The Danger Ahead

That's me in the braids.

By Trace Hentz, Blog Editor

Hi everyone. Do you realize that this blog/website has been here since 2010? 

It's even hard FOR ME to remember all that I wrote and posted. 

There are hundreds of posts from/about the adoptee perspective. There were many adoptees who started writing in the 2000s, posting on blogs, some even writing books. 

It was an avalanche but who was reading? Adoptees mostly. Social Workers/Academics, definitely.

Did it work?

Our intended target was the adoption industry and all the people who planned to adopt a baby. Apparently we failed. We thought people would realize that closed adoption (by strangers) causes harm, trauma, stress, injury and lifelong mental/emotional/physical health issues.  We hoped that people would realize the word "adoption" actually means child trafficking,

We hoped that potential adoptive parents (PAPS) would reconsider adopting newborns/babies.  

We made suggestions like KINSHIP ADOPTION and LEGAL GUARDIANSHIP instead of the archaic closed adoption system.  If a child was a true orphan, with these options at least an adoptee would still have their identity intact. (Yes, there would still be trauma losing birth parents.)

There is also the HISTORY of the Indian Adoption Projects (genocide) HORROR show, as that truth leaked out -- out of that came the book series LOST CHILDREN OF THE INDIAN ADOPTION PROJECTS with Adoptee Voices and history - we had a platform to tell our story.

Here we are in 2022 - we are reentering a NEW dangerous time - some people are listening to adoptees but most are not.  (Twitter apparently replaced the blogs. #AdopteeVoices is their hashtag. #FlipTheScript was also used.)

Adoption is touted the solution since Roe v. Wade was overturned.  

Some are chanting "adopt adopt" - as if all we adoptees worked for since 2005 was ERASED - WIPED OUT!

But adoptees are not silent: we are still here like my friend Karen:

Unfortunately, it seems that some people think placating those anti-abortion, pro-adoption factions will somehow work in adoptees' favor. This sounds ridiculous to me. These factions created the culture of the Baby Scoop Era & want to return us there. +

— Karen Pickell (@Karen_Pickell) June 30, 2022

Karen's website: www.adopteereading.com

 

Can I ask you a favor? Would you please read this? I wrote about WHAT MY ADOPTION COST ME. My story is your story.

https://blog.americanindianadoptees.com/2012/01/lost-daughters-what-my-adoption-cost-me.html?spref=tw

What did being "adopted" cost you? 

I look forward to your comments.   Trace

(p.s. Thank you for being here and reading.)

Cycle of Pain | Survivors of the ’60s Scoop await long overdue apology

PART 1: ‘We’re invisible’: Amid residential school reckoning, ’60s Scoop survivors in B.C. want action

PART 2: 

Fialka Jack-Flesh had not yet taken her first steps in the world before she entered the foster care system.

Her mother, a residential school survivor, was unable to take care of her, and she was taken into care at just eight months old.

“I was removed from my mom’s care originally because she grew up in residential school and she was deemed very unsafe at the age that she had me,” Jack-Flesh said. “She had me, I think, like seven years after she showed up for residential school. So not that long.”

It has been 10 years since Jack-Flesh aged out of government care.

Sometimes, it seems as if it was just yesterday.

For Jack-Flesh, aging out of government care, she said, was jarring and devastating.

“It’s kind of like being thrown off a f–king cliff.  If I’m going to be very honest with you guys.”

 

KEEP READING 

View image in full screen

The Sixties Scoop Network’s open-source map tracking the diaspora of adopted Indigenous children. Sixties Scoop Network

 

Documenting the dispersal of children has fallen to grassroots groups like the Sixties Scoop Network, which has tried to map where Indigenous kids were “trafficked” as far away as Denmark and New Zealand, said co-founder Colleen Cardinal.

Read more: Survivors of the ’60s Scoop await long overdue apology

In The News : New Mexico, Colorado, Dutch Halt Adoptions #ICWA

Bill to keep Native children within their community receives bipartisan support

By Susan Dunlap

A bill to keep Native children within their tribe or pueblo when the state separates them from their parents passed the House State Government and Indian Affairs Committee unanimously on Feb. 8.

Sponsored by state Rep. Georgene Louis, D-Albuquerque and of the Acoma Pueblo, HB 209 has overwhelming support from various organizations and Tribal and pueblo governments in the state. 

If it becomes law, the bill would codify the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which was passed in the 1970s but is poorly enforced, according to experts. The bill would guide the state Children, Youth and Families Department to notify tribes and pueblos when a child removal occurs and to work with the Tribal community to place a Native child with extended family or friends or foster families within their own sovereign nation.

Keep reading

**

Arapahoe County agency did not comply with federal American Indian child adoption law, court finds 

The department did send notice to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and three federally-recognized Cherokee tribes about the child’s case. But the appellate panel found no evidence to confirm whether the tribes received those notices. Prior Court of Appeals decisions have established that notification must take place by registered mail with a return receipt requested.

“As a result, the juvenile court and the Department did not comply with ICWA’s notice provisions,” wrote Judge Sueanna P. Johnson. The panel returned the case to the lower court for compliance with ICWA.

In an annual report on American Indian child adoption cases, Kathryn Fort of the Michigan State University College of Law and Adrian T. Smith found that state appellate courts across the country decide approximately 200 cases implicating ICWA each year. Of the appeals that cite a lack of tribal notice, appellate judges returned nearly two-thirds of them to lower courts in 2019.

Larimer County violated federal Indian child adoption law, court finds

Larimer County did not comply with the federal law that protects the rights of Indian children when it failed to notify the relevant tribes in a custody proceeding, the Colorado Court of Appeals ruled on Thursday.

 Source 

 

Around the World

Dutch halt adoptions from foreign countries

by The Associated Press 

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The Dutch government suspended adoptions from foreign countries Monday after an investigative committee report criticized past ruling coalitions for being "too passive" in the face of years of reported abuses including impoverished mothers being coerced into putting up their children for adoption.

The committee said that abuses included "the falsification of documents, the abuse of poverty among the birth mothers and the abandonment of children for payment or through coercion." Dutch media began reporting on them in the late 1960s, but previous governments failed to take decisive action to tackle the problems, it added.

"Not only have there been many abuses in the past, the system of intercountry adoption is still open to fraud and abuses continue to this day," the government-installed committee warned.

It said that the government needs to "restore its damaged relationship with adoptees, adoptive parents, birth parents and families."

Minister for Legal Protection Sander Dekker conceded that Dutch governments had fallen short.

The committee studied adoptions from 1967-1998 in five countries -- Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Adoptions already underway will be allowed to continue, authorities said. The committee also found cases of corruption, falsification of documents to make it impossible or more difficult to establish the birth families of adoptees, child trafficking and "baby farming."
VIA

 

 

 

 

Dear Dad, You are Still Racist

 

by Author Mae Claire, born in Haiti raised in the USA.

A letter to my deceased father who illegally trafficked me out of an orphanage in Haiti. 
My works: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00IZG9Q56
Insta: @liftingtaboos
Blog: https://solifegoeson.com/

Excerpt:

Adoption is dangerous. Oftentimes we do it and we don’t even really know or understand why we are doing it. We do it because in the moment, it ​feels​ like the right thing. We do it because we think it is going to fix something in us. Maybe it does fix something in us…but it leaves the adoptee with scars, bruises and longing for what could have been.

Dear dad, now you are dead and can probably see and understand the pain you caused. If there is any way you can infiltrate the lives of others who have adopted or are hoping to adopt and warn them of the dangers; we adoptees will forever be grateful.

May you not rest in peace until you have saved other adoptees from the same pain.

FANTASTIC WRITING: Adopted from Haiti, Mae | InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV)

 

MORE:

Have questions about the #adoptee citizenship crisis? Join our Adoptee Citizenship Panel on Oct 8 @ 8 pm ET on FB live. We’ll hear from adoptees living w/o citizenship & our expert panel will answer YOUR questions abt #Citizenship4Adoptees #HR2731
🎟RSVP: https://t.co/gjK4NSpUmb pic.twitter.com/Eyh1JMW6QJ

— Adoptees For Justice (@Adoptees4Just) October 1, 2020

Gold Chains: Slavery of California Natives, Child Trafficking

“Gold Chains” unearths the accounts of slavery in California
Faith Petrie, November 28, 2019, Los Angeles Sentinel



The ACLU of Northern California in collaboration with radio station KQED, the California Historical Society and the Equal Justice Society co-created an educational project directed at highlighting the stories of slavery throughout California.

Gold Chains: The Hidden History of Slavery in California includes 13 essays and six audio stories that present the experiences of African Americans and Native Californians during the 1800s.

Candice Francis, communications director of the ACLU of Northern California said that the project originally spawned from wanting to observe the 400th year since enslaved people were brought to the United States from Africa.

“We were guided to rather than take on that mammoth task, to look more closely at California because there was a hidden history there,” Francis said.

One story highlighted on the website surrounds California’s first governor, a white supremicists named Peter Hardeman Burnett. Burnett advocated for the genocide of Native Americans as well as the exclusion of African Americans and other minority groups in California.

continue

Visit Gold Chains Website

Rosa: Kidnapped, Sold, and Killed

Native children often suffered horrific abuse as a result of a law that professed to send them to white families for self-improvement but instead created a form of legalized child slavery. The case of Rosa, in Mendocino County, is just one example of how the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians brutalized Native, and sometimes black children.

Rosa was between 10 and 12 years old and was believed to be from either the Yuki or Pomo tribe. In the winter of 1862, she was beaten and left to die in a snowstorm by a woman who had been granted legal custody of her under the law. The woman, identified in Mendocino County public records as “Mrs. Bassett,” had locked the child outside in freezing temperatures. Her partially clothed corpse was found in a box outside the woman’s home. Mendocino County authorities never brought charges, even though Bassett’s neighbors testified that she had left Rosa outdoors, causing the child’s death. Before her death, Rosa had been forced to work in the Bassett home as an indentured servant. According to an 1862 report in the Alta California newspaper, kidnappers could sell children for “$30 to $150 depending on their quality.” That same year, a child trafficker came to Ukiah with 16 children, ages six to 13. After he was arrested, the children became public wards. But instead of returning them to their families, county officials offered them to local white residents as “apprentices.” Bassett was among the more than 100 people who applied to become guardians of the children.

Letter from Major John Bidwill of Butte County on how widespread slavery of native people was: “[native people] all amoung us, around us, with us – hardly a farm house – a kitchen without them.”

Read article

Report from Indian Affairs Superintendent:
Superintendent of Indian Affairs, George M. Hanson, an ally of Lincoln and opponent of slavery, once found several white men making their way back from Humboldt County with native children in tow. The men said that the children were orphans, and they were providing them with homes and safety. When asked how they knew the children were orphans. The kidnappers replied that they had killed the parents themselves. 

I look at it as a human rights issue #NAAM2019

This IS Adoptee Rights:
"I look at it as a human rights issue. Why should people who, to no fault of their own, happen to be adopted, have less rights to their existence?" David Weprin said. "It's really a piece of the puzzle people should be entitled to. In this day and age, there is no reason why there should be a restriction to an adoptee having access to their original birth certificate (OBC)." (via facebook)

By Trace L Hentz (repost from 2010)

This article sums it up...

 

No Wonder Adoption Agencies are Nervous About OBC Access!

by Jo Swanson on Monday, October 25, 2010 

I was looking for a quote in my 1989 'mini-book' The Adoption Machine and came across something I had forgotten about. It fortifies what we've known all along about why agencies fight so hard to keep adoptees and birth families from locating one another. The agency is in Michigan - it's the one my daughter was placed through. I'll quote directly from the book:

A birthmother who placed her child through our same "Christian" agency contacted me for search help. She had kept in touch with her social worker throughout the years, even after the woman retired, as a way of somehow staying connected to her child. In recent visits, the former social worker had become quite upset about the birthmother's desire to be reunited with her daughter. "Give it up," she admonished her, suggesting that she was merely having a "bad day." "Cheer up! You have another family now! Besides, I checked the phone book recently, and the family isn't living in the area anymore."

Mother and daughter did meet, however, and upon comparing information provided to each by the agency at time of placement and later with the real story, found:

Claim: Birthmother was told by her social worker at time of relinquishment that her infant was perfectly normal and healthy.

Fact: Records indicated the child was diagnosed in the hospital, right after birth, as having a severe hearing impairment (95% loss), possibly due to exposure of mother, unknowingly, to German measles during pregnancy.

Claim: One year after relinquishment, birthmother was sent a letter by the agency, informing her that her child was "in a happy home" and that the adoption was finalized.

Fact: At the time the social worker wrote that letter, this child was back in foster care after a failed adoption. "The adoptive mother was having a nervous breakdown and couldn't handle a handicapped child." A second placement had been made at thirteen months, and fortunately it was a very good placement.

Claim: The adoptive family no longer lived in the area.

Fact: Adoptive father was deceased, but the mother still lived in the same home as at the time of adoption, and was still listed in phone directory. (Adoptive mother was supportive of her daughter's desire to meet her birth family.)

Claim: The adoptive couple had been told by the agency social worker after placement that the child's birthmother had died subsequent to the birth! (Common practice, we now know, as was telling birthmothers their infants died before or after birth.)

Fact: This agency social worker had spun so many lies that she was in a virtual panic that the two parties might actually meet one day and learn the truth!

++++++++++

We're getting the truth out drop by drop. But we've been doing it for so many decades - when will legislators begin to "get it" and realize how power has been abused by adoption brokers at the expense of children and their mothers?...Trace

67 years ago

67 Years Ago#INDIGENOUS #TAIRP pic.twitter.com/afr0O7GKuZ

— Indigenous (@AmericanIndian8) April 29, 2019

Child Trafficking = Adoption

CNN exclusive investigation uncovers what could be a child trafficking scheme for adoptions. 9 ET tonight https://t.co/2Wau3qSr6J

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) October 13, 2017

Goldwater Press Conference

Goldwater Institute Seeks Protection for Native American Children

Posted By Jonathan Hoffman on Jul 20, 2015 | Tuscon Weekly

Clint Bolick, Vice President for Litigation, Goldwater Institute, photo by Gage Skidmore (Flickr: Clint Bolick) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

  

Recently, the Goldwater Institute held a press conference announcing the filing of a class action lawsuit challenging race based separate and unequal treatment regarding foster and adoptive placement of Native American children.

Today’s existing problems can be traced back over one hundred years to the late 19th and early 20th Centuries when many Native American children were removed from reservations and placed in boarding schools or families with no tribal ties. These policies had a profound and deleterious effect on the ability of Native American tribes to maintain both their respective communities and cultures.

In light of this history, the Congress of the United States passed the Indian Child Welfare Act in 1978. The purpose of the act was to provide tribes with jurisdiction over the process of child foster and adoptive placement thereby maintaining the integrity of reservation community and tribal culture.

While the goals of the ICWA are laudable, many unintended consequences have resulted from putting the interests of the tribe over the needs and interests of the child.

The Equal Protection for Indian Children organization offers the story of Laurynn Whiteshield as an example of unintended consequences:

Laurynn spent most of her life in a home where she was loved and protected. From the time she was nine months old, she and her twin sister, Michaela, were raised by Jeanine Kersey-Russell, a Methodist minister and third-generation foster parent in Bismarck, North Dakota.

When the twins were almost three years old, the county sought to make them available for adoption. But Laurynn and Michaela were not ordinary children. They were Indians.

And because they were Indians, their fates hinged on the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law passed in 1978 to prevent the breakup of Indian families and to protect tribal interests in child welfare cases.

The Spirit Lake Sioux tribe had shown no interest in the twins while they were in foster care. But once the prospect of adoption was raised, the tribe invoked its powers under ICWA and ordered the children returned to the reservation, where they were placed in the home of their grandfather in May 2013. Thirty-seven days later, Laurynn was dead, thrown down an embankment by her grandfather’s wife, who had a long history of abuse, neglect, endangerment, and abandonment involving her own children.

Native American children are American citizens, and as such deserve the same rights and protections as any other citizen. Their rights and protections cannot be removed based on race.

Some who support the status quo deny that the distinction is based on race, but rather on political affiliation, that being of tribal membership or qualification for membership. This is true in one sense, that it is tribal membership or qualification that allows jurisdiction, but most (though not all) base tribal membership on a defined blood quantum or family lineage - in other words, the race of the child.

The Goldwater filing, authored by Clint Bolick, vice president for litigation, includes six claims for relief.

The first count claims a violation of the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment. “Government cannot treat the safety and security of children with Indian ancestry less seriously than the safety and security of all other children.” “...all subject Plaintiffs to unequal treatment under the law based solely on the race of the child and the adults involved and are therefore unconstitutional under the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment.”

The second count claims a violation of the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment. “The failure of ICWA as applied by the BIA Guidelines to adequately consider the child’s best interests deprives the class of plaintiff children of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The third count claims a violation of the substantive due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. “Defendant McKay’s compliance with and enforcement of the foster/preadoptive and adoptive placement preferences under state law and ICWA, 25 U.S.C. § 1915(b), (a), New Guidelines at §§ F.1, F.2, F.3, F.4, violate the substantive due process rights of children with Indian ancestry, and those of adults involved in their care 24 of 29 and upbringing who have an existing family-like relationship with the child.”

The fourth count claims that the ICWA exceeds the federal government’s power under the Indian Commerce clause and the Tenth Amendment. “ICWA displaces inherent state jurisdiction over specified child welfare, custody, and adoption proceedings and therefore violates the Tenth Amendment.”

The fifth count claims a violation of the associational freedoms under the First Amendment. “This forced association violates Plaintiffs’ freedom of association, which encompasses the freedom not to associate under the First Amendment.”

The sixth count claims unlawful agency action. “BIA overstepped its authority by extending, in the New Guidelines, the jurisdiction-transfer provision to all child custody proceedings. Such extension, which directly contradicts a Congress-enacted provision, harms children in cases where parental rights have been terminated. It gives tribes the “right to request a transfer,” 80 Fed. Reg. at 10156, C.1(c), in cases where Congress expressly did not give tribes a right to request 123. Such agency action is unlawful, in excess of statutory authority, and not in accordance with law.”

[Here is what I know:  Tribes and Indian people didn't create reservations or their conditions and have had to manage for the past 100+ years. Governments taking Indian children was part of the early plan, part of the genocide. Some tribes were decimated by removals of their children. Lawyers play a huge part in child trafficking (adoption) now - to make MONEY...The Goldwater Inst. doesn't seek PROTECTION! The big reason they are fighting ICWA now is they are losing the commodity of children to sell.... Trace]

Scandals #Adoption #flipthescript

By Trace

The United States is responsible for most intercountry adoptions in the world: 20,000 out of the total 30,000 total orphans adopted annually. (Remember that these children are not actually orphans.)
In many cases, the prospective adoptive parents (PAPs) are motivated by a sense of altruism, (saving a child), coupled with their desire to overcome infertility and fulfill the Western standard of the nuclear family.

Ignorance is no longer an excuse. Google "Adoption Scandals" - and this pops up:

List of international adoption scandals

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The following is a partial list, by year, of notable incidents or reports of international adoption scandals,^{[1][2][3][4][5]} adoption corruption, child harvesting, baby-stealing, legal violations in international adoption, or adoption agency corruption (see child laundering; child trafficking:^[6][7] "In the United States international adoptions are a big business, where a large number of private international adoption agencies are paid on average $30,000 a time to find a child for hopeful parents."^[8]

Contents

• 1 2010
• 2 2009
• 3 2007
• 4 2005
• 5 2004
• 6 2003
• 7 2001
• 8 2000
• 9 1999
• 10 1995-1996
• 11 1994

Child laundering

Child laundering is a scheme whereby intercountry adoptions are effected by illegal and fraudulent means. It usually involves the trafficking of children which is usually illegal and may involve the acquisition of children through monetary arrangements, deceit and/or force. The children may then be held in sham orphanages while formal international adoption processes are used to send the children to adoptive parents in another country.
Child laundering rings are often expansive with multiple hierarchies of people motivated by large profits from the black markets of intercountry adoptions. With Westerners willing to spend thousands of dollars to adopt a child, enough monetary incentives are created to extend the laundering ring from the middle classes to societies' more affluent groups. These "baby broker" families subsequently forge a new identity for the laundered child, "validating" the child's legal status as an orphan and ensuring the scheme will not be uncovered.^[1]
Child laundering is highly controversial; while many argue that these children are being treated as a commodity and stripped of family contact, others argue that, ultimately, the children will live in a more affluent environment and have more opportunities as a result of this adoption.^[2]

*This is available for all the potential adoptive parents (PAPs) to read. If they did do some research, we'd make some progress in ending international unregulated child trafficking.

It's about money, providing a "Product" who is a child.  Remember that.

Child Trafficking, Illegal Adoptions Headlines #flipthescript

click on headlines

 

11 Facts About Human Trafficking | DoSomething.org ...

https://www.dosomething.org/.../11-facts-about-human-tra...

Do Something

 

California harbors 3 of the FBI's 13 highest child sex trafficking areas on the ... Accessed February 25, 2014, http://www.ncadv.org/files/HumanTrafficking.pdf. ⁴.

 

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Illegal adoption 'big business' in Dominica - Dominica News ...

dominicanewsonline.com/news/.../illegal-adoption-big-business-dominic...

Apr 29, 2014 - Illegal adoption of Dominican children has become a 'big business' between Dominica and the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe.

 

*********************************************************************** 

 

Greece: 7 arrested in illegal adoption ring - WSMV Channel 4

www.wsmv.com/.../greece-7-arrested-in-illegal-adoption-ring

WSMV‑TV

Updated: Sep 24, 2014 6:58 AM PDT ... Illegal adoption in Greece typically motivated by frequent procedural delays and the country's relative affluence ...

 

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Illegal Adoption: Is It Human Trafficking?

March 2, 2014 · by Human Trafficking Indicators · in child trafficking, illegal adoptions, international law

This week, 382 babies were rescued and 1,000 people arrested in a Chinese sting operation against four illegal adoption rings. In January, a Chinese doctor received a suspended death sentence after her conviction for abducting and selling seven babies between November 2011 and July 2013. At least 26 other cases have been linked to this doctor, and several other people are also in criminal detention.

****************************************************

 

Trafficking in Persons Report 2014 - US Department of State

www.state.gov/.../2014/?...Trafficking...

United States Department of State

The 2014 Trafficking in Persons Report is available in PDF and HTML formats. ... Environmental Degradation and Human Trafficking [ Get Acrobat Reader ...

Child Trafficking: Pound Pup Legacy

Child Trafficking = Big Business

People need to recognize what's being done to parents and children is criminal.  Poor people are offered money to relinquish their child, others are promised an education for their children and their eventual return, only later to find out adoption is a permanent measure. Some children are even kidnapped, and stolen and taken to an orphanage, where there are forced to live in ghastly conditions.
This website section contains discussions and articles about child trafficking in the context of international adoption.  In addition, a collection of known cases of child trafficking can be viewed, demonstrating how the demand for adoptable infants actually creates "orphans" for those wanting to believe international adoption protects poor children from a life of crime and homelessness.

• All posts
• Blogs
• Articles
• Discussions
• Videos
• Links
• Child trafficking cases
• Case files

International adoption is big business and with that come unethical practices. In several countries the ultimate goal for children in orphanages is to be adopted abroad. Sadly, many young children are finding themselves living in an orphanage only because of the existence of international adoption. 

Go VOTE:

Eighth Annual Demons of Adoption Awards

http://poundpuplegacy.org/node/73990

NOMINATED: Trio Solutions (Baby Veronica case)

Submitted by OnTheRoadAgain (not verified) on Thu, 2014-09-25 

I would like to nominate South Carolina based public relations firm Trio Solutions, and owner Jessica Munday, for the Demons of Adoption Award.
The same professional PR firm that targeted Baby Veronica's father Dusten Brown, pulled out their arrows again and aimed them at yet another father in yet another contested adoption. The exact same tactics (purchasing Facebook likes; setting up an online shop to raise money in a child's name; smearing the father through any means necessary, including nationally-launched press releases; calling in the national press, including CNN; purposely working the public up into an angry lather; having their contractors set up websites to incite anger and hatred of the bio father) were used on John McCaul this year and last. They attempted the same thing with other children's biological families as well, including Baby Dee.
So, I would like to nominate them for their role in meddling in adoption cases and using the weight and cost of an entire Public Relations team to target poorer, less social media savvy birth families.

***Of course I'd like to nominate the Indian Adoption Projects and ARENA, designed and run by the American government, to commit genocide on Indigenous families. It happened and is well-documented in the anthologies Two Worlds and Called Home ...Trace

What kind of adoptee are you? #NAAM

It's National Adoption Awareness Month. Yes, there is more than one kind of adoptee. Knowing your circumstances could really help you. Every adoptee needs history to understand their predicament.

• Are you an orphan baby? Were your first parents deceased? Think of Orphan Trains where children were taken off the city streets and shipped to farmlands in the midwest.

• Are you an abandoned or relinquished baby? Did your birth mother abandon you or give you up to authorities? Seven million (+) adoptees are now living in the USA, and most adoptees will fall into this category.

• Are you a rescue baby? Were you adopted from a Third World Country like Guatemala or Haiti (such as Operation Airlift) -  the result of oppressive poverty affecting babies and children, or were you sold by unscrupulous baby-selling operations?

• Are you an adoptee from Korea or China or Russia or _____, where your governments decided you should be sent to the US and adopted? There are statistics for some (not all) intercountry adoptions. (see below)

• Are you a Native American adoptee? Were you taken from your reservation and parents as part of a program that systematically adopted out Indian Children to non-Indian parents - a program designed to kill the Indian in you (using cultural genocide via assmilation)? Over the past 100 years, it's hard to know the number of children who were subjected to this form of adoption.

• Are you a kinship adoptee? Were you adopted by a member of your own biological family?

The number of orphan visas issued for intercountry adoptions is tracked by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, Demographic Statistics Branch, Statistics Division. For more information on intercountry adoptions, visit the U.S. State Department's Web site, at http://travel.state.gov.

 

 

How Many Children Were Adopted in 2007 and 2008?
Series Title:	Numbers and Trends
Author(s):	Child Welfare Information Gateway
Availability:	View Download (PDF - 629KB) Order (Free) - Add to Cart
Year Published:	2011 - 32 pages
Provides national statistical estimates for the total number of children adopted in the United States in fiscal years 2007 and 2008. The report includes highlights of the data; findings on the numbers of public agency, intercountry, and other adoptions; and data aggregations in exhibits, tables, and appendices. Data were collected by State courts, State bureaus of vital records, the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Consular Affairs. http://www.childwelfare.gov/systemwide/statistics/adoption.cfm

What other kinds of adoptees are there? Please share a comment on this blog... Trace

Adoption Reality: Illegal Child Adoptions Guatemala #NAAM

Adoption Scandal: The Lost Children Of Guatemala

In recent years, authorities in Guatemala have tried to crack down on illegal child adoptions by foreigners. Corruption, however, is preventing the impoverished Central American country from eradicating the blight of child trafficking.

By Vincent Taillefumier, LE TEMPS/Worldcrunch

Maria Leticia Ispaché spent just one night with her son, Christopher, after giving birth in Guatemala City’s Roosevelt Hospital. Throughout the night she listened to his small hesitating cries. The next morning, one by one, the women next to her in the maternity ward room were allowed to leave with their newborns. “I was alone with my baby when a nurse arrived,” she says. The stranger asked if the baby had already been vaccinated. She took the child and never came back. Leticia Ispaché alerted the hospital, the police and television channels. One year later, she says sadly: “We don’t even have pictures to look for him.”

Corruption and complicity

In 2007, Guatemalan authorities for the first time stiffened the country’s adoption laws. Corruption, however, remains rampant, meaning children are still being shuttled out of the country under questionable circumstances. The trade is said to bring in $200 million a year.

Other efforts to further regulate adoption of Guatemalan children have been led by concerned interest groups. Sobrevivientes led a hunger strike in 2008 that pushed the government to suspend foreign adoptions altogether. And with the help of a UN judiciary body called the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), authorities are working to dismantle the networks that are thought to falsify at least six out of 10 adoption records. The networks are thought to include an army of scriveners, judges, doctors and directors of orphanages who falsify identities, DNA tests and photos.

Read more here: http://www.worldcrunch.com/adoption-scandal-lost-children-guatemala/world-affairs/adoption-scandal-the-lost-children-of-guatemala/c1s3512/

Adoption Reality: Illegal Child Adoption Guatemala #NAAM

Adoption Scandal: The Lost Children Of Guatemala

In recent years, authorities in Guatemala have tried to crack down on illegal child adoptions by foreigners. Corruption, however, is preventing the impoverished Central American country from eradicating the blight of child trafficking.

By Vincent Taillefumier, LE TEMPS/Worldcrunch

Maria Leticia Ispaché spent just one night with her son, Christopher, after giving birth in Guatemala City’s Roosevelt Hospital. Throughout the night she listened to his small hesitating cries. The next morning, one by one, the women next to her in the maternity ward room were allowed to leave with their newborns. “I was alone with my baby when a nurse arrived,” she says. The stranger asked if the baby had already been vaccinated. She took the child and never came back. Leticia Ispaché alerted the hospital, the police and television channels. One year later, she says sadly: “We don’t even have pictures to look for him.”

Corruption and complicity

In 2007, Guatemalan authorities for the first time stiffened the country’s adoption laws. Corruption, however, remains rampant, meaning children are still being shuttled out of the country under questionable circumstances. The trade is said to bring in $200 million a year.

Other efforts to further regulate adoption of Guatemalan children have been led by concerned interest groups. Sobrevivientes led a hunger strike in 2008 that pushed the government to suspend foreign adoptions altogether. And with the help of a UN judiciary body called the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), authorities are working to dismantle the networks that are thought to falsify at least six out of 10 adoption records. The networks are thought to include an army of scriveners, judges, doctors and directors of orphanages who falsify identities, DNA tests and photos.

Read more here: http://www.worldcrunch.com/adoption-scandal-lost-children-guatemala/world-affairs/adoption-scandal-the-lost-children-of-guatemala/c1s3512/

Chosen Children: Kidnapping Rings, AMFOR 2012

(AmFOR)

When I was researching adoption (2004- ) I came across Lori's website AMFOR. Some of her statistics blew my mind! Trace

I just downloaded Chosen Children 2012: http://www.amfor.net/ebooks/chosenchildren2012.pdf

An excerpt: Trafficking of Foster Kids

There have been  reports of cases in the United States of government-run foster homes that turned out to be fronts for child trafficking rings. A study in the United Kingdom found that 55% of child trafficking victims, who are identified and rescued, eventually again go missing. Worldwide, t he numbers concerning child slavery are staggering.  More than 150-million children younger than 14 are child laborers;  one in six children worldwide.  Some girls as young as 13 are trafficked as mail order brides and nearly 90% of domestic workers trafficked from West and Central Africa are young girls.  American children who go missing from foster care are rarely found.

On 3-13-04, Ted Gunderson, FBI Senior Specialist Agent (Ret.)  delivered a speech to the
Congressional Hearing on Child Protection, stating that during his career he “investigated public officials at all levels of government, which reached as high as the White House.  Most of all I have chisled-in-stone documentation of an international  criminal enterprise involving kidnapping, murders, including human sacrifices by Satanic Cults.  Specifically, in regard to Child Protective Services, in some areas and some states, I have been told by reliable sources that a planeload of 210 children from CPS was flown out of Denver, Colorado, on 11-6-97, to Paris, France.
Later, a second plane load of children, also under care of CPS, was flown from Los Angeles to Europe.
I have also developed information through reliable sources that, in the past, children have
been taken from foster homes, orphanages, and  Boys Town Nebraska, and flown by private jets from Sioux City Iowa to Washington DC and forced into sex orgies with politicians.  I have interviewed witnesses who were active in an international child kidnapping ring, who advised me that, of the thousands of children who disappear every year, many are auctioned off, at various locations throughout the country.  
This kidnapping ring involves a case under investigation known as ‘The Franklin Coverup.’  I developed information from a credible source in a major city in the 9 Southwest U.S. that there is collusion between judges, attorneys and underworld criminals. 
Children in that system become adopted, four thousand dollars is given to the people who adopt, and the children’s names are changed, and each child is re-adopted up to 75 times, with four thousand dollars going to each adoption every time.  The federal Government Adoption Bonus is given to these judges, attorneys,  and underworld criminals; it is split among the three groups of child traffickers.
As an outgrowth of my involvement in the Franklin Coverup Case from Omaha, I learned
that a covert CIA operation known as ‘The Finders,’ based in Washington DC, was actively involved in kidnapping and trafficking of children since the early 1960s.  This matter was brought to the attention of the FBI and State Department in 1997.  A report by the Metropolitan Police Department was classified ‘Secret’ in the interest of National Security.  The investigation by the FBI was closed down, however, according to the U.S. Customs investigation report. ‘The Finders’ became an internal matter.
I have given this information to the FBI on seven occasions, and have demanded an
investigation for the international kidnapping and trafficking of children.