Oh man.

[kyburg]

A Dutch couple living in Hong Kong yesterday found themselves at the centre of an international controversy after they gave up their daughter for adoption seven years after they adopted her themselves.

Raymond Poeteray, 55, who has worked as a Dutch diplomat for more than 20 years, and his wife, Meta, adopted Jade, an ethnic Korean girl, when she was four months old.

She's been in foster care outside the family for over a year. And no, no adoptive family has been identified for the child to move towards - even after being in care for over a year.

Nobody is talking much, outside of saying it's traumatic, etc. Natch.

Gods. It would be useful information, if they could simply say what went wrong.

And why, oh why, is there no attempt to find the birth family. Even at this remove. *kicks*

Comments

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

There's just too little information - I suspect a huge case of RAD, complicated by having siblings that...well...look like Mommy and Daddy.

In what appears to be a hugely racist culture. Remember, they went to the Korean consulate for help here - no mention of any others. Within and without. Also, diplomatic families move often - the whole family might have had an easier time in his previous posting...and the move was more devastating that anyone could have predicted. WHAT HAPPENED?

I'd be happy to step up (consider my culture and neighborhood) - but she'd see my white face and consider me the enemy before I could even begin, and who would blame her?

This is just insanely young - but I've been told it happens in children adopted even younger, and with better "matches" ethnically.

I want to know what went wrong. Did they never talk about the adoption? If they did, what did they say about it?

I've got case studies of adoption abruptions that occurred with the Vietnamese adoptees - at ages of 1,2 and so on (has anyone else seen Daughter From Danang besides me?) and were rehomed. What they had to say about their original placements is both scathing and wistful. In all of the cases, they questioned why their original birth parents were never even searched for...if the original adoption failed. "If I had been given the choice, I would have wanted to be returned to my country - at least."

I'll never forget the lady who said that. Most of the people interviewed were in their mid-twenties, and the main thing they wanted people to know about trans-racial adoption is that coming to terms with adoption is tough...and coming to terms with being out of step with the culture your color indicates is painful.

So little information.

(I hope she gets Wonderful. I don't know who that would be, but I hope she get two good doses of Wonderful for parents. And at least two more doses of Wonderful for therapists and clinicians. Considering all the sturm and drang that's gone on already in this post - considering me is high praise indeed, and thanks.^^)

You hear about international adoptions abrupting - but this is the first one I actually know more than that about it.