Dear Adoption,: NAAM

Posted on November 22, 2021 by

This is for day 21 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees, and posted on day 22.

The mission of “Dear Adoption,” is for adoptees to “reclaim the adoption narrative by amplifying adoptee voices, so a more honest depiction of what adoption is will emerge.” It was founded and is curated by Reshma McClintock, an adopted person from India who was the subject of the excellent documentary “Calcutta Is My Mother.”

Adoptees are welcome to submit an essay to the site: hundreds have, and their voices are impressive. The writers are international, transracial, domestic, same race, former foster care youth, a wide range. The essays are long, short, poignant, angry, thoughtful, sad, insightful, and more.

There is also an extensive list of adoptee-led, adoptee-centric blogs and websites, as well as podcasts and other resources.

It’s the letters to Dear Adoption, though, that I’d say are especially powerful. You can read them on the Facebook page or on the website. “Dear Adoption,” just celebrated its fifth year of elevating “the astounding, noteworthy work of adoptees worldwide,” and of creating “a better, safe world for future generations of adopted people…through the sharing of our stories.”

That phrasing always makes me think of the Maya Angelou quote, “There is no greater story than bearing an untold story inside you.” And I hope many more adoptees will continue to share their sacred stories.

Adoptee TikTok: NAAM

Posted on November 19, 2021 by

This is day 19 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

I will start this post acknowledging I am not on TikTok. I’ve never done a TikTok Challenge. I am not a significant part of TikTok’s demographics: 80% of its 80 million monthly active users are between 18 and 34 years old. Did you know that TikTok users spend an average of 52 minutes a day on TikTok? And that users age 4 to 15 spend an average of 80 minutes a day on it? Wowsers. I got those statistics here.

So. I think it’s gonna catch on.

This post is about Adoptee TikTok. No doubt there is a wide range in terms of attitudes and perspectives in the videos shared by adoptees. Adoptees are not a monolith, and neither are their videos. TikTok is one more social media platform to share thoughts about adoption, and the videos indeed contain multitudes, as both What Whitman and Bob Dylan have said..

A recent Mashable article, “TikTok helps adoptees find a new community to explore joy, family, and belonging,” said that “adoptee TikTokers have embarked on a mission to speak out about their past, their present, their families, and their shared experiences — including conversations around mental health and trauma.” (The trauma link is in the original Mashable article.)

The hashtag #AdopteesofTikTok has had some 60 million views. That said, one Twitter user, Conversations About Adoption (@caa_on_Youtube), posted this:

Social media has a vise-like grip on the formation of attitudes, including toward issues like adoption. TikTok is one powerful player in this, especially among young people.

Adoptee Voices—Supporting Adoptee Storytelling: NAAM

Posted on November 18, 2021 by

This is day 18 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

Sara Easterly, an author and adoptee, founded Adoptee Voices to create a writing community that is all “about supporting adoptee storytelling.” As the website says, “Adoptees, it’s your turn to have a voice in conversations about adoption. You’ve lived through relinquishment. You know adoption from the inside. Your voice in the adoption narrative is both needed and necessary.”

To this end, Sara and her facilitators, who are all adoptees and all writers, have created Writing Groups for adult adoptees with stories to share. They meet weekly via Zoom, use adoption-specific writing prompts, and provide publishing and writing advice. They note that adoptees may all be adoptees, but their experiences may be vastly different. They call for grace and respect, and they acknowledge the reality of sensitive and difficult topics. They also are clear that these are not therapy sessions, but are facilitated peer writing groups, intended to serve a community of adoptees.

In her book “Searching For Mom: A Memoir,” Sara shares how, as an adoptee, she “had difficulties attaching to her mother, struggled with her faith, lived the effects of intergenerational wounding, and felt an inherent sense of being unwanted that drove her to perfectionism, suicidal ideations, and fantasy mothers. When she became a mom, her search to find and become ‘the perfect mother’ intensified … until her mother’s death launched a spiritual epiphany. Sara’s perspective as an adoptee offers insight for anyone in the adoption constellation.”

I’ve known Sara through our work in the adoption community, and was thrilled to hear she had created this series of online writing groups. This Saturday November 19, Sara will moderate a free, online panel along with Alice Stephens, a Korean adoptee and author of the debut novel Famous Adopted People.The eight panelists are all adoptees, from Korea and China, who will discuss what the Adoptee Voices Writing Group has meant to them. Learn more about this UniversalAsian conversation here.

Upcoming Adoptee Voices writing sessions include “Write Your Way Through the Holiday Season,” and “Writing Resolutions Winter 2022.” You can learn about all the writing groups and register for them here.

It is wonderful to have more adoptees writing and sharing their stories.

European Adoption Consultants’ Staffer Pleads Guilty to Bribery, Fraud

Posted on November 17, 2021 by

The U.S. Justice Department reported today that Debra Parris, program manager at Ohio adoption agency European Adoption Consultants, has pleaded guilty to charges of fraud and bribery in the adoption of children from Poland and Uganda.

Parris was indicted in August 2020 along with the executive director Margaret Cole and staff person Dorah Mirembe.

Cole is expected to go to trial in February 2022. Mirembe, the Justice Department says, is “still at large.”

Below is the press release from the U.S. Justice Department. You can also find it here.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Texas Woman Pleads Guilty to Schemes to Procure Adoptions from Uganda and Poland through Bribery and Fraud

A Texas woman who was a program manager at an Ohio-based international adoption agency pleaded guilty today in the Northern District of Ohio to schemes to procure adoptions of Ugandan and Polish children by bribing Ugandan officials and defrauding U.S. authorities.

According to court documents, Debra Parris, 69, of Lake Dallas, engaged in a scheme with others to bribe Ugandan officials to procure adoptions of Ugandan children by families in the United States. These bribes included payments to (a) probation officers intended to ensure favorable probation reports recommending that a particular child be placed into an orphanage; (b) court registrars to influence the assignment of particular cases to “adoption-friendly” judges; and (c) High Court judges to issue favorable guardianship orders for the adoption agency’s clients. In her plea agreement, Parris also admitted that she continued to direct the adoption agency’s clients to work with her alleged co-conspirator Dorah Mirembe, after knowing that Mirembe caused clients of the adoption agency to provide false information to the U.S. State Department for the purpose of misleading it in its adjudication of visa applications.

According to court documents, in a second scheme, after alleged co-conspirator Margaret Cole, the adoption agency’s Executive Director, learned that clients of the adoption agency determined they could not care for one of the two Polish children they were set to adopt, Parris and her co-conspirator took steps to transfer the Polish child to Parris’s relatives, who were not eligible for intercountry adoption. In her plea agreement, Parris also admitted that after the child was injured and hospitalized, Parris agreed with her co-conspirator to conceal their improper conduct from the U.S. State Department in an attempt to continue profiting from these adoptions.

Parris pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and commit visa fraud in connection with the Uganda scheme, and conspiracy to defraud the United States in connection with the Poland scheme. She is scheduled to be sentenced on March 9, 2022. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Trial against Cole is scheduled to commence on Feb. 7, 2022. Mirembe remains at large.

Assistant Attorney General Kenneth A. Polite Jr. of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Brennan for the Northern District of Ohio; and Acting Assistant Director Jay Greenberg of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division made the announcement.

If you believe you are a victim of this offense, please visit https://www.justice.gov/criminal-fraud/victim-witness-program or call (888) 549-3945.

The FBI’s Cleveland Field Office is investigating the case.

Trial Attorneys Jason Manning and Alexander Kramer of the Criminal Division’s Fraud Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Chelsea Rice of the Northern District of Ohio are prosecuting the case. The Justice Department’s Office of International Affairs assisted in the investigation.

The Fraud Section has lead responsibility for investigating and prosecuting all FCPA matters. Additional information about the Justice Department’s FCPA enforcement efforts can be found at www.justice.gov/criminal/fraud/fcpa.

An indictment is merely an allegation, and Cole and Mirembe are presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law.Topic(s): Foreign Corruption Component(s): Criminal Division Criminal – Criminal Fraud Section USAO – Ohio, Northern Press Release Number: 21-1140 Updated November 17, 2021

End of Press Release

Additional Information:

The Justice Department press release “Three Individuals Charged with Arranging Adoptions from Uganda and Poland Through Bribery and Fraud” from the August 2020 indictment is here.

I wrote about the August 2020 indictment here.

In 2016, the U.S. State Department debarred European Adoption Consultants for three years.

A 2004 article from Cleveland Magazine about Margaret Cole, “Families in Crisis: When Foreign Adoptions Go Wrong,” is here.

May justice prevail.

Deported Adoptees: NAAM

Posted on November 17, 2021 by

This is day 17 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

Most people, when they think of international adoption, think of cute little babies and children (mostly Black and Brown) arriving at the airport and then living forever with their loving adoptive American families.

They don’t think of an 8-year-old Korean boy abused repeatedly by his adoptive father, who chained the boy outside on a dog’s metal leash stake and beat him, then locked him back in the closet where he was given bread and water. The boy grew up and served in the U.S. military, including a tour in Kuwait, defending America’s interests.They don’t think of the 10-year-old Ethiopian boy adopted by an American soldier, a single dad. who brought the boy to the US where he had his own pizza business as a young man. They don’t think of the 6-year-old boy from Morocco who grew up in the South and now speaks with a Texas drawl. And they don’t think of the little girl born in Jamaica whose leg was amputated due to cancer when she was in high school. All of them have been deported back to their birth countries, because they are not, to their surprise, U.S. citizens, despite having entered the country legally as the children of U.S. citizens.

Mike Davis, adopted from Ethiopia in 1976, deported in 2005. His wife and children live in the U.S.

The rest of the story here is that they, as many young Americans have, committed crimes and then served their time in U.S. jails or prison boot camps. Unlike the biological children born here, the adoptees were deported because, through no fault of theirs, they had not been given citizenship. The wrong paperwork was filed, or their parents thought they had automatic citizenship, or someone (not the adoptee) dropped the ball and maybe didn’t even realize it until too late.

Imagine being 30 or 40 years old, and suddenly ending up in a country where you don’t speak the language, can’t get an ID, can’t get a job, and have no family or friends. That soldier who served in Kuwait ate garbage for a few weeks after he arrived in South Korea, living under a bridge for weeks. He’s now 50 years old, rejected by his birth country for not being Korean enough, and by the U.S., for not being American enough.

Also-Known-As, an adoptee-founded, adoptee-led nonprofit, is among the organizations working to change this. They recently held an online event “Deported, Not Forgotten,” where four adoptees talked about their lives before and after deportation.

Also-Known-As created this brief YouTube video so you can hear their voices and see their faces. Listen to them tell their stories.

Then contact your Congressional representatives and Senators and ask them to sponsor the Adoptee Citizenship Act. You can find information here via the Adoptee Rights Law Center, which is led by an adult adoptee.

Advocating for citizenship for all international adoptees will take only a few minutes.

Also, if you can, please donate to the fundraiser for deported adoptees. Any amount will help, of course. $25 could pay an adoptee’s Internet for a month. $900 could pay for an airplane ticket so a wife, son, daughter, or sibling can visit their family member. Imagine the psychological and emotional hardships of being sent away from the country you thought was yours; the financial hardships are tremendous as well.

If you support adoption, and believe in National Adoption Awareness Month, help pass the Adoptee Citizenship Act for all adoptees, and also donate to support those who have been deported.

I Am Adoptee: NAAM

Posted on November 16, 2021 by

This is day 16 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

“A community built around mental health and wellness, by adoptees, for adoptees”: that is the focus of the nonprofit IAMAdoptee. Co-founder Joy Lieberthal Rho, LCSW, was adopted from South Korea when she almost six years old. She has worked in adoption for many years, including in private practice with intercountry adoptees and their families. That work was the basis for founding IAMAdoptee, which curates a wealth of mental health resources, directed primarily to internationally adopted people.

The wellness resources include suggestions for how to deal with Covid-19 isolation, lists of adoptee-led groups around the world, and articles and blog posts about a range of adoptee-related subjects. There is a checklist and overview for adoptees considering searching for birth family, with information about South Korea, China, Colombia, Guatemala, India, and Paraguay. In “Community,” you can find information about culture camps and related organizations, about citizenship, about adoptee podcasts, and about adoptee-focused conferences.

Currently, IAMAdoptee is partnering with SideXSide, “a large scale documentary and oral history project, telling the story of 65+ years of inter-country adoption out of South Korea and 100 individuals, born in Korea, 1944–1995.” (I wrote about SideXSide here.) IAMAdoptee is hosting a series of Reflections on the Adoptee Journey, about the topics in SideXSide’s videos, such as Memory, Birth Family Reunion, and Searching for Answers. Each topic features a video from the SideXSide project, and then a reflection/conversation with an “esteemed lineup of intercountry adoptee clinical therapists,” facilitated by Joy Lieberthal Rho.

IAMAdoptee is actively adding mental health and wellness resources to their site. The Facebook page has additional information and resources. One recent post, for example, was about adult adoptees from Greece seeking to reinstate their citizenship.

The vision of IAMAdoptee is “an act of service to the adoptee community, a place for an intercountry adopted person to connect with others.” An excellent way to honor adoptees during National Adoption Awareness Month (November) is to follow their Facebook pages and websites, and to donate to ensure they can keep their good work going.

“Deported, Not Forgotten”: NAAM

Posted on November 15, 2021 by

Tomorrow (November 16, 2021, 6pm est) Also-Known-As is hosting an incredibly important event featuring four adult adoptees who were deported back to their country of origin, having lived their lives adopted by US families and thinking they were American citizens.

“Deported, Not Forgotten” will be hosted by Dr. Amanda Baden, who will talk with four adoptees who were deported back to countries where they had no family, friends, language, or connection. If you believe adoption is forever, if you support citizenship for adoptees, or if you care about adoptees, please pre-register and attend this free program at 6pm, east coast time.

Listen to adoptees. Support citizenship for all adoptees.

An Ethiopian Adoptee’s Perspective on Adoption: NAAM

Posted on November 15, 2021 by

This is day 15 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

Aselefech Evans is an Ethiopian adoptee who arrived in the U.S. 27 years ago, at six years old, along with her twin sister. Aselefech describes herself as a politicized family preservationist.

About three years ago, she wrote a poignant, insightful post on her blog, about trauma and the “trauma-versery” that occurs every November on the anniversary of her arrival in the U.S. She re-posted it recently, for National Adoption Awareness Month.

An excerpt:

I remember that my new life was supposed to be enough. For some, it may be. But understand that the most resilient soul often still suffers in silence, no matter how well-adjusted they may seem. My ability to get through this isn’t because I had a perfect life, but it’s because I hold onto the love of my birth and adoptive family—yet, I still struggle with the loss.

Here is the link to this post:

The Unwanted Arrival of Trauma in Adoption

Full disclosure: I am blessed to be Aselefech’s mom through adoption, and I could not love her more. I asked for her permission before sharing this, and she gave it. I am proud of her willingness to speak her truth.

Adoptees Connect: NAAM

Posted on November 14, 2021 by

This is day 14 of National Adoption Awareness Month, so this is my daily post to amplify the voices of adoptees.

Adoptees Connect is an adoptee-led way for adult adoptees to connect. From their Facebook page: “This group is designed to be a safe space for adoptees to gather and share their experiences regarding their individual adoption journeys. We believe that being adopted can come with its own set of complexities that only another adoptee can truly understand. Through Adoptees Connect Groups, adult adoptees are able to empower one another through encouragement, community, as well as a concrete place to find their voices as they navigate their adoptee journeys together.

Through our collective efforts, we strive to bring hope & healing to as many adoptees as possible by building lifelong connections between those who understand. Our goal is to let every adoptee know that they aren’t alone and the way they feel is very normal amidst a not-so-normal situation.”

The founder of Adoptees Connect is Pamela Karanova, an adoptee from Kentucky. Her vision in creating this organization was “to build person-to-person communities that provide validating spaces for Adult Adoptees. At Adoptees Connect, we focus on putting adoptee voices first by creating a safe and valuable adoptee-centric space, created by and for adoptees, where their voices can meet and be heard. In January 2018, the first connect groups were planted in Lexington, KY.

The groups stray away from the traditional support group model by placing a larger emphasis on building strong, healthy relationships with other adoptees. In just two short years, 45 connect groups have been planted in 42 cities and 27 states. It’s the hope of Adoptees Connect, Inc. to plant a group in every city, in every state in the country. This way, anywhere an adoptee might go, they will always have a community to fall back on. Our groups are designed to take online relationships offline, and to get to know the person behind the profile.”

Obviously the pandemic has caused changes in the ability for folx to gather in person. Here’s hoping that everyone stays healthy, and can get together via Zoom if not on person.

More information, including Pam’s blog posts, is available on Adoptee Connect’s Facebook page.

Visit www.adopteesconnect.com for details!

Light of Day Stories

Monthly Archives: November 2021