Inter country adoption has appealed to the public consciousness in two contradictory ways. Inter country adoption is presented as a heart heating act of good will that benefits both child and adoptive family on the one hand. The child is characterized as a bereft orphan doomed to a dismal future within a poor country. All the child Is a chance and a home and that is provided to him by the adoptive parents , who with their love, sympathy and compassion provide the child with a new life.
In contrast to the positive face of adoption are numerous malicious gossips and horror narrations nickering inter country adoption.Adoption is portrayed as child trafficking or baby selling and purchasing. Culpable figures buy, steal, or kidnap children from poor families in developing nations for sale to adoptive families in rich nations. This essay uses the recurrent adoption scandals in Andorra Pradesh, India, as a case study of these two faces of inter country adoption. The Andorra Pradesh adoption scandals are significant In several ways. The United States and India have documented a cyclic series of adoption scandals from the South Indian state of Andorra Pradesh , particularly between the period of 1995-2001.Several orphanages in that area systematically sent out scouts to purchase Infants from poverty stricken and vulnerable families. The identities of the children were then altered and falsified documents were made.
Credulous adoption agencies from various countries supported and partnered these Indian orphanages and thus participated in laundering of these children as ‘orphans’. Therefore the Andorra Pradesh scandals are a heinous example of the ‘child buying scandal. Generally, receiving countries do not know the details of the scandals taking place in sending countries.The aim of this article is to give the reader an inside view of an adoption scandal and to explain how the system deals with the scandal. There is proof and evidence that Indian agencies also obtained children through the various forms of child-stealing and kidnapping describing above, Including misrepresentations to birth parents, taking children placed temporarily for care and education and sending them for adoption, and changing the identities of missing or lost children in order to place them for adoption as orphans.Just as the situation was in Cambodia, the united States officials virtually accepted all the “stolen and kidnapped” infants and provided them with visa, despite the suspicion of one united States government official who slowed down the granting of visa to such adopted infants in 1995-1996. Unlike Cambodia, the criminal enforcement arm of immigration (ICE) never investigated the situation in India, perhaps because there is no indication of any intentional or knowing involvement of united States citizens.
The government of Andorra Pradesh responded to the events not by regulatory reforms but by simply stopping the practice of placing children internationally. The Judiciary In Andorra Pradesh voiced their opinions about the adoption related’ allotting that cam their way and were convinced that the Inter country adoption system In Andorra Pradesh was subject to systematic abuse and the regulatory authority could not stop them. The criminal justice system in Andorra because of the difficulty of winning criminal convictions in India.
Thus, the authorities Nothing Andorra Pradesh often failed to secure criminal convictions, even against the orphanage directors who are broadly viewed as the ringleaders of criminal conspiracies to procure children illegally and profiteer from inter country adoption. He criminal Justice system in Andorra Pradesh has had a rather mixed record in regard to the scandals, perhaps because of the difficulty of winning criminal convictions in India.Thus, the authorities within Andorra Pradesh often have failed to secure criminal convictions, even against the orphanage directors who are broadly lilied as the ringleaders of criminal conspiracies to procure children illegally and profiteer from inter country adoption. The pattern has been to bring criminal charges and temporarily imprison orphanage directors or staff only to release them later and either drop criminal charges or fail to win convictions.
SST THRESHER’S TENDER LOVE AND CARE HOME vs. STATE OF ANDORRA PRADESH CASE ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION Irish pattern was recently broken when the first major criminal convictions in the Andorra Pradesh adoption scandal were announced in August 2005. The case concerned the coordinator and a number of staff from Tender Loving Care Home CLC), an orphanage which was implicated in the 2001 scandal.
The coordinator was well-respected Roman Catholic nun, and the orphanage is on the same grounds as, and associated with, a respected Catholic hospital.The other convicted persons were associated in various ways with the orphanage, hospital, convent or school. The convictions in the TALC case also document how the American institutions have corrupted respected religious institutions in India. The Judgment issued by the court illustrated that the coordinator as well as the other staff of the shelter home Newer guilty of multiple violations of section 470 and section 420 of the Indian Penal Code.
Section 471 prohibits “using as genuine a forged document. The court found that various defendants had “fabricated” at least seventy-nine documents for the repose of “processing the child for in and inter-country adoption,” in order “to have wrongful gain for themselves and wrongful loss to the state and biological parents. ” rhea monetary gain that formed a central part of the violation of section 471 had its source primarily in money arising in the United States. The prosecution noted that the Central Adoption Resource Agency (CAR), which regulates inter country adoption on behalf of the Indian government, limits inter country processing fees receivable by Indian agencies to 10,000 rupees [222.
USED] per case, plus 100 rupees [2. 22 USED] per day maintenance charges. The prosecution claimed, and the court agreed, that TALC collected from foreign?mostly us?parents an average of 222,318 rupees [4940.
40 USED] per case, far in excess of CAR guidelines. These “huge amounts” played an even more central role in the convictions the court issued under section 420 of the Indian Penal Code, which prohibits “cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property. ” The courts specifically noted that the amount charged by the institution Nas beyond the prescribed charges under the CAR guidelines.Thus, as the Court summarized, that various defendants fabricated the relinquishment deed in the name of fictitious biological parents and brought them into existence and submitted them in the family court for the purpose of giving the children to inter country adoption and collected humongous sums from the international parents. The Indian system by limiting the permissible adoption fees and the charitable donations to be made to the Indian institutions that were voluntary and to be paid only after the child had arrived to the recipient nation.The agencies in the United States continued to Moore and flout these rules and limitations, even when it became clear that the fees harmed and the donations made to the orphanages in India were fuelling child trafficking and corruption. While one can fault the Indian government for allowing foreign agencies to continue to participate in their adoption system even as they dilate Indian’s rules, it seems clear that the United States agencies are also responsible.
The agencies in the United States believed that the good deed done in putting up a child for international adoption Justified breaking and bending the rules and guidelines followed , ignorant to the fact that this provided incentives to ‘baby stealing’ and ‘baby buying. Unfortunately the United States agencies have been able to “elk away with little or no liability, still oblivious to the scenario in India. It is difficult to estimate the number of children taken away from their parents due to the lack of criminal investigation, the kind of which was used in the Cambodia adoption scandal.This case also documented the inability of the United States immigration to detect child buying and child stealing and the failure of the Indian authorities to implement high ideals of their system, not being accountable to the government for the wrongs done. Perhaps as many as a thousand children were placed out of Andorra Pradesh for inter country adoption during a time when one or more criminal conspiracies were developing their networks for the illegal procurement of children. How many were purchased, stolen, or kidnapped children?Any attempt to measure the number of children who were purchased, stolen, or kidnapped by the Andorra Pradesh agencies must take account the diverse fates and sources of the children. rhea Andorra Pradesh agencies impacted far more children than the estimated one- thousand they placed for international adoption. The agencies apparently also sometimes shipped excess children out of the state to other parts of India as well as obtaining some children from outside of Andorra Pradesh.
The agencies placed some Children domestically.Some of the affected agencies provided an education or care to children placed there in a temporary boarding situation. Finally, it appears that a significant number of infants died in the orphanages. It seems most likely that at least two thousand infants and children came under the care of Andorra Pradesh agencies implicated in the scandals. These agencies appear to have created paperwork at will, depending on the respective fate they chose for each child.
Thus, the TALC Judgment attributed almost eighty forged relinquishment documents to that single institution.Further the prosecution held that the TALC defendants bought around 436 babies. Given the large number of children involved in the TALC case alone, the existence of multiple affected orphanages over a number of years, and the systematic nature of the systems for illicit sourcing of children, it seems most likely that somewhere between 500 to 800 children were purchased, stolen, or kidnapped room their parents due to the activities of the Andorra Pradesh adoption-related agencies and their networks.Proponents of inter country adoption generally perceive it as life-saving and have not focused on the dangers posed by child-laundering schemes, which needlessly transfer infants and children from parental to fail to receive the benefits of breast milk, including its minimizing effects. Second, institutional care generally lacks individual care and attention.
Finally, illness tends to spread quickly through large groups of children concentrated in a small amount of space.Some orphanages may be unwilling to invest much in medical care for the sick, particularly if they view infants as easily replaceable and only adoptable if healthy. There is evidence that some orphanages had a ready system for infant deaths; they simply took the probably false identity of the dead infant and applied it to another infant, thus ensuring no slow-down of the child-laundering process.
Although there has been no accounting of the orphanage death rate in Andorra Pradesh, reports of infant graveyards at an orphanage suggest it was substantial.Given the evidence of high orphanage death rates in Andorra Pradesh, it cannot be assumed that the adoption system operated to save lives, even when assuming significant rates of infant and child mortality and female infanticide among poor and tribal families. In India, as in Cambodia, most attempts at child laundering were, from a criminal perspective, successful.
The Indian and foreign (I. E. , U. S. ) systems accepted the purchased or stolen children as legitimate orphans and processed them through the adoption system.
In addition, child laundering was quite profitable for the persons at the top of the conspiracy, who gained between RSI 144,000 and RSI 04,000 per inter country adoption, in a society where a middle class man commonly has an annual income of RSI 720,000. In Andorra Pradesh, as in Cambodia, no effective system for regulating inter country adoption was ever created. Instead ,a cyclic series of scandals every few years, each broader and more serious than the last, finally led to a self-imposed shut-down of inter country adoption in 2001.As a regulatory matter, the adoption system in Andorra Pradesh never developed the capacity to distinguish accurately between true orphans and children who had been purchased or stolen. Similarly, the adoption system proved unable to consistently deny notorious child-traffickers access to the system; the implicated agencies and persons suffered temporary repercussions but with perseverance were allowed back into the inter country adoption system.CONCLUSION Thus, Andorra Pradesh, like Cambodia, appeared to provide the limited choice of accepting a corrupt system inter wined with child trafficking or shutting down all inter country adoptions. The State Government has responded to the scandal by Issuing a Government order prohibiting biological parents from ‘relinquishing” heir children to orphanages on grounds of poverty.
In the past, it was this provision that was exploited by agencies who kept nominal records of parents who had given Jp their children. Closer scrutiny revealed that the addresses and names of the so- called parents were fictitious.In any case, most of the poor people who sell their babies rarely deal directly with the agencies. It is middlemen who go to villages, procure the babies and then sell them in Hydrated, or in Achaean. Also belatedly, the State Government had laid down guidelines and set up a board to give certificates of recognition to adoption agencies. But there is practically no check kept on orphanages.
As the events have revealed, these are no better than holding centers for registered adoption agencies to pick up children.Also, in the past, agencies like Mr.. Suburbia’s managed to get themselves registered.
So how will the Government has taken will merely push the problem underground. There could be more instances of female infanticide. ‘ ‘You cannot legislate away a social problem,” rhea questions raised by the two faces of inter country adoption are factual, legal, political, and ideological. Factually, the Andorra Pradesh adoption scandals, like those occurring elsewhere, exemplify the grave difficulty of attaining transparency in inter country adoption.Years after allegations are made, facts remain elusive. Legally, the Andorra Pradesh scandals illustrate the wide gap between the laws of inter country adoption and the actual practices.
Politically, the scandals reveal the manner in Inch different interest groups within sending and receiving countries employ their ‘raying capacities for political manipulation. The thesis of this essay is that there are systemic vulnerabilities in the current inter country adoption system that make adoption scandals, such as the ones in Andorra Pradesh, India, predictable.Further, this essay suggests that there were are no actors in the inter country adoption system with the requisite information, authority, and motivation to prevent abusive or corrupt adoption practices.
Worldwide, adoption experts had believed that ratifying the Hogue Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in the respect of Inter country Adoption (1993) would help reduce malpractice in adoption. The convention aimed at minimizing malpractice and preventing the “abduction, sale and reaffirming of children”.The essay maintains that the United States government is Nell positioned to alter the system and bring about significant reform. If the political Nil can be found, the United States government could use the implementation of the Hogue Convention on Inter country Adoption to create an accountability structure for enter country adoption. The key to this structure will be a chain of accountability under which United States adoption agencies become responsible for the acts of their partner agencies and facilitators in sending countries.
