A Dutch diplomat and his wife dumped their eight year old Korean adopted daughter on Hong Kong officials claiming that she was unable to “fit in” with the family. Not surpringly, the couple’s horrific act has made headline news around the world and ignited a wave of international anger.
Raymond Poeteray, currently the vice consul at the Dutch Consulate General in Hong Kong, and his wife adopted baby Jade from South Korea in 2000 at the age of four months. The couple believed themselves to be infertile at the time. Since then, the couple was able to conceive two biological children. The couple claims that Jade was never able to intergrate into their culture or family and that doctors had diagnosed her with a “severe fear of bonding”. A nanny who claims to have worked for the couple tells a very different story. She said the couple treated Jade very differently than their two biological children and that the diplomats wife rarely hugged the little girl.
This story is horrific and outrageous! What kind of monsters must these people be to mindlessly give away the child they had been raising for nearly eight years with no regard to her future well being. This couple had the girl from the time she was four months old. It’s not like she was a fully formed child with possible abandonment issues. Any issues the girl had with bonding and building relationships is a direct result of the care, or lack there of, given to her by her adopted parents. The diplomat and his wife scared her and ruined her and have now decided that she is no longer wanted. Isn’t there some sort of child-endangerment law that these people can be prosecuted for?
Inter-racial adoption is already a controversal and complex matter, it doesn’t need this type of publicity to complicate things even further.
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AG wrote:
Please do some research on adoption and attachment issues before getting angry. This child at 4 months may or may not have had abandonment issues but she certainly could have had attachment issues. The original news article is very skewed for eliciting outrage (which it has done nicely in your case) and it also sounds like the writer doesn’t know anything about attachment issues in adoption. I am an adoptive mother and I have many friends who have adopted. I belong to a group of adoptive parents who suffer from post adoption depression. Many of these parents have adopted children who have Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD), through no fault of their own. It is extremely difficult and heartbreaking for the parents who spend a lot of time and energy trying to get their child to bond with them. As a result these parents suffer from depression, not only because of the difficult situation they find themselves in, but also because of condemnation from the general public who cannot understand their situation and blithely write them off as being bad parents. We don’t know the whole story in this case (and how can you go simply on what the nanny says?) and while I am not condoning their decision to give up their adoptive child, I can tell you for sure this was not a “mindless” decision made on the spur of the moment and probably caused a great deal of heartache.
Posted on 19-Dec-07 at 12:56 pm | Permalink
Bo wrote:
I’m not going to argue as to whether the child had RAD b/c I’m not a psychitrist or therapist. I did look up RAD in DMV-IV and it sounds like a horrible, but fortunately rare, disorder. But several things about the case are quite unsettling and I do believe cast a suspicious light on the adults. 1) Why wasn’t the child registered as a Dutch citizen? The diplomat argues that it was an administrative oversight. A seven year administrative oversight…right. 2) Why couldn’t the child speak Dutch? The articles claim that she spoke Cantonese and English but not the language of her adopted family. 3) Why did they leave her in Hong Kong - in a country where she has absolutely no legal status - thus leaving her in limbo. Since she was adopted at the age of 4 months, she isn’t a ward of the Korean government. She’s not Chinese - so not technically a ward of the Chinese government. And since she’s not a Dutch citizen, not a ward of the Dutch government either. So basically her adoptive parents left her in a limbo state - without a nationality, a culture, or a country to call her home. That is the reason why I’m upset by this article.
Posted on 19-Dec-07 at 3:21 pm | Permalink
Simon Bao wrote:
There’s nothing that could ever possibly be so wrong with that child as to explain, justify, or excuse the actions of the adoptive parents. One doesn’t adopt a 7 month old baby and then abandon the child 7 years later. Not for any reason.
But apparently, the Dutch public doesn’t need anyone to tell them this. They’re more than just a little outraged over there and we can at least take comfort in knowing this couples’ political careers are over and they’ll be facing criminal investigations.
Posted on 19-Dec-07 at 3:38 pm | Permalink
peony wrote:
I agree with you Bo. The story is very upsetting. This girl is sadly left in Hongkong where she has no nationality. I also agree with previous poster that you can’t abandon a 7 year old girl for a behavioral disorder.
I read a recent Newsweek article about international adoption gone wrong and the story is very sad. My impression from reading the article is that many of these parents choose international adoption expecting a perfect child. When people decide to have children, they must prepare for the unexpected. Just because you can pick a child, that does not mean that they child is without problems. I agree that there are adoption agencies that do not provide full disclosure of the child’s condition. However, there are many disorders such as autism, childhood disintegrative disorder, and Asperger syndrome that cannot be diagnosed until the child is older (2-5 years or even when they are teenagers for aspergers). When a child is adopted when he/she is a baby, there is no way developmental disorders can be detected.
Adoption agencies must do a better job in screening prospective parents. However, It is prospective parents responsibilities to study the positive and negative of adoption. I hear a lot of complaints from parents that agencies do not prepare the parents for potential behavior problems such as RAF. In my opinion, it is parents’ responsibilities to familiarize themselves about the issues.
I have a daughter who is disabled. I understand the challenges of raising an emotionally disabled child. My child was born healthy without complications. At 15 months she lost her language and at 2 years old she was diagnosed with severe autism. No doctor gave parents warnings when you decided to have a child about the chances of having a disabled child. Autism is still such a mysterious disorder that no one knows what causes it. Sometimes things just happen. What saddens me the most from the Newsweek article is how some people justified the reason for killing a child. This is an excerpt from the article:
“But Joyce Sterkel, who runs the Ranch for Kids, a Montana boarding school for disturbed international adoptees, says she’s come to see the parents as well as the kids as victims in these tragic cases. “It’s a horrible thing, but I understand how some people end up killing these kids,” she says. “They have no empathy, no affection, no love. My heart goes out to these parents because they don’t know what to do.”
Some characteristics of the disorder are similar to autism. It upset us parents with disabled children that there are people who find it “understandable” to kill children with emotional disorders. The child is the victim here.
Posted on 25-Dec-07 at 8:49 am | Permalink