A peek inside international adoption: March 2012

Are short stay homes hand in glove with adoption centres?

Activists smell 'baby booking' racket as authorities seek explanation from SOFOSH and short stay home Chaitanya Mahila Mandal upon finding pregnant 15-yr-old under care of adoption centre worker at Sassoon General Hospital

The Women and Child Development department has sought an explanation from the Society of Friends of Sassoon Hospital (SOFOSH), an adoption centre, and the Chaitanya Mahila Mandal, a short stay home, after it found a 15-year-old physically challenged pregnant girl was being looked after by a caretaker from SOFOSH during her hospitalisation at Sassoon.

For remaining article:http://www.mid-day.com/news/2012/jan/310112-pune-Are-short-stay-homes-hand-in-glove-with-adoption-centres.htm

Coerced adoption: Salvation Army launches review of maternity homes that housed unwed mothers

The Salvation Army says it is conducting an internal review into its historic maternity homes, just as a retired Calgary judge — who was once a high-ranking child welfare worker in the city — has come forward and corroborated some of the claims mothers have recently made about coercive adoption practices directed at unmarried mothers decades ago.

‘These people thought they were doing good – they thought these girls were sluts. They thought they were rescuing these children from a life of poverty,” said Herbert Allard, a former social worker, who said he was prompted to speak out upon reading the National Post’s story on forced adoptions over the weekend.

“At the time, I was divorced from the reality … It upset me in a way, but it’s just what went on.”
His account appears to confirm the coercion was systematic: He said the Salvation Army accepted teen mothers into their maternity homes on the condition they would surrender their baby, city social workers purposefully withheld information about revoking the adoption or the option of temporary wardship, and that unmarried mothers were punished in a Salvation Army hospital for getting pregnant out of wedlock.

For remaining article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/coerced-adoption-salvation-army-launches-review-of-maternity-homes-that-housed-unwed-mothers/

Your baby is dead: Mothers say their supposedly stillborn babies were stolen from them

Sheri Sexton says her mother was told her younger sister was stillborn, but Ms. Sexton believes her sibling was actually adopted out. Ms. Sexton believes her own adoption is suspicious, too, partly because she says her adoptive grandmother was her natural mother’s nurse. She also said the same doctor is listed on both hers and her stillborn sister’s hospital records.

This is how the woman, then young, remembered the August day in 1963 on which she gave birth to her illegitimate daughter: She was in an Edmonton hospital; the doctor ordered she receive an injection. She blacked out, and when she started to come to, a male voice said: “knock her out.”
She claimed she woke up sometime later and was told she had given birth to a girl, but the baby had died.

Her baby girl did not die, though. She was adopted by a married couple.

“I never wanted to give up any child of mine for adoption,” the Edmonton mother swore in an affidavit before her recent death. “I went through my entire life believing that the baby I carried in 1963 had died…. I believe that I was lied to and my baby was stolen from me.”

For remaining article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/23/your-baby-is-dead-mothers-say-their-supposedly-stillborn-babies-were-stolen-from-them/

Meet the Parents: The Dark Side of Overseas Adoption

A Midwestern kid's family believes his birth parents put him up for adoption. An Indian couple claim he was kidnapped from them and sold. Who's right?

Prior to 2002, for instance, Peterson had sent upwards of $150,000 to an Indian orphanage called Preet Mandir. The conditions were terrible—three babies died there while awaiting clearance for adoption by Peterson's clients. And when orphanage director J. Bhasin began illegally demanding thousands of dollars above and beyond the usual donation, and would not relinquish the children without the payments, Peterson severed the relationship. (She later filed a complaint about Preet Mandir and its director with the Indian government.)

Four years later, reporters from Indian TV news network cnn-ibn approached Preet Mandir posing as adoptive parents, and Bhasin told them they could buy two children for $24,000. The resulting story led to revocation of the orphanage's adoption license, but the Indian government has since reinstated it on a probationary basis. "The profit motive exists on both sides," Peterson says. "One American agency I worked with just wanted to know that I could get them a certain number of babies a year, and wasn't concerned with where they came from."

For remaining article:
http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/meet-parents-dark-side-overseas-adoption?page=3

Victims of Spanish baby-theft policy demand probe

Victims of a baby-stealing policy approved by Spanish General Francisco Franco's dictatorship have filed a formal demand for an investigation into more than 260 cases.
An association fighting for the stolen children and their families, Anadir, presented the demand at the Madrid attorney general's office with evidence including DNA tests and testimony from nurses who admitted stealing babies.

The demand was made on behalf of the victims and families of 261 snatched babies. Anadir lawyer Enrique Vila said many others are expected to join the complaint.

"We get more and more calls from people who have doubts about their origins, because they have no physical resemblance with their parents or grandparents, or because their parents had them at an advanced age and they are single children," he said.

Anadir estimates there could be as many as 300,000 cases during the 1939-75 dictatorship and up to the end of the 1980s.

For remainingn article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/8287586/Victims-of-Spanish-baby-theft-policy-demand-probe.html

Spanish woman reunited with daughter after 44 years

A Spanish woman has been reunited with the daughter who was stolen from her as a newborn baby 44 years ago.

Manuela Polo is one of hundreds of women who were told their babies died shortly after birth when in fact they were taken and given to childless couples in a stolen baby scandal dating back to the Franco era that has only recently come to light.

The 79-year old from Galicia never fully believed that her seventh child had died shortly after she gave birth in a hospital in La Coruna and after a long search and a DNA test she finally met her daughter last week.

Mrs Polo was told that she had a baby boy and held him only briefly before he was whisked away by doctors who later said he had died. Her husband was shown a tiny coffin meant to contain the corpse.

But the baby, a girl, had been sold to a couple unable to have children of their own. The child was brought up in Valencia with the name Maria Jesus Cebrian, who began the search for her birth mother 12 years ago.

For remaining article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/spain/9173420/Spanish-woman-reunited-with-daughter-after-44-years.html

Tribe takes control of child welfare from state

KINGSTON, Kitsap County — Jessie Scheibner's eyes cloud with tears and her voice trembles as she talks about the day, almost 70 years ago, when a stranger's car pulled up to her parents' home on the Port Gamble S'Klallam Reservation and took her and her two sisters away.

The memories of that car ride when she was 3 and the years spent in one foster home after another are hazy. Foster care was difficult enough, but Scheibner, now 72, clearly recalls being ashamed of her dark hair, brown skin and Native American roots as she bounced from home to home off the reservation.

for remaining article:
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2017861071_portgamble29m.html#.T3Qdm0F6Euk.facebook

Angelina begs Pax's birth mum: Please don't take my boy

The actress breaks down as Pax’s biological mother asks for his return.
Dwarfed by the two oversized teddy bears they were carrying, Zahara and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt giggled and stumbled their way through LA airport last week. But their superstar mother couldn’t even crack a smile. Angelina Jolie looked tense and exhausted after their flight from Amsterdam. Now Woman’s Day can reveal it wasn’t the long-haul journey with two young children that had the mum-of-six seemingly shattered...

For remainin article:
http://womansday.ninemsn.com.au/celebrityheadlines/8440206/angelina-jolie-begs-paxs-birth-mum-please-dont-take-my-boy

Meet Pax Jolie & Pitt's Birth Mother – Who is still alive

Talking of weird childhoods, some of the Brangelina offspring were out in New Orleans on Sunday. Wildman Pax- the 8-year-old son of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt was dancing in the streets and joined by mom Jolie, 36, and siblings Zahara, 7, and Vivienne, 3. I touched before on the shady adoption of Maddox, who probably isn’t even an orphan and was part of a human trafficking operation in his native Cambodia. And, like Zahara and Maddox, Pax isn’t an orphan either and still has family – including a mother, aunts, uncles and grandparents back in Vietnam...

For remaining article:
http://bohomoth.com/2012/03/12/celebrity-meet-pax-jolie-pitts-birth-mother-who-is-still-alive/

Fly Away Home

Last year Foreign Correspondent exposed deep flaws and appalling practices in the international adoption industry operating in Ethiopia and the United States. Our story Fly Away Children generated a massive viewer response, triggered an industry investigation in the US and propelled the American media to probe the system. CBS News recently broadcast an investigation into the activities of an American adoption agency at the centre of Fly Away Children.

Fly Away Children drew an extraordinary response and demonstrated a deep concern about the way some international adoption agencies are operating and dramatically affecting the aspirations of many Australians looking to adopt overseas.

Our story unearthed a great deal but we knew there was so much more to examine, so much cause for concern and urgent reform...
For remaining article:
http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2834100.htm

Adopted or abducted?

Most women describe giving birth to a child as a life changing experience – in a word – “challenging”, “joyous”, “miraculous.” But generations of young, unwed women describe their experience of giving birth to a child as a nightmare – and decades later their suffering has yet to end.

From Australia to Spain, Ireland to America, and as recent as 1987, young mothers say they were “coerced”, “manipulated”, and “duped” into handing over their babies for adoption. These women say sometimes their parents forged consent documents, but more often they say these forced adoptions were coordinated by the people their families trusted most...priests, nuns, social workers, nurses or doctors.

Last month, a Dan Rather Reports producer and crew were in Canberra, Australia as Parliament released the findings of an 18-month-long investigation revealing illegal and unethical tactics used to convince young, unmarried mothers to surrender their babies to adoptive homes from the late 1940s to the 1980s. And we interviewed some of the victims -- adoptees and mothers separated at birth.
For remaining article:
http://news.yahoo.com/forced-adoptions-for-unwed-mothers-around-the-globe.html

Korea to Haiti: Lessons in Overseas Adoption Corruption

Arrested by Haitian authorities for trying to cross illegally into the Dominican Republic with 33 so-called orphaned children, whose parents were later found to be alive, U.S. citizens and Idaho Baptist missionaries Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter remain imprisoned in Port-au-Prince pending investigation of alleged child trafficking. Seeking to save the children in the wake of Haiti’s earthquake, Silsby and Coulter intended to place the children for adoption in the United States with Christian families despite Haitian law, which requires all adoptions to be finalized in the country. Dr. Jennifer Kwon Dobbs, a Korean adoptee and staff member of Truth and Reconciliation for the Adoption Community of Korea (TRACK), presents how adoption from Korea can offer a perspective about this scandal.

For remaining article:
http://www.conducivemag.com/2010/03/korea-to-haiti-lessons-in-overseas-adoption-corruption-2/

Bought in villages, sold in cities

Maharashtra: Touts of adoption agencies love to tour villages in Maharashtra. Here babies from poor families and from unwed mothers can be bought cheap and then sold at adoption homes as orphans.

"In rural areas in particular, the chances of this happening is quite high. Babies can be found in certain villages in the eight districts of Marathwada and Jalgaon," says Chairman Child Welfare Committee (CWC) Aurangabad, Dr Wankhede.

The CWC in Aurangabad gets approximately 40 abandoned children annually.

CWC member from Solapur Devayani Tumma often gets calls from adoption agencies making a sales pitch for abandoned children. “Adoption agencies call us and tell us to send the babies to their institutions,” she says....

for remaining article

32-year old man commits suicide in creswell home

This newspaper article relates when Harry and Bertha Holt's Korean-born adopted (Joseph Tae Holt) committed suicide in 1984.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1310&dat=19840619&id=X2sVAAAAIBAJ&sjid=keEDAAAAIBAJ&pg=5586%2C4781019

Scandal of 'unqualified' experts who advise our family courts: Decisions about the care of thousands of children routinely flawed

Life-changing decisions about the care of thousands of children are routinely being made on flawed evidence from poorly qualified ‘experts’ in the family courts, a damning study reveals.
More than a fifth of these vital reports are being produced by people who are completely unqualified, the Channel 4 News investigation found.
‘Experts’ used in hundreds of family court proceedings are frequently unqualified or unreliable, the study reveals.
In some cases, reports on parents or children are being given to courts by doctors who have not even seen the individuals concerned.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2114173/Child-care-scandal-The-unqualified-experts-advise-family-courts.html#ixzz1p9mdxQ93

Holt International Makes Millions from Selling Children

As you can see from their report, they have millions in assets and they bring in millions in revenues and they also spend more than they bring in for administration and employees.

They also spend millions on creating beautiful marketing materials of children with their "new" and "improved" families and at the same time totally neglect the poor and vulnerable parents who are now without their children. Many wonder why not offer resources to the struggling family? The answer is 'it does not pay':

click here for annual report

How Competent are the Expert Witness?

Around 20 per cent of psychologists acting as expert witnesses for the family courts are not qualified, according to a Channel 4 News investigation. Social Affairs Editor Jackie Long reports.
For video:
http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid601325122001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAEabvr4~,Wtd2HT-p_Vh4qBcIZDrvZlvNCU8nxccG&bctid=1505203707001

‘The fathers had no say’: Men tell another side of coerced adoption story

As more mothers come forward to push for an inquiry into Canada’s historic adoption practices targeting unmarried women, fathers have emerged to say they, too, were coerced into surrendering their children.
In Sutton, Ont., Raymond Cave said he was never asked to sign a surrender document in 1967, even though the people handling the adoption knew he was the father. In Saskatchewan, Bernard Shepherd said he was only allowed to look at his baby before signing the surrender document, and said he was never told about the option for a temporary wardship so he could take some time to consider raising the child with his mother’s help. And an adoptee remembered how when she contacted her natural father, he had no idea she existed.

for remaining story:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/13/the-fathers-had-no-say-men-tell-another-side-of-coerced-adoption-story/

How Competent are Expert Witnesses

Around 20 per cent of psychologists acting as expert witnesses for the family courts are not qualified, according to a Channel 4 News investigation. Social Affairs Editor Jackie Long reports.

For video:

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid601325122001?bckey=AQ~~,AAAAAEabvr4~,Wtd2HT-p_Vh4qBcIZDrvZlvNCU8nxccG&bctid=1505203707001

Quebec's Catholic Church accused of coercing adoptions

Class action alleges abuses.

MONTREAL - A class-action lawsuit accusing Quebec's Catholic Church of kidnapping, fraud and coercion to force unwed mothers to give up their children for adoption is being organized by one of Canada's highest-profile law firms.

The accusations date back to the 1950s and '60s, when the law firm alleges unwed mothers in maternity homes and hospitals were coerced by social-service personnel and hospital employees, often members of the Catholic Church working for the government, to sign documents giving up their children without being told they had the right to keep them...

Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/life/Quebec+Catholic+Church+accused+coercing+adoptions/6298084/story.html#ixzz1p8gkWnzl

HLN NANCY GRACE: HANNA WILLIAMS: "Where is the media for her murder?"

Hanna Williams was murdered by her Caucasian adoptive parents. Hanna was adopted from Ethiopia and brought to the United States to live a life of torture and pain before being killed. Hanna died May 12, 2011, Mount Vernon, Washington. No one to speak or protect her.

For video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vReMDTprFBE&feature=related

Curtain lifts on decades of forced adoptions for unwed mothers in Canada

Karen Lynn was 19 when her mother sent her to a home for unmarried pregnant women in Clarkson, Ont., in 1963. There, she was known as Karen No. 1 to protect her family’s reputation, and said it was clear she would not have been allowed to stay there if she did not agree to an adoption. A year later, Sharon Pedersen was 20-years-old when she was drugged and tied to her bed during labour and then shown four different babies through the nursery window at a hospital in Victoria, she said.

She ultimately signed adoption papers at the local children’s aid society, she said, but not before social workers held a pen in her hand and threatened to call the police because she was screaming and throwing furniture in protest...
For remaining article:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/09/curtain-lifts-on-decades-of-forced-adoptions-for-unwed-mothers-in-canada/

Babies for sale. South Koreans make them, Americans buy them

by Matthew Rothschild
The Progressive, January 1988

Seoul, South Korea. Five pregnant women sleep on blankets on the tile floor of a small room. They keep their personal belongings in three wooden closets on one wall above their feet. This is home, at least until the babies come. The dormitory is called Ae Ran Won, and it is one of a dozen homes for unmarried women in South Korea. Ae Ran Won can hold fifty pregnant women in its ten rooms, but when I was there in November, it had only thirty-five. These women supply the raw material for a peculiar South Korean business: the export of babies to the United States. U.S. families are adopting 6,000 Korean children a year, most of them infants, at a price of about $5,000 a head.

Korea is by far the largest supplier of foreign babies for the U.S. adoption market; 62 percent of all babies adopted from abroad are South Korean. That amounts to 10 percent of the total adoptions in the United States by families unrelated to the adoptees. Many of the babies come from unwanted mothers' homes, about 250 a year from Ae Ran Won alone. At first, the women do not want to give up their babies. According to the questionnaire that we distribute at the orientation interview, 90 percent want to keep the babies, says Kim Yong sook, the director of Ae Ran Won. But after counseling, maybe 10 per cent will keep them. We suggest that it's not a good idea to keep the baby without the biological father, explains Kim Yong Sook, and if the unwed mother and biological father are too young or too weak financially, we suggest that they give the baby up for adoption. We can't push, we can suggest.

After delivery at a hospital, the baby is taken from the mother and given to one of four adoption agencies licensed by the South Korean government. The agencies then place the baby with a foster mother until an American or European family can be found to adopt it. For some of the Korean mothers, the experience hurts. Just after delivery, they are very upset, says Kim Yong Sook, who was a social worker and an unwed mothers' counselor for eleven years for Holt Children's Services, the largest adoption agency in Korea, before joining Ae Ran Won. They have guilt feelings and avoidance feelings. I'd like to see my baby again, they say. Sometimes they have bad dreams. They miss the baby and have a lot of pain....
For remaining article:
http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/33481

Search a Child, Pay Cash - The Adoption Lobby - Part 1

The Story looks into how the system of intercountry adoption works and how political pressure is applied to ease the business in children.

Link to youtube video:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cf2_N0-Hdss

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Adopted and opened for signature, ratification and accession by General Assembly resolution 44/25 of 20 November 1989
Entry into force 2 September 1990, in accordance with article 49

Preamble
The States Parties to the present Convention,

Considering that, in accordance with the principles proclaimed in the Charter of the United Nations, recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Bearing in mind that the peoples of the United Nations have, in the Charter, reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights and in the dignity and worth of the human person, and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

For remaining article:
http://www2.ohchr.org/english/law/crc.htm

THE PERVERSE EFFECTS OF THE HAGUE ADOPTION CONVENTION *

Excerpt from PDF:

Last year I published the book titled Romania For Export Only, The Untold Story Of The Romanian ‘Orphans’. The book focused on my work for the European Commission in relation to the reform of Romania’s child protection. In this book I describe the facts that led to the moratorium on intercountry adoptions and the pressure to re-open adoptions in Romania. In the media I was quoted as saying that intercountry adoption in fact was legalised child trafficking. This is not a popular statement and many placed me in the anti-adoption camp. I would like to distance myself from pro and anti-adoption labels and direct this discussion back to the heart of the matter: is intercountry adoption a child protection measure, or do children have rights in their own country and is intercountry adoption the ultimate breach of such rights?

For remaining article:
http://s3.amazonaws.com/rcpp/assets/attachments/827_828_EN_original.pdf

Legalising adoptions – food for thought (1)

Excerpt from article:

United Adoptees International (UAI), on their Blog, alert to the fact that the fastest growing Dutch adoption agency NAS is pushing for reopening Haitian adoptions by way of an Internet petition. The Dutch Secretary of State Fred Teeven had decided in December 2010 to temporarily suspend these adoptions. “Due to the limited capacity of the Haitian government, a careful adoption process can not be guaranteed at this time,” He planned a visit to Haiti in March 2011, but that now has been postponed because the new Haitian government is not yet in place.

For remaining article:
http://www.againstchildtrafficking.org/2011/04/legalizing-adoptions-%E2%80%93-food-for-thought-1/

Adoption watchdog suppresses Ethiopia findings

A powerful international adoption overseer is refusing to release the results of its inquiry into the disturbing activities of American adoption agencies operating in Ethiopia.

The inquiry was launched after ABC TV's Foreign Correspondent exposed deep and dangerous flaws in the system.

The Joint Council of International Children's Services (JCICS) says it has completed its probe, but to release its conclusions would not be "appropriate".

Foreign Correspondent's story last year exposed a dysfunctional, largely unregulated adoption industry in Ethiopia, where children were being harvested from families, and mothers claimed they were tricked into surrendering their children.

Tonight's story unearths more disturbing developments: children wrongly portrayed as orphans and children pitched to adoptive families as being as young as seven when in fact they are teenagers.

For remaining article:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-03-02/adoption-watchdog-suppresses-ethiopia-findings/346810

INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION Child Protection or a Breach of Rights?

Author Roelie Post wants to distance herself from pro and anti-adoption labels and direct the discussion back to the heart of the matter: whether intercountry adoption is a child protection measure, if children have rights in their own country, and if intercountry adoption is ultimately a breach of such rights? Post ends with the crucial question: can intercountry adoption be legislated without it leading to a demand-driven child market? Romanian banned intercountry adoptions, Post will describe the experience and the consequences for other countries.

The article:

http://www.conducivemag.com/2009/10/international-adoption-child-protection-or-a-breach-of-rights/

Adoptees deported by US

By Kim Sung-soo

Until 2001, when Korean children were sent to the U.S. for overseas adoption, it was their adoptive parents’ responsibility to naturalize them as U.S. citizens.

In addition, adoption agencies both in Korea and the U.S. were responsible for post-adoption services that should monitor adoptees and their adoptive parents until the children are fully integrated into U.S. society. This is a key principle of overseas adoption...
For remaining article go to:
http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/opinon/2012/03/137_106204.html

American mom who sent Russian boy back loses child support lawsuit in Tennessee

LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — A judge in Tennessee has ruled that an American woman must pay child support for the adopted son she sent back to Russia.

Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell approved a motion on Wednesday for default judgment against Torry Hansen, who has repeatedly failed to appear in court and at depositions.

Hansen was living in Shelbyville in April 2010 when she sent the boy, then 7, to his native Russia on a plane...

For remaining article:
http://www.greenfieldreporter.com/view/story/8e03f88210ea4647b6f6dc5210def0ec/US--Russia-Adopted-Boy/

Fly Away Home

Excerpt from article:
"In this report we hear from the children.
Journee Bradshaw, aged 16: ”I didn’t know that I’m going to stay here, I mean, they never told me that I’m going to have a family that I’m going to stay with and I’m supposed to be their daughter. They never told me that, I just found out when I got here.”

Kate Bradshaw (who adopted Journee) “You can’t imagine the depth of her pain. No one will understand the damage, it was seriously as if someone had ripped the soul out of her body and just left her. It was unbelievable, it was absolutely unbelievable.”

For video and transcript: http://www.abc.net.au/foreign/content/2009/s2834100.htm

Land of Gazillion Adoptees

Welcome to Land of Gazillion Adoptees. The blog is devoted to doing its small part in the important endeavor of highlighting the expertise, accomplishments, programs, projects, and stories of the thousands of Minnesota adoptees and their counterparts living elsewhere in the US and beyond. It aims to be “adoptee-centric” by: challenging the adoption status quo; challenging the traditional adoption narrative; challenging adoptees; and being challenged by all, be the challengers be adoptees or otherwise...

Go to: http://landofgazillionadoptees.com/

Stories from the mothers who had their babies taken away

Stories from the mothers who had their babies taken awayby Amber JamiesonAbout 150,000 babies were put up for adoption in Australia during 1951-1975, the large majority from single, unwed girls and women. The practice of “forced adoptions” involving coercion and institutional policies that encouraged babies to be taken away from their mothers, has been the focus for a Senate committee for the past 18 months.Yesterday the Community Affairs committee tabled it’s final report, Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices, to the Senate yesterday. The committee calls for a formal apology to given by the federal government that identifies that actions and policies that encouraged forced adoptions.The report is largely based on the 418 submissions received from individuals and organisations explaining their own personal experiences of having their babies removed from them. Here is a selection of some of those submissions, which explain just what it was like for a young Australian girl or woman in the 1950s-mid 1970s facing pregnancy as an unwed mother:

What happened when they found out they were pregnant?

for remaining article:
http://www.crikey.com.au/2012/03/01/forced-adoption-stories-from-the-mothers-who-had-their-babies-taken-away/

Doctors had no respect: adoption inquiry

Doctors, nurses and midwives involved in past forced adoption practices showed no respect for the women they cared for, a Senate inquiry into the 20 year-long policy heard Wednesday. The inquiry's report into the treatment of 150,000 unwed mothers who had their babies taken against their will between the 1950s and 1970s took 18 months to assemble - including hours of testimony detailing how the women were treated by healthcare professionals.Committee member and Labor senator Carol Brown said women had been tricked into signing adoption papers and physically shackled to hospital beds.She said the pain of women affected was "unimaginable"...

for remaining article:
http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/doctors-had-no-respect-for-unwed-mothers--adoption

Video of Secretary of State Clinton on international adoption

Judge to Hansen: Appear

Case history

In April 2010, Hansen sent her adopted Russian son back to Moscow alone on a plane with a letter saying he was violent, had psychological problems and that she didn't want him anymore. Since that time, she has refused to cooperate with investigators after the then 7-year-old boy -- identified in court documents as Artem Saveliev -- arrived in Russia. No criminal charges were ever filed, but Hansen's adoption agency, WACAP, filed a lawsuit in May 2010 against Hansen and her mother Nancy, seeking child support in Bedford County, where she was living at the time. The suit was first filed in Circuit Court, then transferred to Juvenile Court, where it was dismissed by Judge Charles Rich last year.

Remaining article here:
http://www.t-g.com/story/1819291.html

Welcome!