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Over Child Adoption Saga...HANCI Speaks Out

Over Child Adoption Saga...HANCI Speaks Out

 
Written by The Exclusive News Paper   
Saturday, 07 November 2009
 “HANCI started their work in Makeni in 1996 by opening a centre for war orphans and abandoned children. An orphanage was built the same year at Back of Birch Memorial Secondary School,” an excerpt of a press release issued by HANCI yesterday reads.
 
The release went on to explain their involvement with the adopted children and parents: “When the American organisation MAPS joined us we started another orphanage at No. 3 Mission Road for children whose parents wanted their children to be adopted overseas (USA).
There were 33 children.”The adoption of 23 of that number, according to the press release, was facilitated by HANCI with the consent of the parents. “Each parent completed and signed an agreement document.
Those documents are in our possession and could be examined by those interested,” the statement reads.  According HANCI, this is a familiar story that has continue to come up since 2004 when the matter was first charged to court and subsequently discharged because, according  to HANCI, “the court could not find any evidence of wrong doing.”
 
The release went on to state that when the matter was under investigation, the police spent several days in Makeni interviewing aggrieved parents. None of the parents, according HANCI denied having consented to the adoption. “All they wanted was to have access to information concerning the welfare of their adopted children,” HANCI argued.
 
The release went on, “there has been a turn in demands of the parents who now deny having given their consent to the adoption.”According to HANCI, they have documentary evidence in their possession which they are prepared to present in any court of law.
 
“We also want to inform the public that a humanitarian solution is the best option since there is no reluctance from the American Adoptive parents to make visits in order to know the roots of their adopted children. What they need is reassurance and facilitation by the state authorities who MAPS recognises as the sole authority on the issue,” the release concluded.
Last Updated ( Saturday, 07 November 2009 )

 

Silence on case of stolen Indian children

Silence on case of stolen Indian children
Rory Callinan From: The Australian November 06, 2009 12:48AM
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Doctors, five others held in Mexican stolen babies case

 
 

Doctors, five others held in Mexican stolen babies case

November 6, 2009 -- Updated 2338 GMT (0738 HKT)
Vanesa Edith Castillo Guzmán is reunited with her daughter Diana Fernanda Castillo.
Vanesa Edith Castillo Guzmán is reunited with her daughter Diana Fernanda Castillo.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  • Authorities: Doctors, hospital personnel would tell parents that babies had died
  • Three others accused of buying children, registering them as their own
  • One abducted baby has been reunited with mother, officials say

Mexico City, Mexico (CNN) -- Mexican authorities have arrested three doctors, a nurse and a receptionist accused of stealing newborns at a private hospital and selling them, the Mexico City attorney general's office says.

A married couple and a woman also were arrested on charges that they bought two newborn girls and registered them as their own offspring, said Luis Genaro Vasquez Rodriguez, an official with the attorney general's office.

The doctors and hospital personnel would tell parents from whom the children were stolen that their babies had died, authorities said Wednesday.

One of the abducted babies, Diana Fernanda Castillo, has been reunited with her biological mother. Authorities who found the baby and confirmed her identity through genetic tests handed her over to her mother, Vanesa Edith Castillo Guzmán, on Thursday.

Authorities said they arrested Drs. Victor Manuel Mancera Gonzalez, 74; Jorge Adalberto Guerrero Bustos, 55; and Alfredo Ortiz Rosas, 52. Nurse Maria Guadalupe Castro Morales, 58, and receptionist Leonel Rodriguez Mondragon also were arrested, the attorney general's office said in a statement posted on its Web site.

All the suspects were charged with trafficking in minors, using false documents and organized crime.

Other suspects arrested were married couple Antonio Merino Hernandez, 46, and Maria de la Luz Ruiz Padilla, 39, as well as psychologist Cinthia Nayeli Perez Ortiz, 37, officials said. In both cases, authorities said, they were sold babies born in Mexico City's Hospital Central de Oriente.

According to the Mexico City attorney general's office:

Castillo told officials that her daughter was born at 5:11 p.m. October 25, 2008. She never saw her but heard her cry. The mother repeatedly asked Ortiz Rosas to let her see her daughter, but he told her it would be later, once she recovered from the anesthesia and Caesarean section surgery she had undergone.

Later, Mancera Gonzalez told Castillo that her baby had been taken to the "Moctezuma" Infants Hospital. The next day, Ortiz told her, "Your daughter died. There was nothing that could be done for her. She was born with insufficient respiratory ability. I tried to save her, but she died." He also told her the body had been cremated.

Castillo asked the doctor for the baby's ashes or at least a death certificate October 27, and he replied: "I already told you. She died. I took her to be incinerated. There's nothing more to talk about or do. The documents are on the way."

She later received an e-mail from the clinic owner's son in which he told her that her daughter was alive. "Dr. Ortiz placed her with a family and, of course, received a lot of dough," the e-mail said.

The man who sent the e-mail and other witnesses were interviewed, and all said the baby was sold to a couple who lived in the San Vicente municipality in Mexico state.

That's how investigators arrested Ruiz Padilla and Merino Hernandez, who said they adopted the girl. Authorities believed that she was the Castillo's baby, but genetic tests proved that she wasn't.

The couple said the then-7-month-old girl was given to them in April, and she was the daughter of a woman who lived in the Tlalnepantla municipality in the state of Mexico.

They said they never met the biological mother, and their friend gave them signed documents legally turning the girl over to them.

The couple needed help registering the girl as their daughter, and that's how they met Mancera Gonzalez , who charged them 12,000 pesos (about $900).

The continuing investigation led officials to Perez Ortiz, who bought a baby girl for 15,000 pesos ($1,120) in November 2008 and registered the child as her daughter with documents provided to her.

Perez Ortiz told investigators that she first got in touch with another doctor five years ago, telling him she could not have children. The doctor, who is a fugitive, told her he could get her a baby from pregnant women who in many cases would abandon them or wished they would die.

The doctor told her he would persuade the mothers to keep the babies until 6½ months of pregnancy so he could remove them and inject them with a medication to mature their lungs and hearts. Then he would find couples or women who could not have children.

He told the psychologist she would have to pay 10,000 pesos ($750) up front and the remaining 5,000 pesos ($375) when he gave her the baby.

The woman did as told, but the doctor did not come through until late September or early October 2008, when he contacted her to ask whether she was still interested.

A while later, he told her to meet him at the "Puebla" metro station, where he gave her the baby girl. He also gave her a birth certificate showing that the girl had been born at Hospital Central de Oriente.

Genetic tests proved that this was Castillo's daughter.



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Mother's search for baby exposes clinic kidnap ring

Mother's search for baby exposes clinic kidnap ring

 

A mother's desperate year-long search for her missing baby has revealed a group of doctors and nurses who allegedly tricked patients into believing that their newborns had died, and then sold the children for a few hundred pounds.

The gang was allegedly headed by the owner of a small private hospital in a working class neighbourhood in the east of Mexico City, where Vanessa Castillo gave birth to a girl by caesarean section on 25 October 2008.

Castillo says she saw the newborn and heard her healthy cries before the baby was whisked away from her for routine tests. The next day one of the doctors who had attended the delivery came to her bedside to inform her that the baby had died and had been cremated.

Castillo said that after she was sent home she kept going to the hospital in search of her baby's death certificate and her ashes, but was repeatedly brushed off. A few months later, however, she received an email from the son of the owner of the clinic, saying that her baby was alive but had been sold by his father for 15,000 pesos (about £700).

The police investigation that followed led to the arrest this week of the owner of the hospital, two doctors, a nurse and a receptionist, as well as a psychologist who has admitted to buying the child and who apparently looked after her well.

Once tests had confirmed that Castillo was the mother of the child, she was reunited with her baby girl at an emotive press conference yesterday.

"This is the first time I have seen her since she was born," a tearful Castillo told reporters.

When she was asked about the woman who had bought her baby, she added, "I would like to thank her for looking after my daughter for the last year, but this is not the way to obtain a child."

Police say they have hard evidence of at least one other similar case involving the clinic, and that they are now going through hospital records in an effort to track down more.

"It could be an important number of babies," Mexico City's chief prosecutor, Miguel Mancera, told the Televisa TV network.

"They didn't just steal babies and give them up in illegal adoptions. They also issued false registrations of births at the clinic for babies born without papers elsewhere."

The arrested doctors have denied the charges, claiming that Castillo had gone to the hospital for a very late abortion, and that they gave the baby away for adoption to safeguard its life.

During the past year, Mexico City's authorities have been under fire for not doing enough to track down child trafficking rings.

Local newspapers reported this week that staff from the same clinic had been arrested in 2005 after another mother reported that her baby had been stolen in very similar circumstances. The prompt release of the staff on that occasion has now raised suspicions of past complicity within the prosecutor's office.

In another high profile case involving older children, at least five wards of court from dysfunctional families placed in a private shelter run by an evangelical church have disappeared without trace.

Foreign adoption not illegal, says high court

Foreign adoption not illegal, says high court

Bombay High CourtThe Bombay High Court on Wednesday held that there was nothing illegal in the adoption process where two minor girls aged 15 and 10 were sent to Spain for rehabilitation.

The division bench of Justice Bilal Nazki and Justice A. R. Joshi on Wednesday rejected the petition filed by a 65-year-old vegetable vendor who had alleged that her grand daughters were given for adoption without her consent.

Observing that no criminal offence was disclosed in Kisabai Lokhande’s complaint, the high court rejected her petition stating that she has the liberty to approach the authority if she was aggrieved by the adoption.

In her petition, Lokhande had not challenged the adoption. She had sought a probe against the Child Welfare Committee, the Central Adoption Resource Centre, a Spanish NGO and Preet Mandir, a Pune-based private adoption agency, for illegally declaring the two girls “destitute” and executing the inter-country adoption without their guardian’s consent.

Raising doubt over the motive behind filing of the petition five years after adoption, the court said there seemed to be ulterior motive. One of the girls was allegedly molested while she was staying with Lokhande after their mother went missing and father passed away. Lokhande, who was earning Rs 50 per day, had said she could not look after the girls. They were then sent to Preet Mandir and given for adoption after an no-objection from Lokhande.

Based on a report by the foreign agency, the court said, “The children are happy and bonded with their adoptive parents.”

DSWD holds Davao gab on Adoption Law

DSWD holds Davao gab on Adoption Law
by Degs Duron
Davao City (5 November) -- The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) conducts an orientation today, November 5, on Republic Act 9523 or An Act Requiring the Certification of the DSWD to Declare a Child Legally Available for Adoption.
Approved in March 2009, this new law amends Presidential Decree No. 603, the Child and Youth Welfare Code which entails a long process thus delaying immediate placement of children for adoption.
DSWD focal person on adoption Lolita I. Roble said R.A. 9523 mandates DSWD to certify that a child is abandoned through the issuance of a Certification which serves as primary evidence that a child is legally available for adoption. This is the most expeditious proceeding to declare abandoned, neglected or surrendered children legally available for adoption, she said.
Roble further said the orientation aims to introduce salient features of RA 9523, identify issues and problems in processing cases of adoption, and present operational guidelines in the issuance of DSWD Certification. Starting at 9 a.m. at Grand Men Seng Hotel, the meeting will be attended by Social Workers from DSWD, local government units, hospitals, court and child caring agencies, she added. (DSWD) [top]

Bartholet to testify before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding international adoption policies

Bartholet to testify before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights regarding international adoption policies

Professor Elizabeth Bartholet

Professor Elizabeth Bartholet

Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Bartholet ’65 will testify before the Inter-American Commission on Human rights on November 6 regarding the “Human Rights of Unparented Children and International Adoption Policies” in the Americas. The hearing comes after a request made by the HLS Child Advocacy Program (CAP) and the Center for Adoption Policy.

International adoption is the subject of a heated debate among those in the human rights field, and the hearing comes in the wake of policies that have virtually shut down international adoption in Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru.

“Much of the world…focuses on the bad things that happen when kids get placed in international adoption,” said Bartholet, faculty director of CAP. “When you shut down international adoptions in order to address bad things which occasionally happen, what you do is commit monumental human rights violations. We hope to change the debate.”

The hearing represents a major development in the human rights debate surrounding these issues, as the Commission will address human rights violations that to-date have been largely ignored, says Bartholet.

In her testimony, Bartholet argues that restrictions on ethical international adoption violate children’s basic human rights by condemning them to damaging institutions or to the streets. She adds that every child has a right to be placed in a nurturing permanent home, whether that home is in the country of birth or abroad. Adoption abuses should, Bartholet says, be addressed through enforcement and strengthening of laws prohibiting such abuses, not through closing down international adoption and thus denying homes to children.

Bartholet will testify alongside a delegation including: Paulo Barrozo S.J.D. ’09, assistant professor of law at Boston College Law School; and Karen Bos and Charles Nelson, child development experts affiliated with Children’s Hospital in Boston, the Harvard Medical School, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

The delegation will urge the Commission to initiate an investigation to examine what effect closing international adoption opportunities in Guatemala, Honduras, and Peru has had on unparented children.

A recording of the testimony will be available after the hearing at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

HANCI Refutes Allegations of Child Trafficking

HANCI Refutes Allegations of Child Trafficking


Help the Needy Child International (HANCI) has come under constant pressure by parents whose children were adopted by a United States based organization called Maine Adoption Placement Services (MAPS) a deal believed to have been facilitated by HANCI.
The parents claim that their children were adopted by parents in the US without their consent. On a BBC Net Work Africa Program broadcast on Wednesday 4th November 2009, one of the aggrieved parents who was in tears, demanded that she needed to see her child revealing that she had never signed a document with anybody for adopting her child.
The Executive Director of Help the Needy Child International (HANCI), Dr. Roland Kargbo on Wednesday this week refuted allegations of child trafficking as alleged by the parents. Explaining the legal ramifications of the said adoption case, Dr. Kargbo noted that:
“When HANIC started this operation in Makeni in 1996, a centre was opened for war orphans and abandoned children. This led to the building of an orphanage the same year at the back-of –Birch Memorial Secondary School in Makeni.
When MAPS joined us, we started another orphanage at number three Mission Road in Makeni for children whose parents or guardians wanted them to be adopted overseas, United States to be specific.”   
Dr.Roland Kargbo further explained that: “the home had 33 children but only 23 of them whose adoptions were facilitated by HANCI with the consent of their parents were adopted.” He said it was made clear to the parents that all the 33 children who were kept in the orphanage were kept there for adoption. Dr. Kargbo further explained that each parent completed and signed a document to the effect adding that the agreement was taken to the magistrate court in Makeni for clearance and supervision. He revealed that the said documents were in their possession opened for inspection by interested members of the public.
The Executive director of HANCI pointed out that: “the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs did the adoption; we merely facilitated the links between the biological parents and the parents who wanted to do the adoption. The ministry has addresses of the children and should be able to provide updates about their welfare.”
However, the Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s had earlier revealed that it would reserve all comments as it was currently investigating the matter.
It added that the said adoptions occurred at a time when they were not in governance and there had recently been a change of minister in the ministry.
Meanwhile, the question of adoption in the ordinary lay Sierra Leonean person’s point of view would be interpreted as a way of helping a parent to raise his or her child for a specific period, with the biological parent reserving the sole parental rights of the child.
This would simply imply that an illiterate parent wanting his or child to be adopted because of poverty would probably fail to grasp the legal implications of what it means to give up a child for adoption.
The question now is would there ever be any hope for the aggrieved parents to see or perhaps just hear from their children who now dwell in America?
By Abdul Samba Brima

Aide aux enfants du Congo

Jeudi 5 novembre 2009

Communauté : Evénements actuels

Aide aux enfants du Congo

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