Profit, not care: The ugly side of overseas adoptions

Date: 2011-06-05

Lax regulation and an endless demand by childless couples in the West has created an often exploitative market in babies born in the developing world

By Laurie Penny
Sunday, 5 June 2011

In rural Nepal, where the going rate for a healthy orphan is $5,000 (£3,000), some 600 children are missing. They were taken by agents who came to the villages promising that they would educate the children and give them a better life in the capital, sometimes for a steep fee. The children never returned. (more…)

----------

The scandal of orphanages in tourist resorts and disaster zones that rent children to fleece gullible Westerners

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk 
By IAN BIRRELL
10th April 2011

As a child welfare expert who has worked amid bullets and bombs in some of the world’s toughest war zones, Jennifer Morgan is not someone easily shaken. But even she admits she was shocked by some of the orphanages she visited recently in Haiti.
‘Outside it is a sunny day. Then you step inside the walls of an orphanage and realise that the children there have been exposed to rapes, severe beatings, emotional and mental trauma,’ she said. It was even more disturbing, she added, than the damaged children she came across amid the deadly mayhem of Darfur.
But perhaps the most troubling thing is that these tragic scenes in Haiti are not unusual. In dozens of places around the world, unregulated orphanages have become a boom business trading off Western guilt. Our desire to help is backfiring in the most dreadful fashion. (more…)

----------

Social Worker Busted For Selling Babies

Source: http://www.newstime.co.za 
Monday, April 04, 2011 | Comments: 3

Social worker Sharon Mushokabanji has been busted for selling orphaned children for adoption, reports Jacques Pauw for the City Press.

Mushokabanji has since been dismissed for fraud after it emerged that she had faked her qualifications and registration with the Council for Social Service Professions. She was found by her employer, Child Welfare, to have charged illegal “adoption fees” ranging between R400 and R6,000. (more…)

----------

After 18 months, adoptions at Pune’s Preet Mandir resume

Published: Saturday, Feb 5, 2011, 10:11 IST
By Bhagyashree Kulthe | Place: Pune | Agency: DNA

A ray of hope has dawned upon a number of orphans in Preet Mandir, whose adoptions had been held up for the last one-and-a-half years. On Thursday, a 2-year-old girl was finally united with her South African adoptive parents, bringing joy all around.

This was the first adoption at Preet Mandir after the Bombay high court’s green signal to resume the process, which had been halted for many months following a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe against the adoption agency. (more…)

----------

After 18 months, adoptions at Pune’s Preet Mandir resume

Published: Saturday, Feb 5, 2011, 10:11 IST
By Bhagyashree Kulthe | Place: Pune | Agency: DNA

A ray of hope has dawned upon a number of orphans in Preet Mandir, whose adoptions had been held up for the last one-and-a-half years. On Thursday, a 2-year-old girl was finally united with her South African adoptive parents, bringing joy all around. (more…)

----------

South African woman waiting to adopt from Preetmandir asks activist to drop her demand for inquiry

Date: 2010-11-05

The president of an NGO called Sakhee on Wednesday allegedly received a threat call from a South African woman waiting to adopt a baby from city-based Preetmandir. The caller asked the social activist, Anjali Pawar, to discontinue her efforts to ensure an investigation into whether the children waiting for adoption at Preetmandir were indeed destitute.

Unpleasant experience: Anjali Pawar, president of NGO Sakhee, says she got the call on Wednesday evening

Pawar said the woman who called from South Africa introduced herself as Linda Ganess and repeatedly made abusive remarks over the phone. The woman was upset over the fact that Pawar had demanded an inquiry into the destitute status of each and every one of the 17 children waiting for adoption at Preetmandir, which has been under a cloud for some months over its adoption system. (more…)

----------

Irish couples may adopt from three new countries

The Irish Times – Monday, September 13, 2010

CAROL COULTER, Legal Affairs Editor

IRISH COUPLES will be able to adopt children from Bulgaria, South Africa and Thailand through administrative agreements being discussed by the Adoption Board under the new Adoption Act, The Irish Times has learned.

These are the first agreements being sought under the new Act.

This follows a year in which adoptions from Vietnam, the country supplying the largest number of children for adoption into Ireland, were suspended in the light of a critical report on Vietnam’s adoption procedures from Unicef’s international social service. (more…)

----------

At last, dad is allowed to take Baby T home

Source: www.iol.co.za 
Date: 2008-12-11

Events have taken a bizarre twist after The Star first published an article about Jose Williams and his plight, in which the magistrate handling his daughter’s case denied that the infant had ever been the subject of any adoption proceedings and refused to comment any further.

The Star had simultaneously also asked Abba Adoptions manager Katinka Pieterse to confirm or deny that the magistrate in question, Sarie Snyman, had previously travelled overseas with Abba. She declined to do so and suggested that “you follow that up with her”. (more…)

----------

Williams case has twist

Date: 2008-12-11

At last, dad is allowed to take Baby T home

Falsely accused of being an abusive and mentally unstable drug addict, Jose Williams nearly lost his baby daughter to an adoption to which he was fiercely opposed.

But the 26-year-old refused to give up on his first-born child and, after the claims made against him by his baby’s mother and the Abba Adoption agency were shown to be baseless, he won his nearly nine-month-long battle to obtain custody of the little girl on Wednesday. (more…)

----------

Adoption on hold over licence

Taschica Pillay
Published:Nov 09, 2008

 A childless Gauteng couple’s wish to give a Mumbai toddler a home has been dashed by bureaucratic bungling.
The wife and husband are among 20 couples waiting to adopt children from India.
The couple, who have been married for 12 years, had expected to make a home for the child in August, but ran into trouble when the local adoption organisation’s licence lapsed.
They started the process in February 2007 after failing to find a child locally. “ There were no Indian babies available, which is why we tried the Indian way,” the husband said.
The director of adoptions in the Department of Social Development, Tebogo Mabe, said the agency’s licence with the Central Authority of India had expired and the adoption was put on hold pending renewal of the licence. The department had asked Indian authorities to fast-track the process. (more…)

----------
« Older Entries