Illegal adoptions of Sri Lankan children: Neil and Nour in search of their true origins

Neil, 32, takes off this Sunday with his sister, Nour, for Sri Lanka. They hope to find their respective biological mothers and discover the truth about the conditions of their adoption.

In the faded picture he gives us, the youthful face of his biological mother shines. His thick black braids run along his yellow polka dot dress. She is 19, smiles, beautiful, staring at her baby. And if this cliché was a masquerade, this young woman, a usurper? What if Neil, 32, adopted at 1 month by French parents, was not named Siriwardane?

He does not know anymore, doubt everything. Since he discovered a report in late May about the existence of a huge trafficking of children adopted in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, the postcard of his childhood is troubled. At this time, faced with the growing demand for adoptions, babies would have been stolen from maternity hospitals, with the complicity of recruiters, or bought from poor mothers. Actresses playing their role then handed them to the adoptive families. And a large number of birth certificates would actually be fake.

Is this his case? That of his big sister? The truth, they will go and fetch her together. Nour, a 33-year-old Sinhalese born from another sibling, also wants to understand. Was his mother really 39, his original name is Nilanthi? A ticket for Colombo in his pocket, the two Parisians welded will leave this Sunday in the footsteps of their respective biological mothers for a fortnight.

Ayat Ahmed is a healthy toddler, just two months shy of her second birthday and learning her ABC’s with her mother in a small Dubai apartment.

But it hasn’t always been this way. Born premature and battling pneumonia, she weighed only six and a half pounds at three months old when her Canadian adoptive parents, Tauseef Qureshi and Ameera Hanif, travelled to Pakistan to become her legal guardians.

Now, 18 months later, the couple is fighting to bring Ayat home, challenging a Canadian ban on adoptions from Pakistan, while also struggling against Qureshi’s recent cancer diagnosis.

“We stand a family divided on two separate continents, living apart, not knowing when we will have the chance to see each other,” Qureshi said from his south Ottawa home.

Ottawa family struggling with infertility tries to adopt from Pakistan

German police have identified a popular Asian food market in Berlin as an important way station in a global human trafficking network, Berlin media report. Many of the trafficking victims are minors.

German authorities believe a large Asian food market on the outskirts of Berlin is a way station for a human trafficking network bringing hundreds of people, including minors, from Vietnam to Western Europe.

Investigators told the public broadcaster RBB24 that organized criminal networks use the Dong Xuan Center, a wholesale market where about 250 traders from across Asia do business, and other locations in Berlin to bring people into Germany via Russia, the Baltic states and Poland.

"We have evidence that these cases are in association with other cases nationwide, and that with the use of criminal trafficking methods underage people are brought illegally to Germany to work in nail studios," Michael Bender, spokesman for the German Customs Office, told RBB.

Read more: Germany slow to tackle human trafficking, right evaluators told

A San Jose man who was sexually abused for years by his adoptive parents once contemplated taking a $40,000 settlement offer, unsure if the court would rule in his favor at a trial.

On Monday, he learned that he’d been awarded a $28 million judgment.

Denis Flynn, 27, said his lawyer called him that night and told him to look at his email. Flynn almost passed out when he saw the decision. But the money is not the most important thing, he said.

“This was never about the money. I needed to tell my truth, and the wrong thing to do would have been to continue to suffer,” Flynn said. “When I got that email, all my doubt went away. The law had stated that I did the right thing by coming forward.”

Flynn was 9 when Ralph and Carolyn Flynn adopted him from an orphanage in north Russia and moved him into their luxurious Los Gatos home. Soon after, his father began molesting Flynn, at times on a daily basis. Later, his mother molested him, too.

About 3,000 children are abandoned each year in South Africa

Johannesburg: When the alarm sounds at an orphanage in the Berea district of Johannesburg, all eyes turn to a video surveillance screen in the living room.

The screen is linked to a camera inside a metal box, built into the perimeter wall of the orphanage garden.

Today, it is a false alarm, but the night before, at about 8.30 pm, the alarm sounded and an abandoned baby was collected from the box.

"It was a boy, five months old and healthy," said Francinah Phago, the manager of the children's home run by the Door of Hope charity.

South Africa: the doors of orphanages where abandoned babies fail

When the shrill alarm sounds in the Door of Hope orphanage in Johannesburg, all eyes are turned to a CCTV screen.

In the image, inside a "baby box", a metal cube embedded in the garden wall to collect abandoned children. Today is a false alarm. But the night before, when the alarm sounded, an infant was in the box. "A five-month-old boy, a healthy baby," says Francinah Phago, manager of this children's home run by the Door of Hope association. In 15 years, the former kindergarten teacher has seen dozens of children in this box installed in 1999.

About 3,000 children are abandoned each year in South Africa, according to the National Adoption Coalition. A figure that reflects only part of a problem that regularly makes headlines: often abandoned in their first weeks of life, sometimes in dangerous conditions, many children die before they are found again. According to specialists, the total number of drop-outs could rise to 10,000 per year.

"Baby F" is the 216th baby to join Door of Hope through this "hole in the wall". He is lucky, says Francinah, enjoying a rare moment of silence, while the seventeen toddlers of the house take a nap: "Many children are abandoned in the streets, on the side of the road, in parks or in toilets ". Like this infant dropped a few days earlier by the police, after being picked up in the street by a passer-by.

As per court records, the girl’s adoptive father stated that he took in the daughter of the accused persons when she was 20 days old, and was “looking after the adopted child with all love and affection”.

A Delhi court has convicted a couple on allegations that they kidnapped their biological daughter when she was five years old from her adoptive parents. The girl told the court that she was beaten up by her adoptive parents and not provided food or education.

Metropolitan Magistrate Balwinder Singh, in his judgment, convicted her biological parents under sections of kidnapping and common intention of the IPC and observed, “Even if it is presumed that the contentions levelled by the accused persons that (their) daughter was ill-treated by the complainant (the girl’s adoptive father) are true, then also accused persons were expected to follow due course of law to take action against the complainant… and to get back custody of their daughter legally.”

The court added, “(Based on) failure on part of accused persons to prove that it was only for the purpose of treatment of the child, that too in good faith, the case of the complainant stands successfully proved against the accused persons beyond all reasonable doubt.”

As per court records, the girl’s adoptive father stated that he took in the daughter of the accused persons when she was 20 days old, and was “looking after the adopted child with all love and affection”.

As per court records, the girl’s adoptive father stated that he took in the daughter of the accused persons when she was 20 days old, and was “looking after the adopted child with all love and affection”.

A Delhi court has convicted a couple on allegations that they kidnapped their biological daughter when she was five years old from her adoptive parents. The girl told the court that she was beaten up by her adoptive parents and not provided food or education.

Metropolitan Magistrate Balwinder Singh, in his judgment, convicted her biological parents under sections of kidnapping and common intention of the IPC and observed, “Even if it is presumed that the contentions levelled by the accused persons that (their) daughter was ill-treated by the complainant (the girl’s adoptive father) are true, then also accused persons were expected to follow due course of law to take action against the complainant… and to get back custody of their daughter legally.”

The court added, “(Based on) failure on part of accused persons to prove that it was only for the purpose of treatment of the child, that too in good faith, the case of the complainant stands successfully proved against the accused persons beyond all reasonable doubt.”

As per court records, the girl’s adoptive father stated that he took in the daughter of the accused persons when she was 20 days old, and was “looking after the adopted child with all love and affection”.

"I knew she was not trained, but she had this presence about her that you kind of just believed that she knew," an ex-volunteer the charity says.

Earlier this year, a women’s advocacy group in Uganda sued a U.S. missionary, accusing her of operating a nonprofit in Uganda as an unlicensed medical facility, leading "to the death of hundreds of children." Now the missionary is speaking up, saying the organization she founded had more than a 96 percent “success rate” at treating malnourished kids.

“Mistakes were made and lessons were learned, but mistakes and life lessons never resulted in the harm of any individual,” the missionary, Renee Bach, 30, told NBC News in an email.

By Bach’s own admission to NBC News, 119 children died in the facility between 2010 and December 2018 — a figure also cited in SHC’s internal documentation.

The two women suing Bach claimed that she was "seen wearing a white coat, a stethoscope and often administered medications to children in her care," even though Bach had no medical training.

DIPLOMAT 'BRIBE' British ambassador denies claims she adopted an African child by bribing a controversial minister with a ‘substantial sum’

A BRITISH ambassador has denied claims she adopted an African child by bribing a controversial minister.

A Zimbabwe MP alleges Catriona Laing, 55, paid a “substantial sum” to the country’s ex-social welfare minister Prisca Mupfumira to flout adoption rules.

A British ambassador has denied claims she adopted an African child by bribing a controversial minister

Ms Laing adopted her daughter three, from a children’s home in 2017 when she was ambassador to Zimbabwe.