When educationist Geet Oberoi decided to adopt her first child, Indya, 14 years ago, procedural

delays were the first stumbling block. She was single and had to wait for three years before she

could adopt a child. In 2010, Priya Ramanathan, also single, ran into the same wall. She wanted

to adopt a seven-month-old baby, but was told that it would take more than two years as single

parents were not the preferred choice. Many agencies wouldn’t even accept applications from

Amidst the dark pandemic, a bright side has been the morphing of the templated ‘events’

weddings and ‘milestone’ celebrations into smaller, more intimate ceremonies. At a recent one

such close and connected gathering, marking the birth of a baby girl, conversations about

different ways a family is made—for this one had chosen surrogacy—soon segued into a deeper

discussion.

A Texas woman who was a program manager at an adoption agency based in Ohio has pleaded guilty to federal charges of procuring adoptions of Ugandan and Polish children by bribing Ugandan officials and defrauding authorities in this country. Debra Parris of Lake Dallas also played a role in one of the most horrific child abuse cases in North Texas, where the woman’s adult son used a Barbie doll to cause severe trauma to the private parts of his 5-year-old adopted daughter, authorities said. The girl was adopted from the agency where the North Texas woman worked. Parris pleaded guilty on Wednesday to conspiracy to violate the foreign corrupt practices act (FCPA) and commit visa fraud in connection with the Uganda scheme, and conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the Poland scheme. She is scheduled to be sentenced on March 9, 2022. Two other co-defendants, Margaret Cole, 73, of Strongsville, Ohio; and Dorah Mirembe, 41, of Kampala, Uganda, were indicted in the case. Cole was the executive director of European Adoption Consultants, and Mirembe worked for the company.

The trial against Cole is scheduled to commence on Feb. 7. Mirembe remains at large. Another North Texas woman and an employee at European Adoption Consultants, Robin Longoria of Mansfield, has pleaded guilty in the case. Information was not available Friday on her status. They were charged in Ohio, where the now closed European Adoption Consultants had been operating. The company was based in Strongsville, Ohio. The State Department said that in addition to Poland and Uganda, the agency ran adoption programs in Bulgaria, China, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Haiti, Honduras, India, Panama, Tanzania and Ukraine, according to cleveland.com. Parris engaged in a scam to pay bribes to Ugandan officials to corruptly procure the adoption of Ugandan children by families in the United States, including the adoption of kids who were not properly determined to be orphaned, authorities said.

The bribes were paid to social welfare officers, Ugandan magistrate judges and court registrars. According to an indictment, Parris and other co-conspirators and the entities they worked for received more than $900,000 in connection with the adoptions. In the Poland scheme, the indictment alleges that after clients of their adoption agency determined they could not care for one of two Polish children they were set to adopt, Cole and Parris took steps to transfer the child to Parris’ relatives, who were not eligible for inter-country adoption. The girl was adopted in 2015 to John Tufts, who is Parris’ son and lived in North Texas. The Dallas Observer reported the girl told investigators that a bad guy “hurt my vagina and booty and they make it red” but she refused to identify him, according to Tufts’ arrest warrant affidavit. Tufts was charged in Denton with injury to a child — serious bodily injury, a second-degree felony. According to the affidavit, he “intentionally and knowingly caused injury to [the child] by inserting a Barbie doll into her vaginal and anal area.” Tufts’ wife was also charged. John Tufts was sentenced to 28 years in prison in March 2019, according to Denton County criminal court records. In July 2019, his now ex-wife, Georgiana Tufts, was sentenced to 10 years of probation with 90 days in jail and 240 community service hours as conditions of that probation, according to court records. After the girl was abused, the Ohio federal indictment alleges that Cole and Parris took steps to conceal their improper conduct from U.S. agencies and Polish authorities.

When educationist Geet Oberoi decided to adopt her first child, Indya, 14 years ago, procedural

delays were the first stumbling block. She was single and had to wait for three years before she

could adopt a child. In 2010, Priya Ramanathan, also single, ran into the same wall. She wanted

to adopt a seven-month-old baby, but was told that it would take more than two years as single

parents were not the preferred choice. Many agencies wouldn’t even accept applications from

Marriages end. Romantic love fades—or at least waxes and wanes. But the first time you hold your child in your arms, you know that you are now joined as one, parent and child, for as long as you live. And, even if that relationship ever grows toxic or estranged, parent and child, you shall remain forever.

For my partner and I, and our family, that moment of no return came when our daughter was over a year old. And how she came into our lives became irrelevant as quickly as we fell irrevocably and madly in love with our ever-fascinating child. Five years on, our lives revolve around screentime limits, non-stop questions, the squishiest hugs, the wisest obse­rvations, the funniest jokes, and incessant eye-rolls from the resident six-going-on-sixteen little person in our lives. Meanwhile, the paperwork, the long wait, and the judge pronouncing the order that joined us as a family forever are only distant memories.

But over these five years, I’ve had several prospective adoptive parents reach out to me with questions, worries, and doubts. Will I love this child as I would my ‘own’? What will I do if people I love discriminate against her? How will I tell him he was adopted? Why should I tell her she was adopted? When should I tell them? And, how do I stop my heart from breaking when I gather the courage to tell them? The ans­wers are simple and start from a singular truth. You are parent and child. Forever.

Unconditionally Forever I don’t have an adoptedchild. Instead, my child came into my life through adoption. And adoption doesn’t have to be a scary word. It doesn’t matter what led you to become a parent: great sex, a petri-dish in a laboratory, or truckloads of paperwork. All that matters are the bright eyes that light up your life. And so, adoption was just the process. It is also an essential part of your child’s history, which they have the absolute right to know. Tell them, be honest, use age-appropriate stories, meet other families made from adoption. But it’s unquestionably the right thing to do.

I talk about adoption to everyone who asks, looks curious, or gives me the slightest opening. I’m an over-sharer, and my Facebook timeline is filled with unt­hought-through posts with #TMI. And thus, I open myself up to comments and questions that range from how ‘noble’ we are, how ‘lucky’ she is, and whether we know who our daughter’s ‘real parents’ are. I try to answer each question logically, unemotionally, factually—because often, people really don’t know any better. And I’d like to do my bit to hopefully open someone’s mind enough to have some child somewhere find their way to their forever family.

... There were green

Tattoos on their cheeks, jasmines in their hair, some

Were dark and some were almost fair. Their voices

Were harsh, their songs melancholy; they sang of

Lovers dying and or children left unborn....

“Oh, you are here. Nayantara is getting ready still. Please wait here in the office”. As we entered the Director’s chamber in the children’s centre in an industrial part of north Delhi on that crisp Nov­ember morning a dozen years ago, the mom­ents of waiting for Nayantara seemed to stretch out interminably. Then right in the middle of our half-hearted small talk with the official-looking people in the room, we stopped in mid-sentence as we heard a tiny roar of voices and a swift swoosh as the curtains parted. A bun­dled baby was carried proudly into the room by a beaming nurse. I could see a nice head of hair that had been abundantly and freshly oiled, the smallest of noses, and a light blue cotton onesie with little cars and trains printed on it, no doubt picked out for the spec­ial occasion. My cousin Vatsala’s sage voice rang in my ears. “Didda, don’t get put off by the hair oil”. Before I knew it, Nayantara was in my arms, and I was almost blinded by her million-­watt smile and the spray of dimples all over her face. “She looks just like you”, said the adoption officer triumphantly. Did she know I used to dream of a girl with dimples?

Not because of, but perhaps in spite of what the adoption officer told me, I find myself ever so

often tracing my fingers across my daughter’s face while she sleeps gently next to me. I marvel

at her perfect little nose that has now filled out, her shapely light-brown eyebrows, her

lengthening body, and the fading blue birthmarks that once took up the entirety of her back.

It was a warm September morning and the house of an employee of the Northern Power Distribution Company of Telangana Ltd was decked up for a small yet intimate religious ceremony in the small village. It was a joyous occasion for the man, in his forties, and his wife. A long wait for the couple to adopt a child had finally come true—this was to be the ‘homecoming’ of a 10-year-old boy the couple had ‘adopted’ a few days earlier from a care home in Mumbai. But the story didn’t have a happy ending. A police team swooped on the house that day and arrested the man on charges of kidnapping—the boy he had adopted was found to have been kidnapped from Mumbai earlier. The man landed in jail, though he claims he was the victim of an elaborate racket.

Last year, a man in Mumbai found out that his three children—put in a childcare home run by a well-known charity after the death of their mother—have been adopted by an American couple without his knowledge. He has been fighting a legal battle since then. His case may be not exactly of fraud as the charity had put out newspaper notices about the plan to put up the three children for adoption. But for many others, it has been a nightmarish experience after being taken for a ride by organised gangs.

Experts and activists say the main reason for adoption frauds are India’s complicated laws and their cumbersome implementation process due to which couples desperate to adopt children often look for unauthorised channels. India tightened its adoption rules after cases emerged of parents being coerced or tricked to give up their children for inter-country adoptions. And the involvement of doctors, nurses and orphanage officials in a racket that runs into crores of rupees annually makes it all the more difficult for unsuspecting couples in ­detecting fraudulent deals. Sometimes, of course, couples go ahead despite being aware of the illegal nature of the adoption process.

Ashok Chand, a former deputy commissioner of police (crime) who had unearthed at least three adoption rackets in Delhi around 2010, says that racketeers have more or less the same modus operandi in which they either buy ­children from poor parents or ask them to ­conceive and hand over the newborn to needy parents in return for money.

“One gang had four members, including two women, a doctor and another man. The women were operating the racket in the garb of ­running NGOs,” Chand says.

Holt International and Gift of Adoption Partner to Make up to $500,000 in Adoption Philanthropy Grants Available to Put Adoption in Reach for Qualified Families Adopting Vulnerable Children.

Eugene, Oregon, Nov. 19, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- In celebration of National Adoption Month, Holt International and Gift of Adoption today announced a partnership to reduce financial barriers to adoption for qualified families yearning to adopt vulnerable children by making up to $500,000 in adoption philanthropy grants available. The partnership celebrates each organization’s child-centered beliefs that every child deserves a permanent and loving home.

Through its Families Not Finances campaign, Holt will provide grants of $10,000 towards the fees for adopting children they’ve identified as needing special support to be matched with a qualified family regardless of the family’s financial status. Holt’s $10,000 grant will go toward eliminating Holt’s agency costs for the adoption of children who have been identified as needing special support.

Gift of Adoption will provide up to $15,000 to complete the adoption of any Holt family who has been matched with a child and needs financial assistance to bring their waiting child home.

“For 25 years Gift of Adoption volunteers and donors have made adoption a philanthropic priority", added Pam Devereux, CEO of Gift of Adoption. "Reminding us that you don’t have to adopt to give a child a loving permanent family.”.

Visakhapatnam: The Child Welfare Committee representatives have received the baby of

Anupama Chandran, say reports. The couple who adopted the child handed over the baby

boy to the CWC at a district centre here on Saturday.

The four-member team from Kerala reached Andhra around Saturday evening. They received the baby after talking with the couple for over one hour and 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, it is not confirmed that whether they will return to Kerala on Saturday itself. CWC will have the responsibility to take care of the child until the court completes the procedures.