An independent voice for ethical adoption
Ireland: Scandals at home and abroad have shaken adoption board
From the Irish Examiner:
According to its website, the Adoption Board is “responsible for registering and supervising the registered adoption societies and for maintaining the adoption societies register”.
However, the level of supervision it actually carries out is questionable.
Numerous cases of illegal adoptions and questionable practices involving accredited adoption agencies have been highlighted by this newspaper and by numerous adoption groups.
Despite the Adoption Board having full knowledge of these cases, it has never de-registered any of the adoption agencies in question, nor inspected all of the files they hold. ..
That same year, the Adoption Board came under fire for advice posted on its website telling couples hoping to adopt children in Vietnam that they must bring $3,000 (€2,300) in cash to complete the adoption in the country. The post also told couples to pay another $3,700 (€2,900) in a bankers draft to My Linh Soland, who was then facilitating adoptions there.
At the time, registrar of the Adoption Board Kiernan Gildea defended the payment of such a large amount of money to a single person and not to Vietnamese authorities.
“She was mutually agreed by us and the Vietnamese. They were happy to deal with her,” he said.
However, it emerged in 2006 that Ms Soland – who was interviewed by the Adoption Board in 2004 for the role of facilitator with adoptions of Vietnamese babies by Irish couples and who later operated in this role for the Helping Hands adoption agency – had served a three-year sentence in the late 1990s for fraud, obstruction of justice and intimidation of witnesses.
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