Ukrainian police have raided a private reproductive clinic that has been allegedly “selling babies” to China. While the suspects are accused of “human trafficking,” surrogate motherhood is a legal gray area in Ukraine.

The scandalous case was brought to light by the country’s interior ministry late on Saturday. The police broke up a “human-trafficking” ring that was centered at a private reproductive clinic in Kiev.

Further details on the case were shared by the Deputy Interior Minister Anton Gerashenko on his Facebook page. The ring involved the head of the clinic, her son, as well as two other Ukrainian and three Chinese nationals. They were charged with human trafficking that may lead to 12 years in prison with property confiscation.

The majority of the clinic’s clients were single Chinese males of “certain orientation,” as Gerashenko put it. While the exact number of trafficked babies remains unknown, at least 140 more Chinese nationals are under investigation, the official added.

The price tag for a single baby was about $50,000. The hefty sum covered artificial insemination of a surrogate mom, legal support and organization of fictive marriages needed to facilitate smuggling children abroad. It’s unclear if the babies’ fathers were the ones who then adopted them.

SUBSCRIPTION + Sunday April 26, 2020 3:31 pm

Corruption in adoptions

The deal about the child

The case of a convicted child mediator from Sri Lanka brings international adoptions into the twilight again.

2 comments

For several weeks in early March, my 5-year-old carried a picture in the front pocket of his backpack. Every so often, he’d take it out and look at the toddler in the brown sweater and then with his finger trace the lips that matched his own. His teacher told me he talked about “baby brother” during circle time at kindergarten, unable to contain his excitement over news that I hadn’t shared widely yet in my own circle.

His backpack has been hanging by the door of our Chicago house since March 13, the last day my son and his older brother, who is 8, went to school, the last day life didn’t feel suspended. The suitcase I had packed for my trip to Morocco to meet the boy in the picture stayed on my bedroom floor for a few weeks until I finally put it in a closet, unable to deal with the reminder of what almost was.

Days before I was scheduled to travel to meet my son and start the process to bring him home, Morocco closed its borders. It is under a quarantine until at least the end of May. We had planned to travel as a family to Morocco this summer to complete the adoption. I now hope I can get to him sometime this fall, which feels optimistic, particularly with increasing rates of infection in the United States and the rush to return to an elusive normal before the virus is contained.

Our family is healthy for now, even the little one in Morocco, according to the orphanage director, who sends me pictures through WhatsApp. I am grateful for our health, and for the pictures. But a devastating uncertainty to the global pandemic has caught me by surprise, even though I am familiar with the unpredictability of international adoption. Both of my older sons were adopted from Morocco when they were infants, and I’ve often told people adopting is like being in the first trimester of pregnancy the entire time. Laws change. Countries open and close. In Morocco, I need a judge to grant custody and then the U.S. Consulate to grant the child an immigrant visa, both processes that can be delayed, or not happen at all.

“We are certainly in the midst of an unprecedented time, and the impacts to adoption – both domestic and international – are real,” said Kim Perez, president and chief executive of The Cradle, an Illinois adoption agency.

There will be an arrangement for partial authority for educators. Persons who play an important role in the daily care and upbringing of a child, such as the grandparents, a stepparent or another family member, will soon be given the authority and responsibility to make decisions together with the parents. This is the core of a bill by Minister Dekker for Legal Protection that has been consulted via the internet.

More and more children are growing up in new family forms, with more than two parents taking care of them. Minister Dekker: 'Sub-authority ties in with this: in a way that is pragmatic, offers protection and gives recognition. For example, partial custody is a solution for a father who will take care of his children together with his new partner. '

Recognizable

Now it is not always clear to outsiders what the role of those other educators is. Who takes care of the child and who can make which decisions? It must be clear to the GP and teacher who they can talk to about the child. Sub-authority offers a solution for this and ensures that parents, together with a maximum of two other persons, also bear recognizable responsibility for the daily decisions about upbringing and care.

Decisions

Domestic adoptees are concerned about the ongoing adoption and distance research. The Verwey-Jonker Institute emphasizes that the researchers work strictly independently.

Petra VissersApril 24, 2020 , 6:27 PM

Some of the domestic, now adult, adoptees are concerned about the ongoing investigation into domestic distance and adoption. They doubt whether the investigation is independent and want the reporting point to remain open longer because of the corona crisis. Six of them have sent a long letter of concern to the Lower House. D66 Member of Parliament Vera Bergkamp puts parliamentary questions to responsible minister Sander Dekker (VVD, legal protection).

The research into distance and adoption should provide more clarity about the period between 1956 and 1984, when thousands of women gave up their children under pressure, and the role of the government in this.

The domestic adoptees want to know, among other things, what will happen with their statements and data after they have called the registration point and who has access to it, says Eugénie Smits van Waesberghe on behalf of the group of adoptees. “For example, have statements also been sent to the ministry? Because we don't want that. And who decides which reports are forwarded to the researchers of the Verwey-Jonker Institute? ” According to her, there are also errors in the interview reports that people have requested from the registration point.

Sumiati knows better than anyone that adoption is not always a sweet spot. When she was six months old, she was adopted from Indonesia. For years, Sumiati struggled with the feeling that she was not wanted. To get answers, she looked for her biological mother. The trail ended when she found out that there was an adoption fraud.

“I was six months old when I was picked up by my adoptive parents from a children's home in Indonesia. I grew up in an environment where everyone was white and, with my dark skin tone, always felt like the odd man out. In addition, I constantly had the feeling that I was missing something. It felt like nostalgia for something unknown. When I tried to put these feelings into words, I was told to be grateful for the opportunities presented to me, because life in Indonesia would have been much more difficult. Of course I am grateful for the material prosperity in the Netherlands and for all the opportunities that I have been given, but there was no room for that gnawing bit of lack, deep inside. ”

DEPRESSIONS

'I started to suffer from depression, an inferiority complex and a personality disorder and struggled with the question of whether my life had any meaning. My home situation made everything even more complex, because my adoptive father had also had a difficult childhood and that had an effect on the upbringing. He considered himself my savior and made me feel like I had to excel at everything. This reinforced my feeling that I should not have been born. I thought that my existence was useless because my biological mother didn't want me and I was a disappointment to my adoptive parents. ”

'I was a mistake that had to go'

In 1973 I was adopted from India to Germany, like many of you who may read this. My views on adoption were bottom-line quite positive, just as my view on organisations involved in this, like International Social Service (ISS). Little did I know…

In 1999 I got my first access to the Internet and started searching. The Internet provided the first chance to get some information. Still little did I know…

Today we are faced with the fact that the governments of the receiving countries are funding ISS for various services. One important aspect is that ISS receives funding to assist adoptees with roots searches. They are considered the expert on whom the governments in the receiving countries rely.

In the coming weeks we will share bits and pieces about the involvement of ISS in intercountry adoptions, including their direct or indirect complicity in the trafficking of children for adoption.

I fully understand that this may be hard to believe. I could not imagine myself for many years. I thought ISS is the expert organisation who ensures ethical and legal adoptions, understands adoptees’ and children´s needs, as well as their rights.

MADURAI: A new-born baby girl was handed over to child welfare

committee (CWC) on Tuesday as parents, who already have three children

could not afford to take care of her.

The couple hailing from a village near Elumalai are farmhands. The baby

was born at Elumalai government hospital.

Last year ACT wrote to the Dutch Minister of Justice to inform him about the serious conflict of interest that the FIOM-ISS has regarding the roots-searches of adoptees.

Note about FIOM/ISS

15 November 2019

The Ministry of Justice considers the involvement of the FIOM in the planning of the funding for organisations which execute searches for adoptees for their families in the sending countries.

This non-exhaustive note points towards a number of conflicts of interest and other concerns.

A Dutch court is to be asked to lift the statute of limitation on a legal action in which 19 women aim to sue the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in the Netherlands for allegedly holding them against their will as forced labour.

The Catholic congregation has previously refused to engage with claimants on the basis that action was time-barred. However, subpoenas have now been served on the order for a hearing in which the judges will be asked to use their discretion to lift the statute and allow the full case to be aired.

The basis of the application will be that the women – all of whom are now in their 70s or 80s – were deliberately traumatised during their incarceration in order to ensure their compliance and, as a result, were psychologically incapable of taking the action for most of their lives.

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd ran homes all over Europe, as well as in Canada and Australia, where women and girls were allegedly forced into lives of abuse after being incarcerated, often with the agreement of their parents or sometimes even child protection organisations, up to the 1970s.

Some of the most notorious abuse took place at the Magdalene laundries in Ireland, for which then taoiseach Enda Kenny issued an apology on behalf of the State in February 2013. A €50 million compensation scheme was set up for survivors among the 30,000 women they had incarcerated.