A children’s rights activist has been jailed for six years and eight months for sexually abusing a boy in the 1960s.

Peter Newell was the former co-ordinator of the Association for the Protection of All Children charity.

The 77-year-old from Wood Green, north London, was sentenced last month at Blackfriars Crown Court.

He admitted five indecent and serious sexual assaults on a child under 16.

The Association for the Protection of All Children, or Approach, says its objectives are to prevent cruelty and maltreatment of children and advance public knowledge in the UK and abroad.

The children’s charity SOS Children’s Villages has admitted that it received 37 reports of the sexual abuse of children involving charity personnel in 2016.

The charity, based in Vienna, Austria, admitted the reports in the wake of the sex scandal involving the international charity Oxfam which was also accused of child sex abuse in South Sudan earlier this week.

The press officer for SOS Children’s Villages Cecilia Bergling Naucler said that while they did receive 37 reports of sex abuse, they did not want to identify those accused for “privacy reasons”, Swedish broadcaster SVT reports.

According to Ms. Naucler, the victims were “either children or young adults”. She added: “Due to confidentiality legislation and consideration for children and young people in our activities, we can not comment on individual cases or an exact number.”

The charity, Naucler said, tends to hire locals wherever it operates and the charity told the Swedish broadcaster: “In case of suspicion of serious abuse, notification is made to the police and judicial authorities, in accordance with the country’s current legislation.”

Photo: Edward Parsons/IRIN

(file photo)

By Abiy Hailu

According to a recent report by BBC, Ethiopia was among the biggest source countries for international adoptions by US citizens, accounting for about 20 per cent of the total. The most prominent of the adoption cases is that of Zahara Marley, who were adopted by the most famous Hollywood celebrities, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, back in 2005. Zahara's maternal grandmother once stated that Zahara was so "very fortunate" to have been adopted by Jolie.

But this has not always been the case. For instance, there is also this sad story of a teenage Ethiopian girl who was adopted by an American couple. Larry and Carri Williams of Washington state, starved and beat Hana Williams until she died in the backyard of their home in May 2011.

IG To Father Of Three, All Want To Adopt Abandoned Baby The state-run orphanage Rajkiya Bal Griha in Rampur has named her ‘Pari’. Officials at the lone orphanage for 13 districts in Uttar Pradesh, which houses 35 children, say the girl cannot be adopted for the next two months. (Express Photo/Gajendra Yadav)

She was found crying in a heap of garbage near the Moradabad highway. The six-month-old girl, dressed in a pink sweater and red trousers, had no name. Since then, her photographs have been splashed across local news channels, Facebook posts and WhatsApp groups in Moradabad, prompting more than 80 people — including a father of three sons, an IG-rank CISF officer from Delhi, a chemist and several residents of Bhikanpur Kulwara — to dial the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and local police, offering to adopt her.

Far removed from Moradabad, the girl sleeps in a cot at the state-run orphanage, Rajkiya Bal Griha, in Rampur. Officials at the lone orphanage for 13 districts in Uttar Pradesh, which houses 35 children, say the girl cannot be adopted for the next two months, until the CWC holds a committee meeting and deems it fit.

With police yet to track her parents, she has been given a name by the orphanage, Pari. “We name every child who comes here. She is a very beautiful girl… bilkul pari jaisi dikhti hai,” says Rakesh, the orphanage in-charge. Pari was found last Friday morning by Zayda, a resident of Bhikanpur Kulwara. Her neighbour, Salim, fed her milk meant for his eight-month-old son until police arrived. Zayda thought she would get to keep the girl. She smiled for photographs, posing with local police, until the infant was taken away from her. “I told them I had found her. They took her from me, and now the police are questioning us… The CWC people told me I have to register online to adopt the girl,” says Zayda.

Meanwhile, police are investigating phone calls received at the orphanage, claiming that the girl is from Dehradun. “There were some calls made to the orphanage, with the caller claiming to know her parents. We do not know if they are prank calls,” says Station Officer (Kundarki) Dheeraj Solanki.

Abandoned child in Rampur

Abandoned child in Rampur

RAMPUR: In a new twist to the case of a “cute” baby girl found abandoned in a garbage bin in Moradabad last week, superintendent of Rampur orphanage Rakesh Saxena said he has received unverified information about her parents. Saxena said he was told by an anonymous caller that the abandoned girl is the daughter of a Dehradun-based couple.

“The anonymous caller rang me up on Monday afternoon and again on Tuesday morning. Later, I got some clues to his identity through Truecaller. He told me that he identified the abandoned baby after watching news reports and knows her father and mother who used to be his good friends. The caller said that the couple used to often fight with each other after the man refused to accept the baby as his daughter,” the orphanage incharge said.

The superintendent has forwarded all details about the anonymous caller to the child welfare committee (CWC), Moradabad. According to the sources, the caller has also provided the numbers of the couple.

New Delhi: A PIL was filed in the Supreme Court on Monday seeking a direction to the Centre to adopt a "two-child" policy to combat the growing population.

The petition filed by Anupam Bajpai, national coordinator of Jeevan Bachao Andolan, through advocate Shiv Kumar Tripathi is expected to be heard next week.

The petition, while suggesting that the number of children in each family be restricted to two, has proposed that the Centre link various welfare measures to people only if they comply with the two-child policy.

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On 9 February, the Supreme Court took the extant government to task for the "tardy if not virtual non-implementation" of juvenile justice laws, and ignoring the plight of "voiceless if not silenced" children of India, after a public interest litigation (PIL) was initiated by activist and human rights defender, Sampurna Behura. The apex court also requested chief justices of all high courts to establish child-friendly courts and vulnerable courts in each district.

The Supreme Court Bench, comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Deepak Gupta, spoke about the lackadaisical attitude of the government and authorities towards children – there is pendency of cases of abandoned, orphaned and surrendered children; the conditions of children in shelter and observation homes are abysmal; there is an increased number of vacancies in juvenile justice institutions; and there is an absolute lack of initiative by legal service bodies to act, despite the passing of an amendment to the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2000 in 2015.

Supreme Court. Juvenile Justice. Representational image. APRepresentational image. AP

There were several chief justices' conferences held in 2006, 2009, 2013, 2015 and 2016 about the need to ensure the adequate and effective implementation of the Juvenile Justice Act. As a part of the resolutions passed in these conferences, the Supreme Court noted that every high court has a constituted Juvenile Justice Committee that is headed by a judge to take stock and address issues that concern children. Besides this, the Chief Justice of India also set up a Committee to address issues of implementation of child welfare laws.

Acknowledging that the Bench might be criticised for excessive judicial activism, it stated that the government has done very little for implementation of the Act in its true spirit: "Over the last decade or so, state governments and Union Territories have not fully complied with the provisions of a law solemnly enacted by Parliament for the benefit of children. In many instances, only cosmetic changes have been introduced at the ground level with the result that voiceless children continue to be subjects of official apathy."

The department will probe into how the homeopath was able to fabricate adoption papers to run the hospital’s illegal operations.

We are investigating the matter further. He is a doctor of homoeopathy and his wife also works in the same hospital. (Representational image)

We are investigating the matter further. He is a doctor of homoeopathy and his wife also works in the same hospital. (Representational image)

Mumbai: The state women and child department has initiated a probe into the child trafficking racket where the Kolhapur police last week arrested homeopath Dr Arun Patil and his wife for allegedly selling infants to childless couples. According to the department’s district women and child officer (DWCO), it is investigating how Dr Patil was able to run a hospital without any authorisation for the past 25 years. The department will probe into how the homeopath was able to fabricate adoption papers to run the hospital’s illegal operations.

The homeopath was arrested after the DWCO received a tip-off from a couple and the Central Adoption Resources Authority (CARA), along with the police, busted the racket last Tuesday. Investigations by the women and child department and the police have revealed the existence of a joint bank account in the name of the mother of the child and Dr Patil. The account still has Rs 2 lakh paid for the child to the mother.

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Do you know that in Ghana some parents give birth just for the purpose of selling the babies for as low as GH¢25?

According to the Minister of Gender, Children and Social Protection, Ms Otiko Afisah Djaba, ‘Baby factory’, the practice of deliberately giving birth to a large number of children just to sell them, was gradually emerging in the country,

Preliminary investigation by the ministry, she said, had shown that some parents, especially those in the rural areas, engaged in the practice and, sometimes, sold the babies for as low as GH¢25.

AGRA: "Never give up, no, never give up." These lines from the movie 'Lion' ring in the hearts of Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter and Rebecca Nirmala Peacock, two Indian women who were abandoned soon after birth and adopted by US-based couples. More than 40 years later, the two have returned to India in search of their biological parents.

Like Saroo Brierley, the protagonist in the award-winning 'Lion' who gets to meet his biological mother after an agonizing wait of 25 years in Australia, both Kripa and Nirmala, who met on Yahoo in 2007, long to trace their parents back home in India.

bbc Rebecca Nirmala Peacock with her daughter Trisha and husband David Peacock

In the summer of 1975, Kripa was adopted from a Kanpur-based orphanage by a single mother Mariyln Backstrom, hailing from Aitkin in Minnesota. Nirmala was also adopted from the same institution in 1976 by Leonard Jensen and Judi Jensen, a couple from Salt Lake city in Utah.

ccd Stephanie Kripa Cooper-Lewter childhood