New Jersey

Three Steps To Help Adoptees

Submitted by GuestBlogger on Mon, 04/14/2008 - 16:08

Anne BauerToday's guest blogger is Anne Bauer, an advocate for all adoptees in America. She has written a memoir, "The Sound of Hope: Living in the Closed Adoption System", which chronicles her life growing up without any information about her roots and how she searched and found her birthmother against a wall of opposition from her family and society. Please visit her Web site to read excerpts from her upcoming memoir.

Uniting children and childless couples for the purpose of creating families is the ultimate goal of adoption. Both parties are meant to benefit, the childless couple who yearns for a child of their own, gets the opportunity to be a parent, and the child, who doesn’t have any family members willing or able to raise them, is given a family in which to be a part. However, as an adoptee who grew up in the closed adoption system in America, I know that the emotional interests of the adopted child are not always given priority.

Adoption News: Scams In S. Korea, Cameroon; Prince Harry's Orphan Charity Criticized

Submitted by VirginiaC on Mon, 03/24/2008 - 22:01

 

NewspapersAdoption scams unfortunately lead the news today. In South Korea, police have busted a group of 15 people who gained access to homes by faking that they were adoptive parents. Apparently there is a law in South Korea that gives a preference to home-buyers who are adoptive parents. The Agence France Presse news service said the scammers used phony adoption documents to buy 21 apartments in Seoul and nearby cities. Sadly, 20 biological parents were also charged with accepting money to allow their children to be adopted by the scammers. 

A New Jersey nun has learned that scammers have used her identity to solicit the adoption of children in Cameroon. According to The Daily Record, a newspaper from central New Jersey, police in the African country are trying to determine who used the identity of Sister Mary Lynne to defraud a Rhode Island couple of $7,000. The nun runs an orphanage in Cameroon that gives shelter to street kids and teaches them job and life skills, but it is not an adoption agency. Somehow, in an e-mail exchange from the scammers, the Rhode Island couple came to believe they were adopting a white child from Cameroon. According to the U.S. State Department, only a handful of children are adopted from Cameroon by Americans every year. 

Adoption News: Editorials Against N.J., Minnesota Open Records Bills

Submitted by VirginiaC on Sat, 03/08/2008 - 21:29

NewspaperThe largest circulation newspaper in New Jersey is calling on state legislators to reject a bill to open sealed adoption records. The Star Ledger takes issue with most of the arguments that the bill's backers have used to advance it, from adoptee rights to the need for medical histories. "Changing the law retroactively," it concludes, "is just plain wrong". The bill (S611) passed the New Jersey Senate earlier this week and now goes to the state's Assembly. The Minneapolis Star Tribune has written an editorial against a similar bill pending in Minnesota.

New Jersey's attorney general