A few weeks back I corresponded with a reporter in Ukraine about the corruption happening with adoptions and how good American families are being destroyed. This morning he sent me the link to the first segment of his series of articles that he is writing. The link that I will share will take you to a Ukrainian news site where the article is written in Russian. Here I have translated it best I could through the Google translate app. It is not a perfect translation, but you will understand the heart of his story.
How much are your children worth, Ukraine? By Victor Vasilyevich Kotenko
In 2017, the US State Department on Trafficking in Human Beings published an official report, from which it follows that “… About 82,000 – 200,000 children residing in state children’s homes in Ukraine are particularly vulnerable to trafficking. Officials of several state institutions and children’s homes were allegedly involved or intentionally negligent about sex and trafficking in children, girls and boys under their care.
The Government of Ukraine has not conducted a thorough investigation and prosecution of traffickers, it has gradually reduced the number of investigations and prosecutions over the past six years. International organizations continued to identify a much larger number of victims than the government.
Experts noted that law enforcement agencies, prosecutors and judges showed limited understanding and the ability to identify and prosecute cases of human trafficking.
Official complicity and willful negligence led to abuse of children in state institutions and children’s homes, which are especially vulnerable to trafficking in persons ”
Let’s return to the figures: 82 000 – 200 000 children in orphanages. What is behind the difference of 118,000? Where did they go, these one hundred and eighteen thousand children? Why do the Ukrainian authorities call vague and contradictory figures? After all, can we not seriously believe that official Kiev and the US State Department do not know how to count?
Here is another example: “Today, Ukraine has 1824 candidates in the waiting list for adoption. Of them, according to Kuleba, 212 people want children under 1 year old, 633 to 3 years, 588 to 5 years, 347 to 10 years and only 59 candidates from 10 to 18 years old. At the same time, out of the 18,000 children who got the right to find a new family, the age pyramid looks exactly the opposite: a large half are children from 10 to 18 years old. And all babies under three years old – only 450. Many of them have a disability.
But Ukrainian couples do not want to become parents of sick children. For example, last year only 131 children with disabilities were adopted. And then, 103 of them were taken by foreigners. In children’s institutions in Ukraine, called “places of lack of freedom,” that is, orphanages, children’s homes and boarding schools, 104,000 children are held. Of these, according to the Commissioner for Children’s Rights of Ukraine, Nikolai Kuleba, 18,000 children are to be adopted.
These are orphans and children are deprived of parental care. Most of them, 11,000, are attached to alternative forms: foster families, family-type children’s homes (DDST) or are under guardianship. They do not lose the right to be adopted (with the exception of children whose parents are serving their sentences in places of deprivation of liberty (jails) or are unable to perform their duties due to a serious illness). In boarding schools, according to statistics, there are only about 7,000 children who have the right to find a new family “(see “15,000 dollars for a baby.” As in Ukraine they earn on adoption)
What happens? On the one hand, 118,000 of the inhabitants of orphanages who died from statistics, on the other hand – 18,000 are subject to adoption “?! What do Ukrainian officials try to hide from us, deliberately distorting the statistical data behind which there are thousands of broken children’s destinies? It can be concluded that the Representative of the President of Ukraine for Children, Mr. Nikolay Kuleba and the heads of the Department for Adoption of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine are leading their own, “The black bookkeeping”, the data of which are strikingly different from the official ones and do not take into account another carefully concealed aspect, namely the huge shadow flow of bribes to officials for their share in the adoption process and, in some cases, in the subsequent exploitation of the “commodity” of children.
The point is that Ukraine has not yet ratified the “Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Children and Cooperation in Respect of Foreign Adoption”, which came into force on 01.05.1995, which is equivalent to the refusal of further participation in the fate of orphans adopted by foreigners. Only a few resonant cases of violence, murders, sexual exploitation and other abuses against adopted young Ukrainians become public.
But in this article, I will not dwell on the episodes of the activity of criminal groups engaged in the supply of Ukrainian orphans abroad for the purpose of their sexual exploitation or “disassembly” of organs, as a result of which information about adopted Ukrainians disappears forever, like the children themselves.
The lack of effective control by the Ukrainian authorities leads to the fact that over time, information about children often disappears forever from archival and statistical data (see “Children – running goods”, “Evidence of the ex-attaché of the Consulate General of Ukraine in New York”). This is the source of the manipulation of figures on the number of pupils in orphanages in Ukraine and adopted abroad, because if data about children are lost after adoption, why not get lost now, in advance, so to speak? The destinies of children are erased from life, like blots from a school notebook, leaving behind only a lot of money in the pockets of Ukrainian officials – werewolves …
Abroad, hundreds of legitimate private agencies deal with issues of interstate adoptions, for which this is a profitable business. In the price list, potential adopters are immediately offered to pay for the services of Ukrainian intermediaries and this is quite a decent amount. At one time, the activity of one of the branches of the European Adoption Agency, based in Strongville, USA, was widely publicized (see FBI, Strongville). In addition, children often found themselves in the hands of adoptive parents – among the working documents confiscated by FBI agents, price lists were found, in which $15,000 was pledged for intermediary services. But this is far from all costs: after coming to the territory of Ukraine, the adoptive parents get into the real “corruption hell” and are forced to give bribes at every step: for information, for “speeding up”, for translation, for meeting with the child, for processing documents etc. etc. Total runs from 10,000 to 50,000 dollars!
In Ukraine there are no adoption agencies, which gives the possibility of illegal earnings to state officials. The turnover of funds in the adoption process is, according to the most conservative estimates, hundreds of millions of dollars a year, a large part of which settles in the pockets of Ukrainian corrupt officials. As foreign adoptive parents testify, the employees of the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine, as well as the officials of the services for children, guardianship and trusteeship, heads of orphanages, judges, and until recently prosecutors (on adoption in Ukraine are made by court decision, as of today without the participation of prosecutors). As you know, demand creates supply. Greed and the desire of Ukrainian officials to “sell” more expensive and as much as possible “goods” lead to the fact that documents for children are falsified: data on relatives in Ukraine disappear, counterfeits, birth certificates, medical stories are forged. It happens that children intimidated, deceived, adopted against their will. Particularly indicative is the recent case that occurred in Zhytomyr region with 4 – year – old Dariya Makarchuk, whom officials intended to sell to potential adoptive parents in the guise of an orphan with live parents. In addition, the child, temporarily staying in a family-type children’s home, was subjected to sexual violence and pumping with psychotropic substances. It is established that the accomplices of these and other crimes against children are the heads of the authorities, including the prosecutor’s office and the police. Even after the child was returned to the parents by a court decision, the mafia, who lost the jackpot and pedophiles, who lost their sexual toys, did not calm down and continue to pursue the girl’s family. These and other abuses lead to real tragedies: overseas adoptive parents who have spent huge amounts of money, energy and health are horrified to learn that the child in Ukraine has a mother, father, brothers or sisters who miss him and that he was literally forced to agree to adopt or persuaded by fraud. As a result, adoption is recognized as invalid, which entails terrible consequences. It happens many times that the child is seriously ill and that was hidden, or vice versa, the child was attributed illnesses that he does not have. Other facts about the life of children in Ukraine also pop up, for example, one girl told foster parents about how she was raped at the orphanage regularly and impunity with impunity, and rehabilitation therapy for psychiatrists and psychologists costs a lot of money abroad and cost to the adoptive parents is tens of thousands of dollars.
In Ukraine, the facts about the difficult fate of orphans and problems related to intercountry adoption are hushed up, so I start publishing evidence of foreigners who gave Ukrainian orphans a chance to find a new family. Some of the witnesses, for obvious reasons, asked not to disclose their personal data.
1.In March 2014, we adopted a child from an orphanage in the city of Kotovskaya, Odessa region (Kotovsk Boarding School for orphans and children deprived of parental care). We had to pay a mediator $ 9,000 to assist with adoption in Ukraine. After that we learned that Ukrainian family law prohibits paying for adoption. During our stay in Ukraine, we had to pay the intermediary all the expenses for his meals and transportation. To get the permission of the director of the dwelling house, we had to pay him a bribe of $1,000.
About the court we were informed that the prosecutor had to pay $ 1,000 to obtain a favorable decision on adoption. When the trial was held, another prosecutor replaced the public prosecutor, and since he was a friend of our intermediary, we did not have to pay him $ 1,000. After the trial, we had to bring a bottle of whiskey to the director of the boarding school as a “gift”.
Also, when we applied for a birth certificate, we had to pay a bribe to the clerk, because we were told that they would have to “correct the mistake of his birth year”, since the birth year of the child was different from what we were told earlier. We also had to bribe a clerk who was processing the documents for the departure of the child, so that she signed our documents. Bribery and corruption have been widespread throughout the process of adoption, as well as in most Ukrainian state institutions related to adoption.
After a year in the United States, the behavior of our adopted child has changed (theft, lies, arrest, problems at school) and he said he wants to return to Ukraine. During this time, we learned that he had lied to us before, and that he had never wanted to be adopted. We also learned that he had a permanent connection with his mother when he was at an orphanage, although we were all assured that there was no relationship with her. We applied for the abolition of adoption in Ukraine through all this lie, which he told us about. In the end, in May 2016, adoption in Ukraine was canceled.
After that, the child told her lawyer in the United States that he did not want to return to Ukraine. The authorities of Ukraine refused to file a petition to the US court to bring the child back to Ukraine, noting that this is too expensive. Despite the fact that the Ukrainian authorities portray themselves as protecting their citizens, in fact they do not care about what happens to their citizens after the official adoption.
After it happened with us, we communicated with hundreds of other families who adopted in Ukraine and passed through the same. They were forced to give bribes and they also lied to the wishes of children to be adopted. Several children were removed from Ukrainian parents only for the purpose of transferring to an adopter, and they were never orphans.
Corruption needs to be stopped. It is a hard fact that American families and their adopted children are victims. Our goal is to identify all this corruption and deception in the process of adoption in Ukraine. We also want to draw attention to the unethical behavior of American agencies for organizing children’s recreation programs that provide inaccurate information about Ukrainian orphans, hide medical and other problems in childhood history, as well as child behavior problems.
It is impossible to prevent other families from suffering such pain and suffering, which was why we had to go through.
2. In 2014, we adopted two adolescents from the city of Ananiev, Odessa region. We were faced with corruption, for example, we guess that our daughter, under all legal regulations, was a victim of trafficking in human beings. Both children were hard to adapt to, to a certain extent, understandable, but our daughter was to receive psychiatric care in a hospital. During the therapy, she said that she was “forced” to adoption. She planned to say no to the court, but the court was transferred from Ananev to Odessa, and she was released from attending the court session. As she explained, she informed the director of the children’s home and our lawyer that she did not want to give her consent to adoption. We did not know about this situation and did not understand why the court was moved to another place.
We also had to pay the director of the orphanage $ ,500 behind a locked door as a “gift” to adopt our children.
This is she: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100011434114344.
We do not know what money was spent on our lawyer and mediator.
We were also forced to pay an extra $100 for “accelerating” the officials in each of the government agencies we encountered (passport department, civil registry office in Ananiev, an educational institution that visited our son).
We are experienced parents and successfully raised five more children. As a result of this deception, we have experienced a terrible trauma in our family. So much needs to be changed in the process of international adoption! I spoke openly about this and received numerous messages from families that were completely destroyed by these adoptions !! It seems that all those involved, especially social workers, intermediaries and children’s recreational programs, do not qualify for the placement of these children in their families.
Please do not mention our names because we want to protect our children.
3. Hi. I decided not to reveal my name because I never want to risk the safety of my daughter or the validity of our adoption, but I adopted my daughter from Nikolaev in December 2006. Our judge demanded to pay him $ 1,000 in cash in an undeclared envelope before he approves our adoption. After weighing our options and understanding how much we will have to spend in the country to fight it, having a chance to lose our daughter, we decided that it was not worth it and paid. It was very unpleasant to get into this situation, as we were one of the first families to adopt in November 2006, shortly after the opening of the State Adoption Department, which was founded through known corruption issues.
At the same time, two other families were adopted with us. They also paid bribes in court. One family paid $1,000, another $2000
4. My name is Kathe Ray. I just wrote and published the book Adoption Combat Zone: Deceptions and Collateral Damage: Our True Story of International Adoption, which is now available on Amazon https: //www.amazon.com/Adoption-Combat-Zone-Deceptions-International / dp / 1732042608. In the book are more than 350 stories of adoptions from families who are living in tragedy because of adoption. We paid many, many bribes while in Ukraine. We were constantly lied to in the process of adoption. All four of our adopted children had family and we were told they had none.
5. The greatest corruption is Oksana from the State Department for Adoption. It hides information about children in the registry for their two intermediaries. If you find a child who is registered and is on its list, you will not have any chance through Oksana. I am still wondering why all the beautiful, healthy girls are still in orphanages, and the Adoption Department offers you only boys or very sick children. I will say that our Dnipro judge fought for us and even threatened Oksana with a criminal prosecution if he did not provide the relevant documentation to the judge. So, good people are also …. Therefore, I see a problem in this Oaksana and the department.
6. Celeste Martowski had to pay an additional $ 2000.00 when it was necessary for the court to “speed up” the meeting with the judge. we were forced to pay, and we were told that it would take at least 6 weeks to get our court 😡😡😡
To Be Continued…
Here is the link to the original article. http://sbu.in.ua/zhur_ras/po-chyom-tvoi-deti-ukraina.html
All I can say to this is it is about time the truth starts coming out on the corruption in adoption. And lest anyone think these are isolated cases or even that Ukraine is an isolated country in these atrocities, know that in my book, Adoption Combat Zone, there are cases from every country the U.S. is able to adopt from and even many cases within the U.S. foster care system. Corruption is rampant and billions of dollars are exchanging hands for children and teens, many of whom should never even be considered adoptable. Whether that be because they have living family or because of hidden medical and psychological problems.
The truth is coming out!
Kathe
www.adoptioncombatzone.com
www.katheray.arbonne.com
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