Statistics Netherlands investigated the search behavior of intercountry adopted persons for more information about the adoption and background. Fiom, in collaboration with Statistics Netherlands, has summarized the results of this research in a clear fact sheet.

Survey Research

In 2021, the report “Commission investigation into intercountry adoption in the past” was published as a result of an independent investigation into the state of affairs surrounding old international adoptions and the role of the Dutch government in this. In 2020, Statistics Netherlands investigated for the committee which searches adopted persons have made for more information about their background and adoption. Statistics Netherlands conducted a representative survey among people who were adopted internationally, born in the period 1970 - 1998. By chance (random sample), 11,456 adopted people were invited for the survey, of which 3,454 people completed the online questionnaire. The mean age of the participants was 35 years and 55% were female. Most participants were born in Colombia, India, Sri Lanka, China,

Information from adoptive parents

Most adopted adults feel that the parents have been open about the adoption (90%) and indicate that the parents have shared information about the adoption voluntarily (70%) or after they have asked (20%). However, two in three adoptees indicated that information was found to be incorrect during the search, including birth certificate, date of birth, name of biological parents or reason for renunciation.

Rosanne (41, midwife) and Martin (38, owns their own marketing and strategy business), have three adopted children: Shawn (12), Josiah (9) and Hannah (3). All three children are from South Africa. First came Josiah (when he was 11 months), then Shawn (who was then 5.5). Hannah came in April 2020, when she was almost 1.5. The family lives in Veenendaal.

No need to be pregnant

Rosanne: 'I don't recognize the need to carry a child. Not even to give birth. As a midwife I am often asked that, logically. I think it's fantastic to experience, but for myself I don't feel that need very strongly.

Now that I am a mother, I can miss that feeling that you know from scratch where your child is and what it is going through. I sometimes feel sad about that. That I couldn't be there for them from day one. I was able to save them from that difficult and sometimes damaging start they had.

Fix the damage

Les enfants Gosseries: une adoption manquée, un retour difficile

Article réservé aux abonnés

Alain Lallemand

Journaliste au service Culture

Par Alain Lallemand

With the end of the pandemic finally in sight after more than two years, the world is ravaged by several other crises. Worldwide, 1 to 2 million children are still victims of sexual exploitation, a problem that seems to be covered. And that, while children have become even more vulnerable due to the corona crisis. The system she is supposed to protect has taken a huge blow, partly because schools were closed during lockdowns. The consequences are becoming increasingly visible. The Down to Zero alliance tackled child sexual exploitation in 12 countries in Latin America and Asia. During and especially in the aftermath of the pandemic.

Tackling the sexual exploitation of children, such as exploitation on the street, in a brothel or online in front of a webcam, is complex. The Down to Zero program focuses on youth engagement and the system to protect children.

“But the trusted network of children has disappeared,” says Monique Demenint of Terre des Hommes. “Further help is needed in the coming years to tackle sexual exploitation in a sustainable way.” Protecting children from sexual exploitation requires a broad approach: Down to Zero supports children, their parents and their community. Among other things, the alliance focuses on the involvement of young people themselves as youth advocates and unites its forces in the lobby towards regional, national and international governments and the business community.

Better knowledge about sexual exploitation

For example, care providers are trained in specific knowledge and skills. “These workshops are crucial for people who work with vulnerable children so that they can give them the best care,” Demenint continues. “Think, for example, of how to deal with the children's traumas, such as not constantly asking them to tell their story again. That can trigger their trauma.”

Annie Goodchild, otherwise known as singer I Used To Be Sam, writes for PinkNews about their experience as a transracial adoptee and a queer, non-binary person of colour.

Adoption has a cruel and unique way of f**king up your identity.

Every time I think I’m getting a hold of who I am, I lose my footing and am yet again swept off course. I took one of those DNA tests a few years ago and it changed my life.

I confirmed my birth name was Samantha, not Annie, which I had been called for as long as I can remember. I also got an answer to a question I had been asking myself my whole life: “Does my birth mother want to meet me?”

The answer – a painful and clear no.

(CNN) I've known for my whole life that I was adopted, although I didn't know all the details. Less than 48 hours after my birth, I was placed with the people I'd call my family the rest of my life. All I know about the young woman who gave birth to me decades ago is that she was single and that she felt ill-equipped to raise a child.

Adoption has featured prominently in the national discourse in the weeks since the leak of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade. I suspect that will continue to be the case as we get nearer to the formal Court ruling, which is expected sometime in June.

I was lucky to be adopted as a newborn, because it meant immediately joining my permanent family. As a result, being adopted has just been a quirky fact about me. My family is my family, just like everybody else's. Sometimes though, I still get questions about what it was like being adopted.

One particular question rankles me more than others, and it's one I still get more often than you might think: "Aren't you glad your birth mother carried you to term?" I am often asked, in other words, if I wasn't pleased that the woman who gave birth to me didn't opt to have an abortion instead.

It's a rather odd question: I find that people often look to those who have chosen to adopt children — or to people like myself who have been adopted — when seeking confirmation of their anti-abortion views.

It seems natural to know who your parents or grandparents are. Except for donor children like Jessie Kerkhove.

Today is Genetic Identity Day, the day to reflect on the importance of genetic identity. Many people do not think about it, because it is obvious where you come from. You know your parents, grandparents, or even great-grandparents. But not everyone has that privilege. Think of adoptees and donor children (and other target groups whose right to genetic identity is violated).

This is a day to raise awareness. Primarily by the government. Last year we were given a towel for the bleeding and after a lot of work from the target groups and the initiators – for which all due respect – the Flemish Descendancy Center was created. This center provides psychological counseling to donor children, among others, and has set up a DNA database, which currently contains about twenty DNA samples. They also talk to fertility doctors and gynaecologists and give lectures to students.

Although these are certainly also important activities, this does not change anything for the (adult) donor children who are already there. The real changes must come from politics.

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A report German authorities tried to silence shows how Catholic nuns peddled orphaned boys to predatory priests and perverts for decades.

ROME—A jarring report outlining decades of rampant child sex abuse at the hands of greedy nuns and perverted priests paints a troubling picture of systematic abuse in the German church.

The report is the byproduct of a lawsuit alleging that orphaned boys living in the boarding houses of the Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer were sold or loaned for weeks at a time to predatory priests and businessmen in a sick rape trade. The men involved in the lawsuit say as boys they were denied being adopted out or sent to foster families because selling them for rape lined the sisters’ coffers for their “convent of horrors.” Some of the boys were then groomed to be sex slaves to perverts, the report claims.

The alleged abuse went on for years, with one of the males claiming the nuns even frequently visited their college dorms after they had left the convent. He said the nuns often drugged him and delivered him to predators’ apartments. The Order of Sisters of the Divine Redeemer did not answer multiple requests for comment about the allegations.

A second lawsuit, first reported by Deutsche Welle last year, comes after a separate case against the German church led by 63-year-old Karl Haucke who demanded the Archdiocese of Cologne carry out a full investigation into clerical sex crimes, which it concluded in January 2021. But the details of that investigative report were so horrific that Archbishop Reiner Maria Woelki refused to make it public, demanding that any journalists who see it sign confidentiality agreements. Eight German journalists walked out of a press conference in January after being denied access to the church’s investigation unless they agreed not to publish its contents.

Coimbatore: The district child protection unit (DCPU) is looking for parents to adopt a 14-year-old girl.

The girl had lost a parent before the pandemic and the other to Covid-19, district child protection officer M Mathiyalagan said. “She is staying in a government-registered shelter in the district because she did not have any relative,” he told TOI.

“As many as 21 children lost both their parents and 544 lost either father or mother to the Covid-19 infection in the district. Unlike other children who had relatives, this girl, a Class IX student, has none. So, we are searching for suitable parents to adopt her,” the official said.

DCPU is planning to conduct counselling sessions for the girl about the adoption process, Mathiyalagan said. “Even though the girl is free to stay in the shelter until she turns 18, she needs a place for foster care after that.”

“The unit had received applications from seven parents willing to adopt children. Most of them showed interest in adopting babies. We check their background thoroughly before proceeding with the adoption process as we need to ensure that the adopted children are given good care,” he added.

Abortion opponents say unwanted pregnancies should end in adoption. What happens when a child is given up? Here's everything you need to know:

Are all unwanted babies adopted?

No, despite a strong demand by couples who can't have children. In a leaked draft opinion of a Supreme Court decision that could enable state abortion bans, Justice Samuel Alito cited a 2002 federal report that the nearly 1 million Americans seeking to adopt far outstripped the "domestic supply of infants." A birth mother, he argued, thus "has little reason to fear that the baby will not find a suitable home." Only about 18,000 American infants are relinquished by new mothers each year, so it's true that there is strong competition for most of those babies through private adoptions or agencies. Directly paying for babies is illegal in every state, but adoptive parents and agencies enter into agreements with pregnant women that provide from $15,000 to $45,000 to cover their legal, medical, and other expenses. Still, not every child put up for adoption finds a good home.

What's the problem?

Adoptive parents generally want the youngest, healthiest, least troubled children possible. They also have clear racial preferences: New York University economist Allan Collard-Wexler found in 2010 that on average it was $8,000 more expensive to adopt a white baby than a Black one. Among babies adopted in 2020, according to Statista Research, 29,325 were white, 11,631 were Hispanic, 9,588 were Black, and 5,304 were mixed-race. The racial disparity may partly reflect the fact that Black teens are less likely to put babies up for adoption than white ones, and more likely to have family members raise an unwanted child. But it's also a product of the market pressures within the adoption industry, which is rife with profiteering and exploitation. Pregnant women who sign contracts to turn over their babies have reported being threatened with having to repay all costs if they back out. "Special needs" infants come at a major discount. Children that no one adopts often wind up in foster care. Today, approximately 400,000 children linger in the foster-care system.