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.

„Mager bewijs voor misstanden adoptie”

Anne Vader

20 mei 2021 18:31

Van Dam.?beeld RD, Anton Dommerholt

Van Dam.?beeld RD, Anton Dommerholt

The Joustra Committee rightly recommends the establishment of an expertise center for adoption. First of all it is appropriate to consider the grief that has been done. But with the suspension of international adoption, children are once again left out in the cold ...

On 8 February, the Joustra committee presented the results of its investigation to the Minister for Legal Protection (RD 5-2 and 8-2 ). The adoption community has been deeply shocked by those adoptions that saw abuses in the 1970s-90s. It is appropriate to recognize the grief that has been caused to those involved, adoptees and their biological family, but also their adoptive parents.

The Adoption Vereniging Gereformeerde Gezindte (AVGG) was founded in 1979, in the middle of the period studied. Also (former) members of our association (adoptees and adoptive parents) have to deal with abuse. This should never have happened! Pain and uncertainty are felt (again). We are also thinking of adoptive parents who entered a procedure in good faith that subsequently turned out to be based on an impure basis. We recognize that this can raise questions and doubts about God's providence, of which adoptees and their adoptive parents have previously been firmly convinced.

The Joustra Committee makes recommendations for the government to recognize that it has failed to combat adoption abuses. She also advises the establishment of an expertise center. These recommendations wholeheartedly endorse the GDPR. However, we do not support the recommendation to suspend intercountry adoption, which received the most attention. This recommendation causes attention to be diverted from the results of the original research assignment: what exactly happened in the 1970s and 1990s and what was the role of the Dutch government in this?

The period studied was followed by the Hague Adoption Convention (HAV), which entered into force for the Netherlands on 1 October 1998. This convention formulates all the conditions that international adoption must meet and can be tested. More than 66 'sending' and 'receiving' countries subscribe to this convention. The committee cites the principle of trust that is part of the HAV as a potential weakness in the system. The Netherlands no longer receives adopted children from those countries about which doubts have arisen.

Chinese children's homes pay money to finders who drop children off at homes. This is apparent from an investigation by the Ministry of Justice following a Network report on adoption from China. According to China, these are 'symbolic amounts'.

Netwerk managed to obtain the contents of a draft letter on this subject from Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin to the House of Representatives. In it he discusses the fuss that arose in March about adoptions from China following a report by Netwerk. That report revealed that children's homes in Hunan province pay for children brought in. Many -also Dutch- adopted children come from this province. The ministry then launched its own investigation.

In the draft report, the ministry calls the Chinese adoption system 'vulnerable'. "Possible new irregularities are reported with some regularity," the report said. The Chinese adoption agency has admitted to the ministry that "symbolic amounts" are paid to finders who deliver children to children's homes. Last March's Network broadcast showed that finders were paid semi-annual salaries.

According to the Hague Adoption Convention, which both the Netherlands and China have signed, it is prohibited to pay finders of children. "Not a dollar, not a cent," the Hague Permanent Bureau on the Adoption Convention told Netwerk in March. The letter to the House of Representatives shows that the Ministry of Justice has doubts about whether this ban is being observed in the provinces. "Many children's homes are located in poor regions where small amounts can be of great significance," the report said. That can encourage child trafficking.

Emeritus professor Rene Hoksbergen speaks in a reaction of 'a critical report'. He has doubts about new adoptions from China. Hoksbergen: 'It is extremely difficult for the Netherlands to continue in the same way after this report. But it is up to the adoption organizations to make a decision about this'.

Kinjal V Shah started this petition

We are a Jain family from Gujarat living in Berlin, Germany where the father is posted on work as a software engineer. We are all Indian citizens, including our child.

Our child, a baby girl breast feeding child, has been in the custody of German authorities for the last 8 months (since September 2021). We need your help and support to help get our child to be repatriated to India under the care of her maternal family.

Our daughter was found with a serious injury which parents did not understand and took her to the doctor about. Parents' were being asked to explain the injury. Initially, parents themselves were confused & did not know what happened. Later the paternal grandmother informed that she had accidentally caused the injury while visiting us the child in Berlin.

The parents' immediately informed lawyer and the German authorities. The grandmother has submitted a detailed affidavit on what happened in the German Court.

Korean adoptee artists have garnered attention in the western countries where they live, but their works remain relatively unfamiliar to people in their country of origin. This obscurity isn't due to a lack of effort on the part of the adoptees. Despite their attempts to engage with Korean society, Koreans have yet to reciprocate in kind.

Therefore, the artistic endeavors brought to Korea represent more than the creative expressions of the individual artist's experience. They additionally serve as part of the collective discourse of adoptees and their attempts to cultivate a dialogue with Korean society. Whether through performances, paintings, or written words, these artists raise questions that often confront and challenge the dominant adoption narratives in Korea.

One such prevalent belief among people in Korea insists that if a person enjoys comfortable conditions in the present, then there's little need to broach questions about the past, including inquiries about one's roots.

This notion remains prominent in adoption representation, having been historically constructed first by adoption agencies and now reproduced by overly sentimental media portrayals of adoptees. However, the recent work of Sara Sejin Chang (Sara van der Heide) counters such accounts by employing art that unravels persistent untruths that adoptees are orphans, and she critically examines the colonial narratives around adoption. Her long-term project, "The Mother Mountain Institute," centers on the mothers who have been dehumanized and silenced by the lucrative transnational and transracial adoption industry.

In this installation, the audience listens to the testimonies of women whose children were stolen and trafficked. The film, "Brussels, 2016," shows a video letter from the artist to her mother in Korea and speaks about the processes of racialization towards citizens of color, including the experiences of racism experienced by adoptees in their predominantly white adoptive countries.

GENEVA - In 1963, seven-year-old Tibi Lhundub Tsering was picked up by his foster parents at Zurich Airport, Switzerland. His mother Youden Jampa, working in a road-building camp in India, knew nothing of her son's whereabouts.

This is the beginning of the inconvenient and uncomfortable truth presented in Swiss documentary "Tibi and his mothers" directed by Ueli Meier.

According to the documentary, Tibi was one of the 200 so-called "Tibetan orphans" who were brought to Switzerland in the 1960s from the Nursery for Tibetan Refugee Children in Dharamsala headed by Tsering Dolma, the elder sister of the Dalai Lama. They were moved through a program privately run by Swiss entrepreneur Charles Aeschimann and approved by the Dalai Lama.

Contrary to the expectations of the foster parents in Switzerland, only 19 of these children were orphans, while the vast majority had at least one parent in Tibet, often both, said Meier in the bonus feature of the DVD edition, citing a report by Aeschimann.

In a confidential letter in February 1963, the Swiss Ambassador to India at the time said he discovered many of these "orphans" selected in Dharamsala actually had at least one parent. He warned against the "human and spiritual difficulties" faced by children who became "contractually assigned care items" thanks to the agreement between Aeschimann and the Dalai Lama.

Nenue: Did they seek for foster families through media afterwards?

Ueli Meier: Aeschimann targeted the media resources from the very beginning. The second child he adopted, who was a little girl, was killed in an accident. Therefore, he asked the Dalai Lama for a third child, as the Dalai Lama had guaranteed before on one condition that more exiled Tibetan children would come to Switzerland. And this time about 20 Tibetan children were sent to Switzerland. In order to help these children to find enough foster homes, several media started a campaign. Especially Vinay Warren Begg, a famous political commentator, called for Swiss people to adopt Tibetan children in his own column of Breaking Clouds (an ironic humor magazine in Switzerland). More than 300 families responded since then .

Nenue: How to deal with the applications of adopting Tibetan children?

Ueli Meier: The applications were all given to Aeschimann, then he invited every couple to his home in Olten for checking. Later he connected the elder sister of the Dalai Lama who was working in the children welfare home in Dharamsala. Then she chose several children who were able to be adopted by the Swiss families.

Nenue: Was the whole process ignored by the federal authority of Switzerland?