Governments across Europe must apologise for the adoption scandal that took place in the latter half of the 20th Century, and help victims trace their relatives and heritage, writes James P. Axiotis.

When I was just nine months old I was ripped away from my birth mother, just because she wasn't married.

So when I read that a report published by the Joint Committee on Human Rights has recommended that the government apologise to women like my birth mother, it resonated. It reignited in me the frustrations I have at the lack of remorse by governments that allowed this to happen.

Some 185,000 women in 1950s, 60s and 70s Britain were "shamed" and "coerced" into giving up their babies, a committee inquiry found. But that is only half the story. What few people know is that the same was happening across Europe at the same time including in my homeland, Greece.

Governments need to make a collective apology, and to acknowledge the harm they have caused to both mothers and children. They also need to remove barriers facing victims that prevent them from tracing their relatives, as well as do everything they can to help reconnect these lost generations to their roots. We are all victims in this scandal, and the emotional scars are ones that live with us throughout our lives.

When Cristina Prisco, 42, was growing up as an adopted only child in the Bronx, she always had a clear idea of where she came from — or so she thought.

“There wasn’t really a day that went by that I didn’t think about where I was born and how my story started,” Prisco told The Post exclusively.

Her supposed origin story, long accepted by Prisco and her adoptive parents, was that she had been born to a poor woman in Chile. The birth mother couldn’t afford to raise her baby herself, so she gave Cristina up to a Catholic orphanage.

Prisco’s adoptive father, Benito Zagaglia, travelled to Chile in the spring of 1980, using an Italian passport to enter the country under Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

He brought his baby home in May of 1980, holding her close the entire 11 hour flight from Chile to New York City where her adoptive mother Ann Marie Zagaglia anxiously awaited. Little did the newly completed family know that their baby was a victim of child trafficking.

Activist Petitions Nigerian Attorney-General Malami From Prison, Seeks Investigation Into Child Trafficking Case Allegedly Involving Retired Judge, Policemen, Others

In a petition signed by Aghogho and obtained by SaharaReporters, the activist alleged that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), State Security Service (SSS), Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficked-In Person (NAPTIP) had the facts of the case but kept mute by “promoting injustice

Ahuman rights activist, Ighorhiohwunu Aghogho, has petitioned the Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami over an alleged child trafficking investigation involving Delta State Government officials, police officers, and a retired chief judge among others.

In a petition signed by Aghogho and obtained by SaharaReporters, the activist alleged that the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB), State Security Service (SSS), Economic and Financial Crime Commission (EFCC), National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), National Agency for the Prohibition of Trafficked-In Person (NAPTIP) had the facts of the case but kept mute by “promoting injustice against children in Delta State.”

He added that the Delta State Commissioner for Justice and Director of Public Prosecution had similar facts but decided to shield the culprits and prosecute him on trump-up charges instead.

A lawyer, Igwe Ifeoma, has been arraigned before Chief Magistrate P.E Nwaka sitting at the Magistrate’s Court, Yaba, Lagos State, on Wednesday, on charges bordering on child trafficking, assault of an 11-year-old girl, Esther Onwa.

Ifeoma is facing six counts of conspiracy to traffic a child, child trafficking, inhuman treatment, unlawful assault, and inflicting bodily injuries.

The charges read in part, “That you, Barrister Igwe Ifeoma, on the said date, time and place, in the aforesaid Magisterial District, did take away one Esther Onwa, 11, in order that she would be held or treated as a slave or servitude under your custody.

“That you, Barrister Igwe Ifeoma, on the said date, time and place, in the aforesaid Magisterial District, did unlawfully assault one Esther Onwa, 11, by repeatedly inflicting various degrees of bodily harm on her ears, left eyes, her back, neck, laps, buttocks, and other parts of her body.

“That you, Barrister Barrister Igwe Ifeoma, on the said date, time and place, in the aforesaid Magisterial District, did grievous harm to one Esther Onwa, 11, by injuring her in her eyes with a wire capable of rendering her permanently blind.”

Ron Federici

On June 26, Washington, D.C. will play host to a reunion of the first children rescued from orphanages in Siret, Romania. The horrific conditions of orphans in Siret and other Romanian institutions were brought to light by a 1990 ABC Turning Point report, “The Lost Souls” and a follow-up in 1997 entitled “Romania: What Happened to the Children.” The exposé launched efforts around the United States to help the neglected and abused children.

The Romanian crisis, which has a long history related to communism and economic turmoil, continues today. Dr. Ronald Federici discussed the current state of orphanages in Romania and other parts of the world, as well as the adoption programs in the United States. Dr. Ronald Federici is a psychologist and founder of several American relief efforts for the Romanian orphans.

He first visited Siret’s orphanages in 1996 as a consultant for the follow-up report. Federici, who has adopted two Romanian orphans, is founder of the American chapter of the Romanian Challenge Appeal. He is also the author of Help for the Hopeless Child: A Guide for Families.

Read the transcript below.

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday emphasised that the child adoption process in India needs to be streamlined as there are three-to-four years waiting period under the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) to adopt a single child while there are "lakhs and lakhs of orphan children waiting to be adopted".

The top court had earlier also termed the process as "very tedious" and said that there is an urgent need for the procedures to be "streamlined".

A bench of Justices DY Chandrachud, AS Bopanna, and JB Pardiwala told Additional Solicitor General KM Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, "There are a lot of young couples waiting to adopt the child but the process is so tedious that it takes three to four years to get a single child to be adopted through the CARA. Can you imagine a three to four years period to adopt a child in India? It should be made simpler. There are lakhs and lakhs of orphan children waiting to be adopted".

Nataraj said that the government is seized of the issue and sought six weeks to come up with a reply to a plea filed by an NGO seeking to simplify the process of child adoption in the country.

The bench asked Nataraj to ask someone responsible from the Ministry of Child Development to hold a meeting and look into the suggestions of the NGO 'The Temple of Healing' and prepare a report to be filed in the top court.

For years, Celin Fässler believed she knew who her biological mother was. Until she discovers irregularities in her documents. The story of an officially made impossible search for identity.

Celin Fässler's adoption story begins three weeks too early. She was not yet three weeks old when she was brought to her new family in a neighboring community of St.Gallen in 1982 by the adoption agent Alice Honegger and the Sri Lankan lawyer Rukmani Thavanesan. According to the law, the child must be at least six weeks old. It's not the only inconsistency in Fässler's adoption story.

She grows up sheltered, but realizes early on that she is different from most children. And yet she is not the only exotic creature on the playground. Three other children from Sri Lanka are growing up in her family. Other families in the community are also taking in Sri Lankan children. Fässler remembers common occasions. She can no longer say whether the adoptive parents met for friendship or for other reasons. Did they also talk about Alice Honegger's machinations at the time and about the fact that the canton had meanwhile withdrawn her license to broker adoptions? Or about the fact that Celin Fässler's adoption happened at the time when Honegger didn't have permission?

When she is 17, her parents give her the adoption papers. "I asked so many questions back then, I needed that," says Celin Fässler. It contains an address just outside of Negombo, a coastal town north of Colombo that is characterized by fishing and tourism. It is the address of the woman who is listed as the mother on her birth certificate. Back then, in 1999, Fässler knew nothing about baby farms, about the acting mothers who posed as the mothers of these babies to the authorities for money and signed declarations of consent, and about the fact that children were also snatched from their birth mothers from childbirth. To this day she does not know the circumstances under which her birth mother gave her away - voluntarily or involuntarily.

Celin Fässler's Sri Lankan passport

President Joseph R. Biden 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award Presented to Anna Belle Illien, An “Angel in Adoption” Congressional Award Recipient in 2012

ATLANTA--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The United States President Joseph R. Biden 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award, along with the Presidential Volunteer Service Award, is being presented to Anna Belle Illien, Founder and Director of Illien Adoptions International, Inc. and the Founder and Director of Foundation for Our Children, Inc. both 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations serving vulnerable children worldwide, at a ceremony at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, on Friday, August 26th, 2022.

“I am very grateful to President Biden for conferring this prestigious award upon me. I am also grateful to President Biden for standing with Ukraine and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy in defense of the children and people of Ukraine”

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Anna Belle Illien received the Angel in Adoption Award in 2012 from the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute in Washington. DC. She received the Global Achievement Award in 2021 from the Johns Hopkins Hospital Alumni Association.

NCHS Data Brief No. 315, July 2018

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Chinagozi Ugwu, M.P.H., and Colleen Nugent, Ph.D.

Key findings

Data from the National Survey of Family Growth

"More than 1,000 children from Mariupol were illegally given to foreigners in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and in the Altai district" in Siberia, says the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.

Ukraine accused Moscow on Tuesday, August 23 of organizing massive illegal adoptions of Ukrainian children transferred from occupied areas to Russia. "Russia continues to kidnap children from Ukrainian territory and arrange for their illegal adoption by Russian citizens," the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

"More than 1,000 children from Mariupol" , a port city in south-eastern Ukraine that fell into the hands of the Russian army, "were illegally given to foreigners in Tyumen, Irkutsk, Kemerovo and in the district of 'Altai' , in Siberia, the ministry said, citing information released by authorities in Krasnodar, a city in southwestern Russia not far from Ukraine.

More than 300 Ukrainian children are also kept in "special establishments" in the Krasnodar region, he said.

"Deportations"