AMERICA REFRAMED

Geographies of Kinship

BY DEANN BORSHAY LIEM. A MU FILMS PRODUCTION IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE CENTER FOR ASIAN AMERICAN MEDIA.

SEASON 10 EPISODE 5

GEOGRAPHIES OF KINSHIP weaves together the complex personal histories of four adult adoptees born in South Korea with the rise of the country’s global adoption program. Raised in foreign families, each adoptee sets out on a journey to return to their country of birth and map the geographies of kinship that bind them to a homeland they never knew. Along the way there are discoveries and dead ends, as well as mysteries that will never be unraveled.

"The transition of CCIs to FBC helps promote the NGO sector. There are some great ideas coming from the workshop which will strengthen family services access"

Vikas Sawant, UNICEF

On Thursday 27 February 2020, a unique event took place in Pune: an immersive simulation lab that allowed child protection allies in Maharashtra a hands-on look at transitioning from a system relying on child care institutions (CCIs; orphanages) to a system based on a range of family-based care (FBC) and family strengthening services. This was the first pilot of this conference model in South Asia and our report below shows it to have been a huge success!

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Snehalaya's credibility allowed us to approach the Maharashtra Commission for Protection of Child Rights (MSCPCR) and secure Chair, Pravin Ghuge’s support. Another important party in this venture was Children’s Emergency Relief International (CERI)’s Global Director of Advocacy, Ian Forber-Pratt, who is one of the people involved in drafting the guidelines for FBC at the national and state level. Mr Forber-Pratt has been providing Snehalaya with guidance on the move towards family-based care over the preceding 18 months.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1v3rZ1A287KGm57iw7sQhJN1BbAYN7vqh/view?usp=sharing

The European Adoption Consultants (EAC) is a business that was set up in 1991 by then President George H.W. Bush and Bill Barr, his Attorney General.

This agency has been caught numerous times in its 41-year history trafficking children by fooling parents in poor countries with financial incentives, like promising an education for their children abroad, and then placing them in Christian orphanages where American families will pay a high price to adopt the children.

These families willingly buy these children because in most cases they have been lied to, stating that the children were either orphans, or that their parents did not want them, when the truth was that these children were kidnapped for financial gain.

CNN actually did an investigation on the EAC in 2017, interviewing parents who had been lied to about their adopted children, and then found out from the children themselves that they had parents back in their home country who loved them. This is still up on YouTube: https://youtu.be/jeuSgtFepwE

I am certainly not a fan of CNN, nor Anderson Cooper and his known ties to the CIA, but this is undoubtedly one of the best investigative reports they have ever done, even if it was politically motivated.

Vijaya, a woman hailing from Thiruvananthapuram is leading a life of loneliness and is seeking to adopt two youngsters to end her misery.

Thiruvananthapuram: Days that roll on without anything to do and anyone to keep her company. Vijaya, a woman hailing from Thiruvananthapuram, is leading a life of loneliness and is seeking to adopt two youngsters to end her misery.

This 62-year-old woman is in need of two kids who will bring back the light into her life. She is looking for youngsters above the age of 18 to be part of her family.

Vijaya lost both her daughters in a car accident. Her daughters aged 18 and 21 died in an accident during a family trip around 13 years back. She and her husband survived the accident. Vijaya lost her husband, a police officer, three years back due to heart attack. She has been leading a lonley life since.

She started thinking about adoption after she started sinking further down into solitude. Her relatives were very supportive of her decision. Considering the legal complications in adopting a child, she decided to adopt youngsters above the age of 18. This mother wants to adopt youngsters who are interested to study but are stuck without finding the proper resources to do so. She is also open to adopting orphaned kids.

Two WFP officials are alleged to have "omitted, through negligence, recklessness and inexperience" to take the necessary security measures to protect the trio, said prosecutors

Six assailants armed with five AK-47 assault rifles and a machete attacked the convoy

ROME: Italian prosecutors allege that negligence by two UN officials played a role in the 2021 killing of Italy’s ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo, media reports said on Wednesday.

Luca Attanasio, 43, his Italian bodyguard and a Congolese driver died following an ambush last February of a World Food Programme (WFP) convoy traveling through a dangerous part of eastern DRC near the border with Rwanda.

WFP officials Rocco Leone and Mansour Luguru Rwagaza are alleged to have “omitted, through negligence, recklessness and inexperience” to take the necessary security measures to protect the trio, prosecutors were quoted as saying.

Jacqui McNeill was just 12 when her mom suddenly died of heart failure, but the child — one of 11 kids in total — didn't think twice about caring for her seven younger siblings.

Filled with anger and sorrow for years, Jacqui eventually found solace in her Irish Catholic faith and became closer to God, culminating in her decision to become a nun after high school. However, during her time in a religious community, she found that her desire to have her own child one day was too great to move forward with nunhood.

"You have to live a life of poverty and a life of celibacy for the church," says Jacqui, now 29, in this week's issue of PEOPLE. "People would come over and visit, and I would hold the babies the whole time or play with the kids. I would just cry when they left because it hurt so much to know that I was saying, 'I'm willing to not have kids in my life.'"

Inspired by the work of Mother Teresa, Jacqui decided to travel from her home in Ohio to India, where she worked for four months alongside children with disabilities at a foster home.

"I didn't understand how anybody could look at these kids and see anything but beauty, vulnerability and innocence," she says. "I would have brought them all back with me at 24 years old."

There was no safety net for Anthony Thornton when he walked out of his adoptive home six weeks before his high school graduation.

The Texas teen was on his own, left with nothing but two trash bags full of clothes.

Thornton told USA TODAY he had always been uneasy about being adopted. His siblings had been adopted out of foster care years earlier, but he resisted. Agreeing to it felt like a betrayal of his biological mother.

“There’s still relationships,” he said. “There’s still love and caring and kindness. And, you know, amid that toxicity and tumultuous living, it’s still your family.”

But at 14, Thornton said he felt he had a decision to make: agree to be adopted by his foster parents or run the risk of having to move elsewhere.

To identify more than 66,000 children whose adoptions failed, USA TODAY scoured a massive database designed to track every child in America who passes through foster care.

The Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, started in 1993, contains data that states submit twice a year. USA TODAY entered a data-sharing agreement promising to ensure the security and confidentiality of the data. Reporters reviewed the records of 3.4 million children who spent time in foster care from 2008 to 2020.

A key feature of the AFCARS database is the clues it holds to a child's past.

When child welfare workers remove kids from home and place them in foster care, states are supposed to note whether they were previously adopted. That offers a potential window to see children whose adoptions failed.

But USA TODAY found errors or blank spots where this information should be recorded. The adoption flag was consistently missing or marked as “unable to determine” in the records of more than 400,000 kids served by the child welfare system from 2008 to 2020. Reporters found that Washington listed some children as previously adopted when they were not.

Once a child is adopted from foster care, it’s as if they are reborn in the eyes of many child welfare agencies.

In required data reports to the federal government, these agencies remove evidence that would illuminate the child’s past journeys through the system. They take away the ability to trace details of a child’s round trip from foster care to adoption and back again when an adoption fails, or to examine what might have led to a better outcome.

The result, a USA TODAY investigation found: No one knows how well each state is fulfilling its mission of finding children their forever homes.

At stake are the fates of more than 50,000 children adopted out of foster care every year. The federal government funnels about $3 billion a year to families who adopt from foster care, now the leading type of adoption in most states, according to data compiled by USA TODAY.

Cortney Jones, a child welfare advocate who spent 10 years in foster care and lived through a broken adoption, said following the paths of foster children into adoptions could boost the odds that adoptions succeed.