Indian children 'kidnapped for adoptions in Australia'

I've posted two articles below: "Indian children 'kidnapped for adoption in Australia'"Article from: AAP and the Courier Mail Newspaper August 22, 2008 02:24pmPOOR Indian children are being kidnapped and adopted out to Australian families through state government agencies, authorities claim.More than a dozen prettyӔ children kidnapped in Indian slums have ended up being adopted in Australia, TIME Magazine reported. According to the magazine, at least 120 children were kidnapped from slums in southern India and were sold to a Chennai-based adoption agency Malaysian Social Services (MSS) for as little as $280, before being sent overseas. Police in India told the magazine that after MSS brought the children from kidnappers, new identities were created before the children were distributed overseas. According to one set of paperwork, the mother had wanted her child to go up for adoption because of the social stigma of the child being born outside marriageӔ. In an interview with the magazine, an Indian mother named Fatima said her two-year-old daughter Zabeen was plucked off the street, thrown into a motorised rickshaw and disappeared. "I thought someone had taken her for her kidney, Fatima said. Seven years after Zabeen vanished, it was discovered that she had been processed by MSS and police in India now say that she was adopted by a family in Queensland. Indian police believe at least 13 kidnapped children were adopted by Australian families. Indian authorities are now hoping to question officials from the Queensland Families Department. Queensland Child Safety Minister Margaret Keech told the magazine that the allegations were ԓvery concerning. ԓ(Officials) will work very closely with federal and state agencies to investigate these claims, Ms Keech said. Police also hope to interview people who may have adopted kidnapped children. "Painful truth about adopted children"Article from The Australian Newspaper, August 26, 2008Siobhain Ryan and Sean Parnell WHEN Julia Rollings first heard that the orphanage from which she had adopted her son and daughter was embroiled in a child-trafficking scandal, she was faced with a life-changing choice.She could do nothing, safe in the knowledge that her children, Akil and Sabila, had been declared free for adoption by Indian courts, were Australian citizens and were in a place they called home. Or she could find out for sure whether the story she was told - that Akil and Sabila's parents had voluntarily relinquished them because of ill-health - was true. Two years ago, Mrs Rollings chose the truth, and the truth hurt. An Indian friend she commissioned to look into Akil and Sabila's background found they had been sold by their drunk and violent father to the Madras Social Service Guild orphanage for $50 without their mother Sunama's knowledge or consent. "We've all been caught up in a horrible situation not of our making," Mrs Rollings said. "All of us, Sunama, the children, are all victims of what happened." Dozens of other Australian parents face similar painful truths about their children's histories. At least 30 children are thought to have been wrongfully adopted in Australia in the past 10 to 15 years after they were targeted by a trafficking network in India. This time around, it is a different adoption agency in Chennai - Malaysian Social Services - that is the centre of the kidnapping scandal. The Indian Central Bureau of Investigation has asked to question the Queensland family of a nine-year-old girl who they say was snatched from outside her Indian home as a two-year-old. Like Mrs Rollings, the couple concerned were tricked into believing their child had been given up voluntarily. And like Mrs Rollings, many more families will wrestle with the fear their child will be reclaimed by Indian parents. Mrs Rollings said she and her husband, Barry, spent two years providing the paperwork and assurances required by Indian authorities for the adoption, only to find they had none of the same guarantees about their children's backgrounds. "The authorities overseas should be held responsible for carefully checking all the agencies and making sure that their credentials are absolutely beyond any kind of doubt," she said. The family has since visited Sunama to re-establish the relationship they were cheated of for so long, but Akil and Sabila will stay in Australia. "I feel for Sunama to the greatest extent because she was the one who lost the children," Mrs Rollings said. "And for the children, because they've had to come to terms with a fundamental part of their identity being changed." For the nine-year-old involved in the latest scandal, however, the trauma is not over. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said yesterday it was too early to predict what would happen to the girl. She said that while the Indian Government and the Supreme Court of Chennai had approved the adoption, the birth parents still had rights. Ms Bligh was the minister responsible for adoptions when the Queensland case occurred in 2000. She said yesterday she could not recall any issues being raised with her about the Malaysian Social Services. West Australian authorities had reportedly refused to deal with the agency because of serious question marks over its dealings five years earlier. Brendan Nelson has suggested Australia had a "moral obligation" to return any stolen children, but federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland maintains the birth parents would need to apply to an Australian court for custody. Mrs Rollings said Akil and Sabila had reacted as she had when they heard how they came to be adopted. "It was incredible grief for their first mother and what she must have gone through," she said.