Over on my personal blog, a reader posted links to a couple of powerful videos on child sexual abuse. The reader said that “These have been used for group presentations for Law enforcement events, Psych events, church groups, etc.”

I have screened them both. They are disturbing but in a way that will help you to understand the impact of child sexual abuse a little better. They are not graphic, but they are disturbing. You will see what I mean when you watch them.

The first one is called A Childhood Changed - Child Sexual Abuse:

New adoptions from Guatemala may have ground to a halt last year, but tens of thousands of adoptable children are living in unsavory orphanages in Guatemala, while other children whose adoption processes were supposedly grandfathered under the old adoption system are stuck in bureaucratic hell, often with no legal representation.

I have kept our readers updated about my friend “P’s” nightmare adoption story: the precious little girl she is in the process of adopting was taken to an orphanage three months ago after her birthmother did not show up for an interview at PGN (Attorney General’s Office). The adoption lawyer is doing all he can to have the situation remedied, but the months go by and are no doubt taking an emotional and physical toll on this little girl, not to mention the personal hell the adoptive family is suffering as they wait and wait and wait.

I also posted an interview with Jennifer Hemsley who discovered that their Guatemalan adoption process was fraudulent, and did not proceed with it as it was. She has turned to the CNA (Guatemalan National Council on Adoptions) to help complete the adoption in a legal and uncorrupt manner, hoping that one day her daughter Hazel will come home.

The tragic stories are endless and painful; some parents have given up ever completing the adoptions they started in 2007 and earlier, some unscrupulous lawyers have jumped ship leaving parents with no legal representation to complete their cases, but most parents are praying, visiting Guatemala, spending thousands of dollars and not giving up on the children they started adopting and fell in love with before the adoption laws changed to come into compliance with the Hague Treaty on Intercountry Adoptions.

There is conflicting advice out there for the adoptive parents whose adoptions are stuck in process: some recommend asking the CNA (National Council for Adoptions) for help, while others say the CNA cannot be trusted, that they give conflicting information and don’t really know what they are doing.

A dear Guatemalan friend sent me this article from a Guatemalan newspaper and fortunately translated it as well. Here are some excerpts from this article.

The New Adoption Law has been working for a Year

"Mery de Garcia" * is about to close the Hogar [orphanage]  she runs. She, along with some friends founded "Nuestra Señora de la Piedad" 10 years ago, but this year things have gotten so difficult they probably won't be able to continue. Only 2 of the 50 children she shelters were adopted; meanwhile the children grow up without a family. Today makes one year since the New Adoption Law started working and only a little over 50 children have been adopted with a budget that goes around Q.[Guatemalan quetzales] 10 million (about $1,280,016.00 USD).. This year’s numbers are not even close to the ones last year: 5 thousand adopted children.

“Excuse me sir, pardon me ma’am,” these are the words of polite lads and lasses who know how to use good manners.  Many have forgotten the power and magic of these wonderful phrases, opting instead, for rude interruptions, shoving, pushing, and unannounced bodily functions, such as sneezing.

• When you need to get past someone.
• When you need to reach around someone.
• When you need to get someone's attention.
• When you need to make an informal apology.
• When you did not hear or understand what someone has said.
• When you belch
• When you pass gas
• When you sneeze
• When you cough
• When you yawn 

• When you are already butting in front of someone.
• When you are already reaching around someone.
• When you are confronting someone about something.
• In an angry, or sarcastic tone.

Excuse Me!: A Little Book of Manners asin: 0448425858

As I have shared many times, my adopted child has some special needs (ADHD and asthma). Let me tell you firsthand – parenting an adopted child with special needs doesn’t come cheap.

Hub’s job does not provide good health insurance for his family. Believe it or not, it is less expensive for my son and me to buy our health insurance “off the street” than through the plan offered through his job. So, we are paying a pretty high premium.

Both Nicholas and I each have a $250 prescription deductible to meet before we move into only paying the co-pays. Nicholas always meets this deductible before January ends. (Our plan runs on a calendar year.)

Our Guestblogger today is Melinda Warshaw, an adoptee in a closed domestic adoption. She is active in adoption law reform in NY, and also the regional coordinator for Westchester for Unsealed Initiative to pass a bill of adoptee rights in NY. Melinda has two sons aged thirty and twenty-eight. This is the autobiography of her search for her lost self as an adoptee in a closed adoption. We are honored that she has given us the opportunity to post her manuscript on our website. The manuscript will be presented in chapters twice a week – Monday and Friday.

To read the first installment, click here. The rest of the installments can be found here.

© 2006 All rights reserved

Melinda A. Warshaw 

Chapter Eight: California or Bust (continued from here) 

At thirteen, I was part actress playing the role of someone’s daughter, Gloria Vanderbilt, a stripper, and would soon be adding the mythical California girl to the mix. We were headed to God’s country, the northern peninsula of California, the land of the infamous Carol Doda performing topless on Broadway in San Francisco, as well as Stanford University, SRI (Stanford Research Institute) the home of artificial intelligence, the Linear Excellerator, the hippies, the peaceniks, Silicon Valley, Linus Pauling, the computer and the Los Angeles-based Charles Manson family.

We finally pulled into the driveway of our new home in affluent Atherton to see a stunning, sprawling, modern, California ranch house made of old gray barn wood. We lived right across from the Shah of Iran’s hideous flamingo pink stucco palace. The new house was on one floor except for my room, which was up the stairs right over the kitchen. The rest of the bedrooms were on the other side of the house off the lanai. It was great for me even though my room was really for the help because Rob’s bedroom was now on the other side of the house.

We had a heated pool, a pool house, a lanai, and one acre in the back and one in front. I hoped there was enough room for a horse. The grounds were filled with olive, lemon, apricot trees and to my dismay there was no place for a horse. Mother was thrilled with the fragrant gardenia bushes, eucalyptus and acacia trees around the pool. She even had her very own Chinese gardener. Fresh flowers went into her Steuben glass vases in the prettiest floral arrangements, even in the powder room and of course all the Kroehler furniture and antiques were there too. The fragrance from the gardenias wafted through the air like perfume. I loved the heated pool and a room to myself away from Rob.

It occurred to me that we at Adoption Under One Roof are committed to covering adoption from every angle, yet we have not addressed the pregnant woman considering an adoption plan for her unborn child. If you mention to anyone that you are considering placing your unborn child for adoption, people start coming out of the woodwork begging you to consider them to parent your child. Typically, the pregnant woman feels scared, unsure of her decision, unready to parent, or pressured to place. If you contact an adoption agency for advice, you will undoubtedly feel even more pressure to place your child for adoption, after all that is why they are in business and how they pay their bills. If you are a teenager, you may fear discussing your choices with your parents. You may expect them to be angry, kick you out of the house, or pressure you into placing, aborting, or parenting when you are not sure what you want to do.

We had only one comment posted for the giveaway, but we had several adoptees contact us privately to participate in the “Ask an Adoptee” column. Thank you to all of you – you are an amazing group of people.

The column will be up and running soon.

And the grand winner of the earrings is: NATASHA.

Congratulations sweet Natasha; please send me your mailing address and I’ll mail the beautiful earrings to you.

I received the following information from my helpful friend Melinda and strongly suggest you read it and sign if you are in agreement. It is time for change my friends - make your voice heard and make a difference.

President Obama's transition team is taking questions to present to him. Please go to this link and type in the search section: "adoptees." Questions will come up about the civil rights of adoptees. Please get as many people to vote on these questions as possible.

Please also sign this petition to unseal all birth certificates in the US:

Image Credit: flickr

1. The tennis shoes you must replace today will go on sale next week.

3. The chances of a piece of bread falling with the grape jelly side down is directly proportional to the cost of the flooring it is landing upon.

4. You will remember it is trash day when you hear the garbage truck one house away.

5. The garbage truck will be two doors past your house when the argument over whose turn was is to take out the trash ends.

6. The shirt your child must wear today will be the only one that needs to be washed and/or mended.

At least 62 prospective adoptive families are breathing a sigh of relief now that fugitive Orson Mozes is behind bars in Miami Florida after being arrested December 29, 2008. The television show, America’s Most Wanted, profiled Orson Mozes in August of 2008. Not only did he steal money from prospective adoptive parents but he broke their hearts as well. He pretended to have adoptive child referrals from Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Russia and posted photos on the Internet. He collected money from hopeful adoptive parents to place a hold on the child of their dreams, a child that was never to be theirs, through his Pennsylvania licensed agency, Adoption International Program, AIP. His agency required clients to open a FedEx account, and then wire the agency between $7,000 and $11,000 to hold a precious child for them to adopt internationally.