Connecting Cambodian birth parents with their children - donations for DNA kits
2The back story:
In the 1990’s through early 2000 there were a number of adoptions from Cambodia to adoptive parents all over the world.
Unfortunately the biggest facilitator and her sister, who ran a Seattle adoption agency, were corrupt. The facilitator spent time in federal prison for visa fraud, money laundering, paper falsification, and her sister had house arrest. They bought children under the guise of helping the birth family, underaged children, lied to birth families that their children would be educated and then could go home once they were done with school, instead they were adopted out, created fake birth certificates and other paperwork, bribed ministry officials and kept all but $400 of the orphanage donation fees, of which some of that money was used to pay birth families and the children finders who were paid a bounty for each child they brought back. Around 2001 it all blew up.
At the time Cambodia was a least developed nation, the third poorest in the world; the refugee camps had been closed by the UN at the end of 1993, the country was in a shambles, landmines were everywhere and Pol Pot (and the remains of the Khmer Rouge) was still controlling rural Cambodia, especially in the NW) and children and adults were dying of starvation, simple illnesses, etc. everywhere. During the war about 1/4 of the entire population died or was murdered and after the Khmer Rouge was no longer in power, significantly more died after the war due to conditions in Cambodia.
Eventually many governments of the world shut down Cambodian adoptions. What went on in Cambodian adoptions was a major impetus behind the international Hague convention in international adoption.
What is happening to allow Cambodian birth families to know what happened to their children and for adopted children to reconnect with their birth families:
As many birth families had no idea their children were adopted to other countries, they were heart broken when they went back to the orphanage to get them. A registry in Cambodia has been set up to try to re-connect birth families and adopted children. Because this happened years ago, because children were bought from the same villages over and over, it is hard to know for sure if there is really a match between parent and child. This is where the DNA tests come in. The families in other countries who are registering their children pay for their children’s DNA tests. This fund raiser is paying for the DNA tests of the birth parents. There have been, so far, I believe 3 or 4 matches with a number of birth families in the registry waiting for DNA tests and some where there was hope there was a match but there didn’t turn out to be a match (which is why tests are needed, not just taking people’s word for it and old memories).
Where to donate to help connect children and birth parents:
I know the person running this (she is not an American and adoptive families from many countries are registered with her program). She has been running this on a shoe string for years and there is desperate need for DNA tests for the families in Cambodia who have registered but can’t afford to pay for a test (rural Cambodians still only make $300-400 A YEAR). The money is going to the DNA tests and someone (a partner in Cambodia) to collect the DNA and then send it off to the lab. I know for sure that is what the money is being used for.
===================
My story with this - and this was not an uncommon story except I got lucky and found her birth family on my own.
I have a child from Cambodia adopted at allegedly just 7, was actually just 10 although I didn’t know that until well after the fact They tried to initially age her as 5 due to her size except I questioned that due to a photo another family sent me showing a ton of permanent teeth. She was 42 inches tall and 32 pounds at 9 years and 11 months old, a 4T fit (except for height) and a toddler bike helmet was too big (and she has significant brain damage from the long term serious malnutrition that resulted in a nearly 10 year old being this small). They gave her a fake name, fake birth place, fake age, fake family history. They told me her family was dead (nope just her dad) and she was from southern Cambodia (nope was born in a refugee camp in Thailand). I was lucky I found her birth family on my own and that she was old enough that she knew what her mom and siblings looked like so no question this was a correct match. It was due to her memories that we found them and through a translator (in the USA when I took her to eat at a Cambodian restaurant) I realized that everything I had been told about her was fake.
In reality she was bought to be a servant in a household that fostered infants and toddlers for the orphanage the aforementioned facilitator used (selling a child to be a servant is common in Cambodia when a family can’t afford to feed all their kids - the money is then used to feed the rest of the family and the “buying” family rebuys the child each year, her older sister, at 13, ended up in a garment industry factory which I paid to get her out of twice - think coal mining style company store owns you; you can’t leave until you catch up on your debt).
Due to her behavioral issues the facilitator wanted her out of the house and so she had her paperwork falsified and was offered for adoption without her mother’s permission or knowledge and without disclosing her real history or issues. She had been in a Thai refugee camp that the UN closed and then walked over 100 miles, with her family, to an aid station area in NW Cambodia; her family was homeless there, her father stepped on a landmine, lost his leg, lived through that, died of tetanus 3 mo later which is when her family fell apart. She had (and still has) serious behavioral issues and brain damage (although the later they may not have realized in Cambodia).
I adopted her not knowing about any of this about Cambodian adoptions (there was not all the information on the internet then that there is there now). Seven months into the adoption her birth family was located. Her second youngest brother had died “got a fever and died the same day” (likely malnutrition and dehydration complicated this) three months before we located her family. Her older sister had been put to work in the garment industry at 13, her youngest brother, who had been 4.5 pounds at 5 months old had been bought earlier for adoption, had been rejected by the facilitator because he was so sick and the family she was living with as a servant had kept him - he had been there 18 months before she landed in that household.
When we found her mother, her mom did not know she had been adopted to the USA. When I found that out (this was 3 years before everything there regarding adoption “blew up”) I offered her back with money so that her family could afford to keep her (at the time the average rural family was living on $200/mo - it isn’t all that better now which is why money is needed to pay for the DNA kits). Her mom, thinking her child had won the immigration lottery, wanted her to stay here. That broke our (Cambodian mom’s and my) child’s heart.
I bought the mom a rice field, and later her older sister (who had gotten married) a horse and buggy (in both cases things they said would help them earn a living), her youngest brother I tried to adopt but ended up caught in the shut down. While many children did make it through the process with the humanitarian initiative, her brother, who was on the list to be allowed through the process, did not due to the USA not sending his approval letter to the USA embassy in Cambodia despite a ton of people, including a senator, trying to help me get that done. In retrospect I was lucky as he is behaving just like my daughter and I am not sure I could have survived raising two kids like that. My daughter, though, would have been happier had we been successful.
Unfortunately this story does not end well. Her mother was murdered (axe in the back) by her new husband, her youngest brother is mentally ill (as is my daughter) and also has brain damage due to malnutrition, the family who has raised my daughter’s youngest brother now has her 3 younger half siblings she has never met, of which two of them are also very troubled. I haven’t been able to send the level of donations I used to send to help keep things afloat due to my 3 cancers and subsequent financial issues. I have not been able to afford to bring my now young adult child back to Cambodia to see her family (she also has two 2 aunts, cousins on her mother’s side - the other aunts and uncles died in the war, all of her father’s side of the family died in the war). And unfortunately she is not the only adopted child with a similar family history.
I/we got lucky. At least we know what is happening with her family and get news and photos (sending back an edited for only positive things of the same) and her mother knew, before she died, what had happened to her daughter. I was able to keep her mother updated on her/our daughter, send photos and get photos back. For that I am grateful. Her mother was at peace over what had happened and was able to stop worrying and grieving.
There are plenty of adopted kids who want to know about their Cambodian families, especially as they get older and google Cambodian adoptions. There are plenty of birth families who want to know what happened to their children and for them the grief continues, there is no way out of their pain if they have no news. This is what the DNA tests are meant to help - the Cambodian families still desperate for information about, and grieving for, their children and the adoptive children who are searching for, some of whom were adopted at an old enough age to remember, their birth family.