Mother Teresa was canonised for her work with the poor, but a compelling new series claims there was a MUCH darker side to the nun... and asks: Was she a saint or sinner?

Sky documentary claims Mother Teresa covered up the worst excesses of church

Doctor Jack Preger worked with her charity, and was shocked by what he saw

Woman who worked with her for two years says she was 'schizophrenic' because she thought 'being poor like Jesus was good'

She was able to stop wars, befriend presidents, build a global empire of orphanages and have sick prisoners released from prison. Yet Mother Teresa also covered up for the worst excesses of the Catholic church and seemed more attracted to poverty and pain than actually helping people escape it.

The drama surrounding the adoption of the stateless Ukrainian orphan Bridget has come to an end. The six-year-old from Zaporizhzhia has now been able to leave the country after her American adoptive parents braved the war to come get her.

They are sitting in the Pink Flamingo, a diner with red upholstered seats and walls plastered with photos of cars from the 1950s. A married couple from Maryland is sitting across from a six-year-old girl and a woman with red hair. The girl and the woman are from Zaporizhzhia, some 450 kilometers east of Kyiv.

The man from Maryland is trying to teach the girl a bit of English. He picks up the saltshaker and says: "Salt. Salt." The girl grabs for the shaker and says in Russian: "Give it to me."

The man grabs the bottle of ketchup. Ketchup is called ketchup everywhere. The girl says: "Ketchup."

The man says: "Yeah, bud."

SINGAPORE - The four-year-old girl was abused by her stepfather and later ostracised by both her parents, but her mother refused to let her be adopted by another family.

The girl had been placed in the care of foster parents to remove her from her abusive stepfather. When she finally went home, the physical abuse stopped but the couple began to shun her and favour the two children from their new marriage.

Ms Ng Kwai Sim, centre head of Heart@Fei Yue, a child protection specialist centre, said they asked the mother to place the child for adoption for her safety and psychological well-being.

"The birth mother rejected the option (of adoption) for fear that she would be seen by her family and friends as a lousy mother," Ms Ng said.

"The lack of a stable home environment and a secure caregiver often result in a child feeling rejected. Many of these children have difficulty forming trusting relationships with others," she added.

In what the judge described as a "historic" case, a woman has been found guilty of sexual assault after poking holes in her partner's condoms without his knowledge or consent.

A court in western Germany found a woman guilty of sexual assault and handed her a six-month suspended sentence for purposefully damaging her partner's condoms, German media reported.

In handing down the ruling, the judge said the unusual case was one for Germany's legal history books — representing an instance of criminal "stealthing," but this time carried out by a woman.

What happened in the case?

The ruling was handed down at a regional court in the western German city of Bielefeld, local newspaper Neue Westfälische and the mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The boy dropped the log as he finished another lap, earning five seconds of rest as he made his way through the yard “carrying wood.”

He fought his way through mud and slush left over from a late-season storm that had dumped nearly a foot of snow on his tiny eastern Wisconsin town. Each step was a struggle.

Five minutes of trudging. Then 10. Fifteen.

Every five minutes or so, he fell as he labored along a trail that ran a little longer than a football field. Sometimes he landed on his back, causing the wood he was carrying, a 44½-pound tree trunk weighing almost as much as he did, to force the breath from his chest.

Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. Thirty.

Sumi Kasiyo (48) was almost six when she was adopted. For years she was angry with her biological mother, who had given up her and her sister. Yet she sought her out in 2014. “I hoped she had missed me. But she asked if she could have my jewelry and the clothes I was wearing.”

Adopted

“I used to always watch Spoorloos. I especially liked the stories of adoptees who were reunited with their biological family after so many years. Because I was adopted from Indonesia myself, I felt very sorry for them. At the same time, it was also confronting, because I knew that a reunion with my own biological mother would never take place. I didn't need to see her anymore. Why would I? When I was five, she had handed over me and my sister, Suyatmi, three years her senior, promising to pick us up later.

I waited for her for weeks. Even when my sister and I were in the Netherlands, I missed my mother terribly. But no matter how much I cried, she didn't come for us. I felt pushed aside. It led to many fits of anger and a severe identity crisis. Why didn't my mother want me? And who was I really: Sumiatin, the name my parents gave me when I was born? Or Petra, the name I went by since my adoption?

As young as I was, I was determined to forget about my birth mother. But after my sister tracked down our mother in Indonesia in 2005, it started to gnaw at me: I wanted to go back to my homeland and see my mother. Maybe I finally got the answers I've longed for. Well, things went a little differently…”

There are claims that thousands of disabled Ukrainian children have been forgotten and abandoned in institutions that can’t look after them.

The human rights organisation, Disability Rights International, has carried out an investigation and found children with severe disabilities tied to beds in overrun children’s homes unable to cope.

The BBC has been given exclusive access to an institution in western Ukraine, where disabled children from the east have been left by their carers who fled to neighbouring countries.

Reporting by Dan Johnson

Filmed by Jonathan Dunstan

“Adoptees are told to just be grateful that we were chosen. And yet so many of us are struggling.”

When Alé Cardinalle first met her biological mother and siblings, she was surprised by how familiar their love felt. Born in Brazil, Cardinalle was adopted by a New Jersey couple when she was an infant. On the eve of her 28th birthday, Cardinalle found and contacted her birth mother on Facebook, and the two women arranged a reunion in Brazil.

The flight to Brazil tested Cardinalle’s nerves. She was traveling thousands of miles to visit a home full of strangers in a country she did not remember. “But my mother pulled me into her house and pulled me onto her couch and into her lap, even though I was probably almost twice her size,” Cardinalle tells Teen Vogue, laughing. “She looked at my fingers and looked at my toes and, like, it was just so primal to me. Like how you would look at your baby.”

More family members poured into the living room, half-siblings, and a stepfather who all greeted Cardinalle breathlessly between hugs. “It was just such an abundance of love,” she recalls.

Later, Cardinalle asked the question that had burdened her for entire adult life: Why did her birth mother choose adoption?

Recently, the apex court issued a notice in a matter seeking simplification of the adoption process in India. The current laws pertaining to adoption make it difficult for couples or individuals to adopt orphans and provide them a better life.

The Supreme Court last month issued a notice in a matter seeking simplification of the adoption process in India. A bench, comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant, heard the petition in which the counsel for the petitioner highlighted the ground reality with respect to the adoption process in India and the kind of impact it has had on the country over a period of time.

The petition and the apex court’s notice was long overdue. Laws pertaining to the adoption process in the country has definitely made it difficult for couples or individuals trying to adopt orphans and provide them a better life. This despite the fact that the treatment and facilities for orphans is woeful and open to abuse and mistreatment.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, Section 2(42), defines an orphan as a child:

(i) Who is without biological or adoptive parents or legal guardian; or

Patrick Stuebing, from Leipzig, is continuing his fight to make incest legal

Was adopted as a child and didn't meet his sister Susan Karolewski till his 20s

Started having sex a month after meeting and now have four children together

Previously speaking of relationship, Patrick said they 'do not feel guilty' about it

By HARRIET JOHNSTON FOR MAILONLINE