Source: http://www.kamloopsnews.ca

Murray Mitchell/The Daily News

July 12,2010 

By JASON HEWLETT
Daily News Staff Reporter

When her oldest son died on a soccer field in 2001 Jaswinder Ollek believed her life was over. Nine years of sadness, tragedy and turmoil later she’s found new hope and joy in a young daughter from India.

She feels that joy every time Haveen, 4, looks at her, smiles and says “Oh mom. You are the best mom in the world.”

[…]

Eventually the Olleks were led to a family living in poverty with three girls and another on the way. The fourth child turned out to be Naveen.

“When I saw her, I thought she was mine,” said Ollek.

The family agreed to the adoption and within months a passport was ready for Haveen. Little did Ollek know it would take two years and almost $50,000 before the family was able to bring their daughter home.

Ollek could not hide her frustration as she explained the hurdles she jumped through. She split her time between Kamloops and India and fought hard to secure the proper court orders, child study reports and No Objections Certificate needed to adopt Haveen…

Date: 2010-07-10
Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com

LIFE'S ESSENCE, BOUGHT AND SOLD

Margaret Somerville

From Saturday's Globe and Mail

Two stories concerning the donation of gametes – sperm and ova – appeared recently in the media.

One related that a “virtual” sperm and egg bank is being established that will only accept offers to donate from “beautiful” people. Internet polling will determine who is beautiful enough to do so. The goal – informed by the principle that “everyone deserves a beautiful child” – is to enable “ugly” people to have beautiful children.

The other story was that New Zealand will possibly allow “double donation”; that is, would-be parents would be able to use both donated ova and sperm to create embryos (a practice that is not legally prohibited, although still fairly uncommon, in Canada). As Diane Allen of the Infertility Network argues, this “cannot be construed as any form of infertility ‘treatment,’ but, rather, the deliberate manufacture of babies to meet consumer demand.”

What do we, as a society, owe to the resulting children, especially when we are complicit in their coming into being, by approving and funding the technologies used to create them? They are the people most profoundly and directly affected. They will live their lives as “donor-conceived adults,” “genetic orphans,” as many of them call themselves…

Source: http://newsmandu.com

Date: 2010-05-21

Source: http://www.earthtimes.org

David Furnish had no adoption age concerns

David Furnish has revealed he and Sir Elton John never thought the singer's age would stop them from adopting.

The Canadian filmmaker and his musician husband tried to give a home to HIV-positive Ukrainian child Lev last year, but were rejected because Elton, at 63, was deemed too old and because of their gay marriage.

Speaking at the Butterfly Ball in London's Battersea Park, David told BANG Showbiz: "We did take age into consideration but we are both like teenagers anyway so it wasn't an issue for us."

Although Ukrainian law stopped them from becoming parents, the 47-year-old star has revealed the couple will try again...

Source: Read more: http://www.cbc.ca

Nepal adoption suspension riles Canadians

Last Updated: Monday, April 26, 2010 | 10:11 AM PT

A group of Canadian couples hopes to convince the federal government to overturn a recommendation last month to suspend all adoptions from Nepal.

Ottawa resident Adrian Gollner and his wife are among 11 couples who had started the process of adopting children in Nepal in the hopes of bringing them to Canada in 2009.

But a February report from the Hague Conference on Private International Law raised concerns of fraudulent adoptions and child trafficking in Nepal. In response, federal agencies called on provinces to suspend adoptions from the South Asian country. The report followed visits from international monitors in the fall of 2009 that found widespread evidence of falsification of records...

Source: www.600ckat.com

Invalid death certificate puts BC couple in African adoption limbo

March, 9, 2010 - 08:30 pm Mertl, Steve - (THE CANADIAN PRESS)
VANCOUVER -A B.C. couple has been separated for months after its effort to adopt twin boys from Ghana turned into a bureaucratic nightmare.

Andrea Bastin, a filmmaker from Bowen Island near Vancouver, has been living in the West African country since August as she tries to convince the Canadian High Commission there that the boys' mother died giving birth.

But her effort is complicated by the fact the death certificate she first submitted turned out to be bogus, raising a red flag in a region where child trafficking is common…

Source: news.therecord.com

Payments to Ethiopia soared before local adoption agency collapsed

February 27, 2010
BY BRIAN CALDWELL, RECORD STAFF
CAMBRIDGE — Money going to an orphanage in Ethiopia allegedly soared in the year before an international adoption agency in Cambridge went bankrupt last summer.

The collapse of Imagine Adoption in July stunned more than 400 families hoping to adopt children and triggered a criminal fraud investigation.

Seven months later, with two Waterloo Regional Police investigators and an RCMP officer still working on it full-time, police are saying little about the case publicly.

But a court document used to obtain key financial records outlines the initial evidence and allegations against the non-profit agency’s top two officials — executive director Susan Hayhow and her husband, Rick, the former chief financial officer.

The document, called an information to obtain a search warrant, details allegedly suspicious actions that have not been proved in court and that have not been challenged by either Rick or Susan Hayhow. The Hayhows were not available for comment on allegations contained in the application…

Adoptions from Ghana dropped by rescued agency

November 03, 2009

By Brian Caldwell, Record staff
ELORA – Jeanette and Jesse Martin will always have a place in their hearts for two little girls in Ghana.

But after months of worry, confusion and frustration, they are almost ready to accept that twin sisters Grace and Destiny will never be part of their family.

“I have no idea what the future holds for them,” Jeanette said. “They’ll probably grow up and not know anybody wanted them or fought for them.”

The Elora couple was among more than 400 families stunned this summer by the collapse of Imagine Adoption, an international adoption agency based in Cambridge.

Most still have hope after clients overwhelmingly voted last month to save the agency from bankruptcy by paying an extra $4,000 and bringing in new leadership…

Families vote for Imagine Adoption rescue

Monday, September 21, 2009
CBC News

Tammy and Sidney Vlieg of Calgary are hoping for a sibling for their recently adopted daughter Josina. (CBC)Families whose futures were left in limbo following the bankruptcy of an Ontario-based adoption agency have voted in favour of trying to rescue the firm.

Under the terms of the restructuring proposal, families who were waiting to adopt will have to pay any money they owe to Imagine Adoption, plus another $4,000 in two instalments. The agency will also get a new board of directors and be closely monitored by the bankruptcy trustee…

Ukraine quashes Elton John adoption hope

September 14, 2009

Philippe Naughton
(AP)
'He's stolen my heart' - Elton John with Lev
Sir Elton John will not be allowed to adopt a Ukrainian toddler because he is too old and is not married, a Ukrainian government minister said today.

The 62-year-old singer said yesterday that he and his partner, David Furnish, wanted to adopt a 14-month-old HIV-infected boy named Lev whom they met during a visit to an orphanage with his Aids Foundation.

But Yuri Pavlenko, Ukraine's Minister for Family, Youth and Sports, insisted today that adoptive parents must be married and Ukraine does not recognise homosexual unions as marriage.

Mr Pavlenko also confirmed that Sir Elton was too old to adopt since Ukrainian law requires a parent to be no more than 45 years older than an adopted child…

Canadian families asked to bail out bankrupt adoption agency

WINNIPEG FREE PRESSSEPTEMBER 8, 2009

WINNIPEG — Hundreds of Canadians are being asked to put a price on children — by bailing out a bankrupt adoption agency.

About 350 Canadian families in the process of adopting overseas children were left in limbo when Cambridge, Ont.-based Kids Link International Adoption Agency, which operated as Imagine Adoption, was placed into bankruptcy on July 13 amid suspicions of fraud.

The families are working with bankruptcy trustee BDO Dunwoody to put together a proposal to rescue Imagine Adoption. They've been asked by the trustee to donate $4,000 each to help complete the agency's unfinished adoptions…

Gary Goodyear Continues To Deny Knowledge of Imagine Adoption Agency/Constant Energy Relationship

No Involvement or Knowledge In Dubious Relationship
By David Terry – 21 July 2009

Goodyear At CRC-IRAP Press Conference
Goodyear: I Knew And I Know Nothing About This Situation

Speaking to a meeting which recognized Cambridge-based Atlantic Industries Limited and Upland Technologies as Canadian innovation leaders, Gary Goodyear continued to deflect questions regarding his knowledge of the unfolding situation at the Imagine Adoption Agency and his ownership of Constant Energy, a Cambridge-based rental company.

Constant Energy is one of the Agency’s creditors and clarification is being sought over Gary and Valerie Goodyear’s joint ownership of the company and its dealings with Imagine.

Citing conflict of interest concerns and asserting that he had no knowledge of any of the events leading up to Imagine’s bankruptcy filing, Mr Goodyear stated that he “could not and would not answer questions” related to either Imagine or Constant Energy. Referring to certain press releases published by BDO Dunwoody in respect to these matters, Mr Goodyear suggested that everything that merited publication was publically available and that anything else published was “stirring up trouble”…

Parents ready to fight

Patrick Maloney
The London Free Press
July 20, 2009
London-area families devastated by the collapse of an international adoption agency have joined forces to fight for the children they dream of bringing here.

Glen Pearson

More than 60 people, mostly young couples, met in London yesterday to lean on each other and discuss the stunning bankruptcy of Kids Link International, that operates the agency, Imagine Adoption, that shut its doors one week ago today.

"We are family," Londoner Rob Eagleson said of anyone who's dealt with the Cambridge-based agency that brokered adoptions from Ethiopia and other countries. "We're a part of a family from the time we (get started)."

The bankruptcy filing, and subsequent departure of executive director Susan Hayhow to Ethiopia, has sent 400 families scrambling for answers...

Founder of orphanage in Ghana denies wrongdoing

Updated Mon. Jul. 20 2009 10:56 AM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

The founder of a Ghanaian orphanage that had ties to a Canadian adoption agency that went bankrupt last week, is denying allegations of child trafficking.

Reports have emerged that the orphanage was recently shut down by Ghanaian authorities. The orphanage is run by Hands of Mercy Christian Outreach International, a non-profit group based in Fort Erie, Ont.

Stephen Adongo, Ghana's acting director of social work said there were concerns that children who weren't orphans were being taken away from their parents and placed in the orphanage so they could be adopted internationally.

Deborah MacQuarrie, an evangelical Christian minister who runs Hands of Mercy with her husband, Max, says the allegations were false and the orphanage was never shut down…

Province takes up adoption fight

By KATIE SCHNEIDER, SUN MEDIA
Last Updated: 18th July 2009, 5:47pm
The province is teaming up with the feds to help speed up the international adoption process for Alberta families after the agency they were counting on went bankrupt.

Ontario-based Kids Link, which operates Imagine Adoption, announced Monday it had gone belly-up, leaving 64 families, including six whose adoptions have been approved, in the dark.

Alberta Children and Youth Services has been working with the feds’ international adoption desk in Ottawa and the Canadian embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, responsible for Ethiopia adoption cases, to try to facilitate the visa and passport part of the process for those approved families, said spokesman Trevor Coulombe.

“We’re trying to expedite things … to make sure there’s a strong line of communication between the province and Canadian government,” Coulombe said.

“We’re trying to make sure the families come to the forefront, so the T’s can be crossed and I’s can be dotted.”…

Bankrupt agency rented office space from company owned by Goodyear and wife

Jul 18, 2009 04:30 AM
BRIAN CALDWELL
CAMBRIDGE, Ont. – A company owned by federal cabinet minister Gary Goodyear and his wife rented office space to an adoption agency that collapsed this week amid concerns about suspect expenses.

Valerie Goodyear, co-owner with her husband of Constant Energy Inc., also worked for the agency – Kids Link International Adoption Agency – for several years before it went bankrupt…

Bankrupt adoption agency lists Lexus among its assets

July 17, 2009 CBC News
Laura Morrison says she and her husband paid Imagine Adoption more than $15,000 and are waiting to be united with their adopted daughter. (CBC)
An Ontario company specializing in international adoptions that went into receivership this week lists two luxury vehicles, including a $50,000 Lexus, as assets along with $500,000 in the bank, according to bankruptcy documents.

Kids Link International Adoption Agency, which runs Imagine Adoption, based in Cambridge, Ont., posted a bankruptcy notice on its website Monday. For the last two years, it had helped Canadians adopt children from Ethiopia, Ghana and Ecuador…

Bankrupt adoption agency owed money to 400 families

Jennifer MacMillan
Toronto — From Friday's Globe and Mail
Jul. 17, 2009
Susan Hayhow's stonework century home in Cambridge, Ont., is the envy of her neighbours. With an indoor hot tub, manicured backyard and top-of-the-line appliances, it's perfectly appointed – much like Ms. Hayhow, who appears neatly coiffed and well-dressed in the dozens of photos posted to the websites of her adoption agency and charity. They show Ms. Hayhow during her frequent trips, handing out toys to children in Ecuador and posing in the lobby of the luxurious Sheraton hotel in Ethiopia's capital.

But Ms. Hayhow's financial records paint a very different picture of the 43-year-old's lifestyle – heavily in debt she is now dealing with the bankruptcy of her agency, which has left hundreds of adoptive families in the lurch…

Agency's implosion shows peril of adopting abroad

The bankruptcy of Ontario-based Imagine Adoption puts on hold the dreams of hundreds of families
Hayley Mick
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
Jul. 15, 2009
For months they have gazed at photos, studied up on Ethiopia and dreamed of the day their adopted child would fly home with them to Canada.

But hundreds of families had those dreams dashed when news broke this week that an Ontario-based international adoption agency had gone bankrupt.

Parents and adoption experts say Imagine Adoption is not simply the case of one rogue agency – its sudden implosion highlights the increasing perils of adopting abroad.

“ You trust that these people know what they're doing ”  Robyn Bertucci
“We've been told from the beginning that adoption wasn't for the faint of heart,” one prospective parent from Burlington, Ont., said Tuesday. “But never in our worst nightmares did we imagine something like this.”

As China winds down its adoption program, agencies have fanned out across the globe seeking new sources of children. Africa has become the new China in recent years, but some experts say the stampede for adoption licences has opened the door to programs that aren't necessarily ethical, experienced or reliable.

Imagine Adoption in Cambridge, Ont., began facilitating adoptions in Ethiopia and Ghana about two years ago, and has left heartache in its wake…

Anxious adoptive parents wait for agency's bankruptcy to be sorted

July 15, 2009 | 7:43 PM MT
CBC News
Three-month-old Wondimu was approved to be adopted by a Calgary couple before an adoption agency went bankrupt. (Courtesy of Thurmeier family)
Children approved to be adopted by Canadian parents using a now bankrupt adoption agency are in good care, according to the bankruptcy trustee for Imagine Adoption, which specialized in adoptions from Africa.

The Cambridge, Ont.,-based agency's parent company, Kids Link, went bankrupt on Monday, leaving roughly 200 Canadian clients in the lurch. For the last two years, it had facilitated adoptions from Ethiopia, Ghana and Ecuador…

Adoption Agency Collapses, Takes Dreams with It

SOS Children Villages - Canada
15/7/2009 - Taking prospective parents by surprise, the collapse of Canadian adoption agency Imagine Adoption and its associate, Kids Link, made headlines all accross the nation.

Imagine Adoption, an Ontario-based Government-licensed international adoption agency, surprised its expectant parents by filing for bankruptcy earlier this week. Now, 200 parents are left to pick up the remaining pieces of their dream of providing a home to an impoverished child.

Surprisingly, this is not some isolated case of financial mismanagement. Stories from adoption analysts and from parents say that the dangers of adopting abroad are increasing. The expansion in the number of international adoption agencies, especially in countries with corruption and a weak rule of law, means that accountability and transparency in their financial books may not be 100% reliable….

Three jailed for child trafficking

AP
26/06/2009
A court in northern Vietnam sentenced three people to prison for trafficking children in a scheme that sold babies to a welfare center, an official said.
The three were convicted of selling 12 infants to the deputy director of a social welfare center in Ninh Binh province for 130 million dong ($NZ11,970) between April 2006 and May 2008, when they were arrested, said presiding Judge Vu Duy Ton.
They had solicited infants from unwed mothers and those from desperate families, he said.
The deputy director of the social welfare center, To Van An, committed suicide by jumping in front of a car a month after the arrests.
Vu Quang Dat, former director of a social welfare center in Hoa Binh province, got seven years in prison while his two accomplices received three and five years after the one-day trial on Thursday, the judge said.
Twelve accomplices were handed suspended sentences from two years to two-and-a-half years on the same charges, he said.
Of the 12 babies sold to the center in Ninh Binh, six were adopted by citizens from the United States, France and Canada, five were transferred to the center in Hoa Binh, and one was returned to the family of an unwed mother, the judge said…

The lessons of Idah's long journey from Malawi to Burlington

Geoffrey York
Mchinji, Malawi — From Monday's Globe and Mail, Sunday, Jun. 21, 2009 10:36PM EDT
Before Madonna, before the hype and the fury over her Malawian babies, there were the Clementinos of Burlington, Ont.
The global spotlight never fell on the Clementinos. Nobody heard of their long struggle to adopt a little girl named Idah from Malawi.
But their victory, after a four-year, $35,000 legal battle, was a precedent that paved the way for the U.S. pop superstar to adopt a pair of children from the same African country. Their story raises the same awkward issues – of poverty and culture, of deciding what is best for a child's future, and for the future of a country…

Manitoba government looking into adoption concerns

Manitoba government looking into adoption concerns
Friday, March 20, 2009
CBC News 
Lindsay Drummond and her new adopted baby girl, Emerson Grace, arrive from Kazakhstan at Winnipeg's airport in February. (CBC) 
Recent CBC reports about a Winnipeg woman's experience adopting a baby from Kazakhstan have prompted Manitoba's government to investigate how other provinces regulate the industry.
Claudia Ash-Ponce, spokesperson for the Manitoba Child Protection Branch, told CBC News she wants to hold a conference call with her counterparts at the federal and provincial levels.
Manitoba's government will also review complaints about high fees and other problems with the adoption process that were identified in the CBC reports, said Ash-Ponce.
"Because of the concerns raised through the media, we will be responding by having a pan-Canadian discussion," she said. "Canada can actually call for a moratorium on adoptions from certain countries if there are concerns."
Drummond shows off the extra pockets she sewed into her pants to carry the $22,000 in cash she used for the various fees and 'gifts' she had to pay during the adoption process. (CBC) ...

Ethiopia: Adoption : Des pratiques douteuses

Ethiopia: Adoption: Doubtful practices

Radio Canada, 18 mars 2009
An investigation by Radio-Canada CBC lifts the veil on controversial adoptions of Ethiopian children. Families have concluded adoptions 
on the basis of erroneous information. Others have adopted sick children without being warned. These parents demand accountability from their adoption agency, in Manitoba. 
For two years, Terri and Chris Hambruch share their lives with their 
adoptive daughter Dassie. The record of their adoption agency Manitoba Canadian Advocates for the Adoption of Children (CAFAC), said she was orphan. 
But when Dassie began to speak English, she asked her parents why they had adopted. They said she needed a mom and a dad and that they needed a daughter. Then they learned that her family was still alive 
in Ethiopia...

Pink Pagoda Rising

Written by Roderick Benns
Journalist & Author
The Secret Campaign to Save China’s Baby Girls
Jim Garrow still remembers the day eight years ago when one of his assistants was softly crying in a corner of the Bethune Institute’s office in China.
Her sister had phoned the night before with devastating news – she had found out that her sister’s husband had demanded their baby girl be smothered to make way for a possible son.
In Chinese society, it is typically either the father or a Buddhist priest who is known to them who would kill the baby.

Garrow, who had been working in China since 1995, couldn’t believe his ears.
“I said to my upset assistant at that time that whatever needs to be done to save this baby, we’ll make it happen. Anything to change the outcome, no matter the cost.”…

A crying shame

Sarah Treleaven,  Financial Post April 19, 2008
This first in a two-part series looks at the steeply rising costs of adoption. Next Saturday, the costs of surrogacy.
Perfect-looking families stare out from online profiles on private adoption sites, pleading to provide a home for someone else's biological child. Couples view video clips of a four-year-old born to a drug-dependent mother, puzzling over whether she will be the right fit for their family. And then there are those who literally travel to opposite ends of the Earth to pick up a son or daughter they've only seen in a photograph.
The picture of adoption in Canada includes multiple images. While there are three options for adoption in Canada--public, private domestic and international -- the system is far from simple to navigate. It is characterized by copious paperwork, lengthy wait times, few guarantees and -- in the case of private and international adoption -- extremely steep fees.
While there are currently no fees associated with public adoption through a Children's Aid Society, the cost for private and international adoptions can range from $10,000 to $50,000…

Romanian suing Canadian couple over adoption

Feb. 17 2005
Canadian Press
A young Romanian mother is suing the wealthy Canadian couple who adopted her as a nine-year-old, then sent her back five months later to a life of poverty -- two days after they adopted another baby girl.

The suit, filed in Ontario Superior Court by Alexandra Austin, 22, on Tuesday, identifies her legal father as prominent heart surgeon Joseph Austin, now chief of cardiothoracic surgery at Overlake Hospital Medical Center in Bellevue, Wash.

"They stole my childhood. They stole my future. They stole my life,'' Austin said in halting English, brushing away tears…

Babies-for-sale trade faces a global crackdown

Attempts by Western families to adopt children from poor nations have fuelled a rogue market in young lives. But at last action is being taken. Carolyn Wheeler reports from Lviv, Ukraine

GGuardian.co.uk, Sunday November 21 2004 01.12 GMT

The thick stack of photographs pulled from a manila envelope in Maria Chernyk's cupboard explains all she has to say about foreign adoptions. Each year, the director of Lviv's Orphanage No 1 sends a handful of children overseas: most to the United States, many to Italy, some to Germany, France and Canada, one to a Ukrainian couple in Manchester.

She tracks them with this collection of photos: a sweet blond boy with a crossed eye, a slender, solemn-faced girl who needed heart surgery, a little boy so traumatised by his past that he never spoke.

Each family paid dearly for the privilege of being parents, over £15,000 in many cases, to cover travel, agency fees and the demands of dozens of bureaucrats…

More and more U.S. birth mothers choose to place their infants with Canadian families

While U.S. couples spend tens of thousands to adopt children from abroad, more and more U.S. birth mothers choose to place their infants with Canadian families. Issues of race, money and culture raise questions about 
The Oregonian, U.S.A., GABRIELLE GLASER,  July 04, 2004 
VANCOUVER, B.C.
-- In every way, 11-year-old Gabriel Melcombe seems like a typical adolescent. He wears his hair in an impressive thatch and favors baggy jeans. He listens to hip-hop music. And, like others his age, he is struggling to carve out his identity.

But that search is made complicated by the fact that he is black, being raised by an adoptive white Canadian mother in this city founded by British fur traders…

SURVEY OF COUNTRIES REVEALS CLOSURES, SLOWDOWNS IN INTERNATIONAL ADOPTION

(June 9, 2004) The Adoption Council of Canada's survey of the status of adoption in 16 countries shows that a variety of factors are slowing the rate of adoption of children from abroad. Some countries are closed; others are processing applications slowly, a source of frustration for adoptive families anxious to bring home their children.

China and Russia remain open to Canadian families seeking to adopt abroad, but once-popular countries like Guatemala and Romania are no longer an option.

Parents planning to adopt internationally must face the prospect of delays in file processing for a number of reasons, such as political turmoil (Haiti), health warnings which suspend some procedures (outbreak of SARS in China in 2003) and halts while legislation is changed (Vietnam and other countries).

Citizenship and Immigration Canada is expected to release soon the figures for international adoption in 2003. The statistics could show a decline owing to a number of countries being closed to intercountry adoption.

Adoptions are currently halted in Cambodia, Guatemala, Romania, Thailand (partial) and Vietnam. There are delays in Georgia, Haiti and Kazakhstan….

Violence against women - dead baby scam

COMMISSION ON HUMAN RIGHTS

Fifty-ninth session, 14 January 2003

…Canada

20. By a letter dated 13 August 2002, sent jointly with the Special Rapporteur on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography, the Special Rapporteur advised the Government that she had received information concerning fraudulent adoption practices and violence against unmarried women. The allegations involved staff at the Mount Sinai Hospital, the Victor Home for Unwed Mothers, Women’s College Hospital (now Sunnybrook and

Women’s) and the Catholic Childrens’ Aid Society (CCAS). In particular, the Special Rapporteur received information on the following cases…

Echo of Dickensian England heard in Ontario courts

WINDSOR -- An echo of Dickensian England is being heard in the Ontario Courts. A Windsor man who was one of 30,000 British children shipped to Canada in the 1930s, often as farm labour and domestic servants, is suing Barnado's Homes, Britain's largest children's charity for 400 million [pounds sterling], as a class action on behalf of 3,000 to 5,000 surviving grown children in Canada.

Cherie Blair, is president of the charity. While it is held in high esteem in Britain, Barnardo's and the home children program has been the subject of unfavorable articles, books and dramatizations in Canada over the past 50 years.

Barnardo's is the largest and most prominent of the 50 British organization that participated in a scheme encouraged by the British government to reduce poverty at home by sending children from large families, orphanages or children living on the streets to the overseas dominion. Known as "home children", the boys were usually sent to farms and the girls into domestic service. Between 1870 and 1967, a total of about 300,000 British children were shipped to Canada, Australia and New Zealand, over 100,000 to Canada. The children were almost all under 14 at the time they were shipped, some as young as five. Canada received its last home child in 1939….

Quebec halts adoptions from India

Last Updated: Saturday, May 5, 2001 | 8:47 AM ET

CBC News

The agency that oversees international adoptions in Quebec has put a stop to adoptions from India.

Allegations of child trafficking have forced the closing of several orphanages operating in India. One of them is the orphanage the Quebec government dealt with.

India has always been open to international adoption. But it's only since last December that couples in Quebec have been able to adopt Indian children.

The company that provides the service is called Children of the World. It founded an orphanage, Bethany Home, in the province of Tandoor. The orphanage had the approval of India's Central Adoption Resource Agency.

Five couples have adopted already, 15 others have received a picture of the baby they are waiting for.

But Bethany Home is now closed, its director cannot be found. A suspected child smuggler in India listed Bethany Home as one of his clients.

Greece's Black-Market Babies Come Home -- Stolen Children Demand To Know Their Histories
By Nikos Konstandaras
AP
ATHENS, Greece - Forty-one years ago a frightened Greek child of 5, stolen from her mother, landed in America to begin a new life.

Raised in an orphanage and by foster parents and told her mother had died in childbirth, young Amalia Balch and dozens of other children that October were herded aboard an airplane in Greece.

When the plane landed in New York City, adults streamed on board to claim the children they knew only by photographs, the kids they had adopted by proxy.

"I remember being very sick, and a plane full of children . . . and being very scared," she says.

Today, at age 45, Amalia Balch still doesn't know if she was a black-market baby, if her adoptive parents paid money for her. She hasn't pressed the point, but she suspects they did.

Over the past 10 years and five trips to the country of her birth, she has learned some truths about her roots. First she learned that she was stolen from her unmarried mother at birth.

And recently she was reunited for the first time with dozens of her blood relatives in her mother's home village.

Balch is one of thousands of people who now suspect that as infants they were sold in the baby black market that flourished in Greece for more than a decade after the 1946-49 civil war.

A baby for $1,000

Almost half a century later, there's no reliable way to determine how many children were taken from poor parents and sold, both in Greece and abroad, in Canada, Australia, Sweden and South Africa, as well as the United States….

Booming Polish Market: Blond, Blue-Eyed Babies

New York Times
By GABRIELLE GLASER,
April 19, 1992
Poland's opening to Western market forces has brought an unexpected side effect: a booming traffic in the country's blond, blue-eyed babies.

Since the fall of Communism two years ago, Western embassies in Warsaw have reported a striking rise in the number of residence visas and passports granted to Polish infants and toddlers.

Polish officials say that many of the adoptions are legal but that the black market is growing. And participants in such transactions say some young mothers are being pressed to sign away the rights to their children. In some cases, officials say, poor, pregnant women give up their babies in exchange for money directly. But most often, they say, administrators of homes for single mothers, as well as the attorneys involved in the adoptions, receive up to tens of thousands of dollars.

Reports that large amounts of money have changed hands in exchange for babies are not new in Eastern Europe or the third world: Romania became notorious for the practice after its 1989 revolution.

But the issue is potentially explosive in Poland because the competition from foreigners keeps Poles from adopting Polish children and because some of the cases reported are linked to the Roman Catholic Church….

Shame of Romania's 'barter babies'

Toronto Star, 31March 1991
In the past year dozens of groups and individuals have flocked to get involved in Romanian adoptions. They range from a non-profit group that charges $500 for administration costs but at times initiates adoptions that involve "gifts" of up to $500 to a birth family, to a consultant service that charges $5,000 U.S. to find a healthy young Romanian child and will pay up to $1,000 of that to the birth family as a "gift."

Sources interviewed said the result is that the price sought for a healthy baby in Romania can range from $500 to $20,000 U.S. A Romanian government spokesperson in Ottawa says it is illegal to pay parents to adopt their babies in Romania…

Gabriela Grigoriu from the Metro area says, as a person of Romanian descent, she was moved to help families seeking to help the orphans. Last year she informally helped many people adopt Romanian babies…

An angry doctor battles a gruesome black market in Asian children (Bangladesh)
December 1981
… Even more devastating, in its way, was Preger's discovery, in 1977, of what he claims is a kidnapping ring that supplies children not only for illegal adoption but also for prostitution, mutilation and murder. The British Anti-Slavery Society is preparing a report on Dr. Preger's findings for the United Nations Economic and Social Council as well as for the U.N. Commission on Human Rights. Interpol and the Dutch Ministry of Justice have launched separate investigations into the matter at the request of a Swiss child welfare agency, and Renee Bridel, a Swiss U.N. delegate in Geneva, is writing a comprehensive report on the international traffic in children. "This involves hundreds of thousands of children from all over the Third World—and certainly from Bangladesh," says Bridel. "They are sent to wealthy countries everywhere, including the U.S. and Canada."

Before being deported from Bangladesh in 1979 for allegedly meddling in the country's "internal affairs," Dr. Preger says he discovered how the flesh peddlers gathered the children and what they did with them. Some victims were simply snatched off the streets; others were taken from their parents with the promise that they would be sent to boarding school. Many illiterate, poverty-stricken parents, in a country where the average daily wage is less than a dollar, were duped into giving up their offspring in the belief that they would be fed, housed and educated by a Dutch relief agency. Assured that they could visit their children at any time, the parents discovered when they attempted to do so that the schools did not exist and that their children had vanished without a trace. They were also informed, to their horror, that the blank papers to which they had trustingly affixed their thumbprints were forms by which they had relinquished their sons and daughters for adoption.…