The Celebrity Adoptions Continue…

The Huff reports that Sandra Bullock recently adopted a boy from New Orleans in January, but has been sitting on the news until after the Oscars.  After filing for divorce from her husband Jesse James, Bullock finally releases the news that she and her soon to be ex-husband had been working on adopting for the past four years.  She states that she will be raising her son, Louis Bardo Bullock, as a single mother.

Sandra Bullock Adopts Baby Boy, Divorce Filed

(Huffington Post)

4/28/10

NEW YORK — Sandra Bullock has filed for divorce from her husband, Jesse James, and is adopting a baby boy as a single parent, a story posted Wednesday on People magazine’s website said.

“Yes, I have filed for divorce,” the 45-year-old Oscar-winning actress said in an interview. “I’m sad and I am scared.”

Bullock and James, 41, began the adoption process four years ago, the report said, and brought 3 1/2-month-old Louis Bardo Bullock home in January but decided to keep the news to themselves until after the Oscars. The baby was born in New Orleans, the story said.

James and Bullock separated in March after five years of marriage, following reports that James had been unfaithful.

Bullock won the Oscar for best actress for her role in the blockbuster hit “The Blind Side” on March 7. Within days of her win, the cheating allegations became public and Bullock went into seclusion.

The motorcycle mogul publicly apologized to Bullock and his children, Sunny, 6; Jesse Jr., 12; and Chandler, 15.

He recently returned home after a 30-day stay in a treatment facility where he sought help for “personal issues,” the story on People’s website said.

When asked about whether James had cheated, Bullock said she “had no idea about anything.”

“I did the only thing I could do, and that was to pack enough clothes to live on, get all of Louis’ things and get out of town. My main concern was Louis.”

Bullock didn’t discuss details of the adoption to protect her son’s privacy.

When asked whether James will have any formal parenting role, she replied: “I will be adopting as a single parent. Anything else will be taken day by day.”

She said of her relationship with Jesse’s three children: “I don’t want to know what life is like without those kids. … Whatever we need to do, in the healthiest way, we are going to be co-parenting.”

NY Times Reports on Horse Ranch for “Troubled” International Adoptees in Montana

I knew at some point the news would turn its gaze back to this horse ranch.  I blogged about the ranch a little while back, and it seems that I am here once again.

Russian Adoptees Get a Respite on the Range

By KIRK JOHNSON

EUREKA, Mont. — Hundreds of adopted children, most of them Russian, have come here to northwest Montana to live and perhaps find healing grace with the horses and cows and rolling fields on Joyce Sterkel’s ranch. Some want to return to the families that adopted them, despite their troubles.

Others, like Vanya Klusyk, have seen far too much of what the world can dish out.

Vanya, 17, suffers from fetal alcohol syndrome, which affects his reasoning ability, his impulse control, his intelligence and even his height. Then there were the beatings in the Russian orphanage, he said, where he lived from age 8 to 14, until a California couple brought him to America.

“There were bigger boys, 18 and 19, and I was too small,” he said in a quiet voice, standing in the bright sun outside the ranch’s school on a recent morning. Vanya, who turns 18 this summer, wants to stay on after graduation, working with other wounded children, and Ms. Sterkel has said he can.

An international adoption can be a journey into the waters of the unknown, and sometimes the rocks and shoals — for the parents, the child or both — are too much to negotiate. Ms. Sterkel’s remote ranch, five miles from the Canadian border in a homesteader’s valley that got electricity only around 1960, is for some of those families the end of the line.

In the weeks since a woman from Tennessee put her daughter’s 7-year-old adopted son, alone, on a plane back to Russia, saying he had been violent toward his mother, much of the furor has focused on parents, governments and adoption agencies, and what they do right — or do not do right — by adopted children.

Missing from the debate have been the voices and perspectives of the children themselves and the wrenching life that many face as a legacy of fetal alcohol, institutionalization, poverty and the sometimes socially corrosive survival skills they were required to hone in their early years.

“Lying, stealing and hoarding food,” Alexi, a smiling, upbeat 13-year-old girl, said when asked why her adoptive parents had sent her here. Alexi, whose family did not want her last name used, sat on the edge of a pool table in the main ranch house, swinging her legs and reading a book, “The Purpose Driven Life” by Rick Warren.

She spent the first two years of her life in a Russian orphanage, she said, and does not remember anything about it. She just knows she has always had a hard time trusting adults, including her adoptive parents.

Here at the Ranch for Kids, a nonprofit established seven years ago and focused on adopted children from Russia — where Ms. Sterkel’s family came from a century ago, and where she worked as a midwife in the early 1990s before adopting three Russian children herself — background stories of hard luck or horror are as common as skinned knees.

Ms. Sterkel, 63, said those stories gave her great sympathy for parents who had reached a point of desperation. Adoptees with inner lives, and brains, twisted by experiences that began even before birth can be mercurial — sunny one minute, explosively violent the next, with no ability to make moral judgments about what they have done. They can also be emotionally distant, self-destructive or both.

In Russia, vodka’s curse has been woven through history since the early czars. One widely cited study concluded that Russia’s rate of fetal alcohol syndrome was eight times that of the rest of the world.

Exposure in utero to alcohol can cause irreversible brain damage, with visible manifestations that include smaller eyes and a smaller upper lip with the lip’s groove flattened. Even those with lesser exposure can have an interior rewiring of their brain chemistry, according to extensive medical research.

Isolation in infancy — in an understaffed orphanage or with a drunken parent — compounds those problems. A paper published last year in The American Journal of Psychiatry about preschool-age children from Romania found that more than half who had lived in an orphanage had psychiatric disorders, from attention deficit to post-traumatic stress. Boys tended to have more symptoms than girls, the study said.

That well-documented path of devastation makes Ms. Sterkel impatient with remarks like the one made by President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia, who called the return of the boy from Tennessee a “monstrous deed.”

“What he experienced was monstrous,” she said, gesturing toward Vanya. “Sending a kid back was not.”

Ms. Sterkel can be just as tough in talking about some of her own clients, like the adoptive parents of a Russian boy who was recently brought to the ranch with early signs of fetal alcohol troubles. The parents had agreed to pay $3,500 a month for the boy’s keep, but they knew, they said, that whatever happened, they just could not take him back.

“That’s when it’s sad — they haven’t exhausted all the possibilities,” Ms. Sterkel said.

Ranch for Kids now has 30 children, ages 5 to 17, some of whom stay for a month or two, some for years. Critics say the ranch, and places like it that focus on experience as therapy — exposure to nature, animals and rules of ranch life — are islands of unreality that do not fundamentally address a child’s problems.

“All it does is give them a hiatus,” said Ronald S. Federici, a clinical neuropsychologist in Virginia who mainly treats foreign adoptees.

Dr. Federici has tracked international adoptions since 1992 and estimates that about 4,000 from Eastern Europe alone have foundered — with children being sent into state care or to places like the Ranch for Kids or back to their home countries. He said that while he respected the impulse behind the ranch, permanent improvement could not happen without a spine of rigorous medical and therapeutic treatment.

“It’s like a vacation at the beach — we’re always better when at the beach,” he said.

Ms. Sterkel and her staff do not fully disagree. The rhythms of the ranch — afternoons on horseback, two teachers in a room of eight children, cow-milking — are not how life back home really works. But she believes that strict routines and responsibilities, like cleaning one’s room and close contact with nature and animals, can make a difference in upended lives.

“We can’t fix the fundamental damage,” she said. “Generally, our parents have reached a place where they need to restore sanity.”

About 70 percent of the roughly 300 children who have come here, Ms. Sterkel said, do go back to their adoptive families — though she admits she often loses track after that. Of the remaining 30 percent, the younger ones are often readopted, while adolescents typically go into the federal Job Corps program. And now there is even a second-generation to work with — a 10-month-old girl named Lilia.

Lilia’s mother was adopted from Russia and came through the program herself a few years ago — fiercely unmanageable and claiming, in full embrace of the Goth lifestyle, to be a vampire. The young woman’s life did not much get better: She ended up on methamphetamine, tattooed, pierced and pregnant at age 19.

But she came back to the ranch last year, Ms. Sterkel said, for the final months of her pregnancy, and then agreed to let the infant stay on in the Sterkel family’s care. Ms. Sterkel, now the baby’s legal guardian, said she assumed Lilia had prenatal exposure to alcohol, so she is trying everything she has learned over the years — especially physical contact, usually with the baby on her hip or lap — as an effort at early intervention therapy.

And Vanya now has a big brother figure, a former resident as a child, Jenya Davidson, 21, who has fetal alcohol syndrome, too, and came originally for help, only to return years later to work as a handyman and to help attend to the younger children. The two young men share an apartment over Ms. Sterkel’s garage.

Mr. Davidson, with a nearly constant smile, said northwest Montana was now home. He dreams of starting his own landscaping business.

Sarah Kershaw contributed reporting.

Adoption: Secret Histories, Public Policies Conference 2010, THIS WEEK!

Hi all – I just wanted to make one last plug for The Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture’s Third International Conerence taking place THIS WEEK at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The conference starts on April 29th and ends on May 2nd.  There are some great sessions going on and perhaps what’s most exciting to me is that Deann Borshay Liem’s new film, In The Matter of Cha Jung Hee, will be screening on Saturday.  If you haven’t heard about her new film it is said to be a follow up on her first film called First Person Plural.

If you attend you’ll also have the pleasure of seeing writer, performer, educator, and blogger Lisa Marie Rollins perform “Ungrateful Daughter.”

If you live in Massachusetts or nearby, make sure you register soon!

ABC Transracial Adoption Story and Internalized Racism

I received an email a little while ago regarding an ABC news story which discussed transracial adoption identity.  I was impressed that ABC made it a priority to go beyond discussing transracial adoption on a superficial level to discuss the racial implications.  Here is my analysis of the article and the issue.

“I just always felt like it would be a really enriching experience for us and for everybody involved, really,” Lisa Scoppa said.

Although Ms. Scoppa might be referring to adoption as an enriching experience I also believe she is referring to transracial adoption as an enriching experience specifically.  I take issue with this statement because it infers an underlying motive for transracial adoption which is the creation of a multicultural family.  Unfortunately, I think the statement itself explains just how much confusion there is about race in this country.  Adopting a child of color should not be looked at as an “enriching experience.”  If that is the sole or primary reason for adopting I would ask you to take a moment to reflect on what it means to think this way about your future child.

Adopting a child of color does not automatically give you the insights of what it means to be a person of color in the United States.  Many transracial adoptees struggle with their identities as people of color because of the very fact that many Caucasian parents do not understand how to adequately explain and educate their children about the complexities of race, and how it may affect them.

Fortunately, the article turned to an adult transracial adoptee who explained the complexities of growing up a person of color parented by Caucasian parents.  He touches on an incredibly important theme, which is this.  Adoptive parents need to step out of their comfort zones to really take on these challenges in a holistic way.

“People don’t like discomfort but when you’re adopting a child from another race, another country, it’s very important that families understand that they are going to put themselves outside of their comfort zone to really understand what their experience is going to be for the child. …Otherwise, the child is going to be neglected plain, and simple,” Bertelsen said.

A Spence-Chapin Adoption Agency worker says this:

“This is what I tell people,” Rita Taddonio, who directs the agency’s Adoption Resource Center, said. “If you look around your table and your guests are all the same color, if you don’t have diversity around your kitchen table then you shouldn’t be adopting a child of a different color.”

There are ways to help your child cope, she said. “We recommend parents connect to the black community, that they make sure they have friends in those areas, that they go to a black church or be part of the community as well,” she said. “Every parent’s job is to help them form an identity, it’s just an additional layer of complexity when your child’s identity has pieces of it that you don’t own.”

Ms. Taddonio’s first quote touches on the notion of racial tokenism.  Which is the idea that simply having people of color around the table will simply solve all racial problems.  Unfortunately, it’s not quite that simple.  Far too often, I’ve heard adoptive parents offer “We have a friend who is African American and the family across the street from us are Asian American.”  Simply having those friends does not make you magically understand racism, or racial relations in this country.

I want to touch on one last thing which is this.  It’s not easy.  There is no prescription for this, and it can’t be just something that you attempt to do every once in a while.  It’s as much of a life time commitment as deciding to adopt a child in the first place.  Providing a healthy environment for a child of color to be able to construct his or her own racial identity is so important.  Again, you need to be ready to go outside of your comfort zone.  Don’t just go to Chinatown and eat Dim Sum or send your child to a predominantly African American Church expecting them to get anything more profound out of it than you will.  There has to be mentorship, there has to be education, and there has to be an environment where an adoptee feels ok with exploring their identity.

Sometimes I’ve been asked, “My child doesn’t seem like they want to talk about it or acknowledge that they are a child of color, and we don’t want to push it on them if they don’t want it.”  Take a minute to think about why your child might feel that way.  Perhaps it’s growing up in a predominantly Caucasian community where, although there is no overt racism, your child is taught simply by looking around at their peers, that they do not look the same as them.  Maybe they get teased for it, and maybe, that has made them feel as though they need to distance themselves from that aspect of their identity.  I do anti-racism trainings and we call this Internalized Racism.  What is Internalized Racism?  It is when the ideas and norms are believed by the group(s) and individual(s) that are oppressed.

I think this article was great because it raised a number of issues relating to transracial adoption that are not necessarily teased out in meaningful ways for adoptive parents.  My hope with this post was to really reach out to the adoptive parents who read my blog.  I’m working on an anti racism training curriculum that focuses on transracial adoption, so if you’d like to hear more about it please send me an email.  GS

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/transracial-adoption-america-today/story?id=9914150

Transracial Adoption Can Provide a Loving Family and an Identity Struggle

Black Children in White Families Try to Find Their Place In Society

By RON CLAIBORNE and HANNA SIEGEL

March 3, 2010—

They are images of joy, images of happy endings among so much tragedy.

A few days ago, Duke and Lisa Scoppa adopted two Haitian orphans, 4-year-old Erickson and 4-month old Therline.

“I just always felt like it would be a really enriching experience for us and for everybody involved, really,” Lisa Scoppa said.

Among the things that lie ahead for the Haitian children adopted by white American parents are a better life materially and a chance to grow up in a loving family.

Outside Looking In

But some black children who were adopted by white parents say there’s another side of the story.

“I didn’t feel like I was seen or understood,” said Phil Bertelsen, who was 4 when he was adopted by a white family and then raised in a mostly white New Jersey suburb.

Bertelsen and other black adoptees tell a similar tale: They felt estranged from the people around them who they instinctively knew from an early age were different from them, and yet cut off from their own racial identity and culture.

“In my teens, I became hungry to be a part of some kind of black community, black identity,” Bertelsen said. “What was missed primarily was, you know, strong familiar representations of black life other than the ones I was getting through popular culture and otherwise.”

He grew up to be a documentary filmmaker and made his first movie, “Outside Looking In,” about transracial adoption. In it, he confronts his own parents for the first time.

“Ultimately, I am a part of your family,” he told them in the film. “I use my name with pride. But I am also an African-American in your family and, you know, you have to see me as that.”

In response, his mother said softly, “Maybe we were naive. Maybe we were. I don’t know.”

Bertelsen said in an interview that adoptees “don’t tend to want to shake the tree too much. I call it the gratitude complex. We finally get this family, whomever they are, that we can call our own and so we adjust, we adapt, we learn to go along and get along and that’s what I did.”

Hard Truth for Adoptive Parents

“So in a way, home became a safe haven … but it was a total disconnect from the world outside and so you end up, I ended up, internalizing the questions,” he said.

Through his movie, Bertelsen said, he was able to say what he had always wanted to say: “See me. This is who I am.

“It was a hard truth for my parents,” he said.

“People don’t like discomfort but when you’re adopting a child from another race, another country, it’s very important that families understand that they are going to put themselves outside of their comfort zone to really understand what their experience is going to be for the child. …Otherwise, the child is going to be neglected plain, and simple,” Bertelsen said.

An Identity Struggle

For more than 20 years, starting in 1972, transracial adoptions in the United States all but ended after the National Black Social Workers Association condemned them as cultural genocide.

The group takes a softer line now but it still maintains that it’s better for children when parents are from the same racial or ethnic background.

“You’re only a child once and for a minute,” association president Batiste Roberts said. “And children deserve the right to be with people who look like them, people who understand what they are going through, who understand their culture.”

The Spence-Chapin Adoption Agency in New York City, which facilitates many transracial adoptions, urged white parents who adopt black children to move to an integrated neighborhood, send their child to an integrated school and expose them to other black people.

“This is what I tell people,” Rita Taddonio, who directs the agency’s Adoption Resource Center, said. “If you look around your table and your guests are all the same color, if you don’t have diversity around your kitchen table then you shouldn’t be adopting a child of a different color.”

There are ways to help your child cope, she said. “We recommend parents connect to the black community, that they make sure they have friends in those areas, that they go to a black church or be part of the community as well,” she said. “Every parent’s job is to help them form an identity, it’s just an additional layer of complexity when your child’s identity has pieces of it that you don’t own.”

Transracial Adoption In America

These days, many white families are rushing to adopt Haitian orphans after the earthquake left so many children without parents or families.

The Scoppas said they will make every effort to connect Erickson and Therline to their Haitian and black roots. But they did not apologize for adopting black children.

No Apologies From Adoptive Family

“If there are no black families that want to adopt them and we want to adopt them, and make them part of our lives and give them as much love as possible, then I don’t know why that’s so wrong,” Duke Scoppa said.

Not wrong, say some of those who grew up black in a white family … but not easy, either.

**Video from the “World News” report will be available after 7:30PM at ABCNews.com/wn**

Copyright © 2010 ABC News Internet Ventures

Law Revision Passes Offering Dual Citizenship to Korean Adoptees

I am pleased to announce that The Nationality Law Revision was passed by the Korean National Assembly yesterday.  What does this mean?  Korean adoptees will be allowed dual citizenship in both their adoptive country and in Korea.

The will go legally go into effect January of 2011.  However, there is some gray area.  Korean males must serve in the Korean military.  By granting Korean adoptees Korean citizenship, males would be subject to this very rule.  However, due to the language barrier for most Korean Adoptees, there has been some talk about lobbying for an alternative to military service which might include public service of some kind in Korea.

Please see a letter posted by Daewon Wenger from the Global Overseas Adoptees’ Link (GOA’L) website for a full statement.

UPDATE::Hi folks just a few updates that I got from a friend.  Here is a link to an article explaining the Citizenship stipulations.  It’s not as easy as you might think.

http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/04/116_64629.html

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http://goal.or.kr/eng/?slms=for&lsms=2&sl=5&ls=1&query=view&uid=256

The Nationality Law Revision was passed on 2010/04/21 by the Korean National Assembly. It will give Korean adoptees the right to re-gain their Korean nationality in addition to the adoptive nationality. The revised law will go into effect as per 1st January 2011.

After the launch in fall 2007 this campaign comes to a successful end by having the law revision passed. G.O.A.’L is grateful to all those who participated from the very beginning and supported this campaign by joining our worldwide signature collection, by donating money or by participating in our surveys and by giving important advice.

G.O.A.’L would like to especially thank Professor Lee Chul-Woo from Yonsei University who served as a special advisor to our campaign. Myriam Cransac who spent much of her time designing the entire campaign, the Ministry of Justice who always supported our cause and to all the congressmen who approved this bill.

Now that our campaign was successfully ended, much work remains to be done. We still need to negotiate with the government the problem with Military Service that may affect around 20% of the Korean adoptee community. We will also discuss all regulations and procedures with the Ministry of Justice in order to get all the answers before the law goes into effect. We are certain many among you will have questions. Please keep following the information either on our G.O.A.’L Facebook group or also on our homepage at http://www.goal.or.kr

Giving Korean adoptees dual citizenship is a fundamental step in the improvement of adoptee rights. This step will certainly have an global impact on international adoptees from other countries.

What started as just a dream has finally materialized!

G.O.A.’L will certainly continue to report on the development on dual citizenship and adoptee rights. If you’d like to contribute to our cause, please visit our homepage.

In case you have questions please contact our office.

Best regards

Dae-won Wenger
Board of Directors

NPR’s On Point Program Takes on International Adoption

A friend of mine alerted me of a segment of WBUR’s show On Point that would be focusing on international adoptions as a result of the recent incident with Russian adoptee Artyom.  I was pretty disappointed by the segment’s focus and lack of balanced opinions.  At first I was a bit surprised that Adam Pertman, the ED of the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute wasn’t called upon for an interview on the show.  However, I was not surprised to find that none of the scholars/experts were not adopted individuals.  In fact one of the interviewees was an adoptive parent, (not surprising).

Here were the guests on the program taken from the On Point  website:

Blake Farmer, reporter and producer for Nashville Public Radio. He’s been covering the  story of how a Tennessee woman returned her adopted 7-year-old son back to Russia.

Michele Goodwin, professor of law at the University of Minnesota. She also holds joint appointments at the University of Minnesota Medical School and School of Public Health, and is editor of “Baby Markets: Money and the New Politics of Creating Families.”

Elizabeth Bartholet, professor of law and director of the Child Advocacy Center at Harvard University. She’s author of Nobody’s Children: Abuse and Neglect, Foster Drift, and the Adoption Alternative. Her article “International Adoption: The Human Rights Position” appears in the current issue of the journal Global Policy.

Joseph LaBarbera, clinical psychologist specializing in work with children, adolescents, and young adults. He’s also associate professor of psychiatry at Vanderbilt University.

For the most part I thought Dr. Goodwin’s comments were relatively on point, (sorry, I had to)….She spoke to the challenges of international adoptions which include the potential for child trafficking and the lack of adoptions happening domestically in the U.S. specifically with children of color.

However, I was a bit concerned by Dr. Bartholet’s positions and comments.  Here are a few of her points that I felt were a bit off the mark, and here’s why.

1)            Terminology – Dr. Bartholet continued to use “Natural Parents” and “Normal Parents,” in reference to biological families.  As an adopted person using these terms implies that adoptees and adoptive families are “unnatural,” and “abnormal.”

2)            Abuse Rates for APs vs non-APs – Bartholet makes the argument that Russia acted irrationally by suspending all adoptions all because one adoptive parent made the wrong decision.  She says that the rates of abuse committed by adoptive parents vs non-adoptive parents is very low.

* I don’t think anyone is necessarily calling into question whether or not adoptive parents are more or less qualified as parents.  What’s at stake behind Russia’s decision to suspend adoptions probably has more to do with the fact that it feels that it has a responsibility to protect its children.  I think Russia is outraged by this incident, and wants to get to the bottom of this before continuing its adoption program.

3)            Adoption Barriers – Bartholet seems absolutely outraged by all the “red tape,” and barriers that stand in the way of prospective adoptive parents when it comes to intercountry adoption.

*Again I think Bartholet is missing the mark here.  Yes, there are barriers and red tape in adoption and they are there for many reasons.  First, in regards to Russia, they are there because Russia wishes to find adoption solutions domestically first.  And let’s not forget that birth parents should not be shut out.  I believe there are a few countries that are starting to implement grace periods allowing birth parents to essentially change their minds within several months after relinquishment.  There are also checks on adoptive parents that need to happen.  Clearly, in the case of Artyom, these checks were potentially not good enough as evidenced by Dr. Goodwin who points to child neglect/abuse allegations.  And the last point is that in many countries, the rise of adoption programs has led to child trafficking rings.  Guatemala’s adoption program  which was shut down originally due to trafficking has just started a pilot program aimed at resuming their adoption programs.  Even in China, there have been recent reports that babies have been stolen and birth parents have been duped into thinking they would get their child back.  Some even posed as family planning government officials listening for multiple cries from babies in a household which they would use against families taking their children citing violations of the one child policy.  All in all, there are reasons for the waits in many cases.

4)            Babies Assimilate Better – She also makes the case that babies are preferable since they “adapt” easier.  Host Tom Ashbrook counters by saying that there are many older children who still deserve homes.  Bartholet says that babies thrive better in adoptive households.

*Again I think this is an unfortunate statement as it points to the notion that adoption can’t be disruptive to a child, and that somehow being raised as a baby will negate the “problems” associated with being adopted.  There are many children adopted as children who have struggled with their identities, and with RAD etc.  Once you begin to make statements suggesting that there is a preferred type of child, it’s hard to be seen as a true advocate for what’s right for children.

There were also a number of callers, all were either adoptive parents or family of an adopted person.  There was not one adoptee.  I’m not sure if any tried to call in and were denied or just simply  overlooked, but I’m always so angered by how adoptees, some of which are leading scholars in their respective fields are not called on for their opinions.  Are we not the subjects of these conversations?  How much agency do we have to create positive change in adoption policy?  I can think of a handful of talented and intelligent adoptee scholars who could have added so much depth to the conversation which unfortunately was not about what would happen to Artyom and more about what he represented.  Host, Tom Ashbrook ended by asking the panelists their thoughts on what would happen to Artyom.  This was the first time I had heard or seen anyone in the news media ask an “expert” on what would happen to him.  Goodwin answered seemingly well with only a minute or so to wrap things up, but Bartholet seemed flustered by the question, almost as if she hadn’t even thought about that question.

I’m glad that people are thinking critically about intercountry adoptions.  But the debate has become one-sided and as usual, does not allow adoptees a voice.  Some people I talk to think it’s because we are seen as “biased” or “non-objective,” in our opinions as adoptees.  But aren’t some adoptive parents who are scholars just as biased with their own set of opinions as parents?

It hurts me to hear adoptive parents call in on the radio and say that their adopted child “Destroyed my life.”  I can’t even imagine what it would be like to parent children with severe psychological trauma, but that does not give you the right to abandon your children again.  It may be traumatic for you, but for adoptees abandonment is no joke.  And for it to happen multiple times is unimaginable and unusually cruel.  Many of these scholars say that it’s about human rights issues, and that it’s about giving a child the right circumstances to thrive.  There is nothing “right” about giving up on them.  And of course I know this is not just the responsibility of adoptive parents to be prepared, but adoption agencies are systematically failing to address the specific needs of international adoptees from different countries.  The post-adoption service needs of adopted children from Russia are different from Korean children.  The post-adoption services needs of children from Latin America are different from the needs of children from China.  There is no “cure all” remedy that works for every child.

GENseng, Asian American Student Theatre Group Explores Korean Adoption at SUNY Geneseo

Hello all,

I received an email from a student at SUNY Geneseo who assisting an Asian American theatre group at the school create a play on the Korean adoptee experience.  They are seeking adult adoptees to reflect on their experiences to be used in their play.  If you are interested please contact Shea Frazier at:  ThreescoreMiles@gmail.com

Here’s a message from Shea.  -GS

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My name is Shea, and I am a student at SUNY Geneseo. This semester, I have been doing research about Korean adoption to assist in a play our Asian/Asian-American theatre group, GENseng, will be doing at the end of this month. The play, Mask Dance by Rick Shiomi, revolves around the lives of three Korean-adoptees and their relationships with their white, American, adoptive parents. While preparing for this play, I came across your blog, and I was wondering if you could, perhaps, post information about a project I have been working on for this play.

In honor of the play’s subject and message, we are hoping to make a collage to display in the theatre lobby made of real personal accounts of the feelings and experiences of people who have been adopted internationally, have siblings who have been adopted or, perhaps, are in the process of adopting/have adopted internationally themselves.

By taking these accounts, we hope to give everyone a voice. This is not a play with a political or social agenda; these accounts are in no way formal, can be long or short, and, unless people ask me to identify them, they are completely anonymous. They can come in the form of a poem, a story, a memory, a letter, or simply a statement expressing your feelings on the matter: whatever makes you most comfortable.
If you could spread word about this project or if you yourself may be willing to share your experiences,it would be truly appreciated. Please email me at ThreescoreMiles@gmail.com: people can send me their accounts directly there, or, if you or anyone else has questions, either about the display or about the play itself, send me a message, and I’ll respond as quickly as I can.

North Korean Children to Be Placed in American Foster Families

More updates on adoption from North Korea.  Thanks to Jane for translating this article that gives information about what could be the first three North Korean children to be adopted by American families.

According to the article that Jane cites, the three children ages 12, 8, and 4 are family.  Several are siblings and one is a cousin.  The children’s were North Korean refugees living in China at the time when they were found and taken back to North Korea.

Several couples/families in the states of California and Maryland have agreed to becoming foster families for these children who asked to be sent to the U.S.  It’s likely that they will eventually adopt them.

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Adopt a North Korean

by Noh Jeong-Min, Washington

March 21, 2010

[Translated by Jane]

An American human rights group is pushing forward with the adoption of three stateless North Korean orphan refugees who are in China. The orphans arrived safely in a third country and received support. It will be the first case of Americans in the U.S. adopting stateless North Korean orphans.

The adoption to the U.S. of three stateless North Korean orphan refugees who were living in China is being pushed forward by an American human rights group. The children’s North Korean parents were refugees in China and were forced to go back to North Korea.

The siblings and cousins aged 12, 8, and 4 hid in China, and through the help of an American human rights organization arrived in a third country at the beginning of March.

The representative of the human rights organization added that 2-3 couples/families who are residents in Maryland and California have accepted the refugees for foster care and are working on operations for their adoption.

Human rights representative: The North Korean refugee orphans arrived in a third country. The children want to go to the U.S., and in the U.S. there are families who want to progress their adoptions. They children will be the first North Korean refugee orphans to be adopted in the U.S.

Also, the representative said that the U.S. embassy there that they’re in touch with said that doing the work to prove the identity of the orphans would be difficult, but help from U.S. human rights organizations and a refugee center would increase the changes of the possibility of the orphans being adopted to the U.S.

Amid this, U.S. Senator Sam Brownback proposed a bill on March 23 to speed up the adoptions of North Korean stateless refugee orphans in the future and said that prospects are high that there will be growing interest in adopting them.

Brownback clearly stated that there has to be a strategy to set up and provisions and offices/agencies for adoptions to the U.S. must be installed on the opposite side to help the thousands of stateless NK orphan refugees.

The human rights representative said that the proposed bill was warmly welcomed and that in the future and if processes and provisions are made it is expected that there will be a big effort for NK orphans to be adopted in the U.S.

Presently there are five orphans being supported and two additional ones in the process of going to a third country so they can be adopted in the U.S., the human rights organization’s representative added.

++Translation by me again. This one was pretty difficult because I don’t know the issue well. As always, corrections to my translations are welcome.

http://www.rfa.org/korean/in_focus/human_rights_defector/defector_orphan-03252010170229.html

MC: 미국의 인권 단체가 중국에 있던 탈북 고아 3명의 미국 입양을 추진하고 있습니다. 이 고아들은 제3국에 무사히 도착해 보호를 받고 있으며 이들의 양부모를 자청한 미국인도 있어 미국에서 탈북 고아를 처음 입양하는 사례가 될 전망입니다.

노정민 기자가 보도합니다.

부모가 강제 북송된 이후 중국에서 고아가 된 탈북 아동 3명이 미국 인권단체의 도움으로 미국 입양을 추진하고 있습니다.

12살과 8살, 4살의 이 탈북 고아는 형제와 사촌지간으로 중국에서 숨어 지내다 미국 인권단체의 도움으로 지난 3월 초 제 3국에 도착했습니다. 이들을 돕고 있는 인권단체의 대표는 탈북 고아들이 미국행을 원하고 있어 이들의 입양을 추진하고 있다고 25일 자유아시아방송(RFA)에 밝혔습니다.

또 미국 메릴랜드 주에 거주하는 부부를 비롯해 캘리포니아 등 미국 내 2~3가정이 탈북 고아들을 양자로 받아들이겠다고 나서 이들의 입양을 위한 작업이 힘을 얻게 됐다고 이 인권단체의 대표는 덧붙였습니다.

인권단체 대표: 탈북 고아들이 제 3국에 도착했습니다. 아이들이 미국에 오길 원하고 미국에서 이들을 양자로 삼고 싶다는 가정이 있어 미국으로 입양을 추진하고 있습니다. 탈북 아이들이 (입양을 통해) 미국에 오는 것은 처음으로 알고 있습니다.

또 이 대표는 현지 미국 대사관과 접촉해 탈북 고아들의 신원을 증명하고 입양을 신청하는 작업에 어려움이 있지만 미국의 여러 인권 단체와 난민 센터가 돕고 있어 이들이 미국에 입양될 가능성이 크다고 덧붙였습니다.

이런 가운데 미국 공화당의 샘 브라운백 상원의원이 지난 23일 탈북 고아들의 미국 입양을 촉진하기 위한 법안을 발의해 앞으로 탈북 고아들의 미국 입양에 대한 관심도 높아질 전망입니다. 이 법안은 북한을 나와 떠돌고 있는 수천 명의 탈북 고아들을 돕기 위한 전략을 세우고 미국으로 입양을 주선하는 데 필요한 대안 장치를 마련해야 한다고 명시했습니다.

이 인권단체의 대표는 법안의 발의를 환영하면서 이 법안이 통과돼 탈북 고아들의 미국 입양을 위한 법적 절차가 마련된다면 앞으로 탈북 고아의 미국 입양에 큰 힘이 될 것이라고 기대를 나타냈습니다.

현재 5명의 탈북 고아를 보호하고 있는 이 인권단체의 대표는 나머지 2명도 미국 입양을 위해 제3국행을 추진하고 있다고 덧붙였습니다.

Thoughts on Artyom/Justin

There has been coverage of this story everywhere.  The New York Times alone has about 3-4 articles on it.  What’s striking to me is how this story has become about the many adoptive parents and prospective adoptive parents.  What about the little boy?  He’s still in the same situation he was in before when this all happened, except now he no longer is a person, he’s become a cause.  And because of it, we’ve moved onto what he represents with out addressing the immediate needs of his own health, safety, and what will happen to his adoptive family.

I really like this post over at Harlow’s Monkey.  And I agree, that largely, the adult adoptee community’s voice is missing.  Adoptive parents have been asked to weigh in on this, but where are we on the scale of importance in this debate?  There ARE many adoptees who are in fact leading researchers, social workers, policy analysts and psychologists who specifically focus on intercountry adoption.  Why is it just adoptive parents who are seemingly affected by this story?  Are our voices not as important?

I believe that unfortunately, the true victim has been forgotten.  I agree, those adoptive parents who are already in the process of adopting must be frustrated.  But let’s not forget what’s still at stake here.  There is a still a child who has gone through what must be an incredibly traumatic event.  Many adoptees have a hard time dealing with issues related to abandonment, but can you imagine what is going on in this boy’s mind now?

The last thing I’d like to point out in this article is how people seem to be so angered that they are resorting to physical violence.  In response one person wrote “Does anybody else want to choke her [Mrs. Hanson]?”  Does anyone else find this an incredibly disturbing response?

In a Diplomatic Limbo While Waiting to Adopt

All the Single Ladies YouTube Video

I know, here I go getting all gossipy again, but I haven’t seen so much hype for a video like this in a while.  One father decides to take a video of his kids getting down to Beyonce’s song “All the Single Ladies.”  When his son is told that he is not in fact a single lady, he starts crying.  I’ve been getting emails and tweets from folks telling me that this kid is an adoptee, but to be honest, there’s nothing out there that confirms this!  It’s possible, but it hasn’t been confirmed in any way by the father or family.

Phil over at Angry Asian Man first blogged about it at the end of last month, and ever since, people have been emailing me links to it talking about how the kid is an adoptee.  Not quite sure what to really make of it.  Unfortunately, the father disabled the embed option partially because I think it was a little too much when this youtube clip went completely viral.  But, you can still check it out by clicking the link.

http://www.angryasianman.com/2010/03/single-ladies-devastation.html