In an AP report, briefing activities and news in the Caribbean, I found a small story on the illegal adoption of Carib babies.
It seems couples from neighbouring Martinique, Guadeloupe and other islands, are travelling to Dominica, and convincing impoverished Carib mothers to give their babies up.
The families are bypassing the legal procedures, and after the children reach adolescence, they are sending these displaced children home to their biological parents.
Francis Joseph, who works with the Christian Children Fund in Dominica says, “Babies are babies, they are cute and nice. But now that the child has grown up, you can’t just send the back.”
The story goes on to say, that the Dominican government, nor the independent social workers on the island can estimate the number of children taken. However, 15 teenagers who returned home this year alone, has been cause for alarm. Although, this is not quite as dramatic and certainly not as institutionalised, this almost echoes the same kind of stolen children syndrome that was brought to the movie screen in Rabbit Proof Fence.
I wonder how these children must feel, to be given away, lured away, taken away and raised by people whose concept of parenthood includes a disposability of their responsibilities towards these children. How can you want a child so much as to go to such lengths to get one, and then get rid of the child when they no longer satisfy your egotistical and selfish motivations and appetites.
It’s disturbing to contemplate, but the Caribbean community needs to be more responsible towards it’s indigenous populations. This report is merely another example in the further weakening of the Carib communities, and who is to say it’s not happening elsewhere? Who is to know how many of these children are growing up in conditions that speak to the emotional cruelty of their adopted ‘parents.’
My ancestors must be greatly saddened by the ongoing plight of their children, to be used up and wasted by societies that care nothing for the people they’ve deposed.
This story hurts me on a personal level, because I have roots in Dominica, and who knows if my cousins are part of this tragedy and are somewhere hurting and in need of family torn from their roots, alienated and marginalised?
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