Adoption from Samoa - lost children

The US adoption agency Focus on Children misled Samoan families, and had their children adopted for the price of 13.000 US dollars each.

Is that a crime? Is that child trafficking?

Not so, according the the US judge who had mercy and gave no prison time:

Prosecutors accused the five of conspiring to arrange adoptions that violated U.S. immigration laws, and alleged the scheme included lying to Samoan birth parents and American adoptive parents. As part of a plea bargain with the U.S. Attorney's Office, all five pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting the illegal entry of an alien, a misdemeanor.
Dozens of felony charges against them were dropped, and prosecutors recommended probation. Wakefield is expected to get the same sentence as the others.
...
U.S. District Judge David Sam instead sentenced the four to five years of probation and ordered them to contribute to a trust fund to help adopted children stay in touch with their birth families. He also ordered the defendants to never engage in the adoption business again.

Stolen and Sold for Adoption

Hearing the disturbing news of children kidnapped for adoption, Australian Julia Rollings followed her heart and traced her adopted children's parents in India. And not only that. She connected both families.

Let's hope more families follow her example.



Stolen and Sold
Broadcast: 24/02/2009

Reporter: Sally Sara



Sabila and Akil with their birth mother Sunama

View promo


What would you do if you discovered your adopted children were stolen and trafficked, and not willingly given up by their parents, as you'd believed?

South Asia correspondent Sally Sara investigates the insidious trade of children in India, and joins an Australian family in their moving search for the truth.

Sara reveals that dozens of Australian families are oblivious to the true background of their adopted youngsters, because of bureaucratic bungling and government ineptitude both here and in India.

It’s a remarkable story that reveals a shocking truth about some overseas adoptions.

We follow the journey of the Rollings family from Canberra.

For ten years Barry and Julia Rollings believed their son Akil and daughter Sabila had been given up willingly by their birth parents in Chennai.

But after hearing suspicions reports about Indian orphanages, they set out to locate the childrens’ birth mother. The news was shocking. Akil and Sabila had been taken from their mother, and sold to an orphanage.

The Rollings have now embraced their ‘Indian family’ as part of their own - Akil and Sabila have ‘two mothers’.

It’s an inspirational story of one family’s courage.

Sally Sara also investigates claims that dozens of trafficked Indian children may have been placed for adoption in Australia - their new parents oblivious to the background of the youngsters.

She speaks to heartbroken couple Fathima and Salya, whose child Jabeen was kidnapped from the streets of Chennai by traffickers. Jabeen was adopted to an Australian couple, and now lives unaware of her background, while her adoptive parents live in anguish.

It’s a story of crime and cover up - its victims both here and in India.

Camera: Wayne McAllister, Geoffrey Lye
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Research: Simi Chakrabarti
Producers: Trevor Bormann, Vivien Altman


Further information

Julia Rollings' blog
"Love Our Way - A Mother's Story"

INSIDE STORY OF AN ADOPTION SCANDAL

With courtesy to United Adoptees International:

NEW PAPER PUBLISHED:

Samford University Cumberland School of Law

INSIDE STORY OF AN ADOPTION SCANDAL

- CUMBERLAND LAW REVIEW - Vol. 39:1 -

BY ARUN DOHLE - Aachen - Germany -

Introduction

In historical terms, intercountry adoptions from India havehad a short run. Within thirty years of its inception, murky scandals of child kidnapping, falsifying paperwork, outright trading, and other tragic stories have ridden these intercountry adoptions. Worldwide, adoption experts widely believed that ratifying the Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-Operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption (1993) would help reduce malpractice in such adoptions. The Convention aims to minimize malpractice in adoption and "prevent the abduction, the sale of, or trafficking in children." But does regulating help in weeding outcases of malpractice? Or does the regulation of intercountry adoptions, because of the strong demand for children, lead to a legalized market for children without effective control? Dutch anthropologist Pien Bos studied the relinquishment process of unmarried mothers in India and came to the startling conclusion that the formal controls in intercountry adoptions are counter-productive:


"I am convinced that these Conventions, Regulations and Guidelinesare not appropriate instruments because they do not address the main concerns. . . . Instead of taking away threats, it takes away transparency and causes a mystification of reality. The more adoption is regulated and monitored, the more politically correct objectives get distanced from daily practices.... The transparency of surrender and adoption procedures is obscured by the taboo on the financial component of adoption."

Generally, receiving countries do not know the details of the scandals taking place in sending countries. The aim of this article is to give the reader an inside view of an adoption scandal and to explain how the system deals with the scandal. Therefore, I will often quote directly from documents gathered from journalists, as well as from High Court proceedings. In order to enable the reader to understand the violations, I will give a short overview of the Indian adoption system and regulations. This article illustrates the scandal surrounding the Indian agency Preet Mandir, as it is the agency that has weathered the most corruption and baby-trade scandals and is reputed to have immense clout with the Indian Government. Consequently, the organization's operations have continued nearly unhampered. Preet Mandir placed 518 children up for adoption during the period from 2004 to 2006, accounting for five percent of all the adoptions carried out by agencies registered with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA). Of these 518 adoptions, Preet Mandir placed 358 children abroad, representing 13 percent of all Indian intercountry adoptions within this period.9 Preet Mandir works with all major receiving countries, many of whom also ratified the Hague Convention.

Complete article can be requested at UAI Research & Development uai.hwestra@gmail.com

http://uai-news.blogspot.com