New Delhi, Feb 13 (PTI) Apex child rights body NCPCR has hit out at central adoption agency CARA over its “casual approach” towards the plight of three Indian children abandoned in Malta after being adopted.

In a letter to the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA) director, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) said it was bound to take strict action keeping in mind the welfare of the children.

“The commission has requested your good offices to furnish the details of the children who have been abandoned by adoptive parents in Malta. The commission is in receipt of a reply from your end, wherein it has been mentioned that the government department of Malta has been approached to provide the information about the children if they had been adopted from India,” it said.

“It is stated that in some news reports, a government official of Malta has himself revealed that the children who have been abandoned in Malta were adopted from India,” the NCPCR said.

The commission said it has found that CARA has adopted a “casual approach in the matter.

MUMBAI: The "adoptive parents" of a child "rescued" in an illegal adoption racket in 2019 moved civil court on Friday, withdrawing the plea seeking his custody after submitting that the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) had informed that after finishing due procedure, they would hand over the child to them.

In 2019, the police busted an illegal adoption racket and took away six children from the adoptive parents. Last year, one set of parents moved court seeking return of the child's custody and to be declared his "guardians".

The parents, aged 50 and 44, said they had raised the child for eight years before his custody was taken from them on July 7, 2019. Appearing for the parents, advocate Siddharth Jagushte moved court seeking permission to withdraw the petition. The court granted permission.

The parents, in their plea for custody submitted last year, had said they have been visiting the child regularly. "It is submitted that the petitioners had taken care of the welfare of the child for eight years and ensured the child will get all love, care and affection as required....(the child) recognizes the petitioners as his father and mother," the plea said.

In their plea, the parents told the court that they married in 1997 and have four daughters. They said that after yearning to have another child, they came across a woman with six children unable to take care of them due to weak financial condition. Their plea said that the woman approached them and the biological mother assured them she would comply with adoption procedures.

SINGAPORE – The foster parents of an eight-year-old girl, who was placed in their care shortly after her birth as both her biological parents were in prison, were allowed to adopt the child despite her natural father’s objections.

A Family Court judge decided to dispense with the biological father’s consent and grant the adoption to the foster parents after the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF) assessed that the adoption would be in the child’s welfare.

The girl’s biological father, who was incarcerated for a drug-related offence at the time, had contested the adoption application.

In written grounds for his decision published on Saturday, District Judge Jason Gabriel Chiang said: “It was not an easy decision. I could clearly see the dedication of the applicants to the child and the earnestness of their application.

“At the same time, I also had great sympathy for the natural father’s position, and I further commend him on the strides he has already made for his recovery and his commitment to staying drug-free.

Marco Antonio Garavito on the trade in Guatemalan war offspring

The civil war in Guatemala ( 1960-1996 ) not only massacred the indigenous population, but also launched a human trafficking network in which small children were sold to wealthy Western European families. What psychological problems do those affected show who are supported by your organization Liga Guatemalteca de Higiene Mental?

ND ImClub_Stephan Hermlin. Along the poet

There are basically two syndromes: abandonment and guilt. Guilt prevails in biological families. In society, it is prescribed as a cultural concept that parents have to protect their children. In a rural area, we were able to document a case: in the midst of a military shootout in a village community, a family fled and left their child behind. Later they said to themselves: If only we had gone back, even if they had killed us. They assumed it was their fault - not the war, not the military, no, themselves. The adoptees suffer from a complicated abandonment syndrome. Ever since they were little, they have asked themselves: Why am I here in Europe? Didn't my parents want me? Why did they leave me? This feeling of being abandoned often manifests itself in anxiety, depression, social isolation, and the consumption of alcohol and other drugs.

INTERVIEW

Childless couples often wait years in vain before they can adopt a child. Those who don't want to wait seek help in the gray market. Child for money, especially in poor countries, doctors and commercial intermediaries find ways to help couples. But can humans be traded as commodities?

If you want to adopt a child in Germany, you sometimes have to wait many years. Because the demand is great. Frightening consequence: many couples are looking for a child on the gray market. Numerous commercial or private intermediaries offer children from poorer countries like any other commodity. Nevertheless, it is hard to believe: trafficking in children is punishable under German law - but not in every case. Lisa Wandt met a young woman who tells us her harrowing story.

For a long time, Sabrina was unaware of the truth about her origins. It's a truth that makes her life a lie.

Sabrina Kirsten

"I found out when I was 16 that my mother wasn't my birth mother, and then when I was 21 I found out that she bought me in Turkey in 1988 for 2,500 Deutschmarks." Sabrina has been searching for her roots ever since

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