Something to note:
Dec. 28th, 2009 01:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kyburgThe China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) made a rather chilling proclamation the other day on its website, to wit:
Since China began working with relevant countries in inter-country adoption, the cooperation has been smooth and tens of thousands of Chinese children have been adopted by foreign families. The majority of them are growing healthily under the care and love of their adoptive parents. However, some media reported on December 14 about an American adoptive father who sexually abused his Chinese adoptive daughter, which have attracted broad attention and caused great shocks. Although this is a very rare case, it has caused negative effects on inter-country in China and is against the healthy development of inter-country adoption.
As the agency entrusted by Chinese government in charge of inter-country adoption, China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has always attached great importance to the protection of Chinese adoptive children’s rights and great attention to the children who have been adopted into foreign families. On December 16, CCAA met with the Consul-General of the American Embassy in China Ms. Linda Donahue and notified her about our position on this incident. President of relevant adoption agency also telephoned CCAA and expressed his apology. In order to guarantee the rights and interests of Chinese adoptive children and ensure the healthy and sustainable development in cooperation of inter-country adoption, CCAA plans to take the following measures:
1. CCAA will suspend the cooperation with relevant American agency and decide whether to continue cooperation with this agency depending on its treatment of this incident.
... And it goes on. Suffice it to say, this is rather singular and out of place - this one report is the cause for such concern? (Come on, you can Google a large number of abruptions within the United States alone...how about that one woman who almost killed her China-born daughters, right? These problems exist. Why now is the CCAA interested/offended?)
Methinks it's a rebut to stories like this one, from earlier this year.
The sidebar has a large number of related stories, including ones about abductions, graphics about the reduction in children placed for adoption internationally all of a sudden, separated twins, etc.
The latest one from the Los Angeles Times? Unlike the trend toward open adoptions in the United States, in which adoptive and biological families are known to each other, adoptions in China are closed. And unlike many other countries that send babies abroad for adoption, China deems it illegal to abandon a child. The result is that in China unwanted babies -- in most cases given up because of a one-child policy limiting family size -- are usually abandoned anonymously.
In some cases, babies fell into the hands of child traffickers who transported them hundreds of miles away from their place of birth; family planning officials involved in those incidents tried to cover their tracks with false documents that made it appear the babies had been abandoned.
"The link with the birth parents for almost all the children adopted by U.S. families is forever lost," said Changfu Chang, an associate professor at Millersville University in Millersville, Pa., who has made a number of documentaries about China adoptions, including one featuring Chinese parents speaking tearfully about the babies they relinquished.
Chang says he knows of perhaps 20 adoptive families who have located birth relatives of their children, a minuscule number considering the more than 60,000 Chinese babies adopted by Americans since the early 1990s.
"The orphanage usually doesn't know anything other than where the baby was found and when," said Wang Xiaoli, a volunteer interpreter at an orphanage in Chongqing who often acts as a liaison between adoptive parents and orphanage officials. "And sometimes they are reluctant to tell the adoptive parents too much."
I do know that on the American side, if you are a single male wanting to adopt - you have to be a large number of years older than the child (something between 25 to 40 years, I'd have to go back and look). Such a requirement does not exist for women.
It's very clear we're coming in at the end of the party, adopting from China like we intend to. Most of the girls are approaching or are already in their teens, and have parents who have no fear of asking pointed questions. Again and again, no matter what. I can tell you from experience - you are painfully aware on a daily basis that your kid is different from other kids.
They've had everything they were born to taken away from them. You can't give it back and you can't replace it. And you are also very aware there is nothing anyone walking on two feet could ever do to deserve such a thing - and certainly, not YOUR kid. Some of it is guilt, pure and simple. And parents can be pretty nasty about displacing that guilt on whoever they can target as a source of it.
There is also a new director at the CCAA - and this one of the first things the world at large has to hear.
I think the CCAA is very capable of pushback, and that's what this is.
I've thought about moving our dossier from China to Taiwan, and something inside me just didn't like it. She's there, just not yet.
Last month, they processed three days worth of LIDs. We continue to wait for Sierra, and enjoy Xander while we do so.
Since China began working with relevant countries in inter-country adoption, the cooperation has been smooth and tens of thousands of Chinese children have been adopted by foreign families. The majority of them are growing healthily under the care and love of their adoptive parents. However, some media reported on December 14 about an American adoptive father who sexually abused his Chinese adoptive daughter, which have attracted broad attention and caused great shocks. Although this is a very rare case, it has caused negative effects on inter-country in China and is against the healthy development of inter-country adoption.
As the agency entrusted by Chinese government in charge of inter-country adoption, China Center of Adoption Affairs (CCAA) has always attached great importance to the protection of Chinese adoptive children’s rights and great attention to the children who have been adopted into foreign families. On December 16, CCAA met with the Consul-General of the American Embassy in China Ms. Linda Donahue and notified her about our position on this incident. President of relevant adoption agency also telephoned CCAA and expressed his apology. In order to guarantee the rights and interests of Chinese adoptive children and ensure the healthy and sustainable development in cooperation of inter-country adoption, CCAA plans to take the following measures:
1. CCAA will suspend the cooperation with relevant American agency and decide whether to continue cooperation with this agency depending on its treatment of this incident.
... And it goes on. Suffice it to say, this is rather singular and out of place - this one report is the cause for such concern? (Come on, you can Google a large number of abruptions within the United States alone...how about that one woman who almost killed her China-born daughters, right? These problems exist. Why now is the CCAA interested/offended?)
Methinks it's a rebut to stories like this one, from earlier this year.
The sidebar has a large number of related stories, including ones about abductions, graphics about the reduction in children placed for adoption internationally all of a sudden, separated twins, etc.
The latest one from the Los Angeles Times? Unlike the trend toward open adoptions in the United States, in which adoptive and biological families are known to each other, adoptions in China are closed. And unlike many other countries that send babies abroad for adoption, China deems it illegal to abandon a child. The result is that in China unwanted babies -- in most cases given up because of a one-child policy limiting family size -- are usually abandoned anonymously.
In some cases, babies fell into the hands of child traffickers who transported them hundreds of miles away from their place of birth; family planning officials involved in those incidents tried to cover their tracks with false documents that made it appear the babies had been abandoned.
"The link with the birth parents for almost all the children adopted by U.S. families is forever lost," said Changfu Chang, an associate professor at Millersville University in Millersville, Pa., who has made a number of documentaries about China adoptions, including one featuring Chinese parents speaking tearfully about the babies they relinquished.
Chang says he knows of perhaps 20 adoptive families who have located birth relatives of their children, a minuscule number considering the more than 60,000 Chinese babies adopted by Americans since the early 1990s.
"The orphanage usually doesn't know anything other than where the baby was found and when," said Wang Xiaoli, a volunteer interpreter at an orphanage in Chongqing who often acts as a liaison between adoptive parents and orphanage officials. "And sometimes they are reluctant to tell the adoptive parents too much."
I do know that on the American side, if you are a single male wanting to adopt - you have to be a large number of years older than the child (something between 25 to 40 years, I'd have to go back and look). Such a requirement does not exist for women.
It's very clear we're coming in at the end of the party, adopting from China like we intend to. Most of the girls are approaching or are already in their teens, and have parents who have no fear of asking pointed questions. Again and again, no matter what. I can tell you from experience - you are painfully aware on a daily basis that your kid is different from other kids.
They've had everything they were born to taken away from them. You can't give it back and you can't replace it. And you are also very aware there is nothing anyone walking on two feet could ever do to deserve such a thing - and certainly, not YOUR kid. Some of it is guilt, pure and simple. And parents can be pretty nasty about displacing that guilt on whoever they can target as a source of it.
There is also a new director at the CCAA - and this one of the first things the world at large has to hear.
I think the CCAA is very capable of pushback, and that's what this is.
I've thought about moving our dossier from China to Taiwan, and something inside me just didn't like it. She's there, just not yet.
Last month, they processed three days worth of LIDs. We continue to wait for Sierra, and enjoy Xander while we do so.
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no subject
Date: 2009-12-28 10:15 pm (UTC)My experience with the separated-siblings support group that we started years ago has fed that idea pretty strongly. The SWI doesn't tell CCAA much, and the adoptive parents virtually nothing, because it's easier that way and people don't and can't dig around.
I've seen cases where the SWI knew full well that kids were a set of twins and deliberately broke the set for whatever reasons they saw fit.
I dunno. I'm not surprised that China's pushing back, because they don't like being made uncomfortable, and that includes the screwups of their own people.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-28 11:17 pm (UTC)On that end, people who are that sick can lie through their teeth. And the story is getting a lot of play through the Chinese news outlets (google Whisenhunt, Lacey and rape and see what you get) and it came up originally last May; there's a local KIRO TV thing on this from May that is disturbing.
The December stuff is only relevant in regard to the recent conviction of the people involved.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-28 11:22 pm (UTC)I addressed the whole issue of the bio family in China here.