Tag Archives: fraud in adoption

Swedish Adoptive Parents Urge an End to Adoption, an Apology to Adoptees, Funding for Adoptee Homeland Visits : An Example for the U.S.?

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A widely-read newspaper in Sweden, Aftonbladet (“Evening News”), recently published an article signed by 12 Swedish adoptive parents announcing their support for a proposal to stop adoptions to Sweden. Here’s the link to the article in Swedish; the Google Translate version in English is printed at the end of this post.

The adoptive parents also fully support the proposal that illegally adopted people should receive an apology from the Swedish government, and that the adoptees should be offered financial support for return trips to their country of birth and to search for their roots.

Additionally, the parents noted that we adoptive parents can love their adopted children deeply, and also recognize and regret the damage that fraud and other inequities can cause in adoption. Via Google Translate, “As much as we love our adopted children, we feel sad about what has happened. It is not possible to weigh children’s opportunities for a secure future in Sweden against the risk of children having their papers forged and being illegally adopted away from their families of origin.”

This is the “both/and” of many of us in the adoption community, including adoptees. We can love our families, and loathe the adoption industrial complex. I give credit to the Swedish parents for voicing this so publicly.

An adult and a child are walking along the beach. The sky and beach look hazy.
Photo by Maureen McCauley (copyrighted)

In June of this year, according to PBS.org, “A Swedish commission recommended that international adoptions be stopped after an investigation found a series of abuses and fraud dating back decades…The assignment was to investigate whether there had been irregularities that the Swedish actors knew about, could have done and actually did,” Anna Singer, a legal expert and the head of the commission…And actors include everyone who has had anything to do with international adoption activities.

It includes the government, the supervisory authority, organization, municipalities and courts. The conclusion is that there have been irregularities in the international adoptions to Sweden.”

Swedish scholar Tobias Hubinette PhD, who is also an adopted person from South Korea, on July 9 posted information about the remarkable public statement by the adoptive parents, noting that “Previously, a smaller group of (Swedish) adoptive parents who have adopted from Chile have signed an appeal demanding that the Adoptioncentrum‘s adoptions from Chile to Sweden be investigated, but never before have so many Swedish adoptive parents together been behind an article like the one found in the Aftonbladet.”

Adoptioncentrum, by its own description, is “the largest and most experienced adoption organisation in Sweden, and one of the largest and most experienced organisations in the entire world. We are currently collaborating with authorities and NGOs in more than 20 countries.”

Many folks in Western Europe have been active in speaking out about adoption illegalities. Norway, The Netherlands, and Denmark have ended or restricted international adoptions. This past February, a Swiss news source printed “Why countries are banning international adoptions,” noting that Flanders in Belgium and the U.K. (in addition to Norway, The Netherlands, and Denmark) have investigated and restricted international adoptions. Switzerland plans to end international adoptions at the end of 2026.

There have been many reports about fraud in international adoptions, including from the Associated Press South Korean adoptions.

“The Chinese Adoptees Who Were Stolen” via The New Yorker in May 2025 notes that “As thousands of Chinese families take DNA tests, the results are upending what adoptees abroad thought they knew about their origins.”

We in the United States need to be aware of the rising tide of news and actions being taken by other adoptive parents, and of course by adoptees, around the world, including calls for restrictions, apologies, investigations, reparations, annulments, and more

Around the entire globe, only the United States actually deports international adoptees. We must speak out on behalf of adoptees in regard to citizenship issues.

And we must open our hearts, minds, and eyes to what is happening in other countries and what other parents are doing to combat fraud and inequity. Maybe we need to do that especially because we love our children deeply.

Google Translate of Aftonbladet article, from Swedish to English:

We are people who have adopted ourselves. We have followed the work of the Adoption Commission with great interest, the final results of which were presented in June. We are saddened and appalled by the extent of legal uncertainty that has occurred in international adoptions to Sweden over the decades. We are very upset by the irregularities that have occurred in several cases in the adoption process.

As much as we love our adopted children, we feel sad about what has happened. It is not possible to weigh children’s opportunities for a secure future in Sweden against the risk of children having their papers forged and being illegally adopted away from their families of origin.

The right to identity and origin should not be determined by economic circumstances.
We want to be clear that our position is not about our feelings and choices, but about the fact that sometimes you have to look up and see structures and be able to have several thoughts in your head.

We fully support the adoption commission’s proposal that people who have been adopted to Sweden on illegal grounds should receive an apology from the Swedish state. This should be a given. We agree with the investigation’s conclusion that people who have been adopted should be offered financial support for return trips to their country of birth and to search for their roots.

The right to identity and origin should not be determined by economic circumstances. In addition, adoptees should be offered high-quality conversation support, adapted to their experiences

Many who have been adopted are now adults, but there are also many who are still children. We believe that families who have recently adopted children should receive readily available support, due to the double burden that many children have of separation trauma and disability or illness.

We support the inquiry’s proposal to stop adoptions to Sweden
Today, support for adoptive families is weak in terms of child psychiatry and parental support, and is also unevenly distributed across the country. We all need to learn from the mistakes that have been made and ensure that children who have come to Sweden through adoption and their families are given the right tools to counteract mental illness

The Convention on the Rights of the Child contains several paragraphs that are difficult to reconcile with international adoption of children, for example Articles 8 and 30, concerning the right of children to preserve their identity, language and culture. The investigation also shows that children from indigenous peoples and indigenous minorities are overrepresented among children who are adopted away, due to discrimination in their countries of birth. We consider this to be an unacceptable basis for adoption.

We therefore support the investigation’s proposal to stop adoptions to Sweden. Adoption of children between countries should always be legally secure and be the last opportunity for a child to have their own family, and if this cannot be guaranteed, the mediation needs to be stopped.

Karin Andersen
Johanna Andersson
Suzanna Asp
Carmilla Floyd
Marita Rodriguez Gallardo
Anna Gemfeldt
Tomas Rodriguez Hedling
Anneli Nordling
Kalle Norwald
Helga Stensson
Patrik Stensson
Anna-Stina Takala


Sri Lankan Adoptees Sue the Netherlands for Negligence

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The global trend of adult international adoptees suing their governments for negligence and fraud continues. In the Netherlands, adoptees from Sri Lanka are seeking reimbursement for damages they allege occurred in their adoptions.

Here is the English version of an article from Nos.nl, a well-known new organization in the Netherlands.

“Sri Lankan adoptees hold the State liable for abuses

Eight adoptees sued the State for negligence in their adoption from Sri Lanka in the 1980s. They argue that the government did not intervene when it could have known about the many abuses. The adoptees want the government to recognize this negligence and reimburse the costs they incurred to trace their origins.

“We want the court to determine that the government is liable for the damage suffered by these eight people,” says lawyer Mark de Hek, who initiated legal proceedings on behalf of the victims. With this, the hope is that justice will also be served for other adoptees in a similar situation.

Kidnapping and baby farming


It has been known for decades that a lot went wrong with adoptions from Sri Lanka. The first signals date back to 1979. Since then, stories about wrong files, baby theft, so-called baby farms and human trafficking have regularly surfaced. In 1987, a Sri Lankan survey found that the vast majority of adoptions were illegal.

The fact that the Dutch state was repeatedly informed of abuses from Sri Lanka from the early 1980s was apparent from the report of the Joustra Committee in 2021. At the request of the government, that committee investigated the role of the Netherlands in intercountry adoption. The abuses included baby farming and child theft. According to the committee, the Netherlands did not intervene and the government did not come up with solutions.

It was not until 1997 that these adoptions came to an end. Between 1973 and 1997, a total of about 3400 children from Sri Lanka were brought to the Netherlands. More than 2400 children came to the Netherlands through the Flash mediation agency, which, according to experts, was the crowning glory when it comes to illegal adoption practices.

Fake Mother in Photo


As a result of these practices, many adoptees have questions about their origins. For example, 31-year-old Serani van der Helm from Helmond has a photo of herself in the arms of a woman, made in Colombo during the adoption in 1986. “My file says that it was my mother who voluntarily gave me up. But that turned out to be a fake mother.”

Van der Helm talks about her search for her biological parents, whom she never found:


Serani: ‘When I became a mother myself, adoption suddenly felt very different to me’
Sam van den Haak from Zevenaar also has many questions about her adoption. In her adoption file, her date of birth is April 7, her passport says July 4, so exactly the other way around. Her old Sri Lankan passport has had a pen tampered with, making it unclear what the correct date is. “That should have been enough reason for the State to smell trouble.” Only much later when she had managed to track down her family on her own, did her grandmother tell her that she was actually born on December 17th.

Van den Haak herself calls it painful that there is an incorrect date of birth in her passport. “Do you know how many times your date of birth is asked to identify you? Then I keep being confronted with that embarrassing mistake.” But changing that data is almost impossible in the Netherlands. With the lawsuit, she hopes to get the government to help her get her real date of birth in her passport.

‘Government failed’


Lawyer De Hek calls these clear indications of negligence on the part of the government. The government has previously denied all liability. “The embassy must ensure that an adoption is legally in order before a residence permit is granted,” says De Hek. “By ignoring the signals about this, the government has failed as a regulator and visa provider.”

Here is the link to the article in Dutch:

https://nos.nl/artikel/2484182-geadopteerden-uit-sri-lanka-stellen-staat-aansprakelijk-voor-misstanden

South Korea Agrees to Investigate International Adoptions: This is Big.

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In an unprecedented move, one that other governments will hopefully look into, South Korea has agreed to investigate fraud and corruption in international adoptions from South Korea. According to NPR, South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said “it decided to investigate 34 cases,… which could possibly develop into the country’s most far-reaching inquiry into foreign adoptions yet.”

Further, “Nearly 400 South Koreans adopted as children by families in the West have requested South Korea’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission investigate their adoptions…as Seoul faces growing pressure to reckon with a child export frenzy driven by dictatorships that ruled the country until the 1980s.”

The Danish Korean Rights Group has been the leader in this effort, via Korean adoptee and attorney Peter Møller. The DKRG has filed hundreds of applications requesting an investigation, from adoptees raised in Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium, and the US. The adoptees, per The Guardian, “say they were wrongfully removed from their families through falsified documents and corrupt practices.”

The investigation, according to Spectrum News, is rooted in “a broad range of grievances emphasizing how scores of children were carelessly or unnecessarily removed from their families amid loose government monitoring and a lack of due diligence. 

Perhaps more crucially, the country’s special laws aimed at promoting adoptions practically allowed profit-driven agencies to manipulate records and bypass proper child relinquishment. 

Most of the South Korean adoptees sent abroad were registered by agencies as legal orphans found abandoned on the streets, although they frequently had relatives who could be easily identified and found. This made the children more easily adoptable as agencies raced to send more kids to the West at faster speeds. 

‘None of us are orphans,’ said Peter Møller, attorney and co-head of the Danish Korean Rights Group, as he described the group’s members who filed the application. 

“(In) a lot of papers, the Korean state at the time have stamped papers that say people were found on the streets. If you do a little bit of math, that would mean that from the 1970s and 1980s Seoul would be flooded with baskets with children lying around in the streets. … Basements will be filled with lost child reports at police stations.

Some of the adoptees say they discovered that the agencies had switched their identities to replace other children who died or got too sick to travel to Danish parents, which made it highly difficult or often impossible to trace their roots. 

The adoptees called for the commission to broadly investigate the alleged wrongdoings surrounding their adoptions, including how agencies potentially falsified records, manipulated children’s backgrounds and origins, and proceeded with adoptions without the proper consent of birth parents. They want the commission to establish whether the government should be held accountable for failing to monitor the agencies and confirm whether the uptick in adoptions was fueled by increasingly larger payments and donations from adoptive parents, which apparently motivated agencies to create their own supply. 

The adoptees also called for the commission to push Holt Children’s Services and the Korea Social Service — the two agencies that sent kids to Denmark — into providing full access to the entirety of their adoption documents and background information. They also say all those records should be transferred to government authorities handling post-adoption services to prevent the information from being destroyed or manipulated.”

It is extraordinary and highly significant that South Korea has agreed to this investigation of fraud and duplicity. Will other sending countries follow this important example and do the same?

Debra Parris, European Adoption Consultant Staffer, Sentenced for Horrific Adoption Fraud and Corruption via Uganda and Poland

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Debra Parris, a staff member of the adoption agency European Adoption Consultants, was sentenced November 4 “to a year and a day in prison for bribing Ugandan officials and lying to Polish authorities about the adoption of a girl, who was later raped,” according to Cleveland.com.

The full Cleveland article is here.

The judge said Parris’s healthcare needs caused him to sentence her to less than the recommended sentence of three years. He also ordered Parris to pay a $10,000 fine and $118,197 in restitution to 42 families. He allowed her to self-report to prison by Jan. 9, unless the Bureau of Prisons directs her otherwise.

Among the victims of Parris’s crimes was adoptive parent Jessica Davis. Upon learning that her adopted daughter from Uganda had a loving family and had been fraudulently placed by European Adoption Consultants, Davis and her husband returned the child to her Ugandan mother. You can read more about the family here.

At the sentencing, according to Cleveland,com, “Davis gave a tearful statement during Friday’s hearing, conducted via Zoom. She pleaded with the judge to give a harsh sentence to send a message to adoptions agencies that fraud can’t be tolerated.

‘I waited for this moment for a long time, specifically for Debra,” Davis said. “You caused a lot of people pain and suffering.'”

Jessica Davis and her family took action that many adoptive parents would not, and they handled their adoption with integrity when they returned the child. The Ugandan child is, by all reports, thriving back home with her family.

Also from the Cleveland article, “Parris in November pleaded guilty to two charges of conspiring to commit fraud. Two others— Cole and former agency employee Robin Longoria— also pleaded guilty in the case. Cole, who also had serious health issues, was sentenced to three months in prison. Longoria was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, similar to Parris.”

European Adoption Consultants caused unconscionable damage to children and their families. While some justice is served with the guilty pleas and in the sentencings of the agency staffers, I wonder what restitution the Ugandan and Polish children could receive. The case of the Polish child is horrifying.

Jessica Davis wrote this on CNN in 2017:

“The travesty in this injustice is beyond words. I must be clear in the following statement: My race, country of origin, wealth (though small, it’s greater than that of the vast majority of people in the world), my access to “things,” my religion – none of these privileges entitles me to the children of the poor, voiceless and underprivileged.

If anything, I believe these privileges should come with a responsibility to do more, to stand up against such injustices. We can’t let other families be ripped apart to grow our own families!”

United Nations Report Calls for End to Illegal, Fraudulent International Adoptions

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The United Nations Human Rights Commission today issued a report titled “Illegal intercountry adoptions must be prevented and eliminated.” It is the culmination of work done by global experts, in light of increasing awareness of fraud and other illegalities in adoption.

Here are some highlights from the press release:

  • “In certain conditions as provided for in international law, illegal intercountry adoptions may constitute serious crimes such as genocide or crimes against humanity.”
  • “They also called for setting up independent commissions of inquiry to establish facts surrounding allegations of illegal intercountry adoptions and determine the responsibilities of all parties, facilitate the search for origins and propose adequate reparation measures for victims. ‘States shall ensure that all victims, including those adopted in the past, receive the assistance they need to know their origins,’ they said.”
  • “They also called for setting up independent commissions of inquiry to establish facts surrounding allegations of illegal intercountry adoptions and determine the responsibilities of all parties, facilitate the search for origins and propose adequate reparation measures for victims. ‘States shall ensure that all victims, including those adopted in the past, receive the assistance they need to know their origins, they said.”
  • “For instance, States should create a DNA database that includes genetic samples for all cases of wrongful removal, enforced disappearance, or falsification of identity that have been reported, with the specific purpose of re-establishing the identity of victims of illegal intercountry adoption.”
  • “Victims of illegal intercountry adoptions have the right to know the truth.”

Several adult adoptee groups were involved in the inquiry that resulted in the UN report. According to Lynelle Long of InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) via LinkedIn:

“Many thanks to my colleagues who worked together in our coalition called Voices Against Illegal Adoption (VAIA), led and initiated by Mariela SR Privé, to work with the UN on this statement. We all gave input to the draft, I also presented on behalf of VAIA on 10 March, and we will be presenting our body of evidence and work to the UN at an upcoming meeting in 2023.

Many thanks to our coalition members: 

Fondation Racines Perdues – Raices Perdidas – (RP) 
Chilean Adoptees Worldwide (CAW) 
Collectif Adoptie Schakel 
Intercountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) 
Empreinte Vivantes – Adoptés belges du Sri Lanka
Plan Angel 
Collectif des adoptés français du Mali
Collectif des parents adoptifs du Sri Lanka
Rwanda en Zoveel meer
Association DNA
Back to the Roots
Collectif des adoptés du Sri-Lanka
Child Identity Protection (CHIP)”

I’ve no doubt many experts, in addition to adult adoptees, were consulted as part of issuing a report such as this. Among them, according to the UN, were the following: The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on Enforced Disappearances, the Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice and Reparation, the Special Rapporteur on the Sale and Sexual Exploitation of Children, the Special Rapporteur on Trafficking in Persons especially Women and Children, and the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances.

I hope that adoptees, adoptee groups, adoption agencies and providers, international child welfare organizations, and all those connected with intercountry adoption will review this report carefully to bring about long overdue changes to the international adoption industry.

Hundreds of Korean Adoptees Petition for an Investigation Into Their Adoptions

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The Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG), an adoptee-centered organization based in Denmark, has petitioned the government of South Korea to investigate adoptions for fraud, and to ensure that agencies do not destroy adoptees’ documents.

Korean adoptee Peter Møller of the DKRG spoke recently in Seoul. This is an excerpt.

“Today I have handed in 232 new application to the (Truth and Reconciliation) Commission. 163 from Denmark and 69 from countries other than Denmark, from adoptees placed around the world, including the USA, Norway, the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium…

We add to this declarations of support from adoptees placed by adoption agencies other than Holt and KSS, and adoptive parents…

I have received many inquiries from all over the world, and most adoptees are very worried…adoptees are afraid that the adoption agencies will destroy and dispose of our original documents to prevent the truth about adoption from South Korea from being known.

DKRG has had reasonable grounds to suspect that falsification of adoptees’ documents has occurred to enable overseas adoption…An example:

The adoptee Ms. Stephens from the US writes to me: ‘I was told by the social worker, Mrs. Kim (KSS), that most likely the name provided as my mother’s was a false name, probably changed by a KSS employee. In making me an “orphan,” KSS erased my mother’s identity from my records, making it impossible for me to find her. It is my belief that my mother wants me to find her as she wrote letters to my father and sent him photos of me. My father died before I could meet him.’

I am standing here with a letter from one of the adoption agencies, and this letter proves that this is precisely what happened. Let me read it out loud to you. This is a letter to an adopted person:

‘First of all, I would like to apologize for the mistake in your adoption file written in English. It says you were transferred from Namkwang Children’s Home in Pusan to KSS for international adoption. In fact, it was made up just for adoption procedure, and now I would like to share your adoption background as written in the original paper,’ quote Ms. Lee, KSS…

DKRG has decided to write a letter to the President of Korea, in which we urgently request the Korean government and authorities to protect the adoptees’ original documents and protect the adoptees from reprisals.”

Møller’s full statement is here.

Netherlands Ordered to Pay Damages to Brazilian Adoptee

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The District Court of The Hague on November 24, 2021, ordered The Netherlands to pay compensation (amount not yet determined) to a Brazilian adoptee.

According to Prakken d’Oliveira Human Rights Lawyers, “Patrick Noordoven was illegally adopted from Brazil in 1980. His parentage was thereby misrepresented, by giving him up as the biological child of the Dutch couple who adopted him illegally. Shortly after his illegal adoption, the police conducted an investigation and concluded that Patrick Noordoven and 41 other children had been adopted illegally from Brazil to the Netherlands. Nevertheless, after the investigation, the State did not take measures to enable Patrick Noordoven to know his parentage and the circumstances of his illegal adoption. The Court concluded that by doing so, the State acted in violation of Patrick Noordoven’s right to identity and knowledge of his parentage.”

In 2018, based on Noordoven’s case, The Hague Appeals Court determined that “a child that was illegally adopted has the right to all information about their adoption. This encompasses, among other things, information about how the illegal adoption took place, criminal investigations into the illegal adoption, and press reports about suspicions of child trafficking.” More information is available here: “Illegally adopted persons have the right to obtain all information about their adoption.”

Increasing numbers of international adult adoptees are searching for their origins, and finding that fraud and corruption were involved. Patrick Noordoven spent 20 years tracking down his truth. This appears to be the first time a country, in the case The Netherlands, has been ordered to pay damages to a person adopted internationally from another country.

I am not a lawyer, but I would say this case has global ramifications for illegally adopted people.

IAG Sentencing Rescheduled Yet Again

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Update: The sentencing hearing for defendants James Harding, Alisa Bivens, and Mary Mooney has now been set for August 10, 2017, 10:00am, Courtroom 2, the Waring Judicial Center, 83 Meeting St, Charleston, SC,  before Judge David Norton.

 

 

To perhaps no one’s surprise, given the years this process has taken, the sentencing hearing for the three International Adoption Guides’ defendants, all of whom pled guilty about three years ago, has been rescheduled from July 13 to Thursday, August 17.

The sentencing hearing for Mary Mooney is now scheduled at 10am, for Alisa Bivens at 10:30am, and for James Harding at 11am. The hearings will take place in Courtroom 2, at the Waring Judicial Center, 83 Meeting Street, Charleston, SC, before Judge David Norton.

I have no idea why the sentencing has been rescheduled. It could be for the judge, for the probation officer, for the defendants, for the lawyers. I have been told that these delays are not unusual when it comes to sentencing for federal crimes.

Here’s hoping for justice.