Forgotten Victims" was finally successful: children from Eastern Europe who were abducted by the Nazis are to be compensated.

77 years after the end of the Second World War, the country wants to recognize kidnapped children as victims of the Nazi regime. People who were abducted as children by the Nazis from Poland and other occupied territories are now to receive compensation from a special fund. The petition was brought in by the Freiburg association "Stolen Children - Forgotten Victims".

Rolf Klein: robbed as a two-year-old

"Rolf Klein, born on March 8, 1943 in Kraków," says the birth certificate that the former Freiburg innkeeper has on his living room table along with old photos. Whether that's true - who knows. One thing is certain: Rolf Klein is a kidnapped child. The 79-year-old lives with the name of an unknown. She had missed her child after the war. It turned out that he wasn't her son, but the name stuck.

"They didn't give a fuck. The main thing is that the guy has a name and was born at some point and that's it."