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Introduction

This is an extremely long post, more for skimming than reading: it's a collection of links to, and summaries of, international adoption scandals 2010-17. Because Wikipedia has censored them out! The most likely reason for this apparent censorship is the sheer number of scandals - I found around 90, listed below. And there will be many more.....

90 international adoption scandals over such a short period is a lot: to see them all in Wikipedia might make people think very hard about the pros and cons of intercountry adoption......which is perhaps why they've been censored.

But there are thousands, if not millions of people who have been involved in these and other adoption scandals. And victims have experienced intense pain of some kind: the pain of being trafficked; of having had a wanted child stolen away; of being desperately poor; of seeing indigenous peoples wiped out; of having hopes for "the ideal" child, sibling or grandchild dashed to the ground; of finding out you were stolen at birth and more.

So much pain has been felt. By so many family members on both sides of the adoption(s).

This pain deserves to be remembered on the blockchain. In @familyprotection. In memory of all the victims and in hope that these practices soon come to an end.

Wikipedia itself admits its entries are not reliable references.

Its current (Feb 2018) version only gives a "partial list" of international adoption scandals, leaving out the years 2011-2016 inclusive:

Why has Wikipedia missed out six years?

What scandals were going on in those missing years?

Hundreds of thousands of parents adopt every year. Most research, reading up on adoption's pros and cons. Many would-be adoptive parents and children will be emotional - hopeful for a new future. Which makes them vulnerable. And it is this vulnerability that traffickers - including corrupt doctors and nurses, socials workers and officials - exploit.

So people need to hear both sides about adoption!

Another reason people need to hear both sides is that adoption, however well-intentioned or successful, is essentially child trafficking. A child has been ripped away from its mother! It is not natural for a mother to give up a child except under enforced conditions e.g. extreme poverty or illness. So yes, sometimes it is in the best interest of the child to be adopted but more often than not it's in the best interests of the traffickers.

When we research adoption scandals, it becomes increasingly obvious that the systems that control them are not that benign. Historically, Churches, charities, agencies and orphanages have cared more about money than children; governments don't care about families. Aaron Russo alleged that the family unit was being deliberately broken down to make us more manipulable - so we start seeing the State as our family:

Whatever your viewpoint, the sheer number of officials or government employees, doctors, judges and others who have trashed their oaths of service to slobber at the greasy trough of baby trafficking is staggering: heads should be rolling.

And the ideas that "we can't count all the adopted children - we have no statistics" and that "we need to process adoption cases quicker - let's build a database" dovetail all too nicely with DNA databases and identity cards:

PROBLEM - adoption involves baby and child trafficking
REACTION - we need to stop it - we need more data and control
SOLUTION - let's issue ID cards for people too poor to afford Smartphones

There's perhaps nothing really negligent or conspiratorial about Wikipedia missing six years from its list: someone may be researching these at this moment. And it's difficult for Wikipedia to define what exactly constitutes an "adoption scandal" - is an American parent putting her adopted son back on the plane to Moscow on his own the same as, say, the Canadian residential schools?

Whatever the reasons and definitions, we start filling in the gaps in 2010 because Wikipedia has only listed 3 scandals but we found 7 more. Please note as you scroll through this post the considerable increase in scandals 2011 - 2014. Please also note that many of these scandals, listed once, were in fact ongoing for years - in some cases decades. And there are so many more going on than we could find.

Source

Ireland and Indonesia

An Indonesian boy tells a reporter how much happier he is to be back with him mum in Indonesia after his Irish adoptive parents sent him back home unwanted - via an abusive orphanage.

Denmark - India

It was further found that corruption pulled threads to senior officials of the Indian adoption authorities. The very adoption authorities in whom the Danish minister had earlier expressed her full confidence.

Vietnam

CORRUPT adoption procedures in Vietnam....reduced children to a commodity worth “less than a pig”.....(documents) reveal a network of people, from adoption agency representatives, orphanage directors, hospital administrators right through to government officials and local police, were profiting by paying for children, as well as coercing and defrauding natural parents into giving up their children for adoption.

Britain

Until recently social workers were set "adoption targets" by the government, as part of a system where it seems they, the courts and the police are too often conspiring to abduct children from loving parents in the name of what amounts to heartless "social engineering".

India and Netherlands
An Indian mother travelled to Holland to fight for her adopted son - and lost.

Russia and the US

This shocking return of an unwanted child follows several appalling cases of Russian children being killed after being adopted to America. In one case, a two-year-old boy died after his American father left him alone in a car in 30C temperatures.

Australia
Australia's Mercy Nuns apologise for forced adoptions: many Australian mothers “had been drugged and shackled to their beds in a practice carried out by government officials, hospitals, churches and charities”.

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Ethopia

As with many cases of fraud or corruption in Ethiopia's adoption program, it seems that the story was changed at the local level, long before the adoption proceeded to the country's federal courts and oversight agencies.

Australia

The Catholic Church in Australia has issued a national apology over past adoption practices that have been described as a "national disgrace".

US

A delegation from the Adoption Authority have visited the US to examine “a number of concerns” about adoptions between Ireland and the US, in particular from Florida.... centred on the circumstances around the securing of consent from natural mothers to the adoption, and...where adoption is examined only after all other options for the care of the child within his or her country of origin have been explored.

Ireland

The revelations on the Prime Time programme on RTÉ last week concerning the testing of multiple vaccinations on babies in mother and child homes in the 50s and 60s were shocking to the core. Towards the end of the programme it was also revealed that over 400 babies who died were dissected in Irish universities without the consent of birth parents.

Bulgaria and Greece

The burgeoning black market sale of Bulgarian babies on the Greek Island of Crete was dealt another blow on Friday when six people were arrested for alleged involvement in the sale of a 25-day-old baby for 12,000 euros. The baby was Bulgarian: the illegal adoption had been arranged by Bulgarian intermediaries.

Spain

Spanish society has been shaken by allegations of the theft and trafficking of around 300 000 babies by nuns, priests and doctors, which started under Franco and continued up to the 1990s.

China

Chinese government orphanages may still be buying babies and offering them for foreign adoption: a Sky News investigation follows claims by several Chinese families that their children were seized by government officials against their will and later adopted by foreigners.

Nepal

Flaws have been exposed in Nepal's inter-country adoption system....Nepali officials mostly defend their new system, but admit that they have problems at the local level, which is where the documents originate. "We have to depend on the local government for the process -- police, municipality office and district magistrate officers," said Sher Jung Karki, under-secretary at the Ministry of Women, Children and Social Welfare.

Armenia

The Armenian government is considering changes in its rules and procedures for international adoptions in an effort to stamp out alleged corrupt practices....(proposals) aim to increase the transparency of the process and reduce the role of obscure local middlemen working for Western adoption agencies.

Argentina

Jorge Rafael Videla, who led the military during Argentina’s dictatorship, stands accused of leading the effort to take babies from mothers in clandestine detention centers and give them to military or security officials, or even to third parties, on the condition that the new parents hide the true identities. Mr. Videla is one of 11 officials on trial for 35 acts of illegal appropriation of minors.nThe trial is also revealing the complicity of civilians, including judges and officials of the Roman Catholic Church.

Guatemala
Loyda Rodriguez Morales’ 2-year-old daughter was kidnapped four years ago in Guatemala. The 26-year-old mother has been searching frantically for her daughter ever since. After years of posting missing-child flyers and even organizing a hunger strike to gain access to view the country’s adoption records, she found out her now 6-year-old daughter is living with a doctor and his wife in Liberty, Missouri.

Nigeria
Nigerian police have raided an alleged "baby farm" where teenage mothers were forced to give up their newborns for sale to human traffickers.

Thirty-two pregnant girls were rescued from a maternity home run by a trafficking ring in the southern city of Aba, police said.

The girls, mostly of school age, were allegedly locked up at the Cross Foundation clinic so they could produce babies to be sold for illegal adoption or for use in ritual witchcraft.

Cambodia and Vietnam

Children in Cambodian and Vietnamese orphanages are being abused and adopted illegally, says a UNICEF representative.

Romania and Italy

Romanian authorities have detained two Italians for child smuggling and using a false identity after they allegedly tried to illegally take a Romanian newborn to Italy, prosecutors said.

Egypt and Canada

Canadian officials are investigating leaked cables alleging baby trafficking from Egypt to Canada....A Coptic priest told American diplomats the practice has been going on since 1976.

"He stated that the majority of the priests involved in illegal adoptions are very charismatic, have numerous followers and are consumed with their position of power as leaders of the Coptic community," the priest said, according to a February, 2010 cable.

"According to this priest, the `big' personalities of these individuals have prompted them to engage in activities not condoned by many others in the Coptic Church. He mentioned that the Church is more than capable of raising and educating unwanted Coptic children. He added that in Alexandria, literally hundreds of babies are given to childless families and only a few have been taken out of Egypt."

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Canada
Ontario’s NDP urged the government to look at launching an inquiry into the province’s historic adoption practices in the wake of accusations from women who say they were coerced by social agencies, medical workers and churches into giving up their children.

Russia - US

The U.S. Embassy has moved to defuse the latest adoption scandal between the US and Russia after the death of a Russian orphan in Nebraska prompted a senior official to renew calls for fewer foreign adoptions.

Ireland and Mexico

Mexico adoption bust reveals vast child trafficking ring....investigator has publicly accused Mexican government officials of involvement in the illegal adoptions, posting links and commentary on the organization’s Facebook page...Aside from the nine individuals arrested, Mexican authorities have also stated that three civil organizations are implicated.

Ireland and US

Irish nuns who sent and essentially sold orphans to America during the fifties and sixties benefited by up to $50 million in today’s money...many of the parents chosen had been turned down by other adoption agents, and some children were sent directly to pedophiles.

Russia and Italy

An Italian citizen has been convicted of bribing officials and forging documents to smuggle hundreds of Russian orphans from the city of Volgograd into Italy during the 1990's. Her accomplices included a doctor and a director from a local baby care centre.

Australia and India

An Indian family is demanding the return of their daughter, who was kidnapped and then adopted out to an Australian family 15 years ago.

Cambodia and US

(Angelina Jolie's adoption consultant) has claimed all she wanted to do was give poor third world children a loving home. But, federal investigators say she preyed on poor Cambodian families to buy and sell their babies.

Guatemala

Guatemala's stalled adoption program leaves families in limbo.

Sierra Leone

For years, parents in the West African nation of Sierra Leone have claimed their children were adopted without their consent during the country's civil war in the 1990s. A police investigation was concluded recently regarding their claims. And staff from the agency that handled the adoptions have been charged with 32 counts, including human trafficking.

Tanzania

Tanzanian children are increasingly being spirited abroad in a manner likely to raise queries over the administration of the adoption system in the country. Investigations by The Citizen newspaper reveal that different arms of the government may be breaking the law on adoptions or unscrupulous officials are deliberately circumventing it to profiteer from the practice.

Source

Ireland
The Irish state played important role in denying the adopted a sense of their origin.

Australia
Australian prime minister Julia Gillard delivered a historic national apology in parliament on Thursday to the thousands of unwed mothers who were forced by government policies to give up their babies for adoption over several decades.

Press Conference Dutch-India Adoption scandal.

US

Americans use the Internet to abandon children adopted from overseas.

Colombia

In the last decade, Colombia became one of the five biggest sending countries for children in the world....the reason for this high number of international adoptions was the fact that foster institutions in Colombia get fees from the new parents for any adopted child. Therefore, they expedite international adoption proceedings, do not educate the biological parents about their rights, and even start an adoption process before the four months are over. Furthermore, lawyers, social workers, psychologists, etc., decide about the adoptability, even if they are either not qualified for adoption services in general, or have nor received training.

Spain

An elderly Spanish nun appeared in court on Thursday to face charges of stealing babies, after claims by hundreds of women that their infants were taken from them at birth and given away in illegal adoptions. Doctors, nurses and religious workers at several clinics and hospitals in Spain are alleged to have sold babies for adoption over decades, after telling new mothers that their infants had died.

UK
The forcible removal of children by social workers in Australia between the 1950s and the 1970s has parallels with what is happening in British courts today.

France and Chad

Four of the six charity members arrested in Chad went on trial in Paris in December, alongside a journalist and a doctor, accused of fraud, acting as unauthorized intermediaries in an adoption and aiding foreign minors to stay illegally in France.

Russia

Russia's decision to end adoptions to the US could affect some 1,000 Russian adoption cases in the pipeline — meaning that paperwork has been completed and, in most cases, prospective parents have met with their intended adoptees as many as three times.

Native Americans

Trafficking Native Children: The Seamy Underbelly of U.S. Adoption Industry...

India

Activists claim that India's traffickers sell children abroad by providing false information about them, falsifying documents, and making use of loopholes in the adoption guidelines.

"This entire process needs to be examined. This is trafficking and is happening under the garb of adoption," said the director of Haq Centre for Child Rights.

Ethiopia

An Ethiopian court has revoked the adoption of a girl by a family in the Netherlands. This is the first time a foreign adoption has been revoked in Ethiopia’s long history of overseas adoption.

Source

UK - Portugal

Portuguese immigrants were in Brussels this week fighting for children they claim were seized by UK authorities running a high-level adoption scandal.

And as the shocking news accelerated through international media, police were reported to have arrested the Portuguese parents of five children - accusing them of attempted kidnap.

The situation follows worrying reports of a scheme said to involve judges, lawyers and social workers effectively ‘kidnapping’ 4500 children every year to “feed the adoption industry”.

Ireland

Philomena author on scandal of Ireland's 60,000 babies 'sold' by nuns to rich American families.

Uganda
Uganda’s child adoption ‘market’ brings misery and confusion.

India

NGOs take on 'massive adoption racket': Foreigners are easily buying babies as Indian couples languish on the waiting list.

Bulgaria
A corruption scandal related to adoption in Bulgaria erupted. According to media reports, families would easily adopt a child for a bribe of 5 to 15 thousand euros. A private TV crew secretly filmed a lawyer revealing the corruption scheme to a journalist in the role of a prospective adoptive parent.

US
Six couples have sued a shuttered private adoption agency in The Woodlands and its operators, alleging that they bilked the couples out of thousands of dollars through misrepresentations and lies, including promising an exclusive match with an infant who had already been promised to others.

Switzerland
Thousands of people in Switzerland who were forced into child labour are demanding compensation for their stolen childhoods. Since the 1850s hundreds of thousands of Swiss children were taken from their parents and sent to farms to work - a practice that continued well into the 20th Century.

Chile
The stolen children: Abuse scandals, thefts of newborns contribute to increased distrust in Chilean church.

Congo
At least one U.S. citizen —and possibly more—has been implicated in a child-trafficking scandal in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) while allegedly trying to smuggle kids out of the African country for the purpose of adoption, according to local press reports.

Jamaica
Jamaica's Child Adoption Board has expressed fear that "current inefficiencies in the system may be promoting the persistence of private arrangements" where parents illegally "give away" their children for the prospect of a better life.

Nepal
Five or ten years ago, scores of orphanages in Kathmandu were procuring children from vulnerable families. The kids often come from remote areas, from villages without health care, where the school hardly exists, where food and clothing is scarce. Parents were readily convinced by promises that their child would receive an education and the care it needed.

China - US
An 8-year-old girl who was one of 11 children "adopted" by an American man accused of abusing them has died in a Beijing hospital.

France and Reunion

Members of France's National Assembly finally recognized the country's "moral responsibility" in the “stolen children” scandal when over 1,600 kids from Reunion Island were shipped to France, many to be adopted, over a period of 20 years.

Ethiopia
A documentary breaking the silence over the plight of adopted Ethiopian children.

Hong Kong
Hong Kong's Chinese community must overcome a taboo surrounding adoption and be more open in discussing unplanned pregnancies.

South Korea

In Korea, Adoptees Fight To Change Culture That Sent Them Overseas.

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Brazil
Illegally adopted Brazilians search for their roots.

Lebanon
Illegal adoption agency charged with child trafficking.

Greece
A lot of unconscionable things happened in Greek orphanages and adoption cases following World War II. Fraud was rampant as countless children were placed for adoption under misleading and illegal circumstances, often for substantial sums of money.

Belgium

Between the 50s and 80s, thousands of young Belgian women were forced into giving up children from unwanted pregnancies by Catholic institutions. The final testimonies were heard in the Flemish parliament in 2015.

UK Ireland

The UK and Irish adoption scandals continue through 2015.

Kenya
It’s well known that once intercountry adoption really gets going, children need to be found. Need to be harvested. And things get murky.
These mothers were lucky. Their children had not yet left Kenya on a one way ticket to Denmark, or Sweden.

Chile

“Chilean authorities said Joannon is only one of many priests, nuns, doctors, nurses and others who conspired to carry out illegal adoptions” as recently as 1990.

South Africa
In 2008, when she was barely a year old, Samantha Ntombi-futhi was taken by Hollywood actor Chris Rock and his wife, Malaak Compton-Rock, to the United States of America on a tourist visa and the couple began raising her as their own daughter. A divorce and seven years later, South Africa filed a lawsuit against the celebrity asking why no legal adoptive process was instituted to make Samantha a member of the Rock family, formally.

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Norway

Protests raged in Oslo in defense of a Norwegian family targetted for forced adoption by Social Services Barnevernet.

US

We need to advocate a halt to newborn adoption trafficking. 97.7% of mothers are coerced/bullied into “adoption” due to lack of financial security and/or single status. Yes, this is still happening in the 21st century. Private attorneys and companies, along with religious charities, comprise a multi-billion dollar adoption trafficking industry in the US alone.

England and Wales

The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales apologises in documentary about women who were pressured into handing over their babies in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

Israel
Last weekend, Tzachi Hanegbi, a government minister tasked with studying the disappearances, conceded that at least "hundreds" of children had been taken without their parents' consent. It is the first time a government official has ever made such a public admission.

Canada
An estimated 1,000 babies were sold to adoptive parents in Canada and abroad through a black market ring that operated in Quebec during the 1940s and 50s. Most of those infants ended up in Jewish families who were ready to pay for a chance to raise their adopted children in Judaism.

India
Police in eastern India have shut down an orphanage and arrested its owner for illegally selling babies to childless couples, and were investigating whether the adoption racket was part of a wider human trafficking operation.

Canada

The Ontario government has ordered hundreds of adoption cases to stop moving forward while a judge reviews whether the children should have been put up for adoption in the first place.

Russia - US
Russian senator warns of dangers of international adoption after fresh US scandal.

India
“We have examples of newborns being fraudulently declared dead and later sold for adoption. These are well-oiled networks spread across the country,” said Anjali Pawar, who works for an international non-profit, Against Child Trafficking.

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Denmark - Sri Lanka
Following revelations by a Dutch documentary that upwards of 11,000 Sri Lankan children were in the 1980s illegally sold into adoption to a number of countries in Europe – including possibly Denmark – the Danish adoption authorities have decided to look into the case.

Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka's baby farms - intercountry adoption racket exposed!

Uganda

Facilitators on the ground prey on vulnerable moms, often widows, promising educational opportunities for their children. The traffickers, she says, can include police and lawyers, teachers and local leaders. Complicating matters, there is no word for "adoption" in the language many Ugandan villagers speak, so mothers are easily deceived.

India

Indian police say they have arrested the heads of an adoption centre suspected of selling at least 17 children to foreign couples, the latest trafficking scandal to hit the country.

Investigators said children aged between six months and 14 years old were sold to couples from Europe, the United States and Asia for between $12,000 and $23,000 and taken out of the country.

Malawi
Malawi: How Madonna Managed to Beat the Law of Adoption.

Brazil - Portugal
Brazilian media billionaire Edir Macedo is being accused of involvement in an alleged illegal adoption network that stole dozens of Portuguese children during the 90s.

Samoa

Questions have arisen about MLJ Adoptions, an American non-profit agency that is placing Samoan children with families in the USA and Canada. Since 2013, at least 28 children from Samoa have been internationally adopted through MLJ.

New Zealand
New Zealand women who had their newborns taken from them and adopted out to married couples from the late 1950s to 1980s are calling for an inquiry into forced adoption.

Scotland
A MOTHER forced to give up her baby in the 1960s because she was an unmarried teenager is hoping to use human rights laws to win an inquiry into why 60,000 women in Scotland suffered the same fate.

Quebec
Montrealer blames Quebec government for botching international adoption.

Turkey
Prosecutors in Turkey’s south-eastern Adana province has launched an inquiry after Turkish local media alleged U.S. soldiers at the nearby Incirlik air base illegally adopted Turkish children in the 80s and 90s.

Sweden and Chile
Sweden at epicenter of illegal adoptions scandal with Chilean children.

Ethiopia
Adoptive parent support groups have sprung up on the internet sharing horror stories of their experiences with a few disreputable agencies and orphanages in Ethiopia. Parents report being lied to at many stages of the process, including about the condition or age of their child, about hidden fees, or even whether the child is a true orphan.

So that's the updated Wikipedia list of international adoption scandals 2010 - 2017. Might it be that Wikipedia did not list them because there are so many?!