{"id":3103,"date":"2012-09-10T07:34:02","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T07:34:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.againstchildtrafficking.org\/?p=3103"},"modified":"2013-03-15T13:24:10","modified_gmt":"2013-03-15T13:24:10","slug":"india-family-secrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/india-family-secrets\/","title":{"rendered":"India: Family Secrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Source: http:\/\/www.openthemagazine.com<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

15 September 2012<\/p>\n

Cross-border adoption: the trauma of knowing one was given away at birth and the travails of trying to find out why<\/strong><\/p>\n

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BY Mihir Srivastava<\/a> EMAIL AUTHOR(S)<\/a><\/div>\n
Tagged Under | adoption<\/a> | birth<\/a> | foster parents<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
BELONGING<\/div>\n
\"THE<\/div>\n
THE QUEST Arun Dohle, in his foster father\u2019s lap<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"And<\/div>\n
And with his foster mother (left), now helps other adoptees find their biological parents<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"IDENTITY<\/div>\n
IDENTITY CRISIS\u00a0 \u201cMy parents abandoned me,\u201d says Jennifer Haynes, \u201cI am forced to abandon my children\u201d<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"A<\/div>\n
A letter from her daughter Kadafi who was left behind with grandparents in the US after she was deported to India<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Arun<\/div>\n
Arun Gandhi with Rebecka in Sunanda\u2019s lap<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"INFORMATION<\/div>\n
INFORMATION UNDERLOAD Every child has a right to know who his\/her parents are, believes Carina<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"Genes<\/div>\n
Genes can cast a lifelong shadow on one\u2019s existence, feels Neil Ghosh<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/div>\n
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On the evening of 29 July 2012, Carina Roodenburg, a kindergarten teacher from Utrecht, the Netherlands, wrote this brief note describing what had transpired earlier in the day:<\/p>\n

\u2018Carina, come here,\u2019 a voice unknown two days ago, but sounds familiar already, is calling me. It is my uncle. I stand up. Finally. I\u2019m already waiting for two hours and it surprises me that the tension didn\u2019t drive me crazy yet. I am aware of every footstep I take. How many will it be? Fifteen? Twenty? <\/em><\/p>\n

This is the moment I have [been] longing for. Maybe already thirty years. That many years ago they flew me out of this colorful country into the Netherlands. Between all those tall white people which some of them I could call family and a lot of them even friends, I kept thinking of her. My mind could not remember her smell, her skin, her voice. But my heart did. It started to hurt. More and more. The missing. The not knowing. Tears were piling up and there was only one way to go. Back! And that is where I am now. Still three footsteps to go. Then I will be there. Back to whom it all began. Where I began. One step. I look up. Our eyes met. Now I know. Forever. There she is. My mother.<\/em><\/p>\n

Carina had been adopted in 1982 by a Dutch couple, Adriana and Pieter Roodenburg. Her life with her adoptive family has had all the usual intimacies of belonging. Recently, her ailing 95-year-old grandmother called Carina and her brother\u2014two years younger and also adopted\u2014and said that to her they were no different from her biological grandchildren. \u201cIt was a vindication of the fact that my family, my life, is here in Holland,\u201d says Carina. But, growing up, she was also aware of being different. \u2018It\u2019s hard to put in words what being adopted does to a person,\u2019 she writes in an email to Open, \u2018You\u2019re getting out of your natural system and culture. Then, they put you between people who don\u2019t look like you at all. Everywhere you see White people. At school, I was always the only dark girl. Not to forget that in Holland, most people are tall so I was always the shortest. You see your friends looking like their parents and brothers or sisters. I could not refer to anything. It makes you feel very lonely and sometimes you think you are crazy because you feel so different.\u2019<\/p>\n

As a child, India was entirely unfamiliar to her. Later, India was just a unit of information, a place of her birth, and it wasn\u2019t until she was past her teens that she developed a strong urge to contact her biological mother. \u201cWhen I used to see daughters shopping with their mothers, I would imagine doing the same,\u201d she says on Skype, \u201cThe image of my mother was blurry in my mind.\u201d She would think of her mother on her birthdays. \u201cThat\u2019s my day. I would wonder if my mother misses me [on my birthday].\u201d Some of Carina\u2019s thoughts were far from pleasant. \u2018I have had a lot of psychiatric expenses because of all the problems I suffer of being abandoned (identity crisis, lack of confidence, bonding problems etc),\u2019 she writes.<\/p>\n

Three years ago, Carina began searching for her biological mother. All she knew was that she had been adopted from Pune in 1982 after her unwed mother surrendered her as a one-month-old to an orphanage.<\/p>\n

\u2018I had to see where I came from, hear what the story was, and see if I looked like them,\u2019 writes Carina, \u2018But it was easier said than done. My institution, where I was born, didn\u2019t want to give me my files. So there you\u2019re standing. In the country where you were born, where everybody looks like you, but you can\u2019t talk with them because you don\u2019t speak their language and they don\u2019t want to help you. You feel empty handed and lost. So then I decided to get the help of a social worker who lives in Pune. I couldn\u2019t do this alone. She speaks the language and knows the culture. So she [helped me], and now after 31 years I am going to meet the woman who gave birth to me.\u2019<\/p>\n

The reunion described in her note took place on 29 July. Her mother belongs to a small village on the Pune-Satara road. Seeing each other, they both froze. Emotions found vent only later. \u2018This is the woman I have been thinking of all my life,\u2019 was Carina\u2019s first reaction, while her mother kept mumbling \u2018It wasn\u2019t my fault\u2019 in Marathi. Her mother, it turned out, was a widow with two other daughters, and was suffering throat cancer. Carina offered to pay for the treatment, but her mother\u2019s family declined.<\/p>\n

Back in the Netherlands now, Carina is trying hard to deal with her feelings. \u201cI will always feel a major part of me is missing: a family in India,\u201d she says, \u201cI cannot do anything about it. I will have to live with it.\u201d For her, abandonment as a child is \u201cone of the most traumatic experiences a person can face\u201d. And she is clear about one thing: \u201cEvery child\/person does have the right to know who his\/her parents are.\u201d<\/p>\n

Carina\u2019s is not an isolated case. As we spoke to Indian borns who were adopted in the 70s and 80s by White couples abroad, we found a pattern to their stories: they grew up in an environment where their physical attributes were a constant reminder of their difference.<\/p>\n

Some did well, but many of them had difficult\u2014even traumatic\u2014childhoods. They were haunted by one big question: why had they been given up? Some even wondered if they had been kidnapped.<\/p>\n

The question gnawed away at them, drawing many to India for what would be the most arduous quest of their lives\u2014the mothers who bore them. In some cases, it meant crossing hurdle after hurdle put up by adoption agencies, orphanages, powerful families and governments. Information, they found, was a nightmare to obtain. If they got hold of documents, they found their birth records fudged. They had to take recourse to the courts to force agencies to reveal information.<\/p>\n

Most of those who succeeded found their biological parents leading lives of poverty.<\/p>\n

Others still struggle. No one gave up.<\/p>\n

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THE SEAMY SIDE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

German national Arun Dohle met his biological mother after a 17-year search, involving prolonged litigation, in 2010. It was a reunion both emotional and composed. No words were exchanged; Dohle couldn\u2019t speak Marathi. He had been adopted as a two-month-old by a German couple, Michael and Gertrude Dohle, in 1973. His single mother had given him up for adoption to Pune\u2019s Kusumbai Motichand Mahila Seva Gram.<\/p>\n

Dohle took his fight all the way to the Supreme Court, just to force authorities to reveal information that would lead him to his biological mother. According to him, his adoptive parents were friends of NCP leader Sharad Pawar\u2019s brother Pratap, the one who\u2019d facilitated the adoption. Had it not been for \u201cthe power of the family\u201d, he says, he\u2019d have found his biological mother sooner. On being contacted by Open for his response, Pratap Pawar refused to speak.<\/p>\n

Having won his battle, Dohle now wants to focus on the rights of all adopted children. His battle has left him with deep disdain for the procedure of foreign adoptions in India. He terms the paperwork \u201ccomplete crap\u201d and \u201cnothing but a bunch of lies\u201d. \u201cI am not against adoption,\u201d he clarifies, \u201cI am against the trade in children in the name of adoption.\u201d<\/p>\n

To expose one of the world\u2019s ugliest forms of \u201ccommerce\u201d and campaign for the proper implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Dohle has started an NGO called Against Child Trafficking (ACT) in alliance with Roelie Post, a bureaucrat of the European Commission. ACT has declared an open war against aggressive foreign adoption agencies that are in the alleged business of \u201clegalised child trafficking\u201d. So far, Dohle and Post have investigated over a hundred adoption cases and exposed horrors like the abduction of children, irregularities like false documentation, and cash trails that wind their way not just from India but also countries like Malawi, Ethiopia, China and Peru to places with \u2018demand\u2019 for children.<\/p>\n

Dohle also helps Indian-born adopted adults trace their genetic forebears with the help of Anjali Pawar, who heads a Pune-based child rights NGO called Sakhee. She is the \u2018social worker\u2019 who came to Carina\u2019s aid. For Dohle, she carried out an extensive investigation using whatever little details were available. She has lost count of the reunions she has facilitated over the six years she has been working as a child rights activist.<\/p>\n

What is clear is that Pawar, Dohle and Post are a bother to the establishment. In its recently issued guidelines, India\u2019s Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA), a nodal government body that oversees in-country and inter-country adoptions of Indian children, has banned third-party searches. Pawar and Dohle, already starved of funds for their work, expect the going to get tougher still. But Pawar is defiant. \u201cThey can\u2019t stop me,\u201d she says, \u201cIt\u2019s my constitutional duty to expose and fight against wrongly carried out inter-country adoptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAdoption has little to do with child protection,\u201d says Dohle in a Skype conversation from his home in Aachen, Germany, \u201cChild protection is the responsibility of the State. A real help would be to support poor parents at the local level. It will prevent the forced relinquishment of children, as poverty is the single largest cause of parents deserting children.\u201d Inter-country adoption, to his mind, ought to be \u201cthe last resort for children in need\u201d.<\/p>\n

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THE US MONEY TRAIL<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Somalia and the US are the world\u2019s only two countries that have not notified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which makes it incumbent upon the State to take care of a child \u2018deprived of his or her family environment\u2019, \u2018ensure alternative care for such a child\u2019, and ensure that \u2018due regard [is] paid to the desirability of continuity in a child\u2019s upbringing and to the child\u2019s ethnic, religious, cultural and linguistic background\u2019.<\/p>\n

The case of Jennifer Haynes illustrates the consequences of America\u2019s refusal to accept those terms. She was eight years old when she was adopted by Edward and Melissa Hancox, a US couple, in November 1989. She had only stayed with them a few months when they told her they would not be able to take care of her anymore. Jennifer was adopted by another family, but she did not get to stay long with them either. Her childhood was an unbroken chain of being shunted from one house to another. In all, she moved around 50 homes, mostly in Michigan. The reason was shockingly simple. The US provides financial aid to some families based on the number of children in the household, and she was reduced to a mailbox for the cheques, an income supplement for her foster families.<\/p>\n

It got worse. As a child, Jennifer was often molested\u2014by inmates of orphanages where she spent time awaiting adoption, a few foster brothers, and even one foster father. \u201cI didn\u2019t think it was wrong.\u201d It was only after she started attending school, at the age of ten, that she realised what was happening. \u201cThere was no love,\u201d she says, \u201cI craved the love and affection of a family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jennifer\u2019s adulthood has been no less traumatic. In 2002, at the age of 21, she married an African-American businessman called Justin and had a couple of children, a girl Kadafi in 2004 and a boy Kanassa a year later. But the couple ran into trouble with the law. Justin was imprisoned in 2002 for illegal possession of drugs; out on probation, he found himself back in the slammer on the same charges in 2004. Around this time, Jennifer was booked for a drug felony too, and an immigration inquiry was initiated against her. All she had were a few adoption documents, as her citizenship formalities had been left incomplete by her adoptive families. Technically, she was not a US citizen and thus a fit case for deportation. She fought a long legal battle to stay in the US, but lost. On 2 July 2008, she was asked to pack up. She took a flight to Mumbai without money, without documents, and without even a chance to speak to her children.<\/p>\n

After 20 years in America, first as an adopted child and then a wife and mother of two, Jennifer was summarily expelled to the country of her birth. She had nowhere to go in Mumbai, and sought refuge initially at the YWCA in Colaba. Without documents, she couldn\u2019t find a job, and had to seek judicial help to access her Baptism papers.<\/p>\n

In 2010, these papers led her to her biological family in Ambarnath, a distant suburb of Mumbai. Her mother was long dead. Her father died two months after she met him. Her brother lives with his wife and son in abject poverty. She gifted him a mobile phone to stay in touch, but he lost it. In retrospect, she doesn\u2019t regret being put up for adoption. It was an emotional reunion, but she still doesn\u2019t feel at home. \u201cI don\u2019t belong here,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Jennifer\u2019s sole goal in life is to get back to her son and daughter, who live in Chicago with their paternal grandparents. A call centre job sustains both her life and legal battle to reunite with her children. She has sued Americans for International Aid and Adoption (AIAA), the agency that processed her adoption\u2014apart from that of 5,088 other children born in Asia, South America and East Europe. She holds it responsible for her plight.<\/p>\n

In the agency\u2019s defence, Nancy Fox, executive director, AIAA, wrote to CARA on 23 March 2009 discussing Jennifer\u2019s case: \u2018The first [adoptive] family wanted to disrupt the adoption because of Jennifer\u2019s difficult behavior [at] home and in school.\u2019 Fox claims that the agency took custody of her and found her a new home. \u2018We were totally unaware of her deportation,\u2019 wrote Fox, \u2018It has been 17 years since the finalization of her second adoption in 1992 and Jennifer has never contacted us previously.\u2019 In an affidavit filed at the Bombay High Court dated 11 March 2010, Fox denies what she calls \u2018unsubstantiated statements, allegations and contentions\u2019 made by Jennifer, and asks for her petition\u2019s dismissal saying it was unfortunate that neither her foster families nor she on turning 18 applied for US citizenship. The High Court dismissed the case and it is now pending at the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

It seems unclear if Jennifer will be able to bear another emotional upheaval. \u201cMy parents abandoned me,\u201d she says, \u201cI am forced to abandon my children.\u201d It has been six years since she last saw them. She has tried everything within her means, even written to US President Barack Obama: \u2018Can you please help me? … I am an American without a country; a lost child who was sent away from my home, my family and my children.\u2019 No help came her way. \u201cIf I am a fit case for deportation from America to India,\u201d she says, \u201cso is Obama to Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hers is not the only such tragedy. Kairi Abha Shepherd, 30, another AIAA adoption, is also on the verge of being deported to India. She was adopted in 1982 by a single woman, a US citizen from Utah, when she was three months old, one of a dozen children her foster mother adopted from all over the world. Kairi\u2019s mother died before she could get citizenship, and she was booked as an adult for forging cheques to support an alleged drug habit. She served her sentence, but is now at risk of being thrown out of the US. Kairi\u2019s life, says her lawyer Alan Smith, \u201c<\/p>\n

THE GENUINE CASES<\/p>\n

Neil Ghosh lives in New York City and works in finance.\u00a0 He was adopted at birth by a Bengali American couple in 1983. \u2018They have been and continue to be the only parents I know,\u2019 he writes in an email, \u2018They\u2019ve given me a privileged life that has afforded me many luxuries, such as an Ivy League education and world travel\u2014a life that a poor child in Kolkata might only see in his dreams.\u2019 He holds a Bachelor\u2019s degree in South Asian history from University of Pennsylvania and a Master\u2019s degree in Bengali Modern painting from Columbia University.<\/p>\n

Neil was raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles, and grew up spending a month every summer with his maternal grandparents in Kolkata. \u2018But I made a different kind of journey in 2006\u2014one to discover my roots. As a child, I struggled to understand why my birth parents had given me up. By the time I was a teenager, I understood that life was more nuanced.\u2019<\/p>\n

His genes, he realised, would cast a lifelong shadow on him. \u2018Still, adoption has left me with more practical questions, such as whether I\u2019m predisposed to heart disease or diabetes. And, with the availability of relatively affordable genetic mapping, I am no longer frustrated that I couldn\u2019t learn more about my biological parents\u2019 health.\u2019 He got some information on his biological family from the Kolkata obstetrician\u2014a friend of his mother\u2014who delivered him. It was all he needed to know. \u2018I learned that my birth mother was widowed during the pregnancy and had other children to feed. While I couldn\u2019t learn about my family\u2019s medical history, I learned that her love and influence is with me every day. I occasionally wonder whether my birth mother is still alive or where my older biological siblings might be. While I probably will never meet her, I feel blessed to have been born to a woman who put her children\u2019s well-being above her own emotions and desires.\u2019<\/p>\n

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AN UNENDING BATTLE<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

For some, there has been no resolution. The search, in many cases, goes on. Take the case of Rebecka Saudamini Arnes, a 34-year-old psychiatric nurse from Hoor, Sweden. Adopted by a Swedish couple 33 years ago, she has been in search of her biological parents for the past five years.<\/p>\n

She was just two days old when she was given away to Shraddhanand Mahilasharam by her mother. She has filed a joint petition with her adoptive mother Eva Lindgren, 60, against this women\u2019s home for denying her what she sees as her \u201clegitimate and constitutional right to know about my origin and roots in India\u201d.<\/p>\n

Rebecka\u2019s adoption was facilitated by Arun Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi, and later Tushar Gandhi, the great man\u2019s great grandson, through a Mumbai-based trust called the Mahatma Gandhi Foundation.<\/p>\n

Last month, the Bombay High Court rejected her petition, asking her to start afresh at the lower court level. But the legal rigmarole and travel back and forth from Sweden are proving costly. She does not want to talk about her case because it is sub judice. Her court documents, a culmination of years of digging done with Anjali Pawar\u2019s help, offers a few crucial leads. Her birth certificate, she alleges in her petition, has been manipulated to hide her mother\u2019s identity. The X-ray image shows a smudged mother\u2019s name: \u2018Zarina\u2019. She was delivered by Dr KT Shah of Parle hospital, Mumbai.<\/p>\n

Rebecka\u2019s boyfriend, Johan Berggren, who was helping her in the search, had contacted Dr Shah\u2014who directed him to Tushar Gandhi. \u2018He has all the relevant details and is in a better position to guide you,\u2019 Dr Shah wrote in a mail to Berggren on 14 July 2009. Meanwhile, Rebecka got in touch with Rucha Samant, daughter of the nurse Pushpa who took care of her for three months before her adoption. It was Pushpa who named her Saudamini, claims Samant in an e-mail: \u2018You were the most beautiful child. She cried when you left.\u2019 But the identity of her mother could not be determined.<\/p>\n

Rebecka\u2019s only hope was now the Gandhi family. So she kept writing to them. To her dismay, they wouldn\u2019t part with much information. Arun Gandhi wrote back on 13 July 2009: \u2018The father and mother have a right to privacy. So, no one, even if they know it, will give the information unless the mother or father waives the right.\u2019 He adds, \u2018You must remember: you are assuming that your mother lives in poverty and destitution. That is not so. Anyone who could go to a private nursing home for delivery has to be upper middle class.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Gandhis tried to persuade her to give up her quest. \u2018You seem to think that I have nothing else to do except help you. First of all, you forget that I stopped doing adoption work almost 25 years ago; second, you were one of a hundred odd babies we rescued and gave in adoption; third, we did not keep records of all of you because we don\u2019t need them; fourth, Sunanda was handing all this and she died.\u2019 Arun Gandhi sent this email with an address tag \u2018160, Wintergreen Way, Rochester, NY, 14618\u2019.<\/p>\n

Rebecka\u2019s persistence was too much for the Gandhis\u2019 patience, as the increasingly dismissive tone of their mails makes clear. Wrote Tushar Gandhi: \u2018I told you that if you trouble Dr Shah of Parle hospital again\u2026 I am going to write to the Indian embassy in Stockholm requesting never to give you a visa to come to India, and believe me they will listen to me.\u2019 And: \u2018If anybody from Sweden ever visits Parle Hospital and questions the doctor there, I will have them arrested for the charges of harassment and intimidation.\u2019<\/p>\n

Why would a 34-year-old adopted girl worry the Gandhis so much?<\/p>\n

Tushar Gandhi\u2019s correspondence does not end here. In another email the next day, 29 January 2010, he wrote: \u2018[Your biological mother] never imagined that 30 years later the curse she had thought she was rid of was going to come back to dishonour her. But then you are her curse but not her offspring… You have been a curse on her fate since the day you took root in her womb and like a terminal cancer you will be satisfied only when you kill her.\u2019<\/p>\n

If Tushar Gandhi regrets his words, he has a strange way of expressing it. \u201c[The emails] may have been insensitive on my part but I was at my wits\u2019 end. She would just not listen to logic. I had tried to explain to her rationally but she remained persistent. How can one produce a woman after 30 years?\u201d he told a newspaper.<\/p>\n

Rebecka Saudamini Arnes has not given up her search. It is her right to know who she was born to, not Tushar Gandhi\u2019s to deny her that information, however great his biological forefather\u2019s soul may be.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Source: http:\/\/www.openthemagazine.com 15 September 2012 Cross-border adoption: the trauma of knowing one was given away at birth and the travails of trying to find out why BY Mihir Srivastava EMAIL AUTHOR(S) Tagged Under | adoption | birth | foster parents BELONGING THE QUEST Arun Dohle, in his foster father\u2019s lap<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,58,10,16,17],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3103"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3503,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3103\/revisions\/3503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/old.againstchildtrafficking.org\/archive\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}