Debra Lynn Murphy-Scheumann, 66, of Spring Hill, passed away on October 20, 2020 at the University of Kansas Medical Center.

She was born on July 27, 1954 to Kenneth and Beverly (Shaffer) Murphy in Newton, Iowa. She was the second child born into the family. As a child she was raised with her family around Dike, Iowa, where she received her high school diploma. She would later receive a Bachelor and Master’s Degree from the University of Northern Iowa. Debra held many hats during her working years and all those occupations included helping others. She was a nurse, magistrate, social worker, professor, director of several non-profit organizations and eventually founded a non-profit organization called Special Additions, Inc. Debra truly had a heart of gold and loved children and wanted all children to have a family. In September of 1993 she opened Special Additions, an adoption agency that specialized in special needs and international adoptions. During her time at Special Additions, Debra served as Executive Director and placed over 850 children in forever homes. She also served on a National Board where she would travel to Washington, DC to advocate for the children. She opened children’s homes in Romania (Deb’s House) and Moldova. In September of 2001, she received the Angel in Adoption Award which meant the world to her. Debra and her husband Brent were also foster parents to many children over a 20 year time span.

Debra married Brent Scheuman on June 4, 1983. Debra’s family meant the world to her and it is evident that she instilled the importance of family in her own family.

Debra leaves behind her loving husband, Brent; 4 daughters, Guri (Samuel) Sanders, Charity (Jeff) Bennett, Allison Scheumann, and Georgianna Pahon; 7 sons, Shannon (Brianna) Morrow, Joshua (Julie) Morrow, Austin Scheumann, Alex Scheumann, Derek Scheumann, Kyle Scheumann and Lukas Scheumann; loving mother; Beverly Murphy; one sister, Pamela (Gary) Stumberg; one brother, Kent (Vicki) Murphy; 2 brother-in-laws, Todd (Traci) Scheumann and Brian Scheumann; 13 grandchildren, Josh, Kirsten, Audrey, Nathan and Sydney Bennett; Erik, Gabe, Leo Sanders; Addison, Caden and Brynley Morrow; Brody and Landen Morrow; and so many more family and friends.

Deb is preceded in death by her loving father, Kenneth Murphy and her grandparents Lester and Bertine Shaffer and Loren and Gladys Murphy.

A memorial service will be held for the family on November 6th at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Leawood, Kansas.

A celebration of life will be held on November 7th from 2:00-7:00 pm at Lord of Life Lutheran Church in Leawood, Kansas. This will be open to the public.

In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to contribute to a memorial bench at the Overland Park Arboretum for family and friends to remember Debra. In addition, additional monies will be donated to TLC, a foster care organization that Brent and Deb used to help many foster children. Please send any memorials to Brent Scheumann 19712 Norton St., Spring Hill KS 66083-8448, or:
PayPal: DebMemorialFund@hotmail.com
Venmo: @Brent-Scheumann



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Penwell-Gabel - Funeral Home (913-768-6777) is assisting the family

The Adoption Authority cannot lawfully refuse to register the separate Mexican adoptions of two young children whose lives here involve "a legal limbo", the Supreme Court has ruled.

The adoptions of 15 other Mexican-born children in a similar position to the two children, including a sibling of one of them, have been registered by the Authority in the register of intercountry adoptions, Mr Justice Donal O'Donnell noted.

It would be a failure to hold these two children equal before the law “in such an important feature of their human personality” if the law were to permit a different outcome for them, he said.

He was giving the five-judge court's judgment today dismissing an appeal by the Authority over the High Court's answers to legal questions raised in the Authority’s proceedings concerning the status of the two children.

Both have lived in "a legal limbo" here because their separate adoption processes began under the Adoption Act 1991, but were not complete before the coming into force on November 1, 2010, of the Adoption Act 2010, when the 1991 Act was repealed.

S. Korean government program allows adoptees to submit DNA samples to locate families

Yun Sang-ae (on the screen), who was separated from her family at a young age and then adopted by a family in the US, speaks with her birth family for the first time in 44 years on Oct. 15. (provided by the National Police Agency)

“Sang-ae! Meeting you is a dream come true. If I hadn’t met you, I don’t think I could have found peace beyond the grave,” said Lee Eung-sun, 78. She had to stop talking, choked up by her tears. The South Korean woman had just been connected by video with the daughter she’d lost 44 years ago.

The face mask covering Lee’s nose and mouth was soaked in her tears. Lee cautiously lowered the mask when the police officer beside her gave her permission to do so. Despite the flowing tears, there was a big smile on Lee’s face.

“I miss you, Mom,” said Sang-ae, 47, in halting Korean. In 1976, Sang-ae, at the age of three, was separated from her grandmother at Namdaemun Market in Seoul. She was eventually sent to the US, where she was adopted by a family who named her Denise McCarthy.

The Adoption Authority cannot lawfully refuse to register the separate Mexican adoptions of two young children whose lives here involve "a legal limbo", the Supreme Court has ruled.

The adoptions of 15 other Mexican-born children in a similar position to the two children, including a sibling of one of them, have been registered by the Authority in the register of intercountry adoptions, Mr Justice Donal O'Donnell noted.

It would be a failure to hold these two children equal before the law “in such an important feature of their human personality” if the law were to permit a different outcome for them, he said.

He was giving the five-judge court's judgment today dismissing an appeal by the Authority over the High Court's answers to legal questions raised in the Authority’s proceedings concerning the status of the two children.

Both have lived in "a legal limbo" here because their separate adoption processes began under the Adoption Act 1991, but were not complete before the coming into force on November 1, 2010, of the Adoption Act 2010, when the 1991 Act was repealed.

From: ACT

Date: Mon 19. Oct 2020 at 14:55

Subject: Protection of Mr. Dieu Merci Kitambo

To:

Dear President von der Leyen,

SP en GroenLinks kritisch op nieuwe subsidieregeling onder geadopteerden

Gisteren

•

leestijd 3 minuten

Adoptiebedrog III

The trauma and harm to families and communities caused by intrusive child welfare system interventions is well documented by multiple sources – to the degree that many argue the system can be more accurately viewed as the family policing system, family regulation system, or foster care industrial complex. In our paper It Is Not a Broken System, It Is a System That Needs to be Broken, we outline research that shows that the act of forcible separation of children from their parents is a source of significant and lifelong trauma. As we summarized in the article, “trauma associated with separation has been shown to result in cognitive delays, depression, increased aggression, behavioral problems, poor educational achievement, and other harmful outcomes.”

Youth and parents who have experienced child welfare services regularly testify to the harm of separation and the failures of and trauma created by both short- and long-term involvement with the foster care system. Advocates and those working to reform child welfare from both within the system and without, regularly document this harm. For example, in the most recent court report, M.D. ex re Stukenberg v. Abbott, a consent decree focused on reforming Texas’ child welfare system, the federal court monitor stated on page 11: “The Texas child welfare system continues to expose children in permanent managing conservatorship to an unreasonable risk of serious harm.”

It is within the context of this knowledge and understanding and our many years of concerted reform efforts that we have launched the upEND movement, an emerging collaborative aimed at creating a society in which the forcible separation of children from their families is no longer an acceptable solution when help is needed. This movement seeks to protect the health of children, which requires us to center our work around keeping them with their families and communities.

Despite system acknowledgment and efforts to keep children with their families, supporting families is not the organizing priority of child welfare interventions. The upEND movement seeks to change that. It values families and requires an investment in what they need to be successful. To meaningfully do that, we need to reimagine the supports families have and the systems that provide them.

The upEND movement is rooted in the deep history of the disproportionate harm the system has and continues to cause Black children and families. Not only does the child welfare system have a history of disproportionately surveilling and separating Black children from their families and communities, research points to the ways that the system criminalizes and polices Black mothers, is more likely to substantiate cases against Black families, and penalizes poor families for issues related to poverty and material hardships. Even child welfare reforms that attempt to change how services are delivered within the system still reproduce the system’s coercive power, further marginalizing families and communities already disenfranchised by structural racism.

The European Commission is to investigate allegations about the Irish State’s treatment of women in mother and baby homes.

It is also to investigate allegations about the way the State has treated survivors of those homes.

Earlier this year, the Coalition of Mother and Baby Homes Survivors in Ireland petitioned the commission for an investigation.

It called for an investigation into “breaches of human rights” that occurred in the homes and for an examination of “the wider official system” that “facilitated” forced adoptions of children from those homes.

"The past is not finished with us"

I am fortunate to have grown up in a home with two loving parents. They gave me the care, stability, and training I needed to succeed. But not every child is so fortunate. Across our country, and especially abroad, there are countless children who have no mom, no dad, no family, and no relatives to take them in and care for them. These children often reside in deplorable conditions, in orphanages, and as wards of the state.

Americans have always had a heart for these children. For decades, Americans have led the world in welcoming orphans from abroad into a forever family. As a result, there are more than 150,000 children adopted from foreign countries growing up in America today. These children and their adoptive families are examples of America at its best. Some of them are now part of my extended family; others go to church with Gayle and me.

Unfortunately, this great legacy of compassion is at risk. U.S. adoptions from foreign countries have sharply declined in recent years. In 2004, Americans adopted 23,000 children from foreign countries. Last year, that number fell below 3,000 – an 87 percent drop over 15 years. One reason for the decline is that some countries, like Russia, have shut their doors to adoptive parents. But the most troubling cause of the decline comes from within our own government.

State Department Is Biased Against Adoption

For years, the U.S. State Department and its adoption accrediting entity have been hostile to intercountry adoption. They have obstructed the adoption process with fees and red tape. And they have put crushing regulations on adoption-providing agencies, making it almost impossible to stay in business. The result has been devastating. Over the last year and a half, more than 30 adoption agencies have stopped providing intercountry adoptions, and some have had to shut down completely. Tragically, this means more orphans each year will remain in institutions rather than with a loving family.

ARNHEM - A pregnancy of 10 and a half months, a groom who cannot remember his wedding party and an adoptive mother who does not remember when and where she first saw her children. The adoption of 'twins' Naila and Bryan from Tiel is rattling.

Naila and Bryan are doing fine. The twins are in group 8, like to exercise and their friends are walking down the door. Naila and Bryan's parents are not their biological parents. The children have known this since 2016. Then their parents Jakob and Ika had to confess this fact under heavy pressure from a radical and international police investigation: We are not your real mom and dad.

Adoption is barred, human trafficking is not

Jakob and his wife Ika from Tiel stood before the court in Arnhem yesterday. They heard the Public Prosecution Service (OM) demand a four-year prison sentence for the illegal adoption of their two children from Indonesia. The illegal adoption, which took place in 2010, has now expired, but this does not apply to the other criminal offenses: forgery of documents, human trafficking and 'embezzlement of state'. The latter means: leaving children insecure about their parentage and origin.

Jakob insists that in 2010 he knew no better than: these are my biological children. They were born in Indonesia in October 2009. Their biological mother, Novia, is said to have died ten days after the twins were born. The fact that a DNA test in the Netherlands shows that they are not Jacob's children and that they are not brother and sister of each other, has 'just as surprised' him.