America's underground market for adopted children
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Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#2I'm floored by Facebook's response to being notified that potentially illegal child exchanges were being conducted on the site.
FTA:
'A similar forum on Facebook, Way Stations of Love, remains active. A Facebook spokeswoman says the page shows "that the Internet is a reflection of society, and people are using it for all kinds of communications and to tackle all sorts of problems, including very complicated issues such as this one."'
While I agree there are limits to the culpability of a company like Facebook, and they will never fully police all the activities of their billion plus users, this strikes me as very blasé. Surely they don't believe that anything and everything that occurs on the Internet is also appropriate to occur on Facebook. Or do they now believe that Facebook is the internet?
edit: typo
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#3There was a Reddit post about this not too long ago. A mom of an adopted child posted. She described how many parents, including her, had no idea what they were getting into adopting a child coming from a troubled background. Things that child did, as she described it, were very disturbing, and would bring many people to their brink.
So one can argue it starts with ignorance. People think raising a child is a walk in the park, playing baseball outside on the front lawn, going to football practice and all the nice stuff people see on TV.
From there it moves on to lies. Overseas adoption agencies can be very shady. They want to close the deal. They will hide and paper over medical histories.
Then once a child with severe psychological issues (some which manifest themselves 6 or more months later only), become apparent. The despair starts to take hold. Then someone knows someone who heard about his online "marketplace" and so on. It puts an idea in their head.
Then, a loophole in the law is used. The idea behind having laws to transfer guardianship is to get kids to stay with family members and to keep them out of trouble if say immediate parents create an unsafe environment. Unfortunately that same provision the way it is written allow pretty quick transfer of guardianship and it is exploited in this case.
I would want to believe some of these children end up in home that try to help them, parents who know how to handle such issues better, but unfortunately quite often that is a market for predators looking for victim. The article has a few disturbing details on that, I won't reiterate here.
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#4Interesting read, btw in Russia from January 1, 2013 there is a law that bans adoptions of Russian children by United States citizens.
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#5I'm floored by Facebook's response to being notified that potentially illegal child exchanges were being conducted on the site. FTA: 'A similar forum on Facebook, Way Stations of Love, remains active. A Facebook spokeswoman says the page shows "that the Internet is a reflection of society, and people are using it for all kinds of communications and to tackle all sorts of problems, including very complicated issues su…
I can't see how one can put much blame on Facebook if people are using it for legal purposes. I think there is no enforcement because there is no money to be made in it. Unlike drug crimes where the government can confiscate property.
Should the government enforce mandatory checks in such cases? Involve child services if guardianship is transferred in the area?
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#6Interesting read, btw in Russia from January 1, 2013 there is a law that bans adoptions of Russian children by United States citizens.
Most of the developed countries forbid adoptions of country nationals by foreign citizens, how many US children got adopted by foreign countries?...not sure why Russian media is making such a big buzz around this law, probably just to find one more way to criticize Putin.
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#7Interesting read, btw in Russia from January 1, 2013 there is a law that bans adoptions of Russian children by United States citizens.
The biggest justification for that was this very issue in the article. But boy, didn't American media kept downplaying those abuses and incidents pointed by the Russians... And kept insisting that it was a retaliation for the Magnitsky act. IMHO the ban indeed was a retaliative act, but these problems presented by Russians at the time could have been at least looked at. May be then the existence of the issue would be recognized, accepted and trigger some further protective laws for the adopted children. I didn't see one single major American news outlet who touched on this part, all simply ignored it as a mere 'yet another poke from the Russians'.
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#8Land of the free. Maybe legal custody should be limited to relatives or people with a proven connection to the official family, or disallowed at all for children adopted from foreign countries? It is disturbing to read all these ads talking about "private adoption" like it's a puppy trade fair.
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#9There was a Reddit post about this not too long ago. A mom of an adopted child posted. She described how many parents, including her, had no idea what they were getting into adopting a child coming from a troubled background. Things that child did, as she described it, were very disturbing, and would bring many people to their brink. So one can argue it starts with ignorance. People think raising a child is a walk in…
This is also a failure of social services / the agency that regulates adoptions. Over here I know that the adoptive family has to go through a long vetting process, and needs to have proven financial means to provide for them and the children.
Re: America's underground market for adopted children
#10Interesting read, btw in Russia from January 1, 2013 there is a law that bans adoptions of Russian children by United States citizens.
Most of the developed countries forbid adoptions of country nationals by foreign citizens, how many US children got adopted by foreign countries?...not sure why Russian media is making such a big buzz around this law, probably just to find one more way to criticize Putin.
Honestly I am not sure whether the Russian media made any big deal at all out of that, I would bet in fact even if they did, it was far (lower) from the extent to which American media did. Not to mention the protests held by thousands in the US.