'Stolen boy' may be one of dozens
Julia
when MSS orphanage was shown to have been involved in many adoption
cases where the child's supposed origins were suspect.
I would love to see a skilled mediation service established to manage
these individual tragedies. I fear that this response will result in
the adoptive family going to ground and the Indian family never seeing
their child.
Julia
'Stolen boy' may be one of dozens
Wednesday 23 May 2007
Justice minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin is setting up an investigation
into the case of the Indian boy allegedly kidnapped from his home and
later adopted by a Dutch couple.
'This is a very serious case,' Ballin is reported as saying. 'Think of
the repercussions for everyone involved.'
The boy was allegedly kidnapped in 1999 and sold to a children's home
with a false letter of acceptance from the parents. He was then
brought to the Netherlands by a Dutch adoption agency and adopted by a
Dutch couple.
TV show Netwerk reported on Monday that the Indian police want the
child returned to India for DNA tests and to rejoin his biological
parents. According to the Netwerk report the Dutch agency has known
the child had been kidnapped since 2005.
Meanwhile, adoption specialist René Hoksbergen says it is possible
that more Dutch adoption agencies are dealing in children stolen in
India. He says 53 children have been brought to this country from the
children's centre involved in the Netwerk case.
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2007/05/investigation_into_stolen_indian_boy.php
rkb...@pacific.net.sg
I still don't understand why they did it.
There is no shortage of unwanted and homeless children in India.
Getting the child returned - a child who hasn't lived with his Indian
family for 8 years - is more dicey. I can't imagine that's in anyone's
best interests. The child would have a hellishly difficult adjustment.
Some sort of mediation sounds like a great idea, but I can't imagine
any adoptive parents, or for that matter their adoptive son, wishing
to risk it if the child will be removed from them and returned to his
original family.
I wonder how Indian courts would rule. I know in one case many years
ago, where two sisters had gone to Scandinavia, they ruled that
returning the children would be too disruptive to their lives. But in
that case the agency was not involved in the wrong-doing. The children
had either wandered away, or been kidnapped and abandoned.
Unfortunately India responds to these kinds of situations by making
overseas adoption more complicated and less transparent, rather than
the other way around.
> http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2007/05/investigation_into_stol...
John
<rkb...@pacific.net.sg> wrote in message
news:1180028501.8...@r19g2000prf.googlegroups.com...
What a ghastly mess this one Center has caused!
I still don't understand why they did it.
There is no shortage of unwanted and homeless children in India.
Getting the child returned - a child who hasn't lived with his Indian
family for 8 years - is more dicey. I can't imagine that's in anyone's
best interests. The child would have a hellishly difficult adjustment.
Some sort of mediation sounds like a great idea, but I can't imagine
any adoptive parents, or for that matter their adoptive son, wishing
to risk it if the child will be removed from them and returned to his
original family.
I wonder how Indian courts would rule. I know in one case many years
ago, where two sisters had gone to Scandinavia, they ruled that
returning the children would be too disruptive to their lives. But in
that case the agency was not involved in the wrong-doing. The children
had either wandered away, or been kidnapped and abandoned.
Unfortunately India responds to these kinds of situations by making
overseas adoption more complicated and less transparent, rather than
the other way around.
*****************
Does the court have a choice?
Suppose an infant were kidnapped, and the kidnappers argued that the child
had become attached to them in the 8 years that they had had the child, that
they were the only parents the child had ever known, and therefore that the
child couldn't be romoved.
Wouldn't be a hard case, would it?
Is it so different when the adopters of the child didn't know? Not for the
biological parents, certainly. For the adoptive parents, it certainly is
different, and I feel for them, knowing how attached I am to our daughter.
There's something to what Julia says about mediation and what you express.
But at the end of the day, the biological parents' rights are what they
are--never relinquished, never terminated, never waived or surrendered. The
criminal act of the agency doesn't cut off those rights.
Julia
wrote:
I'm not so sure. I believe I would feel quite differently about my
child remaining with a family who were also innocent parties than I
would if they had actually abducted my child from me. In either case
I would be without the child but I wouldn't necessarily feel the same
way about the child remaining in the other family.
>For the adoptive parents, it certainly is
>different, and I feel for them, knowing how attached I am to our daughter.
>There's something to what Julia says about mediation and what you express.
>But at the end of the day, the biological parents' rights are what they
>are--never relinquished, never terminated, never waived or surrendered. The
>criminal act of the agency doesn't cut off those rights.
I also wonder about separated and abandoned children. In my older
sons case their mother never relinquished her children. The boys were
taken by their father and later abandoned.
And what of children who become separated from their birth parents.
India, and no doubt many other countries as well, has many lost and
separated children. When these children are too young to know where
they live they cannot be returned home. If parents don't come looking
for them in the right places they may be declared available for
adoption after a required lapse of time. It is often impossible for
anyone to know if the children have become accidentally lost or
intentionally abandoned.
Wouldn't these parents have similar rights too? What if they located
their child years after the child had been declared abandoned, freed
for adoption and placed in another family?
Julia
rkb...@pacific.net.sg
> ago, where two sisters had gone to Scandinavia, they ruled that
> returning the children would be too disruptive to their lives. But in
> that case the agency was not involved in the wrong-doing. The children
> had either wandered away, or been kidnapped and abandoned.
>
> Unfortunately India responds to these kinds of situations by making
> overseas adoption more complicated and less transparent, rather than
> the other way around.
>
> *****************
> Does the court have a choice?
It does, in India at least. It can rule - as it did in the case I
mentioned - that the child's best interest is served by remaining with
the adoptive family.
> Suppose an infant were kidnapped, and the kidnappers argued that the child
> had become attached to them in the 8 years that they had had the child, that
> they were the only parents the child had ever known, and therefore that the
> child couldn't be romoved.
>
> Wouldn't be a hard case, would it?
Wouldn't it?
The big difference is usually in a kidnapping, there is a supposition
that the intent is to harm the child. The child is abused in some
way. In such a case, the child must be removed. The second difference
is that the kidnappers would be at risk of drawing a prison term, and
so wouldn't be around as parents anyway.
But let's say that neither of those two things holds. Let's say the
kidnapper was a relative or friend. At 8 a child doesn't have much
say. But what if the kidnappee was 12 or 13? Would it be any kind of
justice to pull the kid out of the family and return it to one it
doesn't know? I know courts do it. But to my mind, it's treating a
child like property, like a chattel. Stolen goods that must be
returned.
> Is it so different when the adopters of the child didn't know? Not for the
> biological parents, certainly. For the adoptive parents, it certainly is
> different, and I feel for them, knowing how attached I am to our daughter.
> There's something to what Julia says about mediation and what you express.
> But at the end of the day, the biological parents' rights are what they
> are--never relinquished, never terminated, never waived or surrendered. The
> criminal act of the agency doesn't cut off those rights.
Possibly. But what about the rights of the child? In the end, parents
don't own a child, They only have the right to raise it.
In a situation where it's not just the people but a whole way of life,
I think it could trash a kid's life altogether. Will the child bond
with its natal family under those circumstances? Will they bond with
the child? It's all very well to say it must be returned, but it's not
quite like returning an inanimate object.
I'm trying to visualize kids like Julia's, growing up as middle-class
Australians, suddenly returned to an impoverished Indian natal family
that speaks a different language. It just doesn't sound right.
John
"Julia" <ju...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:46614cd6...@news.netspace.net.au...
Yes, I would agree that your situation is entirely different. There was the
father's involvement, there is the birth mother's willingness to let the
situation stay as it is, and there was your courage in addressing the
situation.
In the case cited, the bio parents haven't waived their rights but appear to
be asserting a claim to parental rights where those rights were interfered
with by acts of kidnapping and fraud. It is hard for me to imagine the
basis on which illegal acts can be held to cut off parental rights.
It is true that there are doctrines having to do with property rights that
render possession of stolen, found or seized property lawful, often where
innocent takers are involved. That's the sort of doctrine you'd have to
arrive at to make the change in parental rights lawful in this case. It
just seems to me that much mischief lies that way. The better result is the
one that you achieved by force of personality and moral courage.
John
<rkb...@pacific.net.sg> wrote in message
news:1180782963.9...@n15g2000prd.googlegroups.com...
I wonder. There is more latitude in property law for allowing rights to
follow custody. In letting, children stay where they have been placed by an
illegal act, a court would be following property law more closely than by
returning the child.
>> Is it so different when the adopters of the child didn't know? Not for
>> the
>> biological parents, certainly. For the adoptive parents, it certainly is
>> different, and I feel for them, knowing how attached I am to our
>> daughter.
>> There's something to what Julia says about mediation and what you
>> express.
>> But at the end of the day, the biological parents' rights are what they
>> are--never relinquished, never terminated, never waived or surrendered.
>> The
>> criminal act of the agency doesn't cut off those rights.
>
> Possibly. But what about the rights of the child? In the end, parents
> don't own a child, They only have the right to raise it.
>
> In a situation where it's not just the people but a whole way of life,
> I think it could trash a kid's life altogether. Will the child bond
> with its natal family under those circumstances? Will they bond with
> the child? It's all very well to say it must be returned, but it's not
> quite like returning an inanimate object.
No, it isn't. It wouldn't be an easy case by any means. But you have to
draw the line somewhere because, if you don't, it becomes difficult to draw
a line anywhere.
> I'm trying to visualize kids like Julia's, growing up as middle-class
> Australians, suddenly returned to an impoverished Indian natal family
> that speaks a different language. It just doesn't sound right.
No, it doesn't. And it is good that people like Julia and the birth mother
of her sons exercise judgment in the way that they do.
However, I don't think it would be a good thing to replace their voluntary
and free act of judgment with a legal doctrine that would mandate what they
accomplished on their own. If the idea of the "best interests of the child"
isn't limited somewhere, then it will quickly segue both into much greater
involvement of government in children's lives than we know (in my opinion,
at least) to be prudent (i.e., bureaucracies erected and maintained to see
to the "best interests of the child") and into the manipulation of legal
doctrines by those best situated to do that--the wealthy.
rkb...@pacific.net.sg
> <rkb...@pacific.net.sg> wrote in message
>
> > Australians, suddenly returned to an impoverished Indian natal family
> > that speaks a different language. It just doesn't sound right.
>
> No, it doesn't. And it is good that people like Julia and the birth mother
> of her sons exercise judgment in the way that they do.
>
> However, I don't think it would be a good thing to replace their voluntary
> and free act of judgment with a legal doctrine that would mandate what they
> accomplished on their own. If the idea of the "best interests of the child"
> isn't limited somewhere, then it will quickly segue both into much greater
> involvement of government in children's lives than we know (in my opinion,
> at least) to be prudent (i.e., bureaucracies erected and maintained to see
> to the "best interests of the child") and into the manipulation of legal
>
I'm not sure what the legal doctrine in India is; the case I spoke of
is a couple of decades old.
However, I would be concerned that the outcome of a simple "child must
be returned" policy could be extremely noxious.
First, it might deprive the child of the right to stay in its new
family even if both sets of parents agree. If it's an international
case - and that's what we are discussing here - then it's not a big
step for the governments concerned to reverse the adoption, since it
has no further legal basis, and then to cancel the child's right to
residence in the adoptive land.
Second, the natal parents might have no concept of the cultural
distance of the child. The Scandinavian girls spoke no language that
would allow the mother to communicate with them. The parents lived in
a hut with no running water, power, or sewerage. They were illiterate
farmers. The cultural paradigm for children in that culture was that
they obeyed their parents implicitly, and started working inside and
in the field as soon as they were physically able. The mother still
wanted her girls back, and who could blame her? She had searched for
them ever since they disappeared. But had the court removed the girls
from their adoptive home and returned them to this culture, they would
have been complete misfits - going from a world of school and TV and
after-school activities to a life of toiling in the field in a culture
where no one understood them. I think it would have been a terrible
tragedy for both the children and the both sets of parents.
Third, the situation lends itself to blackmail. In India, as in many
countries where the family provides all social security, a decision is
not made in a vacuum. Even if she has the child's best interest at
heart, other family members who don't care might pressurize her to
bring the child back with an expectation that the child's foreign
family would then become an unending source of funds. In poor
countries, the prospect of even small amounts of money can be a
powerful driver.
Fourth, it might discourage families with Indian adoptees from ever
bringing them to India to visit. Why take the risk when there's a
possibility you could be slapped with a court order that prevents you
from taking them back home. I wonder if even enlightened parents would
risk it. I certainly wouldn't, even if I was pretty sure that there
was nothing dicey about the relinquishment.
Julia
That is something I was very aware of in our situation. My son and
daughter have some capacity to understand the life of their first
mother and her family. She, however, has no way of understanding her
older children's lives. Their mother was married at 12 to a brutal
man, became a mother soon after that, and lives a very simple and hard
life.
An education and the experience of travelling overseas has helped my
children see many different ways of life. My daugher, only 12 years
old herself, understood the expectations that would be put on her
while we stayed with her Muslim mother and family - and she tolerated
these expectations.
Long term this would have been incredibly difficult. She managed the
modest clothing and quiet behaviour but she had an enormous struggle
quietly accepting the insults handed out many times every day to her
first mother (and herself) by shopkeepers and others who refused them
service, or ignored them until all other customers had been served.
My daughter has been taught that she does not have to accept ever
being treated as a second-class citizen, and she is quick to report
any racist taunting or sexist remark at school. In India she had to
accept being treated with undisguised contempt.
>Third, the situation lends itself to blackmail. In India, as in many
>countries where the family provides all social security, a decision is
>not made in a vacuum. Even if she has the child's best interest at
>heart, other family members who don't care might pressurize her to
>bring the child back with an expectation that the child's foreign
>family would then become an unending source of funds. In poor
>countries, the prospect of even small amounts of money can be a
>powerful driver.
I expected we would be met by many relatives as that was what we had
been told, but we didn't meet any. I asked about this before we left.
My friend explained that the family knew we would have pressure put on
us to support more people, so they shielded us from that by keeping
our visit secret. The downside is my children have not met any
uncles, aunts, cousins or grandparents.
Julia