FacePalm Friday
Welcome to this week’s edition of FacePalm Friday.
This is where your hosts will list their top picks for this week’s FacePalm moment—something they learned or read about this week that caused the FacePalm to happen (you know, the expression of embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, shock, disgust or mixed humor as depicted in our Rally FacePalm smiley).
We invite you to add your FacePalm of the week to our comments. Go ahead and add a link, tell a personal story, or share something that triggered the FacePalm on the subject of child welfare or adoption.
Your Host’s Selections:
(1)Holt Truly Cares! Not!
http://holtinternational.org/blog/2014/01/transracial-adoption-and-growing-up-white/
I keep thinking about this , and this little tidbit,and this one this one which states “Holt Children’s Services Inc., a Seoul-based adoption agency, said the number of children available for adoption has halved since the law went into effect.
Adoption agencies argue they had no other way but to fabricate facts and circumstances about the children they sought to place in order to provide them with new homes, because in many cases the children were living in orphanages and the agencies could not meet the biological parents to obtain consent. 
Kang is far from the only victim of such child laundering. Jane Jeong Trenka, 40, was represented as an orphan by a local adoption agency although her mother and twin sister were alive. She was adopted by an American couple six months after her birth.
Personal records of almost all adoptees were fabricated in this way, Jeong said.”
So what has Holt done for this? Some heritage tours?
“Please join us for the 11th Annual Adoption Law and Policy Conference at New York Law School. This year’s conference,
DOMA, ICWA and CHIFF: What’s Changed in Adoption and Child Welfare Law and Policy?, will explore recent and future legal developments that impact adoption law, policy and practice. Specific topics will include adoption by same-sex couples following Windsor and other recent court decisions; the Indian Child Welfare Act after the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Baby Veronica case; and international adoption, refugee children policies, and the Children in Families First Act.
Panelists at this year’s event will include, among others: Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, Harvard University; Margaret Burt, Esq.; Professor Richard Chused, New York Law School; Professor Elizabeth Frankenberg, Duke University; Professor Joan Hollinger, University of California at Berkeley; Whitney Reitz, Senior Policy Advisor on International Child Welfare to Senator Mary Landrieu; Susan Sommer, Senior Counsel and Director of Constitutional Litigation, Lambda Legal; and Professor Marcia Zug, University of South Carolina.”
It should be a real
!
Say What?????
(4)Author of Come Rain or Come Shine: A White Parent’s Guide to Adopting and Parenting Black Children.
http://www.npr.org/2014/01/12/261835462/trans-racial-family-gets-double-takes-everywhere-we-go
“A retired African-American couple living nearby also has adopted children, and Garlinghouse sometimes turns to them for conversations about adoption and race.
They’ve also hired an African-American woman to mentor and serve as a role model for the children. “We wanted a successful black Christian female to have a close, tight-knit relationship with our girls,” Garlinghouse says. She says both she and her children have formed close bonds with the woman. “Now I feel like I don’t know what I would do without her.””
A white adoptive mom with only 4? years experience ? 
NPR should have given the conversation over to an adult transracial adoptee.
(5)Ukraine is new adoption mecca?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/01/ukraine-is-america-s-new-adoption-mecca.html
“A congressional staffer who met with Ukraine’s Ombudsman Yuriy Pavlenko last April said he has no reason to believe Ukraine has soured on inter-country adoptions but conceded that officials are concerned with the high level of non-compliance on post-adoption reports, which are required until the child turns 18.
“Forty-seven percent of families are either behind or have never filed post-placement reports,”
(6) Dr. Bartholet gives Russian interview
http://rt.com/shows/worlds-apart-oksana-boyko/children-adoption-abuse-cases-132/
“Deliberate political actions” of NGOs-Unicef, Save the Children.
(7) Soul Child
http://www.soulchild.in/ “All that is needed is a strong understanding, a firm decision, supportive family and friends, unwavering faith in the Almighty and of course, unconditional love.” That’s all!
http://www.soulchild.in/?page_id=9 “We sincerely appreciate the support we receive, especially from SOFOSH – the adoption agency who united us with our soul children and continues to support us in our attempt to raise awareness about adoption. “ Hmmmm…SOFOSH
Isn’t that Special?
“Adoption lawyers are warning prospective parents to be extra vigilant. [Give Us the money!
]That’s because the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office said a woman recently scammed a couple out of thousands of dollars.
Michelle Greenberg, 43, faces forgery and obstruction of justice charges.
According to the probable cause affidavit, Greenberg connected a couple with an expectant mother. But it turned out there wasn’t one.
24-Hour News 8 talked with a woman Wednesday who nearly became of a victim of a similar scam. A mother and daughters bond; it’s these moments with her little girl that Kate Miller won’t ever take for granted.
“Just knowing that she’s here and that she’s ours and knowing what we went through to bring her home,” she said.
Her daughter, Penelope joined family nearly two years ago.
It was an adoption success story, something one couple in Indiana unfortunately couldn’t share.
According to investigators, Greenberg is the reason why. The affidavit states she convinced a couple to pay $13,000 for an adoption, $5,000 of which went in her pocket.”
(9)Woody Allen
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/02/07/should-woody-allen-have-been-allowed-to-adopt.html
“Perhaps chief among them: Is it odd that someone accused of molesting one girl was able to adopt two others?” “Cofsky, who was unaware Allen had adopted two children with Soon-Yi, said questioning whether the agency got it right is like “second-guessing trials.””
““People assume that celebrities can adopt babies as easily as Angelina Jolie, but they don’t hear about the ones who aren’t successful.””
Oh please!!!! 
(10) Heartsent adoptions email
“URGENT – BOY AGING OUT
ZS is a boy that will be aging out on March 3rd. There is very little time before he will no longer be able to be adopted. He is healthy, loves basketball and is a good student. He finishes his homework and is helpful around the orphanage. He also likes dance and calligraphy.
He needs a family that is already approved to adopt from China or a family that is already adopting a child and will be in China before March 3rd. If you are interested in getting more information about him please clicking here to request his information and short video.”
Crabbina says,”Nothing like adopting a teenager with no English at the same time as your other kid. Whether you’re prepared for it or not.” 
Two perspectives on adoption ethics in DRC:
Holly adopted Congolese kid, saw the corruption and seems to be making a genuine effort to stop it (including contributing to a cool family reunification initiative called Reeds of Hope):
“Yet, in DRC I haven’t found a single case where adoptive parents are not required to do one or more of the following: sign a contract that says they must fund raise for their organization/agency and give a certain amount in donations (which usually ends up in the hands of those that are finding children for referrals) for every child they adopt, give a fee to an on-ground staff member that then finds a referral for the AP (child finder fees), give a donation to the orphanage that cares for the child to “compensate” for the cost that they incurred while caring for that child (usually this is required to take the child out of the orphanage), pay monthly foster care fees to the orphanage directly as soon as the referral is in place, give a one time humanitarian donation to the orphanage where their child came from, pay a “referral” fee or other unlabeled designated amount to social services when the referral is made available (some agencies and organizations work directly with social services for their referrals and not through orphanages).”
http://kitumaini.blogspot.com/2014/02/orphanage-donations-child-finder-fees.html?m=0
The Costains continue to beg for cash from strangers to complete their adoption for DRC, caring not one whit about the fact that FRAUD is the reason exit letters aren’t being issued:
“Adoption is SO expensive, especially when the country you are adopting from is literally holding these children hostage from the parents who are legally theirs. Jecoah is legally a Costain! The government just needs to sign his exit letter. So, that being said, I’m asking if you will pray about donating to this adoption”
http://costainpartyofsix.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/family-4
Holly also admitted to bribing the DGM – http://kitumaini.blogspot.com/2012/10/yes-i-bribed-dgm.html
It’s pretty amazing how “ethical” and self righcheouss APs get AFTER they’ve paid bribes, looked the other way and done all sorts of questionable things to get their kid home.
Hi, thought I would jump in here. My post about bribing DGM, which is the immigration of DRC, was one I posted before the embassy finally changed their own advice on their website. I’m not trying to justify our decision at the time, I think I owned up to it then. That was in 2010 and 2011, at the time in DRC the embassy said on their website that paying a “fee” to DGM should be accepted and was the norm. All agencies and organizations said the same. Because the Embassy said that paying this money was part of the process it was argued by everyone in the process that it was not a bribe at all. My post was very much going against this accepted norm. No one else was calling it a bribe or willing to acknowledge it was a bribe then. The reason I wrote the post was to argue that it was a bribe and everyone needs to be aware and advocate to the embassy and to their agencies. Now the embassy has clearly said that it is a bribe on their website, they have changed it. It is still something that I believe is paid to DGM on a routine basis, but now not so openly. It’s interesting to me. I actually struggle so much more from my role facilitating adoptions in DRC in 2010 than this issue. I have blogged publicly about this as well and I will always carry a lot more regret about what I didn’t do in those adoptions than I do about paying the $100 to DGM, which was what was suggested by the embassy at the time. If someone wants to attack me about an issue in IA, THAT is something that is so much more on target than the DGM bribing issue I was trying to bring to light. I feel much more culpable because my part of those adoptions. I have that post pinned on the right side of my blog. I will always and forever be my own worst critic. But in the end, I feel like remaining silent would make it even worse. Not only in blogging, but in physical concrete ways, do I try to makes amends.
So many Facepalms this week:
1) Colleen Novit continuing to beg for other people’s cash in order to simultaneously adopt 2 unrelated high needs, special needs kids from Bulgaria. The $4k she raised is nowhere near enough!
“All funds donated to us from the auction will be used specifically for trip one cost (travel and in country expenses) and with the generosity of the auction as it stands right now, we are just $750 from our Trip 1 being FULLY FUNDED!
Many have asked where that leaves us for the rest of our adoption, and that’s a great question and I can give a rough idea of where that leaves us but know that it is ever changing based on time of travel. We need our Adopt Together account to reach $6,000 by the end of February to pay our submission fees for Gage’s adoption. We will also need to raise $2,000 for Child #2’s submission fees, due at the same time. Beyond that though, Lord willing, all that is left to be fundraised is the best part, GOTCHA TRIP – SUMMER 2014 ”
2) Gee, maybe EARNING the $$ you need to adopt a second kid would be a good idea. This PAP’s presumably illegal lottery-style giveaway flopped:
http://yesthisisourplana.blogspot.com/2014/02/auction-over.html
3) The lovely Renee Tam (who kicked her autistic biological son to the curb 15+ yrs ago, doesn’t even list him as her child in the sidebar of her blog) just adopted her 2nd special needs child, a 14 yo Ukrainian girl to go along with little Russian Paisley.
What agency signed off on this? If Renee’s happy to rid herself of a biokid with SN, there’s an excellent chance both girls are on seriously borrowed time:
http://covenantbuilders.blogspot.com/2014/02/freed-not-freed.html
4) Julie Martindale kicked her adopted SN son Jordan out last year for his difficult behaviors, whole her almost same-age bio daughter with similarly difficult behaviors got to remain in the family home. Jordan ran away from whatever institution she placed him in (so loving! Not!!) but he was fortunately found safe a few days later.
http://wjon.com/st-cloud-police-searching-for-teenage-runaway/
Blessedby10.blogspot.com
Now that the rest of her adopted kids can see what happened to Jordan for misbehaving, maybe they’ll be inclined to behave better?
4) Anthony Salem, adoptive daddy to almost 16 year old Hasya decided it would be appropriate to post a video of him ticking the girl’s chest on the web!
http://www.nogreaterjoymom.com/2014/02/its-justredemption.html
5) Reece’s Rainbow’s Katrina Morriss went to Russia last month in hopes of finding a Russian family for the little Russian girl with DS whose adoption she was unable to finish before the ban was imposed – and was very frustrated that few US media outlets wanted to interview her since they were far from Moscow covering the Olympics.
Whodathunkit?!??
Setting aside the fact that Katrina has no legal claim to that girl and thus really shouldn’t be finding her a family (so weird, it’d be like me saying “you totally wanna adopt this random kid”… then again, that’s the raison d’être of RR:
There’s also the fact that Katrina’s upset Obama won’t talk to Putin about the adoption issue and really truly believes russia should lift the ban w/o changes on the part of the US as 20 dead adoptees isn’t so bad, Reuters Child Exchange was sensationalized, non-fact based reporting, etc:
http://www.operationorphannomore.blogspot.com/2014/02/day-3-sight-seeing.html?m=1
6) Facebook.com/secondchanceadoptions is re-advertising a little Russian girl called Janna as free to a good home — her APs don’t want her anymore and are cool with re-homing via shady website!
Name,
I placed the following comment on Adeye Salem’s website:
“Adeye,
I am what is called “painfully ticklish”. I laugh when I’m being tickled, because I can’t help it, but I HATE the sensation and always fought to get away whenever anyone tried to tickle me as a child. If I had to choose between having 5 shots in a row or be tickled for 1 minute– I’d chose the shots, and feel relieved to have the option. In fact, I can’t think offhand of any pain I WOULDN’T choose in those circumstances. Tickling is EXCRUCIATING.
Fortunately, I had the motor skills to escape AND the verbal ability to say that I hated being tickled– which is why I have grave reservations about tickling a child who has neither. You have no way to know if Hasya is enjoying herself or if she feels like she’s being tortured. Laughter is no sure cue, because it’s an involuntary response. Only if a child ASKS to be ticked can you be sure.”
It’s now awaiting moderation– we’ll see if they have the honesty to post it.
Reece’s Rainbow’s very own Katrina Morriss ( who met but was unable to complete the adoption of a little Russian girl with DS in 2012 before the ban kicked in) has penned yet another plea to Obama and Putin, demanding to be allowed to purchase this particular little girl:
http://babynumber10.blogspot.com/2014/02/broken-promises-post-that-needs-to-go.html
The fact that there are lots and lots of Russian-born kids who have been harmed, re-homed, disrupted and even murdered by US adoptive parents who passed a homestudy, multiple security checks and reference checks JUST LIKE HER doesn’t phase her in the least!
Katrina also seems not to care that she has no legal claim to this little blonde girl but merrily provides photos of her and interviews about her to any journalist willing to talk to her, so set is she on getting this kid. She isn’t aiming for adoption reform or anything… she just wants this kid, period. isn’t able to see how Russia kind of has point in no longer providing kids to the US only to have them harmed!!!
http://babynumber10.blogspot.com/2014/02/broken-promises-post-that-needs-to-go.html