The police claimed in 2019 that the six couples who had “adopted” the six children had paid money for them but did not complete legal formalities for adoption. It was in 2020, when five of the six children were legally adopted by five couples after a go-ahead from the court.

A couple from Mumbai central suburbs awaits reunion with their “adopted son”, now 11 years old, who was “rescued” by the police in 2019 after he stayed with the couple for seven years. The boy is one of the six children whom the police have claimed was trafficked by members of an alleged illegal adoption racket.

The couple’s plea, moved before the city civil court, seeking to legally adopt the boy, was not heard for the last few months as the court which was assigned the case was vacant. The plea, filed under the Guardians and Wards Act, is now likely to be heard on Saturday.

The police claimed in 2019 that the six couples who had “adopted” the six children – all boys then aged between 18 months and seven years – had paid money for them but did not complete legal formalities for adoption.

It was in 2020, when five of the six children — all belonging to different biological mothers — were legally adopted by five couples after a go-ahead from the court.

It took Heike Kramer and her husband 3.5 years and overcame many hurdles to adopt their first child from India. She is also involved in the Federal Association for Parents of Foreign Adopted Children.

Offenburg-Zunsweier. India - many people think of magnificent temples and Ayurveda cures, bright colors, exotic spices and the booming software industry. But very few people know the great need of many Indian children, especially the girls. Not so the Kramer couple from Zunsweier, they have two adopted daughters from the Asian country. TV show "14 years ago we saw a documentary about the fate of girls in India on TV," Heike Kramer remembers. Since then, the petite woman with a big heart has been helping needy girls in the former colonial state. "It was a gut decision back then, it was the feeling that we wanted to adopt a girl from India," explains Heike Kramer. For many people, adopting children from abroad is too much of a hassle. No hurdle was too high for Heike Kramer. The Kramers worked for three and a half years to finally be able to hug their daughter. "After all, they are not looking for children for parents, but parents for children," says Heike Kramer, explaining this difficult process. During this time, contact with the »Holy Cross« children's home in Delhi, India, began. At that time it was managed by a Heilig-Kreuz-Nurse from Hegne. This sister collected school fees for the girls in her children's home and thus made it possible for them to get an education. “A child in India can go to school for a whole month for as little as 5 euros,” explains Heike Kramer. This includes school fees, clothing, food, drink and travel expenses. »Girls who can read and do arithmetic have much better chances in India«, the trained pediatric nurse knows from her many years of commitment. "When Sister Hermann-Josef withdrew from Delhi in 2002, she asked me to continue the school fee project." Shortly afterwards, the sister died. In 1998, Heike Kramer met Norbert Scheiwe, who had founded the children's charity LUCY in Breisach and was able to personally use the money he had raised in India without any administrative costs. Together with Scheiwe, Heike Kramer then founded the Federal Association for Parents of Foreign Adopted Children. She still serves as treasurer on the board of this association. The association is a neutral information center for all questions relating to the adoption of foreign children. "There is a great need for information and many people often do not dare to ask the youth welfare office," says Heike Kramer. All of this is a matter of course for the 44-year-old: »I do it from the heart.« She spends countless hours voluntarily collecting money for girls in India. She has set up a donation account at the Volksbank in Offenburg (BLZ 664 90000, number 77 913 904, proof of sending is possible). Once a year, she brings the money that goes into this account by check to Norbert Scheiwe in Breisach, who then brings the sum himself or through another volunteer to the Holy Cross children's home in Delhi. “The flights to India are all paid for by the private individuals themselves. All the money arrives in full,” says Heike Kramer happily. Heike Kramer is just as proud of the new construction of the Holy Cross Children's Home in Delhi and shows a few souvenir photos of the construction. started in 2002 it could be inaugurated in 2008. Most of the money came from donations. “We have written to every parent of a Holy Cross child around the world asking for donations. A large sum came together.«

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Volunteering in a library, surrounded by books and curating an author’s series provides me with a steady stream of information, education and inspiration. I get the opportunity to choose the authors, read their books and interview them. At least that's how it usually works.

It was different with Catana Tully. We met for lunch before I read her book "Split at the Root: A Memoir of Love and Lost Identity." She had told me over the phone that she would bring me a copy. I immediately recognized this striking older Black woman from her website, and the moment I saw her enter the restaurant, I became fascinated with her beauty and easy-going sophistication.

From my research, I knew Tully grew up as an adopted child in a German, Spanish and English household in Guatemala. Her well-to-do adopted family gave her every advantage, even sending her to a fancy private boarding school in Jamaica that was affiliated with Cambridge University in England.

With her life of privilege and education, and her knowledge of many languages, Tully aspired to be an international interpreter. While studying in Germany, she fell in love with acting and became an actress, fashion model and appeared in films in Germany, Austria and Italy. While in Munich she met and married American actor Frederick Tully and moved to the United States. Soon after, the couple had a son, Patrick, a mixed-race child.

Tully decided to complete her degrees, including a Doctorate of Humanistic Studies, and served as an associate professor at SUNY, Empire State College in Albany, New York, before retiring in 2011.

For a long time, Claudia Corrigan D’Arcy thought of herself as an adoption success story. Pregnant at 18 from an affair with her boss, she denied the pregnancy until her coworkers began to notice. Too far along to get an abortion, she looked up an adoption agency in the Yellow Pages and found herself agreeing to move to Boston and live with a host family until she gave birth. Her son, who she calls Max (his adoptive parents gave him a different name), was born in November of 1987 and handed over to a couple Corrigan D’Arcy had only seen in photos. And that was that.

She told herself she’d done the smart thing. She’d given her son a two-parent family of means. It wasn’t until more than a decade later that Corrigan D’Arcy, by then married and the mother of three more children, began to rethink what had happened.

By having her move to a new state while pregnant, she felt the agency was purposely isolating her from friends and family who might have helped her. Though she knew who her baby’s father was, the agency told her not to tell him she was pregnant. She could have sued him for child support—he was a wealthy lawyer—but the adoption agency didn’t talk about that, only about the hardships she would face as a “welfare mom,” should she keep her child. They called her a “family-building angel” and a “saint” for considering adoption. “It was crazy subtle, subtle, subtle brainwashing,” she told me recently.

Adoption has long been perceived as the win-win way out of a a difficult situation. An unwed mother gets rid of the child she’s not equipped to care for; an adoptive family gets a much-wanted child. But people are increasingly realizing that the industry is not nearly as well-regulated and ethical as it should be. There are issues of coercion, corruption, and lack of transparency that are only now being fully addressed.

The past decade has seen the rise of a broad and loose coalition of activists out to change the way adoption works in America. This coalition makes bedfellows of people who would ordinarily have nothing to do with each other: Mormon and fundamentalist women who feel they were pressured by their churches, progressives who believe adoption is a classist institution that takes the children of the young and poor and gives them to the wealthier and better-educated, and adoptive parents who have had traumatic experiences with corrupt adoption agencies.

Eline and Sander decide, when their son is three years old, to start the adoption process for a second one. After six years, the redeeming phone call comes: an adoption proposal is ready for three Hungarian sisters. “I preferred to hug them completely flat, but we held back. It was of course very exciting for them.”

Ten years ago, Eline and her husband Sander were very happy with the birth of their biological son Noah. When he was 1 year old, they tried to have a second child. Unfortunately, they had three miscarriages. “The doctors saw it as bad luck. They expected me to carry another pregnancy to term, but we still decided to stop getting pregnant.”

Eline always dreamed of a big family and one day when she put Noah to bed, she thought that countless children all over the world went to bed without a mom or dad who gives them a goodnight kiss and says 'I love you'. “That touched me. Every child deserves a loving, safe home.” In the end it is a documentary about adoption that is decisive. "We really see it as our mission to give these children a safe, loving home and, as far as we can, take the pain out of their hearts."

When Noah was 3 years old they started the adoption process. The family soon found out that there is a serious shortage of parents who want to adopt several brothers or sisters at the same time, so that children are often separated from each other. “We found that heartbreaking. Adopted children already lose so much.” Thanks to Eline's work experience and their experience with foster care, the family received special permission from the Child Protection Board to adopt several children at the same time.

Tough years

REVEALED: Parents of Philly's 'boy in the box' were 'beautiful' woman, 21, who'd given up previous baby for adoption and local man who became construction magnate: Friends say boy was likely put up for adoption shortly after his birth

The parents of Philadelphia's 'Boy in the Box' have finally been revealed, 65 years after he was found murdered, as a Pennsylvania construction magnate and a 'beautiful, kind and quiet' woman.

Earlier this month, the slain Philadelphia child known as 'Boy in the Box' was finally given a headstone with his name on after his identity was uncovered in December.

The tot was found murdered in a box in the city in 1957 in what became a tormenting cold case murder for the City of Brotherly Love. A DNA breakthrough in December revealed his identity as Joseph Augustus Zarelli, 4.

His parents, who never married, have been revealed as Augustus Zarelli and Mary Abel, who went by Betty, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer. Family members believe that the boy was put up for adoption through a Catholic organization shortly after his birth. His mother died in 1991, his father in 2014.

Human emotions and relations can heal sickness and truly warm the cockles of the heart. One such relationship has been between a 59-year-old American woman and Indian children whom she has come here to aid. These children suffer from the rare condition of bladder exstrophy, and she felt the need to help them after seeing her own adopted Chinese-origin daughter suffer from the same condition.

A number of pediatric patients and their parents come to meet her from near and far at an international programme at Ahmedabad Civil Hospital being run for the last 15 years.

Child adopted from orphanage

Florida resident Pamela Artigas hails from an affluent family. She said she wanted to do something for the community when she came to know that there was a child with a heart ailment at an orphanage run by XU Zhou Welfare organisation in China, who nobody was willing to adopt. Pamela adopted a little girl, Lily. After some time, she learnt that another 2-year-old was not getting adopted as she was suffering from bladder exstrophy, where her bladder was outside her body. The child was tied to a chair when Pamela saw her for the first time.

Pamela said, “I loved the child at first sight and soon started the procedure to adopt her. It takes 18 months to adopt a child in China. I contacted bladder exstrophy expert Dr Grady Richard in the US even before the process was complete.”

Children's minister halts all adoption from Nigeria with immediate effect following arrests of pregnant women in Lagos

Denmark has suspended adoptions from Nigeria less than a month after Lagos police arrested eight people at a suspected baby factory.

"I have decided to suspend all adoption from Nigeria with immediate effect," Denmark's minister for children tweeted. "We must do everything we can to protect the children and to give the families peace of mind," he said in a separate statement.

The minister, Manu Sareen, said he had taken the decision after the Danish regulator, the National Social Appeals Board, said it was "no longer justifiable to adopt children from the country".

The board said it was difficult to ensure a lawful and ethical adoption process from Nigeria, but added that couples who had been matched with a child would not be affected by the ban. Further information was required from the organisation that helps Danish couples adopt from Nigeria, AC International Child Support, before making a permanent decision, it added.

Until last year, when Russia slipped into second place behind China in terms of international adoptions, Russia exported more children than any other country. Most of these orphans end up in the United States, where many of them happily settle into new families. But hidden in the flood are an unknown number of violently disturbed youngsters.

Click here to read "Where Bathing Alone Is a Luxury."NEW YORK ?€” Finally, the photograph arrives. And all that longing finds purchase. Here is your new child, though for now he is two-dimensional, a glossy image that grows soiled from fingertip caresses. The adoption agency is paid ?€” $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 ?€” whatever it takes. The future is an airline ticket to Moscow clasped in your hand.

After hours on the plane, sleepless and senseless, you step haltingly into a warehouse of children. Here, in real-life glory, stands your child. Blond hair. Luminous eyes of crystal blue. Everything you?€™ve hoped for, waited for, paid for and good God, what is the matter with him?

He cannot ?€” or will not ?€” stop flipping the television switch. On. Off. On. Off. On-off. On-off. On-off-on-off-on-off-on-off, until annoyance and fear seize your heart.

Then he crawls into your lap and hugs you with over-the-top abandon. You remember to breathe. Maybe it?€™s jet lag. Maybe he?€™s as nervous as you.

The social expectation is that adoptees should always be grateful for their adoption, ignoring the fact that it is a complicated, lifelong, and often traumatic journey.

Americans adopting children from India is not new. In 2021, India sent 245 children, the second largest after Colombia, for adoption, according to data released by the U.S. State Department. However, there is little research done on the lifelong impact of the adoption experience on the adoptees, especially in the adolescent years, and their families. Studies suggest that essential shifts in life roles and relationships occur in the post-high school period. In early adulthood, when the adoptees analyze their roots and belonging, it may trigger insecurities about their identity and self-worth.

In the adoption triad, there is the birth mother/family, child, and adoptive parents. Birth mothers and their families are constantly ignored or spoken of negatively in society. The adoptees, biologically separated from their mothers, are traumatized and yearn for love and a sense of belonging. The adoptive parents are often the voices one hears the most. Adoptees’ voices are not often heard.

It is, however, crucial to listen to their lived experiences. I have collected the life experiences of a few Indian adoptees who came to the U.S. in the 1980s and were mostly raised in small rural towns. I will focus on their self-identity and their identification shaped by myriad life experiences growing up in ‘foreign’ families vastly different from their roots. It is not only race and ethnicity that separates them, it is also their cultural backgrounds — language, religion, food, attire, and customs. Being separated from their birth families at a very young age, these children have tried to cope with racial and cultural differences. They have come a long way in making a space for themselves, shaping their careers, and building their families.

Transracial Adoption: A Few Case Studies