Day Two: Fasting for Kidnap Victims

Today is Day Two of my - and many others' fast for three children who were kidnapped by child traffickers and wound up with adoptive families in the US, likely unbeknownst to them.

I was very pleasantly surprised that my first day of fasting went far easier than any other fast - for religious or medical purposes - I have ever done before. When you firmly believe in something, it really makes a difference!

It is very interesting to be participating in this call for action in the midst of the headlines coming out of California about the release of Jaycee who was held for an incredible eighteen years and bore two children while in captivity.

The three children I am concerned about, were, like Jaycee snatched out of their mothers arms - some at gunpoint, others after drugging their mothers, etc. - in violent acts committed by total strangers.

In the end, despite despicable treatment, Jaycee came to be attached to her abductors to whom she was totally dependent. Yet how absurd would it be for anyone suggest that she and her chidlren stay with Phillip and Nancy Garrido - with whom Jaycee felt so comfortable, she worked as the "front person" in the family gardening business.

Jaycee's "attachment" to her abductors is not a consideration!

Why then is it that if an adoption takes place - albeit an illegal adoption - after an abduction, it is somehow thought to nullify the original abduction? because the adopters didn't know?

But the mothers know their children were abducted - brutally - by horrible people with not a care for the children's well-being. The adopters PAID these people - albeit indirectly - and it was their desire for a child that created the entire child trafficking business.

Yet, as always, where adoption is concerned - even illegal adoptions - it seems all the pity is always with the adopting family. All we hear in contested adoption cases is THEIR pain, THEIR loss...THEIR empty crib...

Now, I am not cold and heartless. I do not discount that it would indeed be very painful and difficult to GIVE BACK a child that you love and believed to be YOURS forever (though I've written recently, and we all know about adoptive give-backs of children, not so perfect). Most ironically, even THEN, the adopters seek pity!

Why is adoption so damn sacrosanct and why doe sit supersede the NATURAL God-given ad constitutionally protected right to raise one's own child? Totally false but undying stereotypes that won't die about mothers who lose children to adoption being somehow unfit and those who hose adoption being above the fray and more DESERVING! Or is it the American-capitalistic mentally that they "bought and paid for it" so it's THEIRS?

Whatever it is I grow sicker and sicker by the day...and heartsick for all the children who were stolen and wound up adopted. They are victims of violent abductions every bit as much as much as Jaycee - although treated better in MOST cases...let us not forget that some adopted kids ARE abused emotionally, physically and sexually and some even adopted for that specific purpose, or to bring financial subsidies. Why the heck then is adoption to scared when all this exists?

Questions I have been asking since my first book in 1988...and questions I will continue to raise and fight for answers to with my last dying breath, as did Teddie Kennedy. In The Dark Side of Adoption (a term I coined!) I called for statistics on the number of children adopted and abused. NOTHING. To this day no one follows up on adoptions once finalized, giving pedophiles free range....just as no oe checks on parolees, like Garrido, or even Jeffrey Dahmer!

Our government has the funds to bail out banks and auto manufacturers, we have money for weapons...but have never funded the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act of 2006 to follow up on released level 2 and 3 sex offenders. What price does we place on children's safety? We know the price of children - as much as $40,000 to GET ONE! But what about protecting them?

To wind this angry rant back around to where it started - why won't our government abide by TWO treaty's it has signed to cooperate in th alleged commission of an international crime and to help international contested custody cases? Why won't the State Dept demand DNA testing for the children positively identified from passport photos?

And...if they do -- or in the case of one of three girls who has now been DNA proven to be who her mother has claimed she is -- what will be - should be - the outcome? Should not the children be returned regardless of whether the end recipient knew or not? How could any family knowingly turn their backs on this possibility without the worry that their kids - finding out some day - might not feel terribly angry and betrayed? They can run...will they seek in hiding the truth forever? What kind of people does that make them?

We damn well know there'd be holly hell to pay of US kids were abducted and taken out of the country!

Please think of all of thi as you chew and swallow each morsel of food today, and wash it down with a refreshing beverage. I am doing none of that!