ROMANIAN ADOPTION FOLO

25-1-2008

ROMANIAN ADOPTION FOLO

Duration: 00:01:36

It's a story that first garnered headlines back in 2005. That's when Romanian adoptee Alexandra Austin returned to Canada for the first time in 14 years, to file a multi-million dollar lawsuit against her adoptive parents, as well as the Canadian and Ontario governments.
Ms. Austin alleged that the Canadians who adopted her had abandoned her -- essentially, "unadopting" her -- and sent her back to Romania to a life of poverty and misery. She had been adopted back in 1991, as a 9-year-old girl, but Alexandra Austin lived in Canada for just months before returning to Romania. There, she was denied state benefits such as health and education because of her Canadian papers.
Now, there is a new development in her story: Alexandra Austin has been told that she will be granted Canadian citizenship.
It's an extremely contentious story: her adoptive parents deny all her allegations, especially that they abandoned her, saying instead that she wanted to return to Romania and her birth family. In fact, her adoptive mother is suing the Toronto Star newspaper, and the CBC -- in the latter case, over a documentary on its television program, The Passionate Eye.
We reached Alexandra Austin in Bucharest, Romania -- and her lawyer, Jeffery Wilson, in Toronto.