Maria Damm Hansen. Adopted at 1 year old. Currently 46 years old. Denmark.

For 46 years I was told, and I believed, that I was an orphan and a foundling, adopted from Namkwang Children’s Home through the Korea Social Service (KSS). Everything is a lie and today KSS tells me a totally different story.

I was born on Oct. 4, 1976, and referred to KSS immediately after birth through San Ho Midwifery Clinic located in the Sadang neighborhood of Gwanak District, Seoul. Within 24 hours of my life, I was ready for adoption.

Furthermore, KSS tells me that I have a biological mother (last name Lee) and a biological father (last name Yom), three siblings, and that I have a fraternal twin brother. Because of extreme poverty, my biological father decided to keep and raise my twin brother and release me for adoption.

This new information has come to me as a shock and my whole identity has been turned upside down. I do not feel upset or angry in any way toward my biological parents. But I am devastated to find that the adoption bureaus have treated me and so many other adoptees like pieces of furniture, lied to us about our whole adoption and identity, in an attempt to ensure that it would be almost impossible to find one’s biological family and find the truth — even today. KSS still denies me access to valuable information they claim they have.

Adam Crapser was sent to adoptive parents in the US during the 1970s – a period described as mass ‘child export’ from South Korea

By Nicola Smith, ASIA CORRESPONDENT

A court in South Korea has ordered the country’s biggest adoption agency to pay £60,000 in damages for mishandling a man’s adoption as a young boy to the United States, where he suffered an abusive childhood.

Adam Crapser, 48, was sent with his sister to adoptive parents in the US in the 1970s, during what has been described as a period of mass “child export” from South Korea.

A Telegraph investigation into the phenomenon found that, between the mid-1950s to the late 1980s, some 200,000 South Korean babies were adopted by families in the US and Europe – many of whom were put up for adoption under false pretences. 

By Son Ji-hyoung

A South Korean court on Tuesday ordered adoption agency Holt Children's Services to pay 100 million won ($74,700) to Adam Crapser, who was adopted to a family in the United States in 1979 but deported after four decades.

The Seoul Central District Court acknowledged the agency's "failure to uphold its duty to protect the adoptee and ensure the adoptee's acquisition of citizenship," it said in a ruling.

The landmark ruling is the first in the history of Korea to recognize a legal violation of an international child adoption agency. South Korea was considered the biggest child exporter to the US decades ago.

The court, however, did not hold the Korean government liable for its alleged negligence of duty to protect its citizen.

SADAF AHSAN

When Eun Ae Koh was 8 months old, she was adopted from her birthplace in Korea by two white Americans. Overnight, she gained two loving parents, three older brothers, and an older sister and spent her childhood and teen years growing up in rural Illinois, about three and a half hours south of Chicago, not far off from fields of soybeans and corn. With her parents’ older biological children already grown up and moved out, it wasn’t until the pair adopted a second child, from China, a decade later, that Koh saw anyone who looked like her at home.

“Growing up, I was really only ever around white people,” says Koh, now a 30-something Washington, D.C.-based artist. “That’s what my town looked like, that’s what my school looked like, that’s what my family looked like. There was no exposure to anything Korean at all. I always felt different.”

Koh is far from alone. After a rise in Asian adoptees in the US in the 1990s, many of these children are now in their 20s and 30s and dealing with the mental health impacts of growing up in white families who didn’t resemble them, and were unable to guide them through the unique experience of growing up a person of color in America. Today, they’re finding solace in their own communities and are working to create new systems that can help future cross-cultural adoptees walk an easier path. 

The vast majority of Asian adoptees in the US born in China can be attributed to 1991, when China launched its international adoption program, through which adoptive parents were led to believe that adoptees had been found abandoned – whether at orphanages, or on the streets. In reality, China’s one-child policy and a preference for boys led to a mass of abandoned infant girls. Since, roughly 110,000 children have been adopted from China globally, according to Kerry O'Halloran’s 2015 book The Politics of Adoption, with the majority coming to the US. And in 1981, the Korean government made inter-country adoption more accessible in hopes of raising emigration rates, leading to a wave of Korean adoptees from the mid-’80s to ‘90s. 

By Utkarsh Anand, New Delhi

The CARA statistics showed that of 30,477 prospective parents registered with the central nodal agency for adoption, 28,779 (94%) are heterosexual couples.

The back story to India’s tedious and interminable adoption process can clearly be seen in the statistics with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA): While more than 30,000 prospective parents are currently waiting to adopt, less than 7% the number of children — 2131— are legally free for adoption. Around two-third of them are children with special needs, and it takes three years for an adoption process to complete.

According to the statistics placed by the Union government before the Supreme Court during the hearing of a bunch of petitions demanding legal recognition for same-sex marriages, around half the number of children legally free for adoption are special needs children, with the highest number of them falling in 14-18 age group.

The data, as on April 28, was adduced before a constitution bench led by Chief Justice of India Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud by additional solicitor general Aishwarya Bhati as the law officer rose to oppose a demand of the same-sex couples to have the right to adopt a child as unions. The bench also included justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, S Ravindra Bhat, Hima Kohli and PS Narasimha.

Assam Police on May 6 arrested Guwahati based doctor Sangeeta Dutta from Meghalaya border in connection to the case of child abuse.

Assam Police on May 6 arrested Guwahati based doctor Sangeeta Dutta from Meghalaya border in connection to the case of child abuse.

Dr Sangeeta along with her husband Dr Waliul Islam were accused of abusing their adopted minor daughter. Meanwhile, Dr Sangeeta was on the run and hiding in a house at Umsning in Meghalaya’s Ribhoi. However, the police were able to track her down and brought her to the Paltam Bazar police station at night.

Dr. Waliul, Sangeeta's husband, is being held by the police for five days in connection with the case. In the meantime, Lakshmi Rai, the caretaker who was also allegedly involved in the case, has been taken into custody by the court.

The doctor couple duo are accused for their alleged involvement in a child abuse case and the matter came to light after child rights activist Miguel Das Queah took to social media and informed about the incident.

SURAT: A girl abandoned by her biological parents got a new lease of life when a childless couple from the city adopted her when she was three months old.

But the girl, who is now nearing 14 and studying in Class 9, became a victim of sexual abuse with the perpetrators being her adoptive father, his younger brother, and his three nephews. The ordeal of the teenager, which began in 2021, was exposed by her adoptive mother who witnessed her husband abusing her on Friday.

She rescued the girl and wnet to Adajan police station to lodge a complaint against her 46-year-old husband, his younger brother (41), his elder brother's son (24), younger brother's son (22), and sister-in-law's 16-year-old son.

Police arrested four people including adoptive father and his brother and two nephews.

It all began in 2021, when the accused took her to the first floor of their house and raped her. She was subjected to sexual abuse multiple times by the five accused. The survivor told police that she did not complain earlier as her father and others threatened to kill her or thrash her.

GUWAHATI: An FIR was filed against Walliul Islam and Sangita Dutta on the grounds of suspected child abuse of their adopted 3-year-old daughter at the Paltan Bazaar police station on May 5.

The complainant alleged that the couple tortured and harassed their adopted daughter by tying her up on the terrace of the building in the intense heat purposefully without food or water, with an alleged intent to cause harm or even kill the child.

This has come across as gruesome and inhumane and has professed the cause that such behaviour may lead to the death of the child from Hyperthermia.

Sources also state that the neighbourhood had reported similar events but to no avail. 

The child has also been allegedly reported to have been seen with bruises on the body, demarcating signs of alleged physical abuse by the foster parents.

By KPLC Digital Team

Jeff Davis Parish, LA (KPLC) - The parents of a 12-year-old boy who died of malnutrition last year have been indicted for second-degree murder.

Brogan Nash Duhon died in October 2022 at a children’s hospital in Baton Rouge. A coroner’s report indicated the cause of his death as complications from malnutrition and deemed the death a homicide. Brogan was 42 inches tall and weighed 28 pounds when he died.

His parents, Adam Duhon and Jennifer Ann Duhon, were arrested on murder charges in February 2023 and were formally indicted this week.

A Damascus woman is accused of abusing her six adopted children for years. Lora Loethen is facing child abuse, assault, neglect, and several other charges. She is currently being held without bond.

According to court documents, an investigation into Loethen began in March after one of her adopted kids told another adult that she did not feel safe going home. The child then told police Loethen was beating her since she came to the U.S. seven years ago.

Court documents also reveal Montgomery County Police were dispatched for incidents involving the family more than 65 times and police wrote more than 30 reports between August 2021 and March 2023. Most of those calls involved children attempting to run away, which in 2021, one child told police, “Loethen is verbally and physically abusive which is why he runs away.”

In May of 2022, two children also went to the Damascus Fire Station and told medics they had barely eaten or drank in four days. One of the children then told police Loethen has hit, thrown her down the stairs, kicked, shoved, slapped, and spat on her.

Although MCP received reports of assault, there wasn’t probable cause to make an arrest. Child Protective Services are tasked with calling to remove children from an unsafe environment. MyMCM reached out to CPS and did not hear back as of this writing.