At least 19 children and young adults were abused in several ways in an SOS Kinderdorpen in Suriname fore more than 30 years. In a report, the research firm Verinorm speaks of sexual, emotional, physical, and financial abuse. This includes rape, neglect, beating, and whipping.

The study was commissioned by SOS Kinderdorpen following reports of violence and sexual abuse in Children's Villages in 2021. For the study, Verinorm analyzed documents and conducted 35 interviews, including with victims and former staff. It emerged that the abuse took place from the founding of the Children's Village in 1972 until its closure in 2006.

Among others, five managers, almost half of the responsible managers, were allegedly guilty of abuse. According to the report, this "creates the impression that the abuse by managers was structural in nature”. One of the managers was sentenced by the court to 3,5 years in prison for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl.

At the SOS Children's Village, investigators said, there was "too little supervision, monitoring and enforcement," and indications of abuse were "not taken seriously enough" by the humanitarian organization.

On February 01, 2023,a Polish-Swedish seminar was held at the Institute of Justice. The subject of the seminar was legal regulations and practice concerning intercountry adoptions of Polish citizens to Sweden. The Swedish delegation was presided by Professor Anna Singer, the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Uppsala University, also appointed as Inquiry Chair by the Swedish government, Ministry of Health and Social Affairs to investigate the issue of intercountry adoptions.

The Swedish delegation, apart from Professor Singer, comprised of other members of the Committee in the person of: Tina Nilsson, Pernilla Krusberg and Anders Tordai. The Polish party was represented by the employees of the Institute of Justice: professor Marcin Wielec, the Director of IWS, professor Paweł Sobczyk, the Deputy Director of IWS, employees of the Family Law Section of IWS: professor Elżbieta Holewińska-Łapińska, Dr. Maciej Domański, Dr. Jerzy Słyk, professor Piotr Mostowik, the Head of the Fundamental Rights Section of IWS, and Dr. Bartłomiej Oręziak, the Coordinator of the Center for Strategic Analysis of IWS.

In addition, the seminar was attended by: professor Piotr Fiedorczyk, the Faculty of Law of the University of Białystok and dr hab. Bogusław Lackoroński, the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Warsaw University. In the course of the seminar Professor Elżbieta Holewińska-Łapińska presented Polish regulations on intercountry adoption procedures and practice in the light of file research conducted at the Institute of Justice.

What started as a complaint from the Leithgöb family about the slow progress on their criminal case against the accused, and following the PPU’s involvement, culminated in the police identifying dozens more victims of the alleged scam.

Van den Berg is alleged to have offered services as an adoption social worker, where she would charge prospective adoptive parents, many incapable of having children, for various services in the process to adopt a child. It is alleged that the accused did this, when in fact there was no child to adopt or a child had been offered to the hopeful parents, despite the biological mother not giving consent for adoption. Her alleged offences date back to 2014.

When the PPU took on the case, the police were only investigating a charge of fraud. In a letter in May last year, Adv. Gerrie Nel, head of the PPU, advised the investigating officer on the serious nature of the alleged offences. “We are concerned that more babies have been sold under similar circumstances that the complainant had to endure. The prevalence of such conduct does raise serious consideration that the suspect’s alleged behaviour could be likened to and fall within the ambit of trafficking.

“Furthermore, the suspect seems to be continuing with her devious manipulation because of the vulnerability of childless people. Decisive investigation and action by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority are essential to deal with, what seems to be, a serial fraudster or trafficker of babies,” said Nel.

 

PPU spokesperson, Barry Bateman says Van den Berg preyed on the vulnerability of men and women who yearned to be called mom and dad. “It is alleged that the prospective parents’ were shown pictures of a child they hoped and prayed they would one day adopt, meanwhile the same child was promised to another couple, who were shown the same pictures, and who eventually adopted that child.”

Abstract

Background

Illegal adoption, which mainly includes child trafficking and informal adoption, has long been a prevalent social issue in China. However, the processes and patterns of illegal adoption are not well understood due to the scarcity of data.

Objective

The findings are expected to provide insightful clues for the government and the public to better understand the two categories of illegal adoption.

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Lost between two continents, Priyangika starts a quest to uncover the truth about her adoption.

Adopted from Sri Lanka to Norway at only seven weeks old, Priyangika has always longed for her biological family.

She travels to Sri Lanka to fill in the missing pieces of her identification papers, her family history and her broken heart. But finding her birth mother does not bring her the peace of mind she is searching for. Instead, a need to uncover the secrets of her past leads her to an investigation of the complexity of the international adoption process.

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Revealed: Members of alleged illegal adoption gang that sold babies to Italy keep high-profile jobs despite charges

The alleged ringleader of an illegal network that is accused of selling Armenian children to Italian couples is still working in adoption while on trial, a year-long investigation has discovered.

A joint probe by openDemocracy and Italian investigative website IrpiMedia has found that Anush Garsantsyan is seemingly still involved in arranging adoptions.

And many of her 10 co-defendants – including Armenia’s top obstetrician, a key government official responsible for international adoptions and child welfare workers – also continue to hold senior positions in maternal healthcare and the government.

The news comes four years after a criminal investigation opened into the adoptions of 20 Armenian children between 2015 and 2018, all of whom are said to be alive and living in Italy.

Oxford University research reveals 17,000 out-of-area placements in England can be attributed to the corporate takeover of care

The corporate takeover of children’s care has led to more children moving between short-term, unstable placements far away from their families, according to research.

The Oxford University study – which drew on more than 600,000 care records – revealed 17,000 out-of-area placements in England can be attributed to the outsourcing of care to for-profit providers between 2011 and 2022.

The research, to be published on Monday, also shows growing private involvement in care provision has disrupted the lives of vulnerable children, with higher rates of outsourcing linked to higher rates of placements breaking down within two years, which is regarded as a benchmark of stability by the government.

“Our analysis shows that for-profit outsourcing is consistently associated with more children being placed out of area and placement instability,” said the study’s co-author Dr Anders Bach-Mortensen from Oxford’s Department for Social Policy and Intervention and Roskilde University. “Over the last decade, we see that these outcomes have deteriorated or stagnated while for-profit outsourcing have increased.”

Andrea Eaton officially adopted Maya from orphanage in August 2022; now living in Ghana awaiting citizenship

Nine months after receiving her daughter's official adoption papers from Lagos State in Nigeria, Andrea Eaton of Tillsonburg, Ont., is still waiting to bring her daughter, Maya, home.

It's not an unfamiliar story — Canada has a track record of delaying entry to adopted Nigerian children. It's a problem advocates say is inexcusable and contravenes Canada's international and domestic commitments to children.

"I've missed — we both have — family events, Christmas, my parents have my dogs, my house is vacant," said Eaton who now lives in Accra, Ghana with Maya.

AHMEDABAD: Prachi, 12, was surrendered to the court as a five-year-old by her parents following a family feud. Suffering from TB and a rare skin condition - erythroderma or exfoliative dermatitis - she initially lived in a juvenile foster home for three years and then at Missionaries of Charity facility for five years. As her condition leaves her with blackened skin which is hard like 'scales', she was rejected twice as a child for adoption, said foster home officials.
Prachi, however, got third time lucky when she found her family in Manju Goel, a MD (medicine) from Madison, Wisconsin in the US. Manju is already a single mother to two daughters, both adopted. She will welcome Prachi to her family and is likely to fly back to US this week following completion of formalities. The Ahmedabad regional passport office processed Prachi's passport in a day as a special case, said adoption agency officials.
 

The state child protection officers said that family conditions forced the parents of Prachi to surrender her to the court in 2015 when she was four years old. She was first kept in Shishu Gruh at Paldi and later the NGO's facility for children and adolescents. Officials said that as a child Prachi was diagnosed with a lesion of TB for which she has undergone surgeries twice - once in Civil Hospital and another at a private hospital.

Dimple M, a coordinator at Missionaries of Charity, said that while Prachi's TB is under control, her skin condition, attributed to genetic factors, persists.
Prachi was happy to meet her sister, mother
Dimple M, a coordinator at Missionaries of Charity, said, “The condition requires regular moisturizing to avoid the skin from getting too dry and peel off. As the condition affects the upper layer of skin, it also hampers perspiration. Due to her looks, she could not make many friends. The rejection by prospective parents also hurt her somewhere. But her pain vanished when she got to know about her new family – in the US”. Goel also has an interesting story of her own, said NGO officials. She emigrated to the US as a child and lives across the home of her parents. She never got married, but to fulfill her wish to be a mother, she adopted two girls – one from Mumbai and another from Pune over the past 16 years.
The girls are now 20 and 15 years of age. One of the girls accompanied her to India to complete the formalities of adoption at the NGO. “A medical practitioner, she feels closer to orphan children as her father was a probation officer in one such facility in Delhi. It was a wholesome moment as both Manju and Prachi got a member to complete the family. The family has made special arrangements at the Madison residence to welcome her,” said a social worker at the NGO. “Prachi was so happy to meet her sister and mother. A reserved girl, she enjoys the company of close friends. We’re sure that she’ll grow to her full potential with her family.”

A senior official at Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) official in Gujarat said that children with any health conditions or disability find it difficult to get adopted. “The trend indicates that Indian parents often go for the healthier children. Girls are often the first choice. It is mainly adoptive parents from abroad who choose children that need special care,” said the official.