Adoptionland as of late has been all abuzz with noise about Benjamin Wyrembek’s struggle through the courts in his effort to gain his son. Today’s Ohio Supreme Court ruling is but the latest step in Mr. Wyrembek’s long road.

The married woman he was having an affair with, Drucilla Bocvarov, (thus resulting in the pregnancy in the first place) sought to place the boy with another couple, Christy and Jason Vaughn.

Mr. Wyrembek registered with the Ohio putative Fathers registry (also see The Ohio Putative Father Registry–the WHAT? and Slowpoke Comic’s take on PF registries in general) within the Ohio allotted time frame, established paternity, and has sought to block the adoption of his son and gain custody instead.

The case has been dragged out over almost three years now, as the Vaughns used every stalling tactic in the book, and had previously engaged in a major media push in their attempt to garner sympathy.

By way of backgrounder on the case, it’s practically impossible to find articles not biased towards the would-be-adopters perspective, bearing that in mind, here are a couple of paragraphs from a piece from the Courier-Journal about today’s big news:

The Ohio Supreme Court said Thursday that it won’t reconsider a ruling that favored the biological father in a custody and adoption case that involves a boy a Sellersburg couple has raised since birth.The court also lifted the hold it had put on all Ohio lower court action in the matter. The ruling could clear the way for Benjamin Wyrembek, the biological father, to take custody of 2-year-old Grayson Vaughn, whom Christy and Jason Vaughn of Sellersburg have been trying to adopt for nearly three years.

But the full impact wasn’t immediately clear because the Vaughns and Wyrembek agreed at a hearing last month not to talk to the media about the case. Their attorneys did not return messages left Thursday, either.

The sides have been in mediation since a court hearing last month, according to friends and family of the Vaughns.

The Vaughns were in the process of trying to adopt Grayson when Wyrembek stepped forward to say he believed he was the boy’s father.

They’ve been embroiled in court battles since then. Then last month, an Ohio juvenile court judge ordered the Vaughns to return Grayson to Ohio.

When they refused, they faced enforcement of that order at a Floyd Circuit Court hearing. But the Ohio Supreme Court ordered a delay in all of that state’s action on the case until it could decide whether to reconsider an earlier ruling in the case.

In the original 4-3 decision, the Ohio high court had upheld the Lucas County Probate Court’s dismissal of the Vaughns’ adoption petition because the county’s juvenile court had declared Wyrembek the boy’s legal father.

The Supreme Court again ruled 4-3 Thursday to uphold that decision, while acknowledging that “the separation of children from family members is a matter of grave consequence with lasting implication.”

So much of the “reporting” on this case is utter crap.

Pieces like this out of Faux “News” can’t even be bothered to mention the father’s name, though the piece does note:

“The court also lifted a stay it put on all adoption and custody matters for the case.”

As lousy reporting goes, yesterday’s HuffPo turd, from the turdlish HuffPo itself*)  makes a fine example “A.”  In it, Robin Sax bemoans:

The decision by the Ohio court is just plain wrong.  A leading national group, the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, is against the Ohio decision and filed a brief to the Court asking it to reconsider the ruling.

Gee, let me see if I can get this straight, the lawyers who make their livings doing adoptions are upset that a Father might regain his son and circumvent the much hoped for adoption the Vaughns want. Now the lawyers are filing a brief to the court to say the adoption should instead go through. It’s not like Adoption Attourneys have any personal financial interest in seeing adoptions go through… right? Give me a fucking break. This is merely adoption lawyers protecting their own business interests, nothing more.

Other remarkably unimpressive “reporting”, follows along the lines of  this Toledo Blade piece, Ohio Supreme Court affirms Swanton man’s right to biological son, first it runs a correct headline, and quotes the Father’s lawyer:

Mr. Wyrembek’s attorney, Alan Lehenbauer, contended that his client had followed all the appropriate legal procedures to obtain custody of his son after learning a former girlfriend was pregnant with his child. Mr. Wyrembek registered with Ohio’s Putative Father Registry and filed a petition in juvenile court to establish paternity and obtain custody of the child.

But then it falsely characterizes the Vaughns as the boy’s “adoptive parents.” This is the kind of lie that slips into such sloppy reporting. The Vaughns have never finalized their ATTEMPTED adoption.

The boy has been in legal limbo for years while the Vaughns dragged this out and worked hard to create the media impression that they boy was already “theirs.”

This is not a legal battle between a Father and an adoptive family. This is a legal battle between a Father who has used every avenue open to him to protect his parental rights while being stalled and thwarted time and again by those who WANT to adopt his son without his consent.

But that matters little, when the papers assume it’s already a done deal, falsely mislabeling the Vaughns as ALREADY the boy’s “adoptive parents:”

Still, nearly three years have elapsed while he battled in court with his son’s adoptive parents, Jason and Christy Vaughn of Sellersburg, Ind.

Then, almost as if to counteract their own headline, the paper runs the ever present photograph of the Vaughns, pulling out the the old dressed alike routine as if to visually assert and reinforce the impression of the Vaughns’ ownership of the boy. No other Father centric narrative is visually presented.

Finally, as always, the facebook page in support of the would-be-adopters is presented without any mention of the other facebook page, Give Grayson Back supporting the Father’s custody claim.

Adoption by Gentle Care did the placement.

(See this PDF of a filing by the Vaughns and the Mother here, where they disingenuously attempt to utilize Roe. w Wade  and other precedents relating to women’s reproductive privacy to maintain that adoption placement decisions are merely some kind of extension of the Mother’s reproductive privacy rights. Clearly, such do not apply to a now born child who also has a Father and  their constitutional rights, as reproductive privacy ends at birth. Other fascinating arguments are utilized in the filing as well, such as the notion that the man the Mother was married to when she had sex with Benjamin Wyrembek who is listed on the boy’s birth certificate as the father, despite having no biological relationship to the boy, should somehow have his “right of privacy as a marital unit”  govern the placement of the boy thereby overriding any right the boy’s biologically related Father should enjoy. Let’s just say it makes for an interesting read and provides some insight into both the thought process and the strategies being utilized by the Vaughns. )

To date, the Vaughns have dragged the case out across almost 3 years and  involved at least eight courts in two states and the federal system.

Birth Mother, First Mother Forum has done a useful breakdown, Transition Time in Contested Adoptions: Just Another Excuse for Delay, of how arguments in favour of “transition time” in these cases are really nothing more than yet another stalling tactic utilized by would-be-adopters to aid their “…but he’s been with us so long!” arguments in favour of keeping any given child.

The Toledo Blade piece with the Vaughn visual also points out a likely next course of action, the likely involvement of the Ohio General Assembly:

“The father of a child who registers with the Putative Father Registry in a timely fashion and who pursues a juvenile court determination of parentage cannot control either the timing of the juvenile court’s decision or the timing of the filing of a petition to adopt by prospective adoptive parents,” Justice Terrence O’Donnell wrote in Thursday’s decision.

“I would urge juvenile courts to give priority to parentage cases and decide them with dispatch. I would also encourage the General Assembly to carefully scrutinize our case law and revisit these statutes to clarify its intent if contrary to our result,” the justice wrote.

Nothing like the courts saying to Ohio legistlators, ‘hey, if you don’t like the outcome, feel free to rewrite the law to devise the kinds of outcomes you want.’

Considering the number of adoptive parents and otherwise adoption related individuals in the General Assembly, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see just that.

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* It should also be noted that when the HuffPo runs Discovery Institute propagandists and adoption industry apologists, these two categories are sometimes not two categories at all. Take for example William Pierce, the founder and initial head of the National Council for Adoption (an adoption industry trade lobby, ) who was also a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute in addition to being the Vice President of Democrats for Life. Pierce was but one of many individuals in adoptionland where these intersections or wearing of multiple hats is important to bear in mind.

Christine Arnold & Randal Arnold, adoptive parents of an unnamed 6 year old boy stand accused of abusing the child they adopted from foster care to the point of severe starvation and marks “all over his body.”

When he was finally rescued back on September 17th at 6 years old, the boy weighed a mere 30lbs, a pound less than he did at the time of his adoption  at age 3.

Upon examination, authorities found marks and bruises on the boy’s body, marks that potentially could have been made by belt buckles found in the Arnold’s house.

Initially Christine Arnold had called 911 claiming the boy had fallen down the stairs, rendering him unconscious. When first responders found “bruises and abrasions all over his body,” in various states of healing, physical evidence inconsistent with Mrs. Arnold’s story, police we brought in and both adopters were taken to jail in suspicions of child abuse. They bonded out, with an initial court appearance where formal charges were heard on September 30th.

Pound Pup Legacy has a good round up of some of the articles to date, see PPL’s page on the case, Boy adopted by Randal and Christine Arnold and the link to a PDF copy of the arrest warrant.

This video segment from 9NEWS.com, the local NBC affiliate, is from Wednesday September 29th, just prior to their Thursday Sept. 30th court appearance. In it, there is mention of previous attempts to report on the boys condition that may or may not have resulted in an investigation at the time, but either way, the boy was left with the Arnolds.

Affidavit: Parents accused of starving, beating child with belt

The affidavit says the medical staff at Littleton Hospital Emergency Room determined the boy had blood on his brain and his brain was swelling.

A doctor at the hospital says the boy suffered from “serious bodily injury” and “severe malnutrition.” The boy also suffered from various straight line, u-shaped and horseshoe type markings across his body consistent with the buckle of a belt found at the house, according to the affidavit.

The affidavit reports the Arnolds took custody of the boy on a foster-to-adopt program when he was two and a half years old. That adoption was completed in 2006, according to the affidavit.

According to Jefferson County Social Services, the boy was examined prior to his adoption and was measured and weighed. In 2006, the boy was in the fifty to seventy five percentiles for his height and weight. At age 3, he weighed 31 pounds. On September 17, 2010, the boy weighed 30 pounds at the age of 6, according to the affidavit.

This Fox piece also contains a bit of follow up on those earlier suspicions:

Investigators determined that the principal at the child’s school, Columbine Hills Elementary, actually called police and social services before when the child came to school with stitches in his lip.

It is unclear why no action was taken at that time.

Jefferson County Schools did not return our call seeking their comment.

Finally, this ABC 7 article and video contain some further details and an update on the boy’s condition as of about a week ago, Parents Of 30-Pound 6-Year-Old Arrested On Abuse Charges:

The boy was taken to Littleton Adventist Hospital and then transferred to Children’s Hospital in Aurora.

No doubt these statements will be key as this goes to trial:

The boy’s mother, identified in the affidavit as Christine Arnold, told investigators that she was cooking and her son was playing near the stairs when she heard a crash and found him at the bottom of the stairs.

The boy’s father, Randal Arnold, said he didn’t see any injuries on his son prior to seeing him in the hospital the day paramedics were called to the house.

Investigators said Randal Arnold’s statement was at odds with a phone call he made to Columbine Hills Elementary School the day before, telling the school that his son had fallen out of bed and had “banged his head.”

After being rescued, he appears to be doing better and gaining some weight.

The hospital said the boy gained 5 pounds in five days while he was at the hospital.

As for conditions in the home and the boy’s story of his life in the Arnold’s house:

During a subsequent interview, the boy told a forensic interviewer that he didn’t have any toys except for the ones that were in the basement and he had to ask to play with them. The boy said he ate breakfast and dinner in the kitchen alone and that his parents ate at a different time.

Investigators examined the boy’s room and described it as “relatively sparse,” containing a bed with a top and bottom sheet, no blanket and no pillow, two dressers and some pictures on the wall. There was a sliding chain lock on the outside of the door to the boy’s room, according to the affidavit.

The piece also contains a bit more detail about the charges and bond:

The Arnolds were arrested on Friday on suspicion of child abuse causing serious bodily injury and cruelty toward a child knowingly or recklessly causing injury, according to state arrest records. They were held without bond over the weekend.

The couple made their first court appearance Monday, where their bond was set at $25,000 each and they bonded out. They are scheduled to be formally charged on Thursday, according to Pam Russell, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office.

If there were questions and potential signs of abuse earlier, this raises real questions of what if any, follow up social services and the Littleton, Colorado police took and how the decision to leave the boy with the Arnolds was arrived at.

As this goes to trial, the paper trail will be important to examine carefully.

Each year for the past four years Pound Pup Legacy (advocates for child safety within the foster care and adoption system) have offered a respite/cold hard dose of sanity and relief from the from the dreadful  Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute‘s annual Angels in Adoption awards: PPL’s annual Demons of Adoption Awards.

The Angels in Adoption with their corporate and adoption industry sponsorship make up a somewhat predictable usual motley crew (link opens a PDF) of:

• adoption industry figures
• lawyers and  judges
• adoption marketers
• serial child collectors
• theologically based adopto-philes
• church based adoption schemes
• celebrity do-gooder types
• & adoption apologists, etc.

that the adoption industry and their congressional buddies feel like conferring their self congratulatory honor upon.

The Demons of Adoption awards on the other hand, are one of the few places where reality intrudes upon the adoption industrial community’s self-referential bubble.

PPL’s Demons nominees are those who have gone above and beyond the day to day ongoing corruption of the adoption slime pool to merit special attention and singling out for their crimes and cruelties.

They are awarded their prizes based not on who the adoption industry thinks has done an outstanding job of promoting their interests, but on the votes of Adoptees, parents, and even adopters for their unique flair in opposing our human/civil/identity rights and making adoptionland the ‘special’ place we all know so very intimately.

The previous years’ winners have been quite a deserving lot:

• First Annual Demons of Adoption Awards (award went to the National Council for Adoption)
• Second Annual Demons of Adoption Awards (award went to the makers of Juno)  see  Juno, winner of the second Annual Demons of Adoption Awards
• Third Annual Demons of Adoption Awards (award went to Bethany Christian Services)  see Bethany Christian Services recipient of the Demons of Adoption Awards 2009

This year’s award is still up for grabs, and fortunately there’s still plenty of time to vote.  You can vote for your favorite candidate anytime before October 30th here:

Fourth Annual Demons of Adoption Awards

From the PPL page:

The nominees are:

• LDS Family Services: for being the most secretive of all adoption agencies, using coercive tactics in obtaining infants for adoption and having no respect for father’s rights;
• Gladney center for adoption: for being one of the most profit-centered agencies around and blocking open record efforts in Texas;
• Christian World Adoption: for their involvement in “harvesting” practices in Ethiopia and their blind ambition to “save” each and every “orphan” in this world;
• Larry S. Jenkins: for his involvement in nearly every case where father’s rights were violated;
• Joint Council on International Children’s Services: for promoting the interest of adoption agencies at the expense of children, and pushing agency friendly legislation in Congress;
• Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute for giving their seal of approval to persons and organizations that promote the interests of the adoption industry and pushing agency friendly legislation in Congress;
• Council on Accreditation: for their lack of research done on inter-country adoption agency histories prior to giving out Hague accreditation;
• American Adoption Congress: For failing to remove state reps who were openly working against open access for adult adoptees;
• American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey: for opposing open records for adoptees and “protecting” closet moms, based on a “stack of anonymous letters” claimed to be from “birthmothers”.
• Christian Alliance for Orphans: for promoting the business interests of adoption agencies through churches.
• Southern Baptist Convention: for passing resolution no. 2 , pushing the business interests of adoption agencies to the members of their church;
• Adoption.com for systematically banning voices that oppose current adoption practices and their continuous pro-adoption propaganda;
• Scott Simon: for his vomit-inducing book “Baby, We Were Meant For Each Other” and his grotesque crying and blubbering about his purchasing of another human being;
• WE tv: for their hideously exploitative series ‘Adoption Diaries,’ turning what is a highly emotive and complex topic into ‘reality’ show fodder.

With so many truly deserving candidates, as always, it can be a difficult choice.

While it’s too late to add nominees to the list, personally, I think there were plenty of other well deserving candidates.

A few personal honourable mentions would have to go to:

• Laura Sislby, Charisa Coulter, Central Valley Baptist Church, and the multiple teams of “New Life Children’s Refuge” missionaries- what with their spectacular little international incident/adventures in child trafficking in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Central Valley deserves special mention in that it allowed Silsby’s non-existent “Refuge” to use its tax status.
• PBS’s POV- for it’s multiple nights worth of adoption films run up towards national adoption month (November) and ongoing desire to use our adoption related stories as but fodder for their overarching adoption narrative.
• Adam Pertman, of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute- for time and again, co-opting our voices and flat out stepping in it. Be that going on NPR and advocating a national reunion registry while trying to promote the institute’s policy paper that called for not merely no such thing, but actually decried registries as problematic,  comparing Bastards making first contact to unwelcome telemarketers, or his ongoing speaking engagement comparisons between adoption and slavery (oh, eyeroll! How many times have we as a community been over this? For that matter how many MORE times are we going to have to continue to do so?)
• FamilyLife/Hope for Orphans- the church “mobilizing,” save the savages adoption obsessed christian ministry behind the “orphan Sunday” effort.

Without a doubt, there are always more Demons of Adoption than there ever will be time to write about them and their various misdeeds.

Which is not to say there are not those well deserving of a bit more detailed description. In that spirit, as but one example, Bastardette has also blogged about this year’s nominees and the importance of the American Adoption Congress’s role in the Illinois disaster. They are another, more than deserving candidate.

Consumer Alert! Demons of Adoption Candidates Ready for YOUR Vote

The AAC was nominated for failing to remove state reps who were openly working against open access for adult adoptees. I have no idea who nominated the AAC, but…members of Bastard Nation alerted the AAC as early as 1999 to what Melisha Mitchell up to in Illinois, but nobody with any clout seemed to care. Now Illinois has the worst “access” law in the country and the AAC finds itself waiting in the La città infuocata di Dite–Dante’s City of Dis– for the final count.

Kerry and Niels of Pound Pup Legacy have written a very insightful piece concerning the ongoing problems related to choosing but a single candidate each year, see their important piece, Looking beyond the demons of adoption. Pulling some quick excerpts:

The Angels in Adoption Award gala is an adoption agency’s love fest with all the pomposity of congressional allure. It openly shows the intimate embrace of special interest groups and federal government, more so than in any other field of business.

There is no congressional Angel’s in Petroleum Award, or an Angels in Financial Derivatives and Collateralized Debt Obligations Award. There is not even an Angels in Army Technology Award. With all these branches of business, members of congress have to at least presume a certain distance. Even when a member of congress is actually in bed with a certain special interest group, a pretense of independence is maintained.

I’ve added a personal emphasis in the below because I feel the bolded portions provide critical keys towards understanding:

The Angels of Adoption Awards shamelessly shows the exchange of this political capital for the business interests of the adoption industry. Members of Congress get the opportunity to demonstrate their pro-adoptionism, and the industry gets Congress’s seal of approval, translating in minimal federal regulation of the adoption industry. Federal regulation is even so loose that the accreditation of agencies has been delegated to a private agency (Council on Accreditation) founded and controlled by child welfare organizations. A typical case of Washington making a fox guard the hen house.

When we created the Demons of Adoption, it was of course a well deserved parody of the Angels of Adoption, and that it still is. At the same time the Demons of Adoption, like their counterpart, the Angels of Adoption, only highlight. No agency or attorney is as angelical as Members of Congress want us to believe, but neither are the demons of adoption so exceptionally evil. For every nominee there are several others equally guilty of unethical practices. The Demons of Adoption Awards show us the darkest corners of adoption, but don’t tell us much about the darkness of the adoption industry as a whole.

Only when we learn to see the “bad guys” in adoption as the most depraved examples in a pool of depravity, does it all make sense. Business methods, used by the worst agencies of our time, are the same business methods used by “demons of adoption” a century ago. Coerced relinquishment, fraudulent paperwork, the use of a jurisdictional maze, illegal payments, all of that is not a recent invention, but have been part and parcel of the adoption business ever since its introduction.

No matter how CCAI tries to polish a turd, the trade in children remains a dirty business. Some organizations may stink more than others, and therefore deserve special attention through our Demons of Adoption Awards, but that doesn’t mean other organizations don’t produce a similar stench. Only when we see the systemic rancidity of the adoption industry and its incestuous relations with policy makers, will we be able to change the system in a way that finally the best interest of children is served, and not the business interests of those involved in the trade of children.

In the end, no matter who the winner for this year ends up being, they’re all ‘winners’ in my book.

American attention has by and large drifted elsewhere, other than the ongoing background hum of the puff pieces in local papers about evangelicals “raising funds for orphanages” and the like.

But the adoption industry has certainly not forgotten Haiti.

In the post-quake grab and go period United Adoptees International tried to compile some basic statistics about the flights and where the kids were being taken to (see the UAI sidebar “EXPEDITION LIST HAITIAN CHILDREN”

EXPEDITION LIST HAITIAN CHILDREN
In order to have an overview of numbers, the UAI herewith tries to collect the numbers of Haitian adoptions or airlifts since the earthquake:

• Netherlands: 6+92 =98
• Belgium: 14
• Canada: 100 ?
• France: 326 (900 awaiting)
• Germany: 30+63=93
• Italy: 50 ?
• Luxembourg: 14
• Spain: 40 ?
• Switzerland: 11
• USA: 800 (1100 awaiting)

TOTAL NO 11.02.2010

• 1.356 intercountry adoptions from Haiti since the earthquake.

• 190 unknown.

• 33 known attempts of childtrafficking.

• 2000 scheduled.

TOTAL NUMBERS 3.546 children endangered by fast-speed adoptions.
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The Dutch numbers of Haitian adoptions since 1974 (1983) – 2010 = + 1000.

As far as the child trafficking numbers, I’d have to go higher, up to a minimum of 73 due to Laura Silsby’s team’s earlier attempt at extracting a busload of 40 kids other than the 33 they were later caught with:

I wrote about that trip on February 9th, in my post Thwarted by a police officer in an earlier attempt 3 days before their arrests to export 40 *Other* kids- more on Silsby and the Scavengers. The post and my comments contain links to the initial reporting I was able to find on that previous child procurement trip the New Lifers’ made in to Haiti.

This is why I have repeatedly referred to the child victims of the New Lifers’ child trafficking attempts as at least “73″ not merely the 33 from the attempted trip on the 29th.

To date we know of at least two attempts by the New Lifers at child trafficking. It is unclear as to whether or not there were any other additional or previous attempts.

But these are merely the 73 we know about via the Sislby team. As I wrote back in February, You’ve got the kids, I’ve got the cash, let’s make some adoptions there have been other “orphan” adoption entrepreneurs as well.

For comparison with the Dutch numbers, adoptions from Haiti to the U.S. from 1999- 2009 according to the State Department totaled 2,574.

In 2009, Americans adopted 330 Haitian kids.

The notion of 800+ brought in and granted “humanitarian parole” as an intake path into American adoptions, in 2010, let alone an as of yet untold number more is insanity. It’s an adoption feeding frenzy.

Even the highest number of kids exported from Haiti to the US in that period, back in 2004, only resulted in 355 adoptions. 2010 has easily more than doubled the highest year on record, collecting 800-900+ kids in a mere couple of weeks.

To American adopters and the adoption industry, the earthquake and enduring human misery in the aftermath has been nothing if not a boon.

Some are more than willing to admit how the suffering of Haitians has directly benefited them.

As inter-country adoptions had been declining here in the U.S., Haiti and the unprecedented access to a supply of children suddenly made available to would-be-adopters (around the globe) provided an industry bail out the likes of which agencies could only dream of before the quake.

Far from listening to the cautions of those familiar with the pre-existing situation in Haiti, and rejecting the industry’s urging of mass adoptions in the wake of natural disaster, how such was a sure recipe for a human rights disaster, governments created the conditions for the “orphan” industry to act quickly to gather whatever it could, while it could.

After first extracting kids allegedly already in an adoption process prior to the quake and some, particularly 12 on the Rendells’ Raid that were extracted (apparently) illegally who were not in any adoption process before the quake, there was a pause in adoption processing before new applications were being accepted again.

Then, back in April the U.S. State Department issued a notice on the state of Haitian adoptions:

IBESR Accepting New Adoption Cases

April 29, 2010

Haiti’s adoption authority, the Institut du Bien-être Social et de Recherches(IBESR), has informed the U.S. Government that they are now accepting new adoption applications for Haitian children who were either documented as orphans before January 12, 2010, or who have been relinquished by their birth parent(s) since the earthquake.  The U.S. Embassy in Port-au-Prince has also resumed normal visa processing.  We encourage prospective adoptive parents to verify that their application is being processed in accordance with Haitian legal requirements and the procedures established by IBESR.

and pointed readers across to it’s Haiti page.

Reopening in the wake of this catastrophe is nothing if not an open invitation to continue to capitalize on the misery the Haitian people have been left to.

And by left to, I genuinely mean, left to. The U.S. pledged 1.15 billion towards Haitian reconstruction, yet as reported at the end of September the Haitians have been stiffed with empty promises and little more than an IOU.

Jonathan Katz reports for the Associated Press on the status of aid the US had pledged for reconstruction efforts in Haiti. The verdict: “Not a cent of the $1.15 billion the U.S. promised for rebuilding has arrived.”

From the AP article 5 days ago:

With just a week to go before fiscal 2010 ends, the money is still tied up in Washington. At fault: bureaucracy, disorganization and a lack of urgency, The Associated Press learned in interviews with officials in the State Department, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the White House and the U.N. Office of the Special Envoy. One senator has held up a key authorization bill because of a $5 million provision he says will be wasteful.

Meanwhile, deaths in Port-au-Prince are mounting, as quake survivors scramble to live without shelter or food.

“There are truly lives at stake, and the idea that folks are spending more time finger-pointing than getting this solved is almost unbelievable,” said John Simon, a former U.S. ambassador to the African Union who is now with the Center for Global Development, a Washington think tank.

Nor is Haiti getting much from other donors. Some 50 other nations and organizations pledged a total of $8.75 billion for reconstruction, but just $686 million of that has reached Haiti so far — less than 15 percent of the total promised for 2010-11.

While that finger pointing continues, forced evictions are ongoing, multiple storms that have killed a number of Haitians now and destroyed the tent shelters of thousands more, and hunger, rape, and poverty that defies words are simply some sick version of the new norm.

This new norm has led already desperate parents who leaned on the “orphanage” system before the earthquake to care for their kids as a temporary measure (yes, which means many Haitian kids in “orphanages” were most definitely not “orphans”) to now simply outright abandon their children.

Unable to feed or care for them, or to protect them from violence or even rape in the camps, if their tents are even still standing that is,  desperate parents with no other options are simply abandoning their children.

When people are stripped of any other way to provide even the basics of life for ones’ child, even a tarp over their heads,  is it any wonder that they then leave them at “orphanages” in hopes of assuring the child’s most basic survival?

All the more so when you have “orphanages” advertising their ability to take in more kids and white Americans coming down talking about how much they want to take kids home and give them that “better life”?

These kids are not “orphans” these are casualties not merely of the earthquake, but of the man made humanitarian crisis in the aftermath. The outright refusal to live up to promises of economic aid trickles down through societally until parents are left with no other options by which to keep their children fed or safe.

It’s systemic, not individual.

It’s an impossible situation. In order to better one’s child’s hopes of surviving, you must be willing to never see them again.

The nations that both stall on their obligations and then benefit on the back end by extracting Haiti’s children are nothing short of predatory.

But Haiti is in no position to say ‘not one child leaves for your country until you pay what you promised’ and even if Haiti could, the business relationship would then become all too clear all too quickly. Countries promise “aid” and they take children.

No moratorium on taking these kids, left in desperation in hopes of not some mythic “better life” but of any life AT ALL, has been forthcoming. The price of survival for these kids has been their ties to their families, their parents, their brothers and sisters.

Potential adopters COULD do the only ethical thing and refuse to adopt from Haiti, understanding that their cash and demand is an engine driving this misery. But instead, they flock to Haitian adoptions, viewing such desperate situations as merely their opportunity, their own personal silver linings, and demand adoptions be opened further, and expedited utilizing the ever worsening situation as their excuse. Never once understanding that they themselves are part of the system driving such.

They work on their own behalf, not on behalf of the Haitian people or the country as a whole.

The money they expend on a single child, (their efforts rooted in their own personal desires,) could aid a people were they willing to give without expecting a child for themselves in return. But reciprocity lies at the core of adoption, and I have yet to see American would-be-adopters willing to hand over the pile of cash with no expectation of a personal gain on the back end.

The industry, seeing the profits to be gained off the backs of every Haitian child has no qualms ramming through as many placements as they possibly can, all while lobbying for more, and painting the Rendells and their raid that brought in 12 kids now trapped in diplomatic limbo as nothing less than  “heroic.”

Meanwhile, in Haiti… providing “orphans” has become even more of a key economic engine than it was prior to the natural disaster.

Selling kids to white people, while nothing new, is what’s left.

“Adoption and child sponsorship is the biggest money-making operation in Haiti right now,” Susie said last week. “Everybody and their aunt is starting one. You can raise a lot of money if you have kids in rags who look hungry. A lot of them will round up 50 kids from the neighborhood every time a white person shows up — and once the foreigner leaves, everybody goes home.”

Of course, Mercy & Sharing is just another side of the christian evangelism coin, “indigenous” or “contextual” leadership training, by which rather than exporting kids, evangelicals maintain “orphans” and “abandoned” kids in country, raising them in their belief systems without “family interference” to one day hopefully grow up to be leaders in government, industry, and other areas of influence in order to “take a nation for christ.”  All of which is what lies behind code words like Mercy & Sharing’s “We are very adamant about raising the kids to become leaders in their own country.”

Mercy & Sharing of course also benefits directly from the children now disconnected from family ties and their records destroyed national child welfare crisis. Both economically and in terms of prestige and becoming a ‘go to’ ministry in a country wherein most social programs are administered by NGOs, not the state. The concept of “indigenously” raising of kids de-contextualized from their families for christian leadership is well deserving of it’s own post eventually, but I haven’t gotten there yet.

Meanwhile, kids are being handed over to groups like Mercy and Sharing routinely.

Haiti’s government-run hospital unit for abandoned babies in Port-au-Prince was destroyed in the earthquake, and Mercy & Sharing had worked closely with the children there. The government is now moving abandoned or orphaned kids directly into tent cities temporarily while they process them in the social services system.

“The social affairs offices are pretty much inoperable,” Susie said. “They lost all of their records, too. So the children are being placed in the tent cities right now and then moved, directly after their paper work is done, to orphanages like ours.”

That’s what passes for child welfare in Haiti, desperation, abandonment, adoption,  or being handed off to groups like this.

It’s a free for all.

Not that most Americans seem to have any problem with that.

Meanwhile, in Haiti… Kids are the new economic model. Everyone in position to benefit from such is doing just that, just as quickly as they can.

Now that Illinois’ disastrous HB 5428 has been signed into law, (it’s now known as PA 96-0895) simply by looking at the new law it becomes clear, some untold number of adoptees will have their requests for their original birth certificates, or attempts to register with the registry rejected by the state. Yet the state appears to have no interest in hearing from or about those so intentionally left behind.

No provision has been made to track those rejections nor build statistics how many requests are being turned down. (Let alone offer those rejected any form of redress.)

Until now.

Mary Lynn Fuller (of Illinois Open) is beginning to compile some of the stories of those the state of Illinois is rejecting access to their Original Birth Certificates (OBCs) to or refusing to register in the IARMIE (Illinois Adoption Registry and Medical Information Exchange.) She’s attempting to build some basic statistics on just how many are being turned away and what their circumstances are.

She can be contacted via email- mlfuller65@comcast.net.

If you can help spread the word about Mary Lynn’s effort to do this basic data collection, please share her effort far and wide within your social networks.

This is terribly important work, as many legislators believe they just ‘restored’ adoptees civil rights and believe the new law has ‘fixed’ the situation. Tragically, nothing could be farther from the truth. But without the data to show what those turned away are experiencing, those rejected will be left to suffer this injustice as if it were nothing more than a ‘personal problem’.

These rejections are not ‘personal problems.’  They are the result of a systemic flaw, inherently built into the new law, and precisely what many of us who have been blogging about the legislative wrangling in Illinois for years now warned was about to happen before the law passed.

Bastardette has added her take on Mary Lynn’s effort here:

Attention Illinois Original Birth Certificate Rejects! Act Now!

As Bastardette put it:

You can read Mary’s latest blog about Illinois here. Note that although Mary is a grandmother, and her first mother is dead, she is not yet old enough and thus responsible enough to qualify for her own birth certificate–despite what Feigenholtz says to to the contrary on her own webpage.

Representative Sara Feigenholtz, who sponsored and pushed the bill can say  “Today, we’re opening a new chapter in adoption history in Illinois where we can finally say that all families are created equal” ’til she’s blue in the face.

Even the most straightforward reading of the law makes it clear enough, today Illinois families and adoptees remain locked behind multiple doors of state constructed unequal treatment.

What’s important at this point, is to bring together and compile the stories of those who AS A CLASS OF PEOPLE are left to endure that inequality, and bring their plight to light.

Rather than remaining voiceless, each trapped by the legislation’s fatal flaw, adoptee rights advocates both in Illinois and across the country are trying to ensure that PA 96-0895 is not the end of the road in Illinois as this new law merely creates a whole new set of problems, problems we warned were inherent to it before it passed. None of us are giving up.

We don’t view this latest version of the mess in Illinois as any kind of “end point” nor do we consider the matter “settled.” If anything, we foresee that for a class of adoptees and their families, this is merely another chapter, and the problems therein are only just beginning.

Proving that, though, becomes a matter of individuals being willing to speak out. Of data collection. And of not giving up.

We recognize there’s a long haul ahead of us, all the more so in that once legislators pass a bill, they use their work on it as an excuse to refuse to revisit the “issue” for years to come.

As they refuse to track the consequences of the law, it falls to the directly affected to do so.

With the evidence of PA 96-0895‘s failures in hand, we will continue to push for nothing less than genuine equality for adopted people and their families in Illinois.

Because when it comes to genuinely restoring human, civil, and identity rights, no one should be left behind or forgotten.

---

UPDATE: One final, important addition, BastardGrannyAnnie, also an IL Bastard and also involved in Illinois Open’s fight against this broken law has her own story to tell, and some massive news. Please read across to her piece:

Illinois Adoptees with One Foot in the Grave. Hark! Your Original Birth Certificate is on its Way.

Sad case winding its way through the courts in Louisiana see,

Birth certificate flap heads back to appeals court

Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell has won a second chance to prevent the state from having to issue a birth certificate listing two men as the fathers of a baby they adopted through a New York court.

The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals agreed Friday to hold a second hearing before the entire panel of 16 judges, reopening a landmark case that gay rights supporters and social conservatives are eyeing closely.

No hearing date was set Friday.

…

Having lost on both the district level and on first appeal, Caldwell wants the full court to overturn a February ruling by a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit that unanimously ordered the state to issue a revised birth certificate.

U.S. District Court Judge Jay Zainey ruled in favor of the couple in 2008. Because Louisiana provides new birth certificates for Louisiana-born children adopted outside the state — listing the names of the adoptive parents — Zainey concluded that it must provide the same document for this family as well.

Obviously, there are a number of core issues at stake, such as Equal Protection, but there are also linguistic terminology quirks that are playing out in the  particulars of this case, perhaps foremost among them the fact that Louisiana legal statues and code remains undefined in matters of what constitutes an “adoptive parent”:

“Like ‘surviving spouse,’ the term ‘adoptive parents’ is nowhere defined in the statute, or elsewhere in the codes or the case law of Louisiana. When we parse the term for its plain meaning, we find that a common dictionary definition of ‘parent’ is ‘father or mother,’ and … the plain meaning of ‘adoptive parents’ is a ‘father or mother who adopts a child.'”

I have written before (see Sewing the scarlet “b”- California’s newest bastards, and other abysmal anti-Queer anti-child bastardization) about what happens when Queer marriages are dismantled or unrecognized by the state, ultimately, it’s the kids in those families who end up dealing with many of the consequences.

For some, particularly those with a vested interest in doing so, it’s very easy to tangle this case up in nonsense or politics, but at the heart of the case remains not only a family, but a boy.

This Saturday, July 31, 2010 file picture shows oil-contaminated marsh grass in Barataria Bay on the coast of Louisiana. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

A boy whose everyday ability to deal with things other kids have the luxury of simply taking for granted is now as murky and unpredictable as whether or not the tides will bring more oil up from the gulf waters into the fragile marsh grass.

Uncertainty has left its own indelible mark on the boy’s early childhood years.

Returning to the “birth certificate” article linked above:

The couple sued in 2007, arguing that Smith’s refusal threatened the boy’s enrollment in a health care plan and treated him like a second-class citizen.

It’s their child who would be treated as the son of a single dad (unmarried to his biological mother leaving the boy in that grey area that was once stamped “illegitimate” back in the day) living with a Gay ‘partner’, not listed on the boy’s paperwork should the state’s argument prevail.

Another child, another state, another potential scarlet b. (See my post linked above.)

As always seems to be the case when states pick these fights, it’s the kids and their families who even if they win, still end up ‘paying.’

Most non-adopted people rarely glimpse the hell Bastards can be forced to endure, all over a single piece of paper.

What this can mean in terms of everything from medical coverage to visitation rights if the boy was in a hospital (particularly many religious hospitals) and one Dad was deemed “not legally family” to use medical issues, as but one of many possible examples, rapidly devolves down into a logistical nightmare.

The couple were able to legally adopt the boy in New York, but now that they have him, living in San Diego, when it comes to the day to day practicalities, things suddenly hit a brick wall purely because the state the boy was born in,  Louisiana, is refusing to recognize the New York adoption:

Caldwell advised the registrar that she did not have to honor an adoption from New York that would not have been granted had the couple lived in Louisiana.

Take the word “Gay” out of the picture for one moment and think about that sentence, Louisiana is claiming it doesn’t have to honor or recognize an adoption that was legally finalized in another state.

Now I’m not a lawyer, but even a lay person can usually get their head around the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution.

Quoting from the Wikipedia article on such:

However, in August 2007, a federal appeals court held that the clause did require Oklahoma to recognize adoptions by same-sex couples which were finalized in other states.

The ruling (link opens a PDF) was out of the Tenth Circuit.

Louisiana is in the Fifth.

For the time being, at least, this case that began in 2007 continues to keep the boy in a legal limbo. He was all of two years old back when this case attempting to clarify his legal realities started.

Now, three years later, at age 5, his future legal status remains nothing if not still unclear.

This keeps up, he might just have some certainty by the time he graduates high school.

Yup, I took a month away from blogging. Not for lack of things to say, but that SO MUCH has been happening as of late. Writing about it all took a definite backseat to working on a number of projects.

But I also wanted to step back and take a deep breath and plot a course forward.

Now that October has finally rolled around, when I’m not out enjoying the Autumnal splendor, hopefully I will finally get some writing done.

So stay tuned, same Bastard time, same Bastard channel… .

Photograph by Melissa Farlow, via National Geographic

An incredibly important  Supreme Court decision has come out of India on Monday!

I have no real time to write about it all at the moment, so instead, I’m going to pull a variety of quotes out of some of the articles from the past day or so to lay out the outlines of what has just taken place.

The ruling comes in a case brought by Arun Dohle of Against Child Trafficking or ACT (which has long been listed in my links list.  They have been doing critically important human rights work for both adopted people and their families.)

Please note that while the news reports are dismissive of Dohle’s “lineage plea,” what the court actually ruled was that he would still be able to file a suit for seeking relief.

Certainly not a full victory by any means, ( at least not yet,)  but when it comes to establishing the absolute right of Indian adoptees to their documentation, the high court finally gave over full access, rebuffing arguments by the agency/NGO claiming adoptees have no right to such or that their files should be covered by “confidentiality”or “mother’s privacy.”

The judges flatly dismissed such arguments, ruling:

• it is not a national secret that will cause a `maha yudh’, adding that “nothing is private here”
• “Show it to him. He is entitled to it”
• “No national secret is involved in it and the days of privileged documents are over.”

and then handing over the adoption file to him.

So on to the articles themselves.

Quoting from ‘I won’t be satisfied till I find my birth mother’:

An adopted Indian’s 17-year search for his biological parents has resulted in a landmark judgment which will fundamentally change adoption rules of the country.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed Arun Dohle, 37, to access his adoption records, which was illegal until now.

Dohle was two months old when a German couple, Michael and Gertrude Dohle, adopted him in 1973 from Kusumbai Motichand Mahila Seva Gram (KMMSG), an adoption centre in Pune. Dohle has been seeking adoption records from the centre since 1993.

“The court’s decision is a landmark one as it establishes that adopted children have a right to know about their biological parents after attaining maturity,” Dohle told DNA.

This  Times of India article, ‘I am not interested in my biological father’ contains many more details:

His habeas corpus plea to have his biological mother produced in court was dismissed by the apex court. But 17 years of legal struggle after he first made the innocuous request to Mahila Seva Gram to be shown his adoption file, his wish was finally granted by the Supreme Court on Monday. He now knows that his mother was a 20-year-old Hindu Maratha, a Std X graduate who resided at the agency during her pregnancy after her “friend’s brother” refused to marry her.

The adoption file was slim, just a few handwritten pages, which the bench headed by Justice Markandey Katju handed over to Dohle’s counsel and him in court to read without hurrying them up. According to the judges, it is not a national secret that will cause a `maha yudh’, adding that “nothing is private here” when the agency tried to prevent showing of the file citing “mother’s privacy”.

Dohle is married and runs an NGO called Against Child Trafficking in Germany, which he says aims at “tackling a money-and-demand-driven market in adoption of children that should be labelled as child-trafficking.” His battle may bring hope to many other children given up for inter-country adoption, who once they grow up, wish to find out the identity of their biological parents.

“The “child record” that the adoption agency maintains may contain information about the biological parents if their identities are known,” said advocate Jamshed Mistry, one of the counsels for Dohle in SC. He added that Monday’s order will now ensure that adoption agencies will maintain authentic records as mandated by law in case of foreign adoption and by the landmark SC verdict of 1984, in the case of Laxmi Kant Pandey.

The particulars of Dohle’s case also raise important questions.

The case, took a controversial turn, when he said that former Maharashtra chief Minister Sharad Pawar’s brother might be linked to his birth. The police report, however, categorically denied any links to the Pawar family. But as Dohle pointed out, Pratap Pawar in October 1973, while recommending the Dohles as adoptive parents had written: I am a member of Association of Friends of Germany and Mr & Mrs Dohle are friends…They stayed with us and selected Arun Swanand as their adopted son.”

From Can’t find your mum through writ, says Supreme Court (Emphasis added by me):

Shooting down the objections raised by advocate Neela Gokhle representing the Kusumbai Motichand Mahila Seva Gram (KMMSG) where Dohle was reportedly “abandoned” by his biological mother, the court said, “No national secret is involved in it and the days of privileged documents are over.”

Advocate Jamshed Mistry who was part of the legal team representing Dohle said: “The court’s direction reaffirms the Supreme Court guidelines as stated in 1984 and also the Hague convention to which India is a signatory.”

However, while dismissing Dohle’s appeal, justices Markandey Katju and TS Thakur said he could file a suit for seeking relief.

Dohle was two months old when a German couple, Michael and Gertrude Dohle, adopted him in 1973. He contested that he was abandoned by his mother and was given in adoption without her consent. He alleged that his adoptive parents were helped by union minister and NCP leader Sharad Pawar’s brother Pratap Pawar.

from SC comes to aid of ‘adopted’ man:

The SC order, granting him access in open court to study the original file, translates into good news for all adopted children who want to access information on their origins, said his lawyers. Dohle’s case is particularly controversial as he claims to be the biological son of the elder brother of union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar, Appasaheb. He had produced a DNA report of a German agency, with a sample of hair along with the root from Pawar’s nephew, to indicate that there was 96% likelihood of them “being related.”

Dohle-a slim, bespectacled and soft-spoken man who lives and works in Germany- said he wanted to know if his biological mother was well taken care of and he planned to help her if she was not.

In court, on Monday, when Dohle’s case came up for hearing again with senior counsel Shekhar Naphade arguing that the German couple was helped and “recommended by Pawar’s brother for the adoption,” the bench headed by Justice Markandeya Katju asked the agency why it was unwilling to show the files to Dohle. The judge asked for the files and then handed them to Dohle’s lawyers.

Activist Anjali Kate, who was helping Dohle in the matter along with Mumbai-based lawyer Pradeep Havnur, said the file contained details of the mother, which would now have to be verified.

from SC dismisses German national’s Pawar lineage plea:

The apex court, however, permitted Arun to peruse in the court the records of the NGO Kusumbai Motichand Mahila Seva Gram (KMMSG) to trace out the address given by his biological mother at the time of relinquishing him for adoption by a German couple in 1973.

It rejected the argument of the NGO that Dohle could not peruse the documents as it was a confidential matter.

“Show it to him. He is entitled to it,” the bench said.

Earlier, the Maharashtra government had informed the court that there was no truth in the claim of the man that he was related to the family of Sharad Pawar through one of his brothers and submitted a police report in this regard.

According to Arun, he was born on July 31, 1973, at Sassoon Hospital in Pune. A German couple, Michael and Gertrude Dohle, had adopted him four weeks later from the NGO after his mother reportedly abandoned him. He claimed to be the son of the brother of the Union Minister.

He settled in Germany but later came back to India to locate his biological mother.

The German national said he suspected the institution had kidnapped him as a baby and separated him from his mother.

He submitted that he also suspected that the abandonment theory was a ploy to facilitate his adoption.

Arun, through counsel Senthil Jagadeesan, alleged in the apex court that for the past eight years, he has been rebuffed by the NGO which was refusing to reveal her identity.

The Mumbai police too refused to help him in tracing his biological mother, he alleged.

The Bombay High Court had in 2005 dismissed his plea, following which he appealed in the apex court.

In 2005, the apex court had asked the Maharashtra Director General of Police to place in a sealed cover a report on Arun’s biological connection.

While I thrilled beyond words for all Indian adoptees, tonight, my thoughts are still with Arun Dohle whose real life, and real family lies at the core of this partial victory.

“Justice delayed is justice denied.”

Sunday, August 15, 2010

BASTARD NATION ACTION ALERT: Monday is “Contact Chairman Oliver Day” (Pennsylvania)

HB 1978 is a short, simply written bill to restore the right of all Pennsylvania adoptees to their original birth certificates without restriction. For months, the bill has been stalled, with no hearings, in the House Health and Human Services Committee chaired by Rep. Frank Louis Oliver.

To move this bill into hearings, Pennsylvania Adoptee Rights (PAR) is sponsoring “Contact Chairman Oliver Day”–a day dedicated to asking Rep. Oliver to schedule hearings.

You do not have to be from Pennsylvania to help. Please join activist around the country and contact Rep. Oliver. Messages shouldn’t take more than two sentences.

Call, fax, or email Rep. Oliver now.

Bastard Nation is not affiliated with PAR and HB 1978 is not a Bastard Nation bill. We, however, support the action and endorse the bill as it is currently written, and will continue to do so as long as it remains clean.

If you don’t know about the Magdalene Asylums/Magdalene Laundries you should.

They form a crucial chapter in the flesh and blood consequences of what can and has happened to women and children when the Catholic church gains control over a woman’s reproductive capacity and her life.

Visit  Justice for Magdalenes.

Then the memorial statue in Galway, while you still can. (Also see the latest press release, in pdf form, on the efforts to save it.)

Despite the number of babies sent on into adoptions, other babies graves are still being discovered, see Bethany infants buried in unmarked graves for example, from this past May.

Go see the text of the stones,  read the names of women enslaved by these institutions who died in them.

It’s a chapter all too many would like to tear out of the books, pretending it never happened.

The root of the problem remains, this hatred of women, and efforts to control their reproductive capacity didn’t end with the Laundries.