When Adoption Becomes ABDUCTION: ILLEGALLY KEEPING GRAYSON FROM HIS FATHER!

AND HERE IT IS YET AGAIN!!!!

Ind. couple, natural father fight for 3-year-old

SELLERSBURG, Ind. —

An Indiana couple is holding on to the son [NOT their "son"] they've tried to adopt for nearly three years even though a court has ordered them to surrender the child to his biological father in Ohio.

The Lucas County Juvenile Court this week ordered Jason and Christy Vaughn to hand over the nearly 3-year-old boy named Grayson to Benjamin Wyrembek, prompting their attorney to file a flurry of legal maneuvers to prevent the surrender.

"This isn't my fault and, quite frankly, it's not the birth father's fault. It's not the birth mom's fault. Everybody is doing what they think is right," Jason Vaughn told The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Ky.

Wyrembek's attorney, meanwhile, says courts have ruled in his client's favor and the case shouldn't be tried in the media.

GRAYSON SAYS:

Yet one MORE case of abductors refusing to follow the law and allow a son and his father be together AS GOD and the law intends them to be!!

What gives people the right?

How can they justify KIDNAPPING?!

UPDATE here.

Another Child Adopted, Abused, and Killed by a "Fatally Forever Family"

Another adoption tragedy taints Tennessee

Death of child may cause international backlash

By Jennifer Brooks • THE TENNESSEAN • July 18, 2010

• This was supposed to be Kairissa XingJing Mark's forever home.
  

On March 29, the 4-year-old's new family brought her home from China to a big brick house in a cozy Mt. Juliet subdivision that is the picture of the American Dream. There was a big fenced-in yard for her to play in and pretty pink curtains in the upstairs bedroom window. In the window next to the door, someone had taped a child's coloring of a religious scene, the Good Shepherd guarding his flock.

But three months after her adoption, Kairissa is dead, her adoptive family is shattered and the international adoption community is reeling from the news of yet another horror story out of Tennessee.

Kairissa's mother, Dr. Deborah Wen Yee Mark, a pediatrician [photo, right] , stands accused of beating her to death. Last week, a Wilson County grand jury indicted Mark on one count of first-degree murder and eight counts of child abuse. It also indicted her husband, Steven Joshua Mark, a stay-at-home dad, on multiple counts of aggravated child abuse, child abuse, failure to protect and of being an accessory after the fact.

The couple's 8-year-old biological daughter is in foster care. Police say she told them she witnessed some of the attacks on her little sister.

Court date set

The Marks will be arraigned Friday and they intend to plead not guilty, said their attorney, Jack Lowery Jr. Kairissa died at Vanderbilt Children's Hospital on July 2, one day after police were summoned to the family home by a report of a child in distress. Lowery said the fact the case is already heading to court shows signs of a "rush to judgment."
The fact that a pediatrician, someone who devoted her entire career to protecting other people's children, is accused of killing one of her own adds to the horror of this case. Those who know the Marks best aren't talking — their neighbors, their congregation at the Donelson Fellowship Free Will Baptist Church, where they worshipped, her colleagues at Centennial Pediatrics in Lebanon.

"She's a lady who, in the past several days, I have received numerous calls in support of, telling me what wonderful care she took of (her patients') children," Lowery said. "This is just a quality family. They attended church here. They were very involved. They have suffered. Their lives have absolutely been turned upside down."


The Marks, he said, spent a number of years attempting to adopt from China. It's a process that has become increasingly difficult over the years, as more and more countries have tightened their restrictions on international adoptions to the United States.

Russian case was shock

In April, news broke that an adoptive mother from Tennessee had put her 6-year-old son on a plane back to Russia, with a note saying she no longer wanted him. The incident sparked an international uproar and threats of a moratorium on further adoptions from Russia.


"We do expect changes to happen," said Chuck Johnson, CEO of the National Council for Adoption, who has been in contact with the Chinese government about the case. Overall, rates of abuse of adopted children tend to be lower than among biological children, he said, but "every tragedy is one too many."

China probably would hold off on any policy changes until there is a conviction, but Johnson said there is already talk of requiring additional follow-up visits after an adoption. Right now, China's minimum requirements are home visits at the six-month and one-year mark after an adoption.
"It's so unfortunate. Our hearts just break," Johnson said. "We see the motivation and desire of most families who just want to bring a child out of an institution and give them a home, have someone to call them Mom and Dad. … And then to see something like this happen."

China cracks down

Local adoption agencies also are bracing for a possible backlash.
China has already cracked down on U.S. adoptions in recent years — it now bans adoptions by single women, anyone who has ever taken medication for depression and anyone with a body mass index of 40 or higher.

International adoptions have nosedived from a peak of 22,739 children brought into the United States in 2005 to fewer than 13,000 in 2009. The average wait to adopt a child from China ranges from more than four years, for parents who want to adopt a perfectly healthy child, to an average of nine months to two years for those willing to adopt a "waiting child" — one with a diagnosed health problem.

Families screened

Prospective families undergo rigorous scrutiny, including background checks, home visits and interviews with friends and family members. The Marks worked with an as yet unidentified Nashville adoption agency, but most agencies in the area follow the same basic precautions.



Bethany Christian Services, a national adoption agency with an office in Nashville, declined to say whether it was the agency that helped the Mark family adopt Kairissa. But Tammy Bass, director of Middle Tennessee Bethany, noted that any couple looking to adopt overseas would have to run through the same rigorous background check — starting with local criminal history checks and running all the way up to a screening by the Department of Homeland Security, not to mention financial history checks and visits from social workers.

Bethany checks in with its new families two weeks after an adoption and again at the six-month and one-year marks, she said. Social workers check to make sure the children are bonding with their new families and look for signs of attachment disorders or other problems.

Adoption "can be a shock to your system," she said, explaining the reasons for the home visits. "We stress the importance of staying connected with the family, not just the two-week visit but beyond."
The local Bethany office has placed 25 children with new families so far this year, Bass said.

"This isn't the norm, when you look at how many children" are thriving and happy in their new homes, she said. "But the fact that a lot of (adoptions) are going really well doesn't take away from this tragedy."

Child Trafficking Feared in Haiti

Trafficking fears as Haiti children go missing

United Nations officials say children have gone missing from hospitals in Haiti since the devastating January 12 earthquake, raising fears of trafficking for adoption abroad.

"We have documented around 15 cases of children disappearing from hospitals and not with their own family at the time," said UNICEF adviser Jean Luc Legrand.

"UNICEF has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti that existed already beforehand.

"Unfortunately, many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption market."

The agency said it had warned countries during the past week not to step up adoptions from Haiti in the immediate wake of the quake.

However several are fast-tracking adoption procedures already under way, including Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States.

Mr Legrand said the situation was similar to the aftermath of the tsunami in Asia five years ago.

Trafficking networks were springing into action immediately after the disaster and taking advantage of the weakness of local authorities and relief coordination "to kidnap children and get them out of the country".

Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said child enslavement and trafficking in Haiti was "an existing problem and could easily emerge as a serious issue over the coming weeks and months".

The UN mission in Haiti has stepped up surveillance of roads, UNICEF officials said.

Mr Legrand said there was separate but only anecdotal evidence of people taking children by road to the neighbouring Dominican Republic and loading children on to planes.

"We have seen over the past years many children being taken out of the country without any legal procedure," he said.

"This is going on. This is happening now. We are starting to have the first evidence of that, this is unquestionable."

He was unable to give details on the 15 missing children or their condition or clearly connect the anecdotal observations in Haiti's chaos with trafficking.

The cases were documented by social workers and by partner non-governmental organisations working for UNICEF in hospitals.

Surrogacy Debated: Adoption Called "Regulated"

The New York Times offers four views on surrogacy regulation.

The Baby Market: Should the government decide who can obtain a baby through surrogacy? The debate is summed up by Rebecca Dresser is a professor of law and professor of ethics in medicine at Washington University in St. Louis:

"For better or worse, most individuals become parents without having to establish their qualifications for child-rearing. But in adoption, prospective parents must undergo screening to evaluate their parental fitness. Which approach should we take to people seeking parenthood through surrogacy?"

Charles P. Kindregan Jr. is a professor of family law at Suffolk University in Boston, and is co-author of the American Bar Association book on assisted reproduction, says:

"The freedom of parental choice to conceive and raise a child is protected by the Constitution." Seems this would clearly add more protection to the surrogate than those who are "essentially contractors who find egg donors, sperm donors and pregnancy surrogates to carry the baby."

Kindregen instead believes: "Everyone who has studied the issues raised by assisted reproductive technology and specifically by surrogacy recognize that there is a need to ensure the protection of children brought into existence by this technology. I think it is possible to achieve this goal while still allowing the option for gay and lesbian partners, as well as non-partnered and infertile couples to enjoy the rights and obligations of parenthood."

He then goes on to say, "It is unconscionable that the practice of surrogacy in the United States is so unregulated that anyone can open and operate a for-profit surrogacy clinic....

"Legal adoption is the soundest method of creating and protecting legal parenthood, but a person cannot be compelled to adopt and may not even be eligible to do so. However, the use of surrogacy can be provided with greater protections for all involved, including the potential children."

HUH? In most states anyone can hang a shingle and arrange adoptions! Private adoption there are little standards except ability to pay and once an adoption is finalized - even a state adoption - there are no follow-up protections for the children.

Arthur Caplan is a professor of bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, says:

Some years ago, young woman in Indiana signed a surrogacy agreement with a man from Pennsylvania. She agreed to be artificially inseminated by him and deliver any baby that resulted for a fee of $30,000. One month after a baby boy was born, the fee paid and the child taken back to Northeast Pennsylvania, the man beat the child to death. He pleaded guilty to third degree murder.

Today, the fees being charged for surrogate mothers have escalated well past $50,000. As a result, some of the surrogacy trade is being outsourced to poor women in India and China. Indian women agree to carry to term embryos for American parents for fees averaging around $12,000. However, most of the money goes to brokers or agents.

There are more laws in the United States governing the breeding of dogs, cats, fish, exotic animals, and wild game species than exist with respect to the use of surrogates and reproductive technologies to make people.

All of the arguments seem to assume that adoptive parents meet some "fitness" requirements that should be applied to potential parents through surrogacy, though they know fill well that no one is going to enforce any such regulations in a pay-as-you-go drive-through industry ...and when the "model" they use doesn't even apply it.

"Find My Family" Reignites Old Cliches and Who's The Mother Battle Lines

I posted on Dec 7 about the ABC show "Find My Family" and pondered with others why adoptive parents felt it exploitive.

One adoptive mother has posted on Adopt-a-Tude an in depth reaction to the program - and to reunions in general - including why she feels it exploitive and much, much more.  It apparently is also being discussed at MotherLode, and one reviewer called the show "grotesque."

Here are some excerpts:

I understood too the longing: "I deserve to see where I came from." And sadly, as a single mom raising a daughter who's an only child, I've spent more than a few sleepless nights worrying whether my daughter will feel "alone in the world"—as more than one adoptee on the show articulated. In truth, the show made me long all the more for the possibility that my daughter might someday find and connect with her Chinese kin.

So, on the one hand, the show made me question again the wisdom of closed adoptions. The bottom line is blood relations are family. You don't cease being "family" just because you're not there. Adopted or not, we all have far-flung family members. Is there a draw there? The possibility for that sense of kindred connection? I'd be lying if I said no.....

In the meantime, as much as I feel sympathetic to the pain articulated by the adult adoptees and birth mothers in Find My Family, I'm also an adoptive parent and—I’m human. So while I understand the deep-seated need to discover the connection and sense of belonging that comes from blood ties, from the sense of having been molded from the same clay, there is another part of me, in my head, in my heart, that feels there are things about Find My Family that are one-sided, superficial, and potentially exploitative....

Lisa then she goes into the old cliches that parenting "is about being there, day in and day out, year in and year out, through the good, the bad, the sick, the rebellious, and ugly" yada yada.  DNA is cast aside and the "babysitter" cliche dragged back out.   She concludes with: "when the Find My Family hosts and adoptees kept saying, "That's your mother" and "We found your mother" and "We found your family"—as if these adoptees were still orphaned and alone in the world—I couldn't help but cringe.....The bottom line for me is that, as an adoptive parent, the show made me feel incredibly invisible [emphasis added]."

The flowing is my reply. I encourage you to read her post in full and add your own comments.

Lisa,

I appreciate your articulate honesty. What I get the sense of, as I read your reactions, is a huge dichotomy - a conflicting duality of feelings.

You say you understand and agree with the AAC statement and feel the pain of loss and the need to connect of adoptees, yet… you feel left out, as if a reunion would cast you aside as a babysitter...a not an uncommon concern of adoptive parents, albeit an irrational fear.

I have been involved in thousands of reunions and read about a thousand more over the past 30 years.  As for the “statistical results” you long to see, they are all over the place, like any interpersonal relationships, prime example being marriage. Are marriages good or bad? Are married people happy, content or not? Is marriage stable, secure and faithful? The answer, of course, is that some are and some aren't, and there are all degrees of happiness and contentment and all kinds of arrangements within the framework of marriage.

Reunions, like any other relationships, are as unique as the people in them.

Adoptive parents are not included in reunions because it is not about them! You no more belong at your daughter's reunion than you do on her honeymoon! Interestingly, however, the one episode I saw - the one with Ashley who finds a brother and sister - they DO show her siblings visiting her at her adoptive parents home. This is as it should be. These are now extended family members and should be welcomed as any other extended family.

Lisa, it is not the sweat equity which makes you feel angry - it is your fear and your insecurity that blood really is thicker than water. It’s your insecurity that this child is NOT blood related to you as you would like her to be; did not come from your body and does not have your DNA. These are YOUR issues and ones you need help to overcome so that you do not inflict them on your child and create feelings of indebtedness and gratitude on top of those you already recognize: the abandonment and identity issues.

What troubles you the most was the show referring to the original mothers and father and siblings of the adoptees as what they ARE: mother, father, sisters and brothers. We need no more fight for such linguistic titles as we need to fight over the children themselves. To truly love an adopted child is to love, accept and embrace fully all of her kin. That’s what they are and the fact of her adoption does not re-write that biological truth of kinship no more than it changed her hair color.  Have the confidence to believe that the "sweat equity" you put by in by virtue of being able to "be there” in ways that your child’s original mother was not, is shared by your daughter.

A mother is always a mother – even if one subsequently acquires a step-mother or if your mother dies. She is still your mother. She may be loved dearly or not. Some people feel far more attachment to a step-parent than their biological parent. Neither distance nor death, nor time apart, erase or change that reality.  They are mother and father…but adoptive (or step) parents can still be Mommy and Daddy!

Lisa, many mothers love more than just the one child and our children have aunts, uncles and grandparents that they love without taking anything away from Mom and Dad. Why would her having yet other RELATIVES in her life be any different? Unless an adoptive parent has been abusive - emotionally or physically - they have nothing to fear when their adult child reunites.  No more to fear than when that adult child marries!

I pray you find help to deal with your not uncommon insecurities so that you can give your little girl the gift of not feeling guilty about loving all the people that created and love and care for her.  Adoptees – like children of divorce- need Not to feel in a loyalty bind but allowed to love all of their parents because love is not finite but abundant and a renewable resource.

PS Despite the costs of adoption, neither sweat nor financial equity makes being  motherhood about ownerdhip. Read or re-read Kahil Gibran's "Your Children"

Have You Seen "Find My Family"?

If you haven't seen it yet, the next show airs TONIGHT (Monday, Nov. 30) at 9/8c on ABC. 

Find My Family.

The adoption community is waiting to see how the show's producers will treat the complex issues surrounding adoption and reunion. Hopefully the show won't merely sensationalize what are often highly emotional reunion events. Hopefully it won't over-commercialize these personal experiences.

The show's host, Tim Green, is a reunited adoptee, so his personal involvement in adoption might abate some of these fears, but we'll have to see. A preview of the show aired last week, and Tom Shales of the Washington Post found it to be a touching tear-jerker in his review. If you caught the show last week, what did you think?

Excerpt from a NY Times review:

The six-episode series has a lot in common with “The Locator” on the WE channel. In each case the show acts as private investigator, tracking down missing loved ones. “Find My Family” differs on two counts: It appears to focus almost exclusively on adoptees, and it plays down the detective work to make more time for the catharsis.

In real life the issues surrounding the reunification of adoptees and birth parents are difficult and often contentious. Not so on “Find My Family.” The primary host, Tim Green, sums up the show’s ethos in the premiere when he tells a couple searching for the daughter they gave up years before, “I think every adopted person’s dream is to be found.” Mr. Green and his co-host, Lisa Joyner, are adoptees — “like a lot of people working on this show,” he says — and at a successful mother-and-child reunion his tears flow along with the family’s.

The possibility that someone might not want to meet a parent or child whom she’s never known is acknowledged, but in the segments made available for review, it’s just a plot device, something to generate a little suspense before the inevitable group hug. “Find My Family” will become more interesting — and more genuinely moving — if it ever allows itself to depict the consequences of rejection. (Of course rejection would mean turning down not only the chance to meet a crucial person in your life but also the chance to appear on television.)

The general air of hokum can’t completely hide the complexity of the show’s situations however....

Blogger China AdoptionTalk says: "I think this show is going to open up more conversations at work, and could very well open up some conversations within our extended family."

I highly recommend reading Dusky's FirtMother Forum for an indepth look at Gladney from "The Locator" who found duplicated non-IDs and lost of false info!

“Operation: Get That Baby.”

No, it's no a snarky, sarcastic tittle I made up.

Not a parady.

It's a RAL EVENT. A fund raiser to help "such a deserving couple."

This "deserving couple" plans to "Get that baby" through Abba Adoption Agency:
Our vision is to share the Love of Christ to those that are hurting and lead them to the Cross by the testimony that has been given to us....We desire to shepherd these women to be what God wants them to be. In addition, we must equip the families that God is trusting to train up these little precious miracles in Christ centered homes. We are merely the vessels to bring the truth of the sanctity of life.

NOTE:  Since ABBA Adoption is a Christian Agency we seek out adoptive parents that are evangelical Christians who can provide a stable, nurturing home. 

Additionally: ADVERTISING: ABBA adoption understands families do not wan to wait years to adopt a child.  Therefore, we get involved in the community to network with places such as local Care Pregnancy Centers, hospitals, doctor offices, churches, schools and universities to make a presence of what we have to offer and what makes us more effective and essential in working with birth mothers on thier adoption plan.  In addition, we utilize marketing strategies that prove successful.  We know our market and we know what it takes to reach that market for our families.

Expectant mother are labeled "birthmothers" as they "market" and "advertise" for "THEIR FAMILIES!"  How loving and caring!  Just what Jesus would have them do.  They read it all in the Book of Marketing and Exploitation verses 21:3-5: "Thou shall take from the poor, the struggling and and the suffering and give to those who pay your fees, so sayeth the Lord of Adoption."

By this logic, terminal patients should be called organ donors by their physicians and all hospital staff. Their loved ones should be called widows and widowers instead of husband or wife.  And donor programs renamed: Get That Organ! With the marketing slogan: Why wait for death to be a donor - do it today!  You know you need the money, and others are so much more DESERVING than you of your organs! An eye for another's sight!  It's the Christian, loving thing.  You have two.
 
No known connection, except that ABBA means father in most Semitic languages, name of God the Father in Mark's Gospel....but The ABBA Fund provides financial assistance in the form of interest-free loans for good Christian moms and dads to adopt.

The Abba Fund website states:

The greatest thing you can do to establish a culture of adoption/orphan care in your church is to be gripped by the reality that God has adopted us as His children. The church is God’s great trans-racial adoptive family. As the gospel takes root in our hearts and we recognize that adoption is central to the heart and mission of God it also becomes something we care about. We will naturally begin to reflect our vertical adoption in our horizontal efforts. This is the foundation for creating a culture that believes that every Christian is called to care for the fatherless in some way. Not everyone is called to adopt but everyone is called to do something. The question for each Christian and each church is not “Should I care for orphans?” The question is “How can I care for orphans?”