Our oldest son, Samuel (10), was five weeks old when we picked him up from Chicago. Last summer we went back to his hometown for the first time. Very exciting, how would it go? There was a meeting with his birth mother and a goodbye. It went well, it turned out to be a dream trip.

More than ten years ago, we were preparing for an open adoption, where we would keep in touch with the biological mother of our child. Every year we sent photos and letters to Samuel's birth mother in the US. No response, unfortunately. When we asked about it, Samuel replied that he would like to meet her.

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We have told Samuel from infancy that he was born of different parents, and that through adoption he became our child forever. Samuel is brown. My husband, our two youngest children and I are light pink-beige. People often ask, “Are those your kids?” “Yes”, I smile pityingly. “All three?” “Yes, all three.”

We tried to teach Samuel about African-American culture, but we didn't know his birth mother. In the summer of 2010 we found her on Facebook. We asked through the adoption agency if she wanted to contact us. She replied, "I think about you daily, I love you, I will think about it, thank you, you are a blessing in disguise . " After a few months, Samuel said disappointed: "She must think very long."

Jagatsinghpur, June 23: An adopted son and daughter have allegedly killed their mother over illicit affair between them at Bandar village in Jagatsinghpur on Tuesday.

Bandar police has seized the woman’s body wrapped with polythene bag and nabbed the two accused from the spot.

The deceased has been identified as Rumila Kandi(60) whereas the two accused are Rajesh Kandi and his beloved one.

Sources said, Rumila Knandi had adopted Rajesh Kandi as her son. However, one of Rumila’s married daughters was staying with her since long.

Meanwhile, Rumila spotted the illegal affairs between Rajesh and her daughter and opposed it strongly. As a result, Rajesh and his lover decided to get rid of Rumila.

While helping Peruvian police with an investigation in the early hours of the morning, forensic genetics expert José Lorente was struck by the sight of children milling around in the streets of the country’s capital without their families.

“I asked the police what the children were doing up so late,” he said. “Some were lost, some had disappeared, they said, but there was nothing they could do to identify them. This got me thinking.”

Professor Lorente wondered if DNA could help reunite these children with their families – and the idea for DNA-ProKids was born.

The programme uses our unique genetic footprint to trace thousands of missing children around the world. Some have been stolen from their parents and trafficked for sex or as slave labour, others sold in illegal adoptions, and some lost in hospital mix-ups.

Now, 20 years after Professor Lorente’s flash of inspiration, DNA-ProKids works with governments in Peru, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Paraguay, Thailand, Brazil, India and Malaysia.

On May 28, 2021, NCFA met via video conference with several African country adoption authority representatives to discuss transparent and ethical intercounty adoptions. I am currently a NCFA intern focused on communications and intercountry adoption policy, so I was very grateful to be invited to join the meeting to observe and learn, and to share a little bit about my family’s experience with intercountry adoption from an African country.

Meridian International Center arranged the meeting with representatives from Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Madagascar, Republic of Congo, Senegal, South Africa, Togo, and Zambia. The virtual meeting centered around the emotional, physical, and psychological benefits of family permanency, misconceptions about intercountry adoption, and the foundations for an ethical adoption program.

NCFA’s Director of Strategic Initiatives and Communications, Kristen Hamilton, began by reviewing the trends in intercountry adoption and why a strong adoption program is vital. Unfortunately, in recent years, intercountry adoption has significantly declined worldwide, while millions of children remain vulnerable or institutionalized globally. Adoption provides children and youth with the opportunity to achieve family permanency so that they can become healthy, thriving members of society.

NCFA President Chuck Johnson provided an overview of the Child Welfare Continuum, explaining that the continuum of care for a child does not begin with intercountry adoption. Ideally, the child could be reunified with a birthparent or a biological family member. If neither of those options are available, domestic adoption becomes an option. Finally, a child can be adopted by a family outside their country of birth. This range of care works best when there is common recognition that family permanency is always in the child’s best interest and should be the driving goal for all decisions.

Research has consistently shown myriad detrimental effects on children, who live in institutions and group care, including negatives impacts on their physical growth, emotional developments, and language acquisition. Inadequate caregiver attention delays or weakens children’s behavioral and social competencies. While group homes and orphanages can supply a child’s basic needs, they lack the resources to provide the type of nurture and attachment that only a permanency family unit can provide. Even with the best intentions, the majority of children living outside permanent, parental care experience a cycle of neglect and impaired development. Conversely, a permanent family, properly trained and supported, allows children the stability and care to thrive and grow.

A woman has received a jail sentence of three months for the manslaughter and neglect of a newborn baby that she put in a bin after giving birth.

Three years of the sentence were suspended for a period of three years by Justice Eugene O'Kelly who said it was a "sad and tragic" case with

the woman's "grave" actions meaning her baby girl was "left to die by the one and only person who knew of her birth".

However, when handing down the sentence, the judge said that the woman, now 23, had herself acknowledged that "she has to live with consequences of what she has done and what she has failed to do for the rest of her life", in a letter handed up to the court.

He said her actions went "so much against the natural instincts of any parent", but that there was little risk of her reoffending.

A new Family Planning scandal is erupting in China, this one taking place in Quanzhou, Guangxi Province.

In September 1989, a boy was born to a couple with six previous children, father Deng Zhen Sheng and mother Tang Yue Ying. Soon after the boy was born, Family Planning paid a visit to the family and assessed a fine of 6,000 yuan, and the family was given 15 days to pay the fine. The family put together and paid 1,380 yuan, all they had. Family Planning then confiscated some furniture and other possessions of the family.

Nearly a year later, in August 1990, Ms. Gao Li Jun, head of the Quanzhou Family Planning office, tricked the family into bringing the boy to the her office, even sending a driver to the family’s village to pick them up. While in the Family Planning office, the boy garnered the attention of the Family Planning leader. Ms. Gao invited the family to her house for dinner. While eating, she tried to talk them into allowing her to find a rich family to adopt their son, since they were poor. “No,” the husband angrily replied, “who wants to adopt my son? I won’t give my son to anyone.” The subject was dropped.

After dinner, Ms. Gao arranged for a room for the family at a hostel across the street from the Family Planning office. Ms. Gao told them to not leave the room. Less than an hour later, five “comrades” from Family Planning broke into the room where the mother, daughter, and the son were (the father had gone to the market). They took the boy.

The family attempted for years to retrieve the boy, asking for information about their son. Ms. Gao repeatedly told them that when he turned 30 he would return to them.

How I tracked down the mother who left me in a Romanian orphanage...by a TV actress who was brought to safety by a British couple and educated privately here. So what happened when she confronted her past?

Surveying the derelict building, once a notorious Romanian orphanage where hundreds of infants were left starving in bare metal cots, actress Ionica Adriana was moved to tears.

With her northern British accent and her private education, you'd never guess that this orphanage was part of her own heart-breaking history.

But it was here, in a fly-infested room closely packed with other unnaturally silent, nappy-less and filthy infants, that Ionica spent the first two and a half years of her life.

She was one of the lucky ones. In the grimmest of life's lotteries, Ionica was picked for adoption by a couple who each ran a business in rural North Yorkshire and were struggling to have children of their own. As an uncomprehending toddler, she went from the harshest deprivation — even of food and water — to wanting for nothing.

Romania caught between opposing demands of EU and NATO

8 apr. 2002 (updated: 29 jan. 2010)

Languages: Français | Deutsch

The US Congress could hamper Romania’s bid to join NATO unless the country lifts its moratorium on child adoptions. Romania banned international adoptions of children in June 2001 under pressure from the EU that condemned the practice as human trafficking.

The US Mission in Brussels has sent a letter to the Commission, arguing that many families in the US want to adopt Romanian children. The note warns that a continued moratorium on adoptions would “create potential problems in our Congress at the time of congressional debates on Romania’s candidacy for Nato accession”.

La Roumanie tiraillée entre les exigences opposées de l’UE et de l’OTAN

8 apr. 2002 (mis à jour: 29 jan. 2010)

Langues : English | Deutsch

Le Congrès des Etats-Unis pourrait entraver l’adhésion de la Roumanie à l’OTAN si le pays ne lève son moratoire sur les adoptions d’enfants. La Roumanie a interdit l’adoption d’enfants en juin 2001 sous la pression de l’UE qui comparait cette pratique à du trafic d’êtres humains.

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Véronique and Jean-Noël Piaser adopted a Sri Lankan baby in 1985. In 2018, they discovered that the little orphan had in fact been stolen from her mother. A huge shock. After a careful investigation, they decided to file a complaint this Friday.

The Piaser couple had two boys of around ten when they decided to adopt a child. In 1985, two-week-old Maria entered their lives. But 33 years later, in 2018, when she wants to find her biological parents, the family discovers the unthinkable. Maria was stolen from her Sri Lankan mother by mobsters. The young woman and her adoptive and natural parents were victims of a sector known in Sri Lanka as a "baby business".

The Piaser couple discovered it before their daughter. Anticipating the trip, to save time in the process, they ask a Sri Lankan friend to start the research. " We gave him the adoption file, which was only 6 or 7 pages long, explains Véronique Piaser . He began to inquire (…) and called us back to tell us: it's a baby business" .

"We must tell him about this disaster"

“ There everything collapses!” Continues the adoptive mother. To tell her child: the circumstances of your adoption were villainous and we were cheated. It's super difficult, because we love him and he is our girl. And at the same time, you have to tell her about this catastrophe .