Everything went silent, Judi told me, as if she'd been pulled underwater. She read the sentences over and over, trying to comprehend them.
The boy Sulaiman Suma had been looking for all these years was her 16-year-old son, Samuel.
Part 1.
Part 2.
Part 3.
[more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia
on Aug 10, 2011 -
12 comments
Interactive map of international adoptions, from the superlative Schuster Institute
for Investigative Journalism. The site contains an amazing amount of information about corruption in international adoption in countries like
Nepal and
Vietnam.
posted by the young rope-rider
on Apr 19, 2011 -
18 comments
International Adoption may not necessarily be helping the disadvantaged in Third World countries as advertised. In some countries, like
Guatemala and
India, children are simply stolen from their families. The
Hague Convention governs the rules for International Adoptions, but like all rules, they aren't always followed. Many adoptive parents believe that their children have been given up, but in some countries, "
orphanage" doesn't mean what you think it means.
[more inside]
posted by grapefruitmoon
on May 10, 2009 -
18 comments
Bulgaria's abandoned children. This heartrending BBC documentary visits a home for abandoned children in Bulgaria; they are left there by parents who can't - or won't - take care of "defective" children. But poor nutrition and uncaring workers have turned it into a hell on earth for the poor kids as they waste away; some are never taken off their toilets, some are left in bed until their limbs atrophy. Many cannot speak. Only one can write. Most just sit and rock for hours because of the lack of stimulus.
Very hard to watch.
posted by TochterAusElysium
on Mar 16, 2008 -
20 comments
Orphan Trains of Kansas. A collection of histories, personal stories, newspaper accounts, pictures and other references.
Beginning in 1854, charitable institutions in New York City began sending orphans on trains to the west to find new families, feeling that the children would fare better out west than on the streets of New York. Orphan trains arrived in Kansas between 1867 and 1930, and some 5000-6000 children were placed in Kansas homes.
posted by amyms
on Sep 22, 2007 -
30 comments
Orphan trains. From 1853 to 1929 an ambitious relocation adoption program run by the Children's Aid Society, founded by
Charles Loring Brace, sent kids from urban slums and orphanages out to live on Midwestern farms,
with mixed results. Some became state governors, others
suffered abuse or servitude.
Even though we use the name Orphan Train, few of these children were true orphans. Some were half-orphans, having lost one parent to disease or accident. Some had both parents but had run away do to abuse or neglect. By 1910, CAS had "placed out" over 106,000 children and the program ran for another 19 years. Also, similar programs were run by the New York Foundling Home (called Baby Trains), New York Juvenile Asylum, and the Boston Home for Little Wanderers. In all, at least, 200,000 children found themselves moved from the city to small towns and farms across the Nation.
posted by Brian B.
on Mar 16, 2007 -
9 comments
"Orphans and babies as young as three months old have been used as guinea pigs in potentially dangerous medical experiments sponsored by pharmaceutical companies, an Observer investigation has revealed.
"British drug giant GlaxoSmithKline is embroiled in the scandal. The firm sponsored experiments on the children from Incarnation Children's Centre, a New York care home that specialises in treating HIV sufferers and is run by Catholic charities." [
link]
posted by The God Complex
on Apr 3, 2004 -
13 comments
The Lost Boys of the Sudan are a group of nearly 17,000 orphans whose parents were murdered and whose homes were destroyed by a government miltary turned against them. They marched on foot, without food or water, under attack from hungry predators & occasional strafing miltary fire for several years until settling in a squalid refugee camp in Kenya; nearly a decade later, the U.S. began a humanitarian policy of importing them, a few at a time, and resettling the lucky few in cities such as Chicago, Atlanta, and even Fargo, N.D.
(NYTimes, reg req'd)
posted by jonson
on Jan 3, 2003 -
14 comments
What is best for AIDS orphans? For many children around the globe, not only do they face a life without one or more parents because of AIDS/HIV, they also face the stigma of carrying the virus themselves.....
posted by bunnyfire
on Dec 1, 2001 -
1 comment
