Category: Family Preservation

Press Release From United Adoptees International: Dutch Government accept bribes to get Haitian Children

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Family Preservation, Family Systems

Euphemistic word use to cover Payments

Already in an earlier report, the so-called ‘Kalsbeek Rapport‘ reported that ‘unregular’payments would be acceptable to proceed the adoption procedure. They used the OESD guidelines for multinational enterprise (page 56). which has nothing to do with Adoption or otherwise Childprotection issues. The Kalsbeek committee with i.e. adoptive mother and renowned adoption researcher prof. dr. Femmie Juffer, accepted bribery and calls it ‘Facilitation Payments’ (see page 50).

The argument to accept these minor payments as they call it, is because it is the custom of the country to act in this way. But what is meant with small or minor payments runs between 1000-1.500 euro per child to Haitian authorities* and in the cases of China (so called Orphanage Humanitarian Aid Fee) 3.500 euro’s per child in bare cash to the local board of the orphanage, can be a huge amount for the receiver in these countries. And in comparison you cannot keep saying that these amounts are minor payments. Not even for Western standards as we call 100.000 Chinese Adoptees x 3.500 euro’s is 350.000.000,- euro and for the Haitian Children adopted in the Netherlands, 1.000×1.000 = 1.000.000,- in cash. And this is only the additional ‘fee’. Not the general adoption fee or expenses for the adoption procedure of a Haitian or Chinese child. And no one knows where this money ‘officially’ is meant for.

The recent report (Interlandelijke Adoptie, knelpunten in het stelsel) from the Youth Inspectorate in the Netherlands says in the part of the investigation about adoption agency Wereldkinderen (page 14) that in the case of Haiti ,Wereldkinderen decided to stop with adoptions from Haiti due to raising fees to Haitian Authorities to get the children for adoption. They said, that the corruption was growing and decided to stop adoptions from Haiti. This example in the report confirms the stories the UAI received from anonymous adoptive parents who adopted from Haiti a few years ago.

It is very strange that NAS (and former agency Flash) the other Adoption Agency who was quite in a hurry to get children from Haiti this week, does not report anything about these issues. While they work with the same authorities.

Its more as shameful that the Dutch government and the adoptionlobby is enforcing adoptions in a situation like in Haiti right now. But it is unforgivable for many adoptees, that they have been sold and bought by and trough the related governments without a blink of an eye.

Adoption was and is a baby and child-market where everyone provides from except the parents of origin and many Adoptees who get at the longterm brainwashed by programmes as ‘Spoorloos’ to create persons or group of mythical proportions from an independent human being with a genealogy in the country from origin, into a victim who is rescued by adoption and therefore, has to act as a mascot for the adoption society to keep the adoptionindustry rolling.

Once adoption was meant as a last resort but who dare to dig deeper into the reality of adoption finds a world of facilitations to serve prospective adoptionparents and their governments. Because it became clear, once you are adopted, the government and their assets don’t care about Adoptees at all. The proof of this, is that no receiving government ever changed a law voluntarily to meet the needs of Adoptees and their interests. Suddenly what once was used to get the child stays with the child. Adult adoptees who are critical are assessed as outlaws in the (intercountry) adoption system. This is not just a meaning, but mechanism which you can see every day, every month and every year. Decade by decades. With no interest in Adoptees and the urgent need for national and international debates regarding this problematic issue.

At the end, the Adoptees who do not want to become a stranger to him/herself, will finally stands alone in a bewildered landscape where he or she does not really fit. Except, when it becomes an anonymous or silent assimilated creature or as a symbol and a mascot for the success of adoption ‘sponsored’ by faciltation payments**.

* Not only the Netherlands paid extra, it is expected that all countries who adopted from Haiti paid ‘additional’ fees to get the children ‘freed’ for intercountry adoption.

** The so called ‘facilitation payments’ are not defined as bribes because the Dutch government accept the so called none defined additional payments in cash to get children for adoption by using ‘facilitation payments’ which is according to the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprise not a bribe (page 56). But the fact, that the adoption community and its governments use economical guidelines for multinational enterprise to clarify the financial procedure should somhow at least create suspicion. The UAI cannot imagine that the use of euphemistic words like ‘facilitation payments’ will take the reality away that children are sold and bought due to international treaties like the OECD guideline.

 … … … …

 Pound Pup Legacy has tremendous reactions from intercountry adoptees (people of color adopted by whites) at their website. See especially readers’ comments on “reasonable fees”, forced assimilation, economic bias of adoption, adoptees’ reactions on the assumptions made by whites who adopt children of color, and how adoptees feel about being status symbols.

EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI: INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION CASES

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Loss, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Haiti's Orphans2 Comments

Sent from United Adoptees International:

International Reference Centre for the Rights of Children Deprived of their Family (ISS/IRC)

EARTHQUAKE IN HAITI: INTERCOUNTRY ADOPTION CASES

As in every dramatic event that affects a country, the question about the intercountry adoption of children arises again in the Haitian context.

In this regard, ISS / IRC first recalls that, in general, international adoption should not take place in a situation of war or natural disaster, given that these events make it impossible to verify the personal and family situation of children. Any operation to adopt or to evacuate children that are victims of the earthquake to another country must be absolutely avoided, as was the case during the 2004 tsunami.

However, the intercountry adoption situation in Haiti highlights a new problem: what response
should be given to the multiple adoption dossiers which were in the process of being finalised
before the earthquake? As of today, some receiving countries have announced their intention to
‘freeze’ all pending adoptions due to the present incapacity of the Haitian authorities to follow the
required procedures. Yet other receiving countries have already planned to launch evacuation
missions for children as quick as possible and in this situation, ISS/IRC would like to reiterate the following points.

Given the actual state of the country, the transportation of relief supplies of basic necessities is
extremely difficult due to the congestion of different channels of communication and transportation (in particular, the airport at Port au Prince). Mobilising forces in this emergency context should focus on meeting the needs of the greater majority. All initiatives that involve an additional burden to the existing relief efforts should take place later, to give priority to current operations focusing on basic needs.

Regarding the adoption of children, a difference must obviously be made between those who have been declared adoptable and those for whom an adoption order (judgment) has been delivered. For children where matching has occurred and there is an adoption order (judgment), the transfer of these children to their adoptive families could be considered under the following conditions:

  • 1) identification of the child and his/her location is secured by the necessary safeguards,particularly through copies of his/her dossier lodged in the receiving country, personal data is stored appropriately;
  • 2) the psycho-social adoptability of the child (ie ability to be adopted) is re-evaluated,considering the trauma s/he might have suffered (emotional shock, physical injuries, etc.).
  • 3) it is established that the child’s dossier is complete and that the adoption order (judgment) has been delivered;
  • 4) the diplomatic representatives of the concerned receiving countries are able to verify the actual identities, adoption dossiers and alternative care conditions of the children; 5) the Haitian authorities are duly informed and involved in the finalisation of the adoptions in question.

For children who do not meet these conditions, no action should be undertaken at this point to accelerate the adoption procedure. It is important to remember that for sometime, intercountry adoption in Haiti has been subject to numerous serious concerns owing to the lack of guarantees and transparency.

Where the necessary safeguards are not available, intercountry adoption should be suspended until the reinstallation of the administrative and judicial systems in Haiti.

The ISS / IRC, stresses that the abovementioned conditions require time to be fulfilled and they
can not be undertaken in an urgent manner. Moreover, these children are currently experiencing extreme stress so that a sudden shift to a new country and a new family can have a psychological impact that is impossible to measure. According to the Guidelines developed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the evacuation of such children or their temporary placement in families abroad is also traumatic. It is considered as an added disruption to the injury already suffered by the child. In the emergency phase, the efforts of the authorities of affected countries, international organisations and NGOs should focus on providing basic protection to the child (eg: accommodation, food, medical, emotional and psychological attention, education) that is as close as possible to the daily living conditions and any regrouping should be with other familiar children or adults.

Finally, ISS / IRC reminds receiving countries in charge of intercountry adoptions to consult each other as well as UN agencies and NGOs in order to develop a unified approach to this problem in order to avoid conflicting decisions and poor initiatives.

Well aware of the difficulties and suffering that the earthquake has caused, ISS / IRC presents its deepest sympathy to the Haitian community and acknowledges, the difficult situation of parents involved in an ongoing adoption. Nevertheless, we invite various actors involved in intercountry adoption to exercise restraint and reflection in managing the current crisis and avoid giving emotional responses to a sensitive issue such as the adoption of these children.

ISS / IRC January 18, 2009

Quai du Seujet, 32 ▪ 1201 Geneva ▪ Switzerland

Tel : +41 (0)22 906 77 00
▪ Fax: +41 (0)22 906 77 01
▪ E-mail : irc-cir@iss-ssi.org     

*www.iss-ssi.org

United Adoptees International Says Adoption is a Last Resort Not First Aid

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Haiti's Orphans

UAI-United Adoptees International Responds to Expedited Dutch Adoptions as Not “Humanitarian Aid”. This is an example of what Not to do “for” Haiti’s children:

THE NETHERLANDS, Amsterdam, January 18, 2010 – Following the humanitarian disaster in Haiti, humanitarian aid is on its way, but also; expedited adoptions, possible abduction of children and forced relinquishment for intercountry adoptions to the West. The removal of children in times of disasters and wars under the guise of adoption, according to the vision of United Adoptees International (UAI), is not the right form of humanitarian aid. Concerning Haiti, the reaction of the Dutch government is an irresponsible response to the situation in Haiti where currently monitoring and surveillance cannot even be maintained. However, the Dutch government has decided that adoption will be the first priority and already agreed to 110 adoptions from Haiti. Of these, 56 adoptions were approved by the Ministry of Justice in an accelerated manner, arguing that these were already in the ‘pipeline’. Due to this, the Nederlandse Adoptie Stichting (NAS) and the largest Dutch agency Wereldkinderen, under pressure from prospective adoptive parents, took their chance to put pressure to get even more (risky) adoptions from Haiti.The facts and history teach us that adoptions from Haiti are risky and generally carelessly made. In 2003 the Dutch Youth Inspection called then for a strict control, after several reports of careless adoptions from a Dutch Adoption Agency. In 2005 a Unicef report warned for high risks regarding adoption from Haiti also.
At that time the Dutch agency had to close their dubious adoptions from Haiti.

 
Subsequently, the UAI reported on May 13, 2008 in the media about about a dramatic adoption from the same agency who opened another channel in Haiti, that was illustrative for multiple adoptions from Haiti. An adoptive couple told their story during a national TV broadcast of EénVandaag. They showed an Adoptee from Haiti who will probably stay the rest of her life in a mental hospital in the Netherlands.

Given the terrible disaster and the appalling situation in Haiti, the current “baby lift” operation is inspired only by emotion and a neo-colonialist way of thinking: “Our children are better off in the West ” as one of the Adoption Agencies involved in the ‘Babylift’ claimed. Just in these situations ,the UAI considers it no more than wise and logic to go through the required procedures, especially in the situation of chaos.

In times of disasters and wars, every time again it appears that children are moved prematurely to the West, before governments know how to deal with the disaster itself. The term ‘baby lift’ operations was originated during the Vietnam war in the seventies, where children were flown per aircraft to the United States. Without checking whether the children were actually orphans or relinquished by their parents. Many Vietnamese parents have searched for years unsuccessfully for their stolen children. But that is not where it stopped, still these kind of activities are still taking place and a recent example is Zoe’s Ark. A French ‘relie’f organisation which attempted to smuggle one hundred children from Chad for intercountry adoption under the guise of humanitarian aid.

NGO’s like the Red Cross, Unicef and World Vision, continuously calls at times for a temporary stop of adoption or a careful approach in times of crisis. These institutes simply need more time to get children back to their parents or to reunite with their family. The UAI in the mean time, made contact with several aid agencies including Plan Netherlands and asked them for their point of view on the disaster in Haiti. They are highly concerned about the situation in Haiti and in particular the high risk of child abduction. Since 1973, Plan Netherlands has worked in Haiti and has 143 employees on the spot. It is one of the largest development organisations. During disaster like these Plan has, in addition to providing medical and other resources, as first priority the protection of children to prevent the exploitation, abduction and abuse. From personal experience Plan knows that in times of crisis, the risk of abduction of children can be very high.

The UAI, therefore, considers the response of the Dutch government premature and not very considerate but too much motivated by emotions instead of properly thinking through the long term consequences for the Adoptees and their Haitian families. And after all the adoption scandals of recent years, one would have expected that the Netherlands now would had learned their lesson in this area. But the reality now shows an opposite picture. And the question is, whether that is really in the interests of children and parents in Haiti.

Adoption is a last resort, not first aid

 

SOS Cautions Against Premature Adoption of Haitian Children

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Haiti's Orphans

Email received today: Date: Wednesday, January 20, 2010, 5:22 PM

SOS believes that brothers and sisters should always stay together.

Dear Joan, 

 
 

Nature was cruel enough to turn children into orphans in a matter of minutes. But mere minutes cannot determine the future of these orphaned children. The global community must now be responsible enough to take the time to determine these children’s fates.

You may have seen in the last several days a planeload of orphans from Haiti making their way to Pennsylvania, undoubtedly to be adopted by parents in the U.S. This is a wonderful story of survival, rescue and adoption. But it’s not the whole story…

These particular children already had adoptive parents waiting to raise them with love and security. They presumably had been through the process that determined that no close relatives existed to take them in. Haitian children who have just lost their parents in the earthquake have not been through any such process.

In the weeks ahead you will see many stories about what should happen to these children. This is our position.

Our Position on this Sensitive Issue:

*    SOS Children’s Villages believes in the rights of every child, including orphaned children.

*    We believe that a coordinated approach needs to be taken by relief agencies in Haiti to identify, register and document unaccompanied children as quickly as possible.

*    We believe in the earliest possible reunification between children and their families.

*    We caution ALL ORGANIZATIONS working in Haiti against making premature decisions on permanent care (adoption) of orphaned children.

*    We believe that siblings should always stay together.

*   We believe that a parental figure should always be present.

*    This is absolutely a sensitive and complex issue … but decisions made now will impact these children for the rest of their lives. Shouldn’t the first consideration be family ties — brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles? If there is a chance at reunification with parents or close relatives, isn’t that the best option?

If there is a chance that siblings could stay together and grow up together, isn’t that better than being split apart?

SOS Children’s Villages will remain in Haiti for the long-term. We will provide secure, stable homes for orphans as they mature. We will prepare them for lives as independent adults. Please support SOS as we pave the way for a brighter future for these orphans. Sponsor a Disaster Orphan now.

Heather Paul
Executive Director

SOS Children’s Villages – USA
1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 1250
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 1 888-SOS-4KIDS or 202-347-7920

Help the Orphans of Haiti Without Adopting Them Out of Their Homeland by Donating to SOS Children’s Villages

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Haiti's Orphans

This message arrived in my email today.

It IS possible to provide for suffering children in Haiti by providing care right in their homeland. SOS Children’s Villages has been providing such care for children – especially sibling groups – and their extended families for 60 years. — Without permanent separation from their homeland and their extended families by closed adoption by foreigners.

SOS Children’s Villages is in complete support of the United Nations Rights of the Child.

 

Dear Joan,

Where will they go? Where will the thousands of children who have lost their parents in the Haiti earthquake go? This is the question that we have all begun to struggle with and address as the real devastation becomes clearer. Will they stay in their own country? Will they be placed with relatives, or temporary holding facilities, or be adopted by Americans and Europeans? Will brothers and sister stay together, or be pulled apart?

You, as an SOS supporter, already know what we collectively think about these issues. We believe that extended family should always be the first refuge of an orphaned child. We believe strongly that siblings should stay together. We believe that a Mother figure should always be present. Based on these guiding principles, that have been part of the SOS culture for 60 years, we will address the orphan crisis unfolding in Haiti. You already know what we’ve been doing as immediate concerns for children’s health and safety:

 *   Made a shipment of ten tons of supplies, that arrived yesterday in Haiti. These supplies included water, canned food, medicines, tents, sleeping bags, lamps, shovels and metal scissors. Created temporary shelters for unaccompanied childrenin the SOS villages in Santo and Cap Haitian.

 *   Begun to provide trauma counseling to child survivors; this effort is being escalated with the arrival of SOS child counseling experts from Costa Rica into the affected area.

 *   SOS is on the ground, helping to address the immediate needs of the people of Haiti, especially children. We will also be in Haiti for a long time to come. SOS Children’s Villages has operated programs in Haiti for 30 years. We will be with the children who have just lost their parents for many years to come. We will watch them grow up. We will care for them. Let’s make sure the right decisions are made for these children.

Help support SOS as we provide immediate assistance, as well as begin to address the unfolding crisis for the children who have lost their parents.

Heather Paul
Executive Director
SOS Children’s Villages – USA

P.S. Please help SOS to continue saving the lives of those in need in and around our Villages in Haiti. Donate now.

SOS Children’s Villages – USA
1001 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Suite 1250
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 1 888-SOS-4KIDS or 202-347-7920

Email from Lola – An Adoptive Parent Repulsed by This Blog!

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Genealogy, Obituaries16 Comments

Lola writes:

I would be ashamed to post the awful things you have on your blog.  I hope you get flamed constantly!  There are orphans in this world that need homes.  Why don’t you adopt some and stop whining?!  Learn what it’s like from the other side as an adoptive parent!  You make me sick!  You need therapy, not a blog.  Being so anti-adoption may be good for your mind, but it certainly hurts all those kids in foster care.  Don’t they deserve a home away from the abusive people that gave birth to them?  Those kids are taken away FOR A REASON!  Hello! Get a clue!  You may be unthankful for being adopted, but ask a 10 year old in the foster system or in an orphanage if they want a Mom & Dad…ask a kid waiting to come home to the US in Haiti right now where they would rather be!  I think you would be surprised by the answer!

Dear Lola,

Getting flamed is not an issue for me since I am paying for this website and am in constant contact with my webhost tech support.

I lived a life of torture and still am — at the hands of my adoptive family and natural family, too, not all, but enough to cause me considerable pain and anguish. Read my book for full details of the crimes committed against me by my adoptive family and others.

Lola, you are the one who is having an emotional reaction to my life. If you can’t take reading the terrible things done to adoptees (I’m not the only one) you are the one who needs therapy. There are thousands of adoptees and our natural parents who have been organizing since 1955 in America and around the world to expose the disgusting treatment we have received: examples: Adoptive parents who are lawyers have destroyed paperwork on their own adoptee’s birthparents. That’s a crime against that lawyer’s own adopted child! Adoptive parents who treat their adoptees like slaves and sex objects – like the rich couple who imprisoned a girl from a foreign country to do their household chores like Cinderella, and the Russian girl, Masha, was adopted by a pedophile and repeatedly raped and then she was freed and adopted by another woman who gave up on Masha and voided the adoption. So much abuse in adoption.

Lola, criticism from people such as you does not bother me. You only have an opinion of what you read. You do not know me personally and you do not know how this adoption has affected me and my children. They were also abused and mistreated by the relatives who mistreated me. The destruction of adoption lies and discrimination and prejudice scars adoptees and their children for life.

Lola, you can attack me all you want, but remember: in my book, I have published proof that our government has defrauded millions of adoptees by the practice of seizing our birth certificates, sealing them permanently, issuing materially false statements on a new, amended Certificate of Live Birth in the new adoptive name and naming the adoptive parents as parents of birth. This is fraud and perjury. If that happened to you, you might feel a tad bit offended, pissed off, and disgusted.

I was 18 years old when I had the shock of my life, and then my adoptive parents yelled at me, threw pots and pans at me, and acted as if I had done something horrific. No, I was found by siblings that they knew I had and they prevented me from a continued and meaningful relationship with them because my adoptive parents wanted me all to themselves. Any parents who would do that today would be up on child abuse charges. The only reason they got away with that is because my father signed relinquishment papers.

Do not blame my natural father for it, either. He was used, first by the good old Catholic Church and then by a child-stealer who was procuring a baby for her brother. No one helped my father in his grief that he lost his wife to an early death. No one helped my father keep his kids together. And all you, Lola, can think about are the so-called orphans in orphanages.

I have said this before but it needs repeating: Children who need homes can very easily have those homes through legal Guardianship and not adoption. Guardianship provides a legal guardian (a single person or a couple) who provide a safe, loving, and permanent home for children who need a home. If children cannot be raised by their natural parents, this is a far better alternative than total and complete adoption. Even “open” adoption is not a safe alternative due to the sealing of the child’s birth certificate and a replacement, “new” birth certificate in the child’s new adoptive name and adoptive parents named as parents by birth. Adoptive parents cop an attitude of ownership over the child and see the parents of birth as inferior.

With Guardianship, a child’s legal birth name, legal birth certificate, and status as the child of one and only one set of parents is protected. The legal guardian is under legal obligation to act legally and lovingly for the child as a parent would, as foster parents do, and as adoptive parents do, but they do not have the “advantage” of the law sealing the child’s birth certificate, replacing it with a new one with the guardians’ names on it and changing the child’s name and identity for all eternity.

In situations where the safety of the child is concerned, better to remove a child from the danger, but retain the child’s identity and relationships with that parent or parents. Adoption erases the existing problem as to why removal of children seems necessary, but, the adoptee faces lifelong harm from adoption and must face those issues later in life.

Yes, I am completely anti adoption. No adoption under any circumstances. Not even to save the Haitian children from starving to death after the earthquake. Good grief I hear that refrain already…Family Preservation at all costs, even if their parents are dead, there are other relatives who would be lost to them in adoption by foreigners.

I am not ashamed for anything I write. The only people who are flaming me are my own stupid family members who do not want me to write about my life. Foreign governments and Social Service Agencies throughout America and other countries are reading my website: Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, to name a few. Why? Because there are active adoption reform movements in those countries who have achieved what America needs: drastic reform in adoption.

I worked in foster care and in homeless shelters where I have seen kids removed from their parents solely due to poverty, not abuse. Even in the cases of abuse, those parents are still parents and those kids were born of those parents. By your way of thinking, Lola, adoption should totally erase the past and give these poor kids a new and better life. Wrong. Kids do not forget what has happened and they must cope with it all. Subjecting kids to the total identity change of adoption and forbidding them any knowledge of or contact with their own blood kin is child abuse. I’ve been at this adoption reform activism and advocacy for very near 36 years. I’ve worked in and around foster care, troubled youth, homeless families, crisis centers and disadvantaged families for my entire adult life. I went to court with an 18 year old that aged-out of the foster care system and went out on his own because he had no family. He bought me a rose from a street vendor because I cared enough to see him through that last year. He faced the reality of his life and was a strong young man. I did the same for an 18 year old young woman. She was all alone at the end of the court proceeding. Both of these kids went through foster care with their parents in what-ever state that left them incapable of taking care of their children, but both of these young adults had their birth identities intact, had their personal histories, had the rough experiences of foster care, but they also had a determination to press forward and do something with their lives. They also were free to establish some type of relationship with their parents, which they said was important for them to figure out. And they both thanked me for being at their sides when they stepped out of that court room to face the world. Adoption would have stripped them of their names, their birth certificates, and their families. Guardianship would have provided a home and loving family while giving them the right to their own birth identities. Guardianship conveys freedom, adoption conveys possession.

Oh yes, and lets all go over to Haiti to adopt all those poor orphans! That will solve these black kids’ problems, right? No it won’t! Being adopted by foreigners of a different race is an inner struggle for Transracial Abductees: go see their website under my Links page and here. They will face prejudice in this lily-white biased country of ours who hates Obama for being a “light-skinned black man”. You prospective adoptive parents who think it is the loving thing to do to go to Haiti and adopt their children — do you know what emotional damage that will do to these children who have lived through the trauma of an earthquake? They have seen their parents and other relatives die and you want to put a band aid on that by taking them away from that devastation? Do you not see that taking care of them in their own country is the best solution? I suggest you read some other blogs about taking kids for adoption out of Haiti. The Daily Bastdardette: HAITI: OPERATION PIERRE PAN POSTPONED; POLITICIANS PANDER. In that blog post alone, Bastardette has many links to a wealth of information.   You will be shocked by what you read. World organizations are advising against adopting kids out of Haiti for the very reasons I have just stated, and more.

Lola, be thankful that you have led a most comfortable life. Do not suggest that I adopt! I wouldn’t do such a horrible thing to a child! My life was ruined because of adoption.

My goal is to change adoption laws and social policy so that what happened to me will never happen to another child, ever. To be lied to, to be prevented from knowing my own siblings, to be forbidden to grieve the death of my mother, to not ever be taken to her graveside — those are crimes of child abuse perpetrated upon me by my own adoptive parents. That is sick perversion and possession of a human being.

My adoptive mother is dying in a nursing home right now. She has not once acknowledged the damage she caused me. But she is happy that I used a photograph her brother took of me as an infant for my book’s cover. She gets tears in her eyes because she is happy that I have reached my goal of publication. Maybe she cannot accept the horror of the crimes she and others committed against me, but she is happy for me to be published and encourages me to attend the next AAC Adoption Conference. Mom has realized the importance of the falsified birth certificate as being fraudulent. She has realized that her actions and that of other adoptive relatives and my dead mother’s relatives “were cruel” to my natural father, she said so this past summer. My mother now knows the destructive words said to me by my loving adoptive cousins: “Joan, you OPENLY declare you have two fathers, so you must not love this father. We don’t want you here…” at my adoptive father’s funeral in 1982. I had been in a reunion with my natural father and many other relatives for nearly 9 years at that point. The hate directed at me from prejudicial relatives was their inability to let me live my own life.

My adoptive Mom has also lived the destructiveness and spiteful hate from my own full-blood sisters who not only attacked me because they (like you) did not want me to write anything about my adoption (see my horrible articles in the Buffalo News in MY ARCHIVES page) that they repeatedly abused my mother and my kids and my ex-husband by hate phone calls and hate mail and false child abuse charges. Normal people will let go and let the other person live free from contact. Continued harassment because I am an adoption reformer is completely out of line. There is no reason for my sisters to attack my adoptive mother, but they have. My mother is dying. We need to resolve what we can and live in peace, yet, my sisters are still out there harassing me. I have no contact with them for a number of years into our reunion, and do not want contact from them because of their destructive behavior to me, my children, my adoptive mother, and my ex-husband. Why would I want to build relationships with people who have mocked me for decades and now want in on the action because my book is published? Or because they now want to be a part of adoption reform when they mocked me for being in adoption reform since I was 18? They are filled with nothing but malicious slander and defamation toward me. Every word I write is the truth. Even my ex-husband and my young adult children will attest to the hateful behavior of my relatives toward me and to them. Even my adoptive mother deserves respect as my mother, instead, she was mistreated by my blood sisters by false child abuse charges claiming she was sexually abusing her own grandchildren! Adoption and its aftermath has negatively-affected entire family systems — but you, Lola, want to sing adoption’s praises!

Adoption, in its present form, has been and is, a destructive social and legal device that splits up families.

Lola, are you under 36? If so, I have lived more trauma since 1974 than you have as a non-adopted person. You sound like a young kid who does not know beans about adoption reform. Keep reading. Visit other adoption reform blogs. See the kinks on the side bars. These links will lead you to other links in adoption reform. Better yet, show up to our Conferences and really learn what it is like to be adopted and to lose your child to adoption:

American Adoption Congress

Adoption Crossroads:  Adoption Healing, Baby Scoop Era Research Initiative, Origins Inc. Australia, Origins Canada are proud to announce: Shedding Light on the Adoption Experience VI an Educational Conference About Realities: The Lifelong Effects of Adoption and the Need for Family Preservation.

Lola, you are living in a fantasy world. You need to wake up and smell the coffee. It is people like you who make me sick.

Guest Post – ONE LIE = MANY GENERATIONS LOST

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

This post is written by Lori Carangelo founder of Americans For Open Records, and submitted by me, legitimatebastard, via email:

Another thing the general public as well as pro-adoption folks don’t consider is that neither relinquishing Parents nor Adopters have a say wih regard to falsifying and sealing the Adoptee'[s birth recoird — It’s the law, even in stepparent adoptions.  And it’s not only the immediate “Triad” of Adoptee-Parent-Adopter who are adversely affected by the Adoptee’s falsified records.  It’s also the Triad’s future children and their children who inherit the burden as well.
 
I found my son two decades ago, after an 18-year search hindered by falsified sealed “adoption-birth” records.  Two decades later,  now that they are of legal age and can make their own decisions, I found his two daughters, my granddaughters, who were also lost to adoption (stepparent adoptions with falsified, sealed records).  One of them who I had helped raise in her first year, could not possibly have remembered me nor know that I loved her.  I had no say in her parents’ decisions and only my son’s Adopter was permitted to be part of her life as “her grandmother,” just as only his Adopter was allowed to be his “Mother.”  This granddaughter was evidently conditioned from an early age to be angry and distrustful of not only her father (my son) but also his “birth” family, and so she rejected my attenpt to know and befriend her.
 
My other granddaughter, however, who has the same father (my son), different mother, and who I had never seen, has told me she was searching for her father before I found her and that she is interested to know about the family and “what she missed”…an expression of a natural need to know.  Is it that my two granddaughters have different genes and personalities?  Or that they have different resiliences to adoption’s lies, half-truths and false assumptions?  Or that they were raised in different environments with different histories?  I’ve had only a first contact with her at this writing, so cannot yet answer these questions, but anticipate we’ll both have lots of questons…and answers that adoption would otherwise withhold, distort, or fabricate.  
 
Books such as Joan Wheeler’s “Forbidden Family” are written to help break the cycle of adoption’s mistakes not only for themselves but also for future generations.
 
Lori Carangelo, Founder ( http://LoriCarangelo.com)
Americans For Open Records ( http://AmFOR.net )

Yes They are Using BirthMothers to Keep Adoptees’ Birth Records Sealed

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

Lori A at her blog, DNA Diaries, has an excellent post about how slowly she realized the issues surrounding adoptees’ fight to obtain a certified copy of their own true birth certificates.

In her post, Slowly Coming Around to a New Way of Thinking (Dec 16, 2009), Lori states “U.S. courts have ruled that there are no such things as ‘adoptee rights’. No rights exist in law or can be upheld in court. Let that soak in for a minute. No matter how old you get as an adoptee, there are still certain rights that do not and will not pertain to you, because of a decision that was made for you. You are disallowed certain rights that pertain to the non adopted, but there are no other rights that pertain to you under the law.”

And then, Lori states, “Then it slowly, over days, begins to sink in. When adoption started it was to hide the sins of an unwed mother and the embarrassment of infertile couples. As time goes on, it becomes more about privacy for the parents raising the adopted child. Now, it’s about my right to privacy as a damaged first parent. … Now I get it. They are using ME, my status to promote ‘their’ agenda.”

Yes, that’s right. Lori. They, The NCFA, and the ACLU, and the Catholic agenda, are all working against us to protect the rights of the unwed mother to remain in hiding. That not only is an inaccurate assessment of single mothers who lost their newborns to adoption, but it is a gross injustice to all adoptees. For we are punished for the “sins” of our parents, yet, many of us were born to married parents! I was. And then my mother died, making me a half orphan. A half orphan has rights. But then I was adopted and adoption overrode my first birth rights.

This cycle needs to stop.

Thank you, Lori, for your post.

Some Thoughts on Adoptive Family Kinship

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad, True Birth Certificate for Donor-Conceived

In the lifespan of an adoptee, it is necessary to look at the whole picture. The adoptee grows up within an adoptive family. That includes the adoptive parents’ sisters and brothers who are the adoptee’s aunts and uncles. There are cousins who are older and cousins who are younger. There are children of the older cousins, who are second cousins to the adoptee. These children grow up together and form emotional attachments. Such is family life. (See the book: Adoption and the Family System, 1992, by Miriam Reitz and Kenneth W. Watson.)

Those attachments are not broken when an adoptee is reunited with their biological kin. If there is genuine caring and understanding, those adoptive kinship feelings do not change. The adoptee does not swap feelings for the adoptive over to the reunited family of birth. Rather, the adoptee somehow integrates the “new” people into her life. And integrates the new “self”, which is also her biological self and family of origin. There are more relatives to reunite with than the parents of birth and siblings. Aunts, uncles, cousins — the usual extended family.

When one looks at the lifespan of an adoptee, it is necessary to look at the family developments and development of self though the life span. Young adulthood, marriage, children, aging and dying parents, middle age complications of divorce, changing or ending jobs, and aging of oneself. There is also the ebb and flow of relationships. Reunion does not happen with one event. It is a process that continues throughout the adoptee’s life. Relationships may end with some relatives, but there are continuing relationships, and surprising new ones as well.

I have found biological kin  that I have had long-time relationships with that no one else knows about within other reunited relationships. I have social circles that are separate from my natural father, my adoptive mother, my step siblings, my three sisters whom I do not want involved in my life. I enjoy close emotional ties to blood kin distant cousins for over 20 years.

In my extended adoptive family, there are relatives who have not been aware of the drama that has been going on. These relatives have not caused pain and have not been involved in spreading rumors.  

From my childhood cousinship relationships, I have learned:

Step families can and do flourish with love and open communication and laughter.

New Step families bring in new children to play with. There was no distinction. We added the new cousins right in with the old ones. Because we were kids.

Families who broke off and went their own directions for decades and who have touched base again, are renewing childhood emotional bonds. Some of us have not seen each other since childhood and are brought together in middle age due to parents dying. We are re-discovering what we meant to each other as children. We are forming continued relationships as middle aged adults.

So, adoption  kinship does not end when there is a reunion between an adoptee and her natural family. I have said this since 1974 when I was 18 years and newly reunited,  and I continue to say it: every adoptee has two sets of real parents. Deal with it. Adoptees must deal with it or live in denial. How other relatives deal with it is their own choice. An adoptee who searches for natural parents must conduct a search with responsibility and caring. Biological kin who search for and find an adoptee must do the same.

I was found by siblings I knew nothing about. Adding my reunited biological kin back into my life, and adding new biological kin in the decades that followed the initial stages of reunion, in no way destroys adoptive family kinship. The adoptee is in the middle and struggles with dual identity. It is a life process.

Adoption Gone Bad – Not Reunion

On By legitimatebastardIn Adoptee Birth Certificates, Adoptee False Baptismal Certificate, Adoptee False Legal Birth Certificate, Adoptee True Sealed Birth Certificate, Adoptee's Conflicting Emotions, Adoptees' Civil Rights, Adoption Loss, Adoption Psychology, Adoption Trauma, Family Preservation, Family Systems, Reunions are not bad

I do wish people would understand this about my adoption: it is not my reunion that “went bad” because there is much more to reunion than just a few relationships. My sisters are unto themselves, yet I had a reunion with multple people and still do. Reunion and adoption is about telling the truth to the adoptee. For the complete story, as it unfolded, read my book!

The real issue in my adoption is this: my natural father relinquished me under duress. He did not know he gave me to an adoptive family that made up their own rules about contact, what would be allowed to the older generations and other certain select relatives, and not to the father who relinquished his daughter to them, nor to his daughter, the adoptee, herself. My father’s rights were violated by adoptive relatives who deemed themselves to have control over my adoption and my life.

Meanwhile, my father was not aware that meddling relatives from his deceased wife’s family would spread filty lies about him killing his wife and that he “could not stand the sight of me” that’s why he “got rid of me”. THAT was the content of hate mail sent to me for decades from anonymous letters whom I suspect are members of my extended adoptive family who listened to these lies and beleived them.

My natural father was told by the court to stay away from me during the 18 years of my childhood. He did. He did not want me to be confused. But the inference of meddling extended family cause plenty of rumors and hate. I was hunted down like an animal (by adopted realtives) because I dared to accept my father back into my life in 1974. And I dared to  write articles in the paper defending adoptees’ right to know the truth. Hunted down, tracked down, by adoptive relatives who did not like the fact that I was in reunion with a father that they hated, but I was not ever supposed to know him or like him or love him. Nor was I supposed to know any of my blood relatives, but certain members of my adoptive family deemed themselves worthy of socializing with  my blood kin, while keeping me away from my own blood kin.

Why? Because the myth of adoption says that the adoptee must never be told the truth, or must never know the parents who gave them life.

That is what happened in my life: My adoptive relatives broke the adoption contract signed between my natural father and my adoptive parents. My father relinquished me to their care, firmly believing that I would be protected from a confusing life. It is not his fault that other relatives prevented him form knowing what was really going on for 18 years to his daughter that they were keeping a close eye on. Keep the father away from his daughter. Keep the adoptee away from her father and her siblings, but we will watch the adoptee and take notes on her as she grows into an adult.

Family secrets. Violation of a confidential and private adoption court proceeding between two sets of parents over the relinquishment and adoption of an unsuspecting adoptee.

Reunion  gone bad? Adoption not right from the start. Whose privacy violated? Mime. And my father’s privacy.

My reunion is still going on folks…I still have relationships with other relatives. The adoptee is in the middle and suffers because of the prejudice against adoptees in the larger society.