A High Court judge has refused to approve the adoption of a 17-year-old girl in a case in which he said the Child and Family Agency (CFA) “completely failed” to support a relationship between the child and her natural mother.

In his ruling on Monday, Mr Justice Max Barrett said the girl’s natural mother had proven herself to be a “demonstrably competent” parent for her other children and was “literally begging” for a relationship with her daughter, referred to as Miss B.

Had the CFA “just done its job” and acted upon the woman’s plea six years ago for greater access and information about Miss B, “who knows” what type of progress towards family reunification could have occurred, he said.

The judge listed a litany of “manifold and serious failings” on the part of the CFA, including that it had failed to support appropriate access visits and to support the relationship between Miss B and her natural mother, who had objected to the adoption application.

Mr Justice Barrett noted the girl’s foster mother has done a “remarkable job” caring for the girl since she was just months old. There is a huge amount of mutual love between the pair, he added.

The FOX 13 Investigates team has obtained a video of Utah County Attorney David Leavitt discussing his "strategy” to adopt a Native American baby, allegedly taking advantage of his political influence to overcome a federal law designed to protect Native American children from being adopted by non-Native families.

The video was recorded by a documentarian in 2020. It has since been submitted to Homeland Security Investigations as part of a criminal human trafficking investigation.

The 17-minute clip first shows Leavitt expressing his struggle with the decision whether to pursue the adoption.

Leavitt went on to explain how he tried to broker a deal with the Northern Cheyenne Tribe in Montana, offering them the ability to export buffalo to Ukraine.

Although he is not blood-related to the child, the little girl was considered Leavitt’s step-foster-great niece.

Biological parents of a newborn girl have moved the Gujarat High Court for her custody to ensure she does not end up in jail with her surrogate mother.

The parents, originally from Ajmer, Rajasthan, came in contact with the surrogate a year ago. The procedure was carried out under the guidance of a doctor. In February, the pregnant surrogate was booked for kidnapping a child based on a complaint filed at the Gomtipur police station in Ahmedabad. She was arrested and kept in custody.

Himalayan Homestays Supporting Rural Empowerment

The surrogate gave birth to the girl at Asarwa Civil Hospital two days ago and is willing to give the child to the biological parents. However, the Gomtipur police have refused to do so, as, according to rules, the surrogate gave birth to the child and the newborn will have to stay with her even when she is in jail. The surrogate will be re-arrested once she is discharged from the hospital.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Arvind Kumar has allowed an urgent hearing.

Bombay High Court

Janani Ashish Charitable Trust vs Frederic Christian ... on 8 July, 2021

Bench: D. S. Naidu

4. FAP No. 17 of 2021

IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUDICATURE AT BOMBAY

MANILA – More adoptive parents and children longing for homes will have better chances of spending a lifetime together with the simplified process of adoption.

Senator Grace Poe on Tuesday said the finalization of the implementing rules and regulations (IRR) of Republic Act (RA) 11642 or the Domestic Administrative Adoption and Alternative Child Care Act coincided with the 40th day since her adoptive mother, actress Susan Roces, passed away.

The co-author of the landmark law on child care was the keynote speaker at the ceremonial signing of the IRR at the Manila Diamond Hotel in Malate.

"This is a milestone in our shared aspiration to ensure the best interest and future of our children," Poe said in a statement.

The IRR will buttress collaborative efforts for the welfare of Filipino children.

Families who have adopted Maltese children have had their car or front door burnt in a clear sign of retribution, instilling fear in many other prospective parents when they make plans to adopt a child.

This pushes many of them to not want to adopt Maltese children, preferring to take a longer, more arduous and more expensive route to adopting children born in other countries.

Maltese families are scared to adopt Maltese children, lawyer Josette Sultana, one of the founders of Adoption Opportunities, said. “We have heard stories where birth parents have gone after people who have adopted their children and burnt their car or front door,” she told The Malta Independent on Sunday in an interview.

Dr Sultana was approached by this newspaper after information from Parliament revealed that only 27 Maltese children have been adopted over the last decade.

She said that this happens because birth parents would be going through a circle of negativity and many times they would not want to let their child go. Added to this, Malta’s small size makes it much easier to locate somebody and so the majority of approved prospective parents prefer to spend thousands of euros in searching for their future adopted child overseas.

By Elvira Loibl

Introduction

The case concerned the decision by the Norwegian authorities to allow the adoption of a child by a ‘Norwegian Christian’ foster family against the wishes of his mother, a Muslim Somali refugee. The judgment seems to reflect the new Zeitgeist regarding adoptions, which came to be viewed more critically within the past couple of years. This is due to the serious abuses and human rights violations that have been uncovered in past adoptions as well as the fact that adoptions are highly invasive as they cut the child off from his family and culture of origin. The judgment of the ECtHR’s Grand Chamber in Abdi Ibrahim v. Norway strengthens the position of parents, whose children have been removed, and whose interests traditionally played a minor role in the welfare systems. It further emphasises the importance of the child to maintain ties with their family and their cultural and religious origins.

Facts

The case concerns a Somali woman who immigrated to Norway in 2010 as a single underage mother with her one-year old son where she was granted asylum status. In order to be assisted in caring for her child, the applicant had stayed at a parent-child-centre, which notified the child welfare services that it considered the applicant’s child to be at risk. The child welfare services issued a care order regarding the applicant’s son, arguing that the case clearly involved gross physical and emotional neglect. The child was subsequently placed with ethnically Norwegian foster parents, who were active Christians, even though the applicant had requested that her child should be cared for by her cousin or a Somali or a Muslim family. The Country Social Welfare Board, however, had claimed that it could not find a foster family with a more similar cultural background and that it considered it more important that a placement was chosen on the basis of the child’s need for stability. For three and a half years, the applicant was allowed very limited contact with her son.

As many of you know: Chile has investigated their overseas adoption “program”. According to the Chilean investigation about 25 per cent of all their adoptions were illegal or unethical. The Chilean investigation sparked the current Swedish investigation of intercountry adoptions to Sweden.

So why do we have so much knowledge about Chilean adoptions but not the Korean ones? The answer is simple: Korea has not actually researched their adoption program so far. Just like Chile, Korea did have a truth and reconciliation investigation but unlike in Chile, the Korean one never included the adoption program.

An investigation of the Korean adoptions just started

Earlier in 2022, the National Human Rights Commission of Korea (NHR) announced a research grant of 50 million won (approx. €/$30 000) for investigation of human rights violations carried out in relation to overseas adoption.

The Korean research team

The Haryana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (HSCPCR) has recommended Director General of Police (DGP) PK Agrawal to form special teams to rescue illegally adopted children from the deras run by transgenders across the state.

The commission has made the recommendation to the DGP after visiting a number of such deras in the state.

In Dadli Kheda dera at Narwana, a two-month-old girl child was found illegally adopted by mahant Resham Ma. As Resham failed to produce any proof of adoption, the commission took the custody of the girl and sent her to a Child Care Institution.

In Jind, two girls aged two and 17 were found illegally adopted in a transgenders’ dera by mahant Meenu and Seema. No adoption proof or any surrender deed was available with them whereas the Aadhaar cards of the girls found a mention of transgenders Meenu and Seema as parents. They said the girls were found at their doorstep.

Meanwhile, a boy recently managed to escape from the custody of a transgender dera in Jhajjar district. He said his parents had handed him over to the dera.

Brilliant Beginnings has championed LGBT+ inclusion for many years, and supports trans men, trans women and non-binary people building families through surrogacy. Trans parents who need the help of a surrogate include trans women (assigned male at birth) who do not have a uterus, and trans men (assigned female at birth) for whom, even if they have a uterus, carrying a pregnancy is not possible or counterintuitive.

This page covers some specific issues which arise for transgender and gender diverse intended parents, but please also see our information for different-sex parents, male same-sex parents, female same-sex parents, single dads and single mums depending on your personal circumstances. Please note that we have used ‘sex’ rather than ‘gender’ to describe relationship status to be consistent with common usage and legal terminology.

Fertility preservation and options for conception

If you stored eggs or sperm before transition to preserve your fertility, you may have eggs, sperm or embryos in storage available for you to use in a surrogacy process. Alternatively you may be able to provide eggs or sperm now to create embryos to conceive a child (and if this means you will need to adjust any hormone treatments you are on it is important to seek expert medical advice).

You may need to think about finding an egg or sperm donor (or both) to help you conceive. If you are not able to use your own genetic material (or eggs/sperm from your partner) then conceiving through surrogacy will be complicated from a UK legal perspective. We would recommend seeking early legal advice and our sister organisation NGA Law can help you.