Abuse and Adoption

More single mothers, abused women place children for adoption in Fiji

I have blogged about the connection between adoption and violence and quoted Hubinette on the subject.  This article furthers the connection.   


SUVA, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- About 78 children are given up for adoption annually in Fiji from either abused women or single mothers. 

[NOTE: The entire population of Fiji is estimated to be between 838,724 and 944,720 - or about the population of the state of Delaware]


    This has concerned stakeholders dealing with children in the Pacific island nation as more violence against children and women have been recorded.
    Head of Fiji's Ministry of Social Welfare Jiko Luveni said on Monday there were several reasons why mothers opted to give up their children for adoption and that the increase was a concern.
    In cases of married women, it was the ones who faced financial problems or differences with their husbands that gave up their children.
    The National Adoption Board in the island nation said that many of the women have no other option because they have no means to support the children as poverty slowly grips the country with no job opportunities for the thousands that have left their rural villages in search of greener pastures in the urban towns. 
These people later join the squatter settlements that have grown significantly since the political upheavals. 


[NOTE: Baby brokers and easily misled "liberals" will be all over this!  A new location's whose problems we can exploit - hooray!  More babies that need "rescuing" - yipee!]


    This came at a time when the divorce rate in Fiji has also increased.
    Fiji Women's Crisis Center (FWCC) coordinator Shamima Ali said they deal with a large number of sexually abused women annually that come to their office or were referred through others for help.
    It was these women who sometimes opted to give their children for adoption simply because they could not afford to fund expenses for their new born.
    The Fiji Women's Crisis Center recorded 17 new cases of rape, 47 new cases of child abuse and six cases of sexual harassment, from the beginning of the year until October 2009.
    The Fijians Affairs Board also expressed concern on adoption and marriage breakups and emphasized the importance of family values.
    They said divorce was increasing because of the breakdown in the society and most Fijians in urban centers were caught in the wrong company resulting in extra-marital affairs because of cultural shock.

Adoption as Violence Against Women

November 25 is int'l day for elimination of violence against women

Making the world a safer place

Tacloban City (November 23) -- The United Nations Development Fund for Women enjoin people of the world to join the 16 Days of activism against gender violence, a campaign linking November 25th - the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against women with December 10th, the International Human Rights Day. Since 1991 over 2000 organizations in 156 countries have participated in this campaign.

This year, a new advocacy program called "Say NO – Unite to End Violence Against Women," campaign, serves to spotlight international efforts to garner attention and action on the issue of violence against women.

The goal of the campaign is to reach 10,000 "actions" by March 2010, and one million in one year. Actions vary from volunteering at abuse shelters to donating to programs that protect victims of violence or educate women and girls.

The project will be a continuation of the "Say NO" signature campaign launched by UNIFEM in 2008. In one year the petition received five million signatures, including the names of Heads of State and parliamentarians from 69 countries.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said, "I am painfully aware of the distance to go and gap between commitment and action. On this UN Day, let us resolve and redouble our efforts on behalf of the vulnerable, the powerless, the defenseless. Let us stand more united than ever – united in purpose and united in action to make the world a safer, better place."

Violence affects the lives of millions of women worldwide in all socio-economic and educational classes. It cuts across cultural and religious barriers impeding the right of women to participate fully in society. Violence against women takes a dismaying variety of forms from domestic abuse and rape, to child marriages, female circumcision, trafficking, dowry-related violence, and honor killings.

Today 1 out of 5 women has personally experienced some kind of abuse and almost every woman has been indirectly confronted with acts of violence and discrimination within her family or in her immediate neighborhood.

Changing people's attitude and mentality towards women will take a long time. Nevertheless, raising awareness of the issue of violence against women, and educating boys and men to view women as valuable partners in life, in the development of a society, and in the attainment of peace are just as important as taking legal steps to protect women's human rights. (PIA 8) 

------------------ 

Shawyer (1979) described adoption as "a violent act, a political act of aggression towards a woman who has supposedly offended the sexual mores by committing the unforgivable act of not suppressing her sexuality, and therefore not keeping it for trading purposes through traditional marriage. The crime is a grave one, for she threatens the very fabric of our society. The penalty is severe. She is stripped of her child by a variety of subtle and not so subtle manoeuvres and then brutally abandoned.” Some mothers who have been persuaded to surrender a child to adoption have described it as “aborting the mother”. 

Let's make our "action" to bring attention to adoption as a form of violence aginst women. 

Let's bring attention to unwarranted, corced and explopitive adoption seprations as a human rights violation.

Let's call for an end to the rdication of one's heredity, ethnicity or name by adoption practices and the lack of equal access to birth recors for all persons spearted by adoption.

Guatemala Journey: Part I

I have returned and am processing so very much.

It was a very intense and very unique opportunity and experience.

I begin at the beginning... The home we stayed in - our "home base" in Guatemala City -- like most homes and business in Guatemala, has steel entry doors to protect inhabitants from crime. No one opens their doors without knowing who is knocking.








Below is our room.



It can feel somewhat claustrophobic, or stifling at times living under such cautious scrutiny; so cloistered inside.

However, in the rear of the home is a patio which is just lovely and a way to enjoy the cool Guatemalan weather. We had several meetings on our patio.


A few of our meetings with survivors of violence against women were held here at home base, and also a meeting with women who organizing for work place rights - two of whom travelled 12 hours each way by bus! But the rest of our meetings got us out via van excursions.

Violence against women in Guatemala is so prevalent that the daily newspaper lists approximately two murders a day. While officials are still defining and redefining what exactly constitutes femicide...whether it must legally contain all five characteristics - it is clearly a result of cultural machismo , cultivated by years of war and training men in violence and killing, and often aggravated by alcohol consumption and rampant racism. All of these factors are then layered over by impunity and re-victimization of victims.

722 violent murders of women took place last year and already more than half that number so far this year. An AlJazeera video was produced on gang violence against Guatemalan women and released while we were there. This is a link to the VCU blog of our delegation.

A spokesperson from ASOCIACION NUEVOS HORIZONTES (New Horizons) an organization that provides help to victims of domestic and other types of violence said that 99.9% of Guatemalan women experience domestic violence, and many of the murders are the direct - or hired hit - result of such domestic disputes while much crime in general results from the narco trafficking. Most of the women killed are killed by their husbands, not gangs, as the government often portrays it. Many are found dead in the streets having been dragged there after the fact, and many of these crimes occur after women have filed complaints of abuse and/or have sought orders of protection.

Anna Glady's Ollas of the Human Rights Ombudsman's office told us that the police often pick up alleged perpetrators and drive them around the block so it appears if hey are veing apprehended, but in reality, just let them go.

What separates crimes against women specifically is the viciousness. Drug and gang killed are shooting. Women, however are raped, tortured, mutilated, dismembered, decapitated, wraped in barbed wire...body parts strewn in different locations as a message. These crimes are committed for one reason and one reason only: because they are women.

Impunity Reigns

The police are very corrupt and often do not know how to properly investigate a crime scene and protect evidence -- or simply do not care to. Ww were repeatedly told from all sources that any woman who wears nail polish, or has tattoo, or is wearing a short skits is labeled a prostitute or a "nobody' and o effort whatsoever is taken to find the perpetrator of her rape, kidnapping and/or murder.

The victims are re-victimized and their families given no justice.

An excellent source, is a 2007 BBC documentary entitled "Killer's Paradise" which is viewable in 15 parts on YouTube. It's a POWERFUL, MUST SEE!

The violence, victimization of the victim and lack of investigation, occurs regardless of the status of the women, as it has with Gladys Monterroso, attorney who was kidnapped, tortured, burned and raped and who came and spoke with us, as did Rosa Franco, a mother seeking justice for the murder of her 15-year old daughter Maria Isabel Franco.

Rosa was offered and refused reparations, including having a street named after her daughter as is done for other notable women who have been killed, such as Myrna Mack Chang.

Myrna was an anthropologist documenting the displacement of indigenous peoples. Her sister, Helen Mack, started the Myrna Mack Foundation, a major NGO fighting these crimes in her memory. They released a report entitled "Impunity, Stigma and Gender" and English summary of which is located at this link.

Hearing first hand victims reports was extremely triggering for me, being a survivor of acts of domestic and stranger violence myself. This visceral reaction was not expected.

Many of the delegates were social workers who had chosen that career path and chosen to come to Guatemala out of a great deal of human compassion. We all bring our life experiences and training with us to the table. And so, I sensed, at times, some were acting as observers there to analyze, theorize, and contextualize the stories we heard as source material, as studying and reporting on the social, political and economic struggles facing Guatemalan women will be of great value.

I, on the other hand, have been an advocate for the rights of marginalized, coerced, voiceless women - many suffering from PTSD - for more than 30 years. All of my activism has been in peer self-help support. I am thus unaccustomed to dealing with women's pain from the outside looking in or in a professional/client clinical or detached manner, but rather as an equal.

Perhaps the difference is best explained in this illustration:

Sympathy: I am sorry for your loss. What can I do to help you during this difficult time?

Empathy: I feel and understand your pain; my grandmother passed away last year as well.

Some delegates seemed to "admire the courage" of the women who had endured, and their "bravery" to share their testimony. And while I did as well, I also knew that they HAD to tell their stories and that they did not ask to be heroines. I knew of the importance of having their experiences validated; that these things did happen to them, or their daughters, though they were expected to remain silently in shame in fear.

I felt this subtle divide, and it was painful on many levels. It was at times for me a disturbing, albeit totally unintended, objectification of those being "interviewed" as "subjects" of a research project rather than sharing with them on a level as I was unable not to and which at the same time brought me great pain in reflecting on my very personal connecting experiences to their abuses, and re-victimization. I felt -- perhaps unwarranted -- the solicitousness of those who believe that we mothers who have lost our children to adoption are somehow noble or brave for "letting them go" while also expressing some sense of pity for our loss.

As I am trying to process all of these thoughts and feelings... I was also moderating comments that had been sent while I was away, when a comment dated July 15 on the post "Why I am Going to Guatemala" caught my eye in a way it had not previously. The anonymous poster suggested that some of the Guatemalan mothers whose children had been kidnapped are just making it up, having regret after voluntarily placing their children for adoption!

And so...I have a great deal to process as I share with my experiences...

A LOT more to come including a very special trip to a Mayan village and all that relates specifically to adoption and the kidnapping and trafficking of Guatemalan children. ...and how and why it is part and parcel of violence against women as reported to us by Norma Cruz' daughter, Caludia Maria Hernandez, on her behalf in the offices of her Fundación Sobrevivientes (Survivor's Foundation).

I had a productive additional day's stay which included a visit to the privately run children's home and a meeting with Anna Escobar who miraculously reclaimed her kidnapped daughter before she had been sent out of Guatemala for adoption...along with photos of her and her daughter!

Stay tuned...