By Ashley Albert

Special To The Medium

My name is Ashley Albert and I am a Parent Leader. I want to raise awareness about a federal law that has devastated Black, Indigenous and People of Color’s (BIPOC) children and families. The Adoption Safe Families Act (ASFA), written by Former Senator and current President Joe Biden, was passed in 1997 by the Clinton Administration. Its intent was to improve the safety of children, and to not leave children lingering in foster care. It promoted adoptions and other permanent homes for children.

Under ASFA, states receive millions of dollars for exceeding the average number of adoptions their states complete in specified years. But this provides different outcomes for different families. To further promote adoptions, ASFA stipulates that courts can terminate the rights of birth parents whose children are in foster care within two years. This controversial provision within this law is called the “15-22 rule”. If a child has been in foster care for 15 out of 22 months, states must move to terminate the biological parents’ rights. This mandate hinders birth parents from regaining their parental rights even when they are in positions to provide a safe, permanent home environment for their children.

This law, and how it is carried out, disproportionately moves children from lower-income families of color to middle and upper-income White families, which destroys the former for the benefit of the latter, and harms both the individuals and the communities involved. In 2016, I was told to sign an open adoption agreement in order to maintain a relationship with my kids. I was told that if I didn’t sign the papers that I would never see my kids again. I signed the papers on January 5, 2016 in hopes of maintaining a relationship with my children. I went to court to enforce and modify the open adoption agreement, and successfully won. However, it took one year and eleven months before I would be able to see my children again. At the same time, I found out that my daughter’s name had been changed, which, according to the original agreement, they were not supposed to do. Before signing the papers, I noted two things I wanted written in the Open Adoption Agreement. 1. DO NOT CHANGE THE CHILDREN’S NAMES! 2. To have visitation. I have been having a hard time getting support to have the adoptive mom abide by the order. I would have never signed the agreement if my kid’s names were going to be changed. I felt betrayed because I only relinquished my constitutional rights to parent on the specific condition that my child’s name would not be changed. My rights were violated when the name was changed and visits withheld. There is no accountability or responsibility to the harm my family and I have suffered because of this. King County Superior Court found there to be a breach of contract by the adoptive mom and other parties, and allowed me to file a tort claim with the state of Washington against the Dept. of Children, Youth and Families for violating my constitutional rights as a parent. I filed a claim in January 2021, but to date, I have received little or no support from state agencies that I believed were supposed to help people in my situation.

Someone dims the lights, and an old video clip begins to roll. In a dank room, dozens of children with shaved heads crouch naked in puddles of urine, fight over a bucket of gruel, lie tethered to radiators. One little girl’s leg juts up at a grotesque angle; she uses her hands to scoot across the wet floor. Several kids rock back and forth or hit their heads against the wall.

The footage is not easy to watch, even for those who remember seeing it on television more than two decades ago. The Berlin Wall had just fallen, and Eastern Europe’s communist dictatorships were rapidly collapsing. A few months after the execution of Romania’s leader, Nicolae Ceausescu, in 1989, Western journalists discovered a desperate underworld of abandoned children warehoused in unheated orphanages.

Around 180,000 were estimated to be living this way, and seeing them on ABC’s “20/20” spurred thousands of Americans to rush to save Romania’s forgotten children.

Some of those Americans are sitting here on an October afternoon in 2012, at the Homewood Suites hotel in Davidson, N.C., along with the Romanian children they adopted. Now in their teens and early 20s, these adoptees are too young to remember much of their home country.

But one person in the room remembers.

In this report, Deji Lambo writes on the tortuous journey of a mother of three, Fortune Obhafuoso; her failed plan to make her life better through surrogacy; and other risky episodes that culminated in a policeman allegedly conniving with yet-to-be-identified persons to pay her N185,000 after collecting her newborn against her will

Fortune Obhafuoso, 35, was embittered as she gave an account of how her day-old child was taken from her at a Lagos State police formation where detectives investigating high-profile criminal cases are domiciled.

The mother of three said after the baby was taken, a policeman, Samuel Ukpabio, threatened her never to return for the child.

Afterward, she was conciliated with N15,000 and thrown out.

“All I want is my baby; I gave birth to him around 12.30am on Friday, December 23, 2022, and immediately named him Joseph. I only breastfed him once because, on the same day I gave birth to him, I was arrested and taken alongside my three children to the State Criminal Investigation Department, Panti, Yaba, Lagos State.

Since a few months you can again adopt a child from abroad in the Netherlands. That child will have a promising life here, but what does the adoption actually do to someone's identity? We ask influencer Lara Mallo (34), she was adopted as a baby from Brazil and made the YouTube series Looking for Lara in which she goes in search of where she comes from. “I couldn't find inner peace.”

At the age of one, Lara Mallo (34) from São Paulo was adopted by a Dutch family. She grew up in Het Gooi, where she was bullied as a child because she looked different from her classmates. Although she has actively searched for her biological parents, it has yielded little to this day.

Hey Lara, thank you for sharing your story. When did you find out you were adopted?

“I never really realized I was a different color because I always felt white. Just like my adoptive parents. But at the age of four, classmates already showed that they thought I was 'dirty' because I have a different skin color than them. As a child I didn't understand that. I thought: why am I brown and my parents are white? Then my parents explained to me that they adopted me because my biological parents could not take care of me. They said it honestly and directly, without making a fuss.”

What was it like growing up in your adoptive family?

MUMBAI: Hindus who have always wanted to adopt a girl even though they already have a daughter can now do just

that. The Hindu adoption law prohibits same gender adoptions but, in a landmark judgment this week, the Bombay High

Court has thrown open the legal doors to allow Hindus adopt a child of the same gender as their existing one.

In the verdict, the HC allowed a recent petition by Mumbai-based actor couple (names withheld on request) to be legally

declared as adoptive parents of a girl they had taken in as their ward over four years ago under the Juvenile Justice Act.

Born and abandoned in Mumbai, reborn in Sweden, Erika Sandberg says she is Indian on the outside, but feels Swedish on the inside.

Rediff.com's Vaihayasi Pande Daniel narrates her tale.

Illustration: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com

In August 1976, a Swissair jet flew out of the monsoon skies of Bombay, due west, with a precious little bundle onboard.

The Boeing was headed for Zurich. In Switzerland probably another air hostess took careful charge of this special delivery as she boarded a flight headed to Stockholm.

The Bombay High Court on Tuesday granted interim stay on transfer of pending adoption matters to the District Magistrates and directed the courts to continue with adjudication in such cases.

The division bench of Justice G. S. Patel and Justice S. G. Dige also issued notice to the Attorney General for India in a writ petition challenging the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2021 to the extent that the word ‘Court’ is replaced with ‘District Magistrates’.

The court listed the petition for final disposal on February 14, 2023, at 2.30 pm.

“While considering interim relief, we must bear in mind the primary objective which is the interest of the children and infants who are to be adopted whether these are domestic or foreign adoptions. The concerns of the adoptive parents are also involved," the court said.

The court further said that if the petition succeeds, any orders passed by the District Magistrates will immediately become vulnerable.

The court says there is no harm if the existing system of courts handling adoption cases continues till the next day of hearing, February 14, and rejects the argument that the amendment was required to avoid delays in the disposal of the adoption matters.

The Bombay High Court has directed the central and state government not to transfer pending adoption proceedings to district magistrates, as mandated under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Amendment Act 2021, till the next hearing on a challenge to the Act’s provisions allowing the DMs to issue adoption orders.

The high court said that till the plea is disposed of, the courts currently having such matters on their record and file should continue with the proceedings. “The safer and more prudent course of action would be to allow all the matters to be placed before a single-judge bench of the high court which is assigned to hear such matters… Those orders may continue to be passed until the challenge is finally decided,” it said Tuesday.

The court also stayed the effect and implementation of a September 30, 2022, letter issued by the commissioner of the Women and Child Department asking all courts to transfer adoption cases to district magistrates.

A bench of Justices G S Patel and S G Dige passed the interim order on a writ petition filed by advocates Nisha Pandya and Pradeep Pandya, residents of Kandivli, that challenged the constitutional validity of the 2021 amendment. The petitioners claimed that because of the amendment, which replaced “court” with “District Magistrate”, the adoption procedure would be overseen by the DM, who is an executive officer. The procedure had since 2006 been entrusted to the judiciary, they said, claiming that the amendment was made without any logical reason.

MORE than three weeks have passed since the arrest of eight Croatian citizens, i.e. four married couples in Zambia, allegedly on suspicion of child trafficking. The indictment has not yet been filed, and the key circumstances of the case are still not known to the public.

Based on reports from the local and Zambian media and statements from Croatian institutions, we know that four married couples from Croatia came to Zambia to adopt children from the Congo and that the Zambian police arrested them in the town of Ndoli together with the children, who were handed over to a social welfare institution. .

According to a statement by the Police Chief of the Copperbelt Province, Peacewell Mweemba, a preliminary investigation indicates that the adoption documents issued by Congo "are not authentic", local media reported.

Zambian police said they received a tip-off on December 6 that three white men had booked rooms at a guest house in Ndola, after which immigration officials, with the help of police, tracked down the suspects, who were accompanied by children of Congolese origin between the ages of one and three. They were arrested a day later at Simon Mwansa Kapwepwe International Airport.

The local police announced their identity, which caused great public interest and calls from various right-wing politicians and portals, from the Vice President of the Zagreb City Assembly from the Homeland Movement Igor Peternel to the Narod.hr portal Željka Marki?.

Directing CARA to issue an NOC within 30 days to an NRI couple for adoption

of a child, the Delhi High Court in a ruling said the application being prior to

the coming into force of Adoption Regulations, 2022, the "adoption would not

be strictly required to be dealt with in the procedure prescribed in the said

Regulations."