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46
https://researchingreform.net/2021/10/06/survey-majority-of-kinship-carers-say-they-receive-no-support-to-enable-child-contact-with-parents/

Survey: kinship carers say they receive no support to enable child contact with parents

06 Wednesday Oct 2021

Posted by Natasha in Researching Reform   

A survey produced by Kinship, a company providing support and assistance to kinship carers, has found that only 11% of carers received support from their local authorities to help with contact between children in kinship care and their parents, and a further 23% wanted support but did not receive it.

The survey also noted that 62% of carers they polled believed the children in their care had long term physical and mental health needs.

The figure of 62% marks a 43% increase from the last survey carried out by Kinship in 2010, raising important questions about why these needs may be rising.

The survey found that only 33% of children had received a formal diagnosis and that of those children, 40% had been diagnosed with anxiety or depression, 38% with behavioural issues, and 38% with an attachment disorder.

The poll also held that 36% of the children had special educational needs, a figure three times the national average (12%).

Kinship care refers to children whose parents are unable to look after them on a short or long term basis and are cared for by other relatives, or by other adults who have a connection to the child, such as a sibling, close family friend or neighbour. The majority of kinship carers are grandparents.

The survey gathered the views of  1,651 kinship carers, which in relative terms is an extremely small sample. We couldn’t find an exact figure for the number of kinship carers in England and Wales but a conservative estimate might be 100,000 adults caring for these children under such an arrangement.

There are currently more than 200,000 children in the UK being cared for by family or a friend.

47
Articles / Barrow couple due to adopt baby arrested in murder probe
« on: September 20, 2021, 05:11:49 PM »
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-56048829

Barrow couple due to adopt baby arrested in murder probe

Published 13 February

A couple have been arrested on suspicion of murdering a one-year-old boy they were set to adopt.  Police said a 37-year-old woman and 34-year-old man, from Barrow-in-Furness, had been arrested on suspicion of murder, causing or allowing the death of a child and two counts of assault.  They have been released on bail, Cumbria Police said.  Cumbria County Council said the child was under its care but was living with the couple before the adoption.  The council said it had recommended an independent safeguarding review was carried out.  Police said the North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) was called on 6 January and the child was taken to Furness General Hospital in Barrow before being transferred to Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool.  He died the next day.  Det Ch Supt Dean Holden said: "Two people have been arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into the tragic death of a one-year-old boy in Barrow.  An investigation is under way by a dedicated team of detectives and other specialists in order to establish the full circumstances of the death in full consultation with the coroner."

The county council said a final adoption order had not yet been granted by the courts, however it is a requirement of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 that a child lives with their adoptive parents for a period before an application for an adoption order can be made.

48
https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/long-lost-siblings-finally-meet-24748308

Scots gran reunited with long-lost sister after 50 years apart following lockdown search

As Josie Drages-Dawes, 75, tearfully pulled little sister Sylvia McCulloch, 69, into her arms, she said the missing piece of her family jigsaw puzzle was finally in place.

By Jenny Morrison Feature Writer/Advance Content Writer

04:30, 15 AUG 2021

A gran who used lockdown to search for her long-lost sibling has finally been reunited with the sister she dreamed of finding for more than 50 years.  As Josie Drages-Dawes, 75, tearfully pulled little sister Sylvia McCulloch, 69, into her arms, she said the missing piece of her family jigsaw puzzle was finally in place.  The Sunday Mail revealed in April that Josie had tracked down her missing sibling five decades after she first suspected her mum may have had a secret baby.  For the last four months the reunited sisters have only been able to get to know each other over the phone due to coronavirus restrictions.  The pair finally met at an emotional family gathering that included older siblings Bridie Tummon, 89, Gussie Fisher, 84, and Eric McKenna, 77.  Mum-of-six Josie, of Paisley, said: “To finally be able to meet Sylvia to hold her in my arms was such a wonderful moment.  I thought because we’d been talking over the phone for these last few months that I would be fine when I saw her. I’m the one who usually holds things together but I immediately felt a catch in my throat and in my chest. I couldn’t hold the tears back.”

Sylvia, who now lives in London and travelled to Scotland for the reunion, said: “I can’t believe that just six months ago I didn’t know any of these siblings even existed and now I’ve met them all and been so welcomed into the family.  To meet Josie and the rest of the family was so emotional. I feel like my life has just started again.”

Josie, who grew up in Paisley, always believed she was one of 14 brothers and sisters.  But an accidental slip of the tongue 55 years ago by her mum, Mary McKenna, led Josie to suspect she may instead be one of 15 children.  Neither Josie’s mum nor any other older members of the family would speak about what Josie realised was a family secret.  It was only years after her mother’s death that Josie learned from social work records that her widowed mum had been briefly married to another man, Alexander Hillhouse, who was jailed for a year for bigamy.  Her mum had given birth to their daughter Sylvia but she was taken into care at three months old as Mary couldn’t afford to properly care for her.  Sylvia grew up believing the foster family who raised her were her birth parents. She was 18 when she learned the truth but was given little detail about her family and knew nothing of her 14 siblings.  Josie said: “It’s been 55 years since I first suspected I might have another sister after my mum accidentally called my daughter Sylvia, then wouldn’t explain who Sylvia was.  I’d always wondered if she was out there but it wasn’t until 20 years ago that I found out from social work records that she did exist. I didn’t have the right information to find her at the time but during lockdown my daughter Beverley used everything we knew by then to track her down on social media.  From the day my mum used the name Sylvia, I knew there was a story there. It’s not in my nature to leave things unresolved. If there’s a missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle, I have to find it.  Now we’ve found Sylvia the missing piece of our family jigsaw puzzle and I couldn’t be happier.”

Josie grew up in care after the sudden death of her dad George McKenna in 1949 when he was 45.  She remained close to several of her siblings and received occasional visits from her mum, who hadn’t been able to cope, financially or practically, with raising so many children on her own.  Josie and her family organised the gathering to meet Sylvia at a restaurant in Linwood, Paisley. They even arranged for a surprise limo to bring Sylvia to the party and for a piper to play as she stepped out of the car  As well as meeting Josie, Bridie, Gussie and Eric, she met her extended family of nephews and nieces, including children of several siblings who have died.  Josie also took Sylvia on a visit to lay flowers at their mother’s grave, who died in 1968 aged 58.  Sylvia said: “Everything about the trip was emotional but so lovely. As we met and shared our stories, it was like chatting to people I had known all my life. I wish I had known them all my life."

Josie added: “When I think of all the years we could have been in each other’s lives, it makes me sad but we have found each other now and that’s what matters.”

50
https://adoptionland.org/533/do-you-understand-that-your-baby-goes-away-and-never-comes-back-2/

“Do you understand that your baby goes away and never comes back?”
Admin May 9, 2015

Nurses traded horror stories involving tearful and confused new mothers, who asked whether they were allowed to hold or feed their babies.

On July 29, 2014, Maryann and Dexter Koshiba, 32 and 37 years old, sat, utterly exhausted, in a recovery room at Washington Regional Medical Center in Fayetteville, Arkansas. That morning, Maryann had given birth to a baby girl, and both had been up all night through the labor. Around five in the afternoon, Dexter recalled, he received a phone call. A local adoption attorney named Marti Woodruff was sending someone to the hospital with documents for the couple to sign. The Koshibas had been working with Woodruff for about a month to arrange the adoption of their unborn child, and everything had proceeded relatively smoothly until then. An unfamiliar woman arrived and handed over the relinquishment documents. Dexter was so tired that he couldn’t fully focus on the papers. But he signed them anyway, and roused Maryann to do the same. “Do you know her?” asked Dexter, once the woman had left, but Maryann was so groggy that she didn’t recognize anyone right then.

Like that, one of the most important decisions of their lives was made.

Maryann and Dexter had grown up together in the Marshall Islands, on the capital island of Majuro, but Maryann had moved to Hawaii with her family and infant son in 2007, and then on to Ore­gon. Dexter followed in 2008, moving first to Arkansas, and then, after becoming involved with Maryann, to the West Coast, where they lived in Seattle for almost two years before moving, together, to Springdale, in the northwest corner of Arkansas the unlikely home of a large Marshallese population.  “I don’t even know what that means, ‘closed adoption,’” Maryann said. “What is ‘closed adoption?’”

Dexter got a job at George’s, a local chicken-processing plant, making around minimum wage; they found an apartment and settled in among the Marshallese community. In 2011, Dexter took a job at a Butterball turkey plant, where the wages and benefits were slightly better, but the couple still struggled to pay the $450 monthly rent. Leading up to Thanksgiving, the work was steady, as the plant churned out around 45,000 birds per day. But for the rest of the year, Dexter often failed to get enough hours. Their family was starting to grow in addition to Maryann’s son, the couple had two new daughters and some months they could barely pay their bills. Maryann wanted to get a job, but they couldn’t afford a babysitter. They pinned their hopes on a tax refund that might let them buy a ticket to fly Maryann’s sister over from the Islands so she could watch the kids.  In 2013, soon after their then-youngest daughter was born, Maryann got pregnant again. By March 2014, the couple had decided to place their unborn baby for adoption. They already had three children to care for, and both had other children from previous relationships living with extended family. The stories that circulated among the Marshallese in Springdale made U.S. adoption sound not dissimilar to customs back home: The adoptive parents would call and send pictures regularly; the biological parents would have the right to reclaim their children if need be; and the children would return to their birth parents when they turned 18. They’d also heard that Marshallese women who placed their babies for adoption in the United States were paid around $10,000.  With the help of a Marshallese man named Justin Aine a distant cousin of Dexter’s who had become a liaison between an adoption lawyer named Vaughn Cordes and the transplanted Marshallese community, Dexter and Maryann were matched with a prospective adoptive family. They chatted with the family over Skype and generally had a good impression of them. Immediately after they agreed to the adoption, they started to receive checks from Cordes about $1,200 each month. The funds nearly doubled the family’s income. They were able to pay off old bills and buy clothes for the children and milk for the baby. Dexter bought a car to travel to and from work.  In the last month of her pregnancy, however, Maryann pulled out of the arrangement. She fought with Aine she said he insulted her father; he said she was pestering him for money. She was still determined to place the baby for adoption, though, and the other Marshallese women in the community advised her to contact another local attorney, Woodruff, to complete the proceedings. “The Marshallese ladies talked about Marti,” said Dexter when I met him and Maryann last November at their tidy apartment in Huntsville, a village of about 2,000 people 27 miles outside Springdale, “and said, she’s a good person, helping people do anything.”

Woodruff found a new family to adopt the baby and sent Cordes a check to reimburse him for the money he had given to Maryann during the pregnancy.  But almost as soon as Maryann gave birth, something seemed amiss. First, there was the rush surrounding the signing of the papers dropped off by the mysterious woman papers that were written in English, which Maryann couldn’t read. (Woodruff doesn’t remember sending anyone from her office to the hospital and said that Maryann and Dexter may have been referring to a hospital social worker; she also insists that the documents would have been translated by the hospital.) When the adoptive parents arrived at the hospital, the two sets of parents crowded around the baby for a group photo. But then the adoptive parents moved to a separate room until the infant was ready to leave the hospital. Woodruff gave Dexter and Maryann some cash a couple hundred dollars, Dexter said and instructed them to go home. They asked to speak to the adoptive parents one last time they wanted to exchange contact information. Woodruff, the couple said, put them off disappearing somewhere in the hospital. Maryann was confused; she had thought that the adoptive mother would stay in touch. Now she was being hustled out of the hospital without so much as a phone number. (“If she had been promised phone numbers by somebody, it wasn’t us,” said Woodruff.)

Months passed, and no photos came. Depression took hold of Maryann. “Every day I’m always crying, and my husband [asks] ‘What happened to you?’” Maryann said. “I’m worried because I don’t know where she is right now.”

She began to call Woodruff regularly, asking for the adoptive parents’ phone number. She wouldn’t try to take the baby back, she promised, she just wanted to know the child was OK. (Woodruff said that Maryann only called to argue that she hadn’t signed a consent form, but that if she had asked for the adoptive parents’ phone number, she would have told Maryann that information is confidential.) Dexter said they offered to repay the money they’d received from Woodruff, but Woodruff told them that wasn’t a possibility. Woodruff stated that she makes sure all the birth parents she works with understand the terms of their agreement: “I have never promised open adoption to anybody because, to me, that would be a misstatement of Arkansas law.”

At one point, Maryann tried to go back to Aine, hoping to reconnect with the first set of adoptive parents the ones who had promised to stay in touch. But, of course, it was too late.  In desperation, Maryann called the police. She says the police called Woodruff, then told Maryann that she wasn’t entitled to any information since she had willingly entered into a closed adoption. Closed adoption is the default form of adoption in Arkansas, and it mandates that adoption records are sealed; no identifying information about either birth or adoptive parents is shared and the parties can only contact each other through their agency or attorney. If she persisted in calling the precinct or Woodruff’s office, Maryann claimed the police told her, she’d be thrown in jail. Together, the couple approached a lawyer to see if they could sue for the return of the baby. But after a quick call to Woodruff’s office, the lawyer told the Koshibas the same thing the police had: They’d agreed to a closed adoption, and that was that. “I don’t even know what that means, ‘closed adoption,’” Maryann told me.

“What is ‘closed adoption?’” Dexter repeated. “We’re just trying to find someone to help us.”

51
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9788281/LIZ-JONES-62-Im-used-invisible-obese-million-times-worse.html

At 62, I’m used to being invisible, but being obese is a million times worse: She’s always obsessed about being thin. Now, LIZ JONES dons an ‘empathy suit’ to confront her prejudice and see if society’s really changed

    Liz Jones used to be obsessed with maintaining a weight of eight and a half stone
    She spent the day as a fat person to see if she can finally beat her own prejudices
    Also to discover if the ‘body positivity’ movement has made any difference at all
    It was a momentous shock as people, even children, stared with no sympathy

By Liz Jones For The Daily Mail

Published: 22:02, 14 July 2021 | Updated: 08:52, 15 July 2021

Squished in a cab, I’m on the way from Kensington, West London, to Harrods. As I’d given my destination to the driver, I’d noticed his eyebrows shoot up as if to say, ‘Harrods? Really? Would Primark not be more apt?’

I’d seen him sigh with impatience as I heaved my bulk inside. I’ve only been morbidly obese for, what, 30 minutes, but already I have the waddle, the refusing at kerbs, like a mule at Becher’s Brook. I no longer have the faintest idea what my feet are doing as they’ve disappeared beneath the shelf of my monoboob, the Himalayan foothills of my stomach.  I have that in-the-way-fat-person apologetic shrug as people, even small children, stare at me with no sympathy at all, tutting, their parents open mouthed, as if to say, ‘Don’t you realise there’s a pandemic on? We need to save the NHS, not strain it at the seams, like your awful size 40 trousers!’

I have beads of sweat on my nose. It’s not long before I’m in tears. Getting out of the taxi, straightening, I catch sight of my silhouette in the window of Harvey Nichols: for years my spiritual home, now as uninhabitable (and hot!) as Mars. I’m as wide as I’m tall.  What on earth has happened to me a size 8, recovering anorexic?

A non-cooking, food-phobic, designer-togs-wearing stick insect?

It’s an experiment. I’m on a mission to see if the so-called ‘body positivity’ movement a two-decades long campaign to change the way we view the curves of larger women has made any difference at all to the way the overweight are perceived and treated.  In our new woke world, are we nicer to obese people, or is the fact we now see bigger models on catwalks and in ad campaigns merely paying lip service?

There’s also a personal motive. For years, I have been unhealthily obsessed with my own weight. The experience has culminated in my first novel, where my heroine is a size 18-plus mum.  To understand her better, I decided to walk in her shoes, albeit for one day only. So today, I am over 20st. To achieve this, I’ve been strapped into a bariatric empathy suit, kindly lent by British medical supplies firm Benmor Medical. Young doctors and nurses are made to wear such suits while training, so they can get a sense of the challenges faced by the obese.  I have huge, round, breasts. The manual states I can add pads on my hips ‘to make you pear-shaped’. I think the manufacturer is being kind: watermelon springs to mind.  ‘Can I have back fat?’ I ask the stylist assigned to strap me in. Once that’s added, I have the posture of the obese person: constantly bowed.

The padding on my upper arms means they jut out awkwardly.  The stylist has picked out a colourful shirt dress. ‘What size is it?’ I ask hopefully.

‘It’s a 26.’

‘Oh, great!’

‘Er, no. It’s meant to float loosely.’

Moving around, unused to my extra bulk, I knock over chairs, laptops, coffees. I’m clumsy. No one wants me.  My day as a fat person is such a momentous shock because I’ve spent a lifetime devoted to being thin.  From the age of 11, when my older sisters let me borrow their Cosmos and Honeys and brought home a calorie counter from Boots dear God, the calories in my mum’s home-made marmalade! Was she trying to kill me?

I’ve regarded food as the enemy, extreme fitness my friend. By my A-levels, I was anorexic, although my parents didn’t notice, or at least never said anything. I’d never heard the word ‘anorexic’: it was 1976.  I thought I was the only person in the world who weighed her daily apple.  In my 20s, terrified I was going blind, I went to my GP, only to be sucked into the NHS, committed and force-fed as I was down to 6st.  Today, aged 62, I still know what I will eat today, and what I will eat tomorrow.  I’m not cured, I merely function and tip toe, smugly disapproving, round the constantly grazing and masticating ‘normal’ people, who seem to me like cows.  Despite being well-informed, spending much of my career as a magazine editor trying to highlight the problem of eating disorders, I admit I haven’t really bought into the new body-positive, we are all beautiful, #benice way of thinking.  On the contrary, rightly or wrongly, I look down on people who overeat: no willpower, no constraints, they have never felt hunger in their lives.  I used to long for a body like supermodel Kate Moss, herself criticised for glamourising the skinny look.  But even the most famous skinny model in history gave in and had a daughter. I never had children as I was scared of defacing the life-long artwork that was my body. I never ovulated, anyway: my body was too busy growing fur to keep warm and ingesting its own organs.  I was put on steroids in my 20s to make me eat ‘talking’ therapy was never mentioned and grew pendulous breasts that sunk, as depressed as me, to my waist. I had them excised and I remember getting home after the operation, looking in the mirror for the first time in years and, even though blood was seeping through my T-shirt, said to myself, ‘I look so young! And so thin!’

I was 29. I was 8½ stone: which is now the title of my first novel. The revelation that I was deluded, that extreme thinness is neither beautiful nor healthy, came when I was made editor of a fashion glossy in my early 40s. After the Dior show, I went backstage to be confronted by supermodel Gisele.  Six foot, a teenager in jeans and flip flops, as etiolated as a Giacometti sculpture. I realised I could never be thin enough and should be encouraging young women not to waste their lives obsessing about food.  That is why I wrote the book, its title my target weight throughout the Seventies, Eighties, Nineties, Noughties.  There that elusive figure was, at the end of every week, under the list of what I’d eaten that day.  The heroine of my book is Pam, a size 18 mum who works in fashion. She uses humour to deflect barbs from colleagues, friends, even her own husband.  ‘I don’t have a waist, I have an equator,’ she says merrily, in that self-deprecating way women are taught far too young.

Pam is demoted at work, abused on the street, teased by friends, even when she’s suicidal. Devastatingly, Pam’s husband no longer wants sex or even lifts his lashes to look up when she enters a room.  She blames herself, although, as she points out, like most overweight women, she has an encyclopaedic knowledge about her condition: ‘The hereditary factor for being fat is the same as the hereditary factor for being tall. If your dad plays professional basketball, chances are you’ll be asked to place the fairy on top of the Christmas tree.’

She is assaulted by fat-shaming headlines every day, but also confused by them: ‘Overweight doesn’t mean you are unhealthy’ (Good Housekeeping, March 2021). Phew! But that is swiftly followed by a Government website stating, ‘876,000 hospital admissions caused by obesity, costing NHS £6.1 bn a year’. As well as not being able to lose the baby weight from having twins ‘If I’d known twins were in my husband’s family, I’d have beaten him off with a wooden spoon’ Pam has an overweight mother who showed love by feeding.

I put the sweet drawer from my childhood into the novel. My own mum had one filled with Topics, Bounties, Walnut Whips for me to chomp on after school. They were covered with an ironed tea towel, an early and ineffective form of stomach stapling. I resisted. Pam didn’t. She believes that if only she can be thin, she will be happy, she will be loved. And yet, in the book and in my life, nothing can be further from the truth: both me and my heroine are cheated on.  So my day as a larger version of Pam, of being obese, is an attempt not just to find out if I got the heroine of my book spot on, but to get over my own prejudices against the 28 per cent of Britons who are obese, too. How are they made to feel?

In my 60s, I know what it’s like to be invisible as an older woman. But, as I discover, the experience of being overweight is a million times worse.  People see me, but quite obviously lack any respect for me. It feels as though this is my fault.  Fat must be contagious, as no one offers to help with doors, or steps. When I sit to tuck into some hummous at an outside table, I can see people thinking, ‘Why is she even eating?’

I’m disgusting, a drain on taxes. Because I must have brought it all on myself. I brave Harrods, where I’ve always been welcomed, what with my size 8 body and my Stella McCartney wallet. The doorman opens the door extra wide. I head for the express lift but, seeing the faces of people inside, I reverse apologetically and take the escalator, squishing between barriers. I get off at Womenswear, shuffle past McQueen, Dior and Bottega. All closed to me now.  Why am I here?

I don’t belong anywhere. Even the more generously-cut frocks on the Pleats Please racks would be stretched to breaking point.  Lingerie! Yes! Surely they’ll have something in my size!  I head to Hanro. The assistant is kind, says they only go up to a 20 but ‘they come up large’, unlike the changing room, where I’m like Alice in Wonderland.  ‘How about a thong?’ I ask her.

The sales assistant looks like she’s swallowed a thistle. She tells me to try Rigby & Peller, the Queen’s underwear maker across the road, which I do later.  They too are kind, but say their bras only go up to a 44H, though they can make me one to measure, for £305 and a six-week wait. Useful! I try the cinema but find I’m too big for the seats.  Exhausted, I sit down to eat at Lola’s Cupcakes in Selfridges. Should I be eating cake?

I’m past caring! I can’t fit behind the table, so two waiters are brought to pull it out noisily for me.  Embarrassed, I don’t remove my face mask but, as Fat Me, I find it a welcome disguise, a comfort, meaning I can shuffle anonymously, avoid eye contact.  I reach for my mirror to check my face, something Thin Me does often. But today I think, ‘What’s the point? Who cares about my face?’

I wonder that any overweight person can bring themselves to leave the house, given the turnstile for the train platform is tiny and the (clearly 20st) bus driver jokes I should ‘Swipe that Oyster card twice, love!’

I’m reminded of a trip to Ronnie Scott’s for a plus-sized friend’s birthday before the pandemic. The benches are fixed. My friend, excited for her treat, the most beautiful, kind person you could ever meet, wouldn’t fit; a chair was placed at one end.  Humiliated, she left early.  I’m finally back at the office. My empathy suit is peeled off. The relief! I emerge, a dehydrated butterfly; I hadn’t dared drink shop loos are too small, bar the disabled ones.  I get back to my hotel and switch on the TV. Love Island appears on the screen, sponsored by Just Eat. Of course it is. Gaze at gorgeous bodies while chomping your way to an early death on food you haven’t even cooked!  That, despite the supposedly ground-breaking models in ads for Dove, Marks & Spencer, Gap etc, and plus-size influencers urging us to all be more body-positive, the world is still deeply unkind to the overweight.  Which is why I’m now vowing to be kinder. Wearing an empathy suit has indeed made me feel more empathetic.  So, the next time you huff when a bigger person sits next to you on a plane, remember it’s more than possible they haven’t chosen to be big. It’s also possible that, despite the body-positive cries to ‘embrace their curves’, they already hate themselves enough for both of you.

52
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9753017/HELEN-JOYCE-argues-gender-self-identification-lobby-harming-children-women-trans-people.html

Why it's wrong and profoundly damaging to make us all agree that someone is whatever gender they say they are: HELEN JOYCE argues the gender self-identification lobby is harming children, women and trans people themselves

By Helen Joyce For The Mail On Sunday

Published: 22:00, 3 July 2021 | Updated: 10:35, 4 July 2021

Once, that would have been a statement of the obvious. Today, such a belief could get you fired.  Now, a forensic book by a senior writer at The Economist argues the gender self-identification lobby is harming children, women and trans people themselves.   Gender self-identification is often described as this generation's civil rights battle.   But for a man to declare 'I am a woman', and for everyone to be compelled to agree, is not, as with genuine civil rights movements, about extending privileges unjustly hoarded by a favoured group to a marginalised one.

What we are facing is a fundamental redefinition of what it means for anyone to be a man or woman the supplanting of biology and a total rewrite of society's rules, with far-reaching consequences.  Most people are supportive of 'trans rights' assuming something similar to same-sex marriage and women's franchise is being demanded.  That trans people be allowed to live full lives, free from discrimination, harassment and violence and to express themselves as they wish.  Such goals are worthy but they are not what mainstream transactivism is about.  What 'trans rights' actually refers to is gender self-identification. This means that others are forced to agree someone is the gender they say they are.  It requires that everyone else accept trans people's subjective beliefs as objective reality.  This is not a human right at all. It is akin to a new state religion, complete with blasphemy laws.  Underlying my objections is a scientific fact: that biological sex has an objective basis.  Sexual dimorphism the two sexes, male and female first appeared on Earth 1.2 billion years ago.  Mammals animals like humans that grow their young inside them, rather than laying eggs date back 210 million years. In all that time, no mammal has ever changed sex.  The differences between men and women therefore date back an extremely long time and their bodies and psyches have been shaped by evolution in ways that matter profoundly for health and happiness.  The distinction between the sexes is not likely to be amenable to social engineering, no matter how much some people want it to be.  As well as serving the interests of trans people very poorly, the ideological focus of this powerful lobby means it seeks to silence anyone who does not support gender self-identification.  What's more, I fear, its overreach is likely to provoke a backlash that will harm ordinary trans people who simply want safety and social acceptance.  When the public finally realises what is being demanded, the blame may not land with the activists, where it belongs.  One place I expect to see a backlash soon is in women's sports. Allowing biological males who identify as women to enter women's competitions makes no more sense than allowing heavyweights to box as flyweights or adults to compete as under-18s.  And yet, under pressure from transactivists, almost every sporting authority has moved to gender self-identification.  A handful of transwomen (biologically male) are expected to compete in women's events at this month's Olympics such as New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who broke junior records as a man and transitioned eight years ago.  The sight of stronger, heavier, faster males easily beating some of the world's best female athletes is sure to outrage deep-seated intuitions about fair play.  Another backlash is imminent in paediatric gender medicine.  Until recently, hardly any children presented at gender clinics but in the past decade, the number has soared.   There are now numerous studies of children with gender dysphoria discomfort and misery caused by one's biological sex.  These show that most grow out of it, as long as they are supported, rather than encouraged to self-identify out of their sex.  But, as gender clinics have come under activists' sway, the treatment offered has taken an ideological turn.  Instead of advising parents to watch and wait with sympathy and kindness, they work on the assption that childhood gender dysphoria destines someone to trans adulthood.  They recommend immediate 'social transition' a change of name, pronouns and dress followed by drugs to block puberty, cross-sex hormones and surgery, often while the patient is still in their teens.   This is a fast track to sexual dysfunction and sterility in adulthood.  In the past few years, a new group of trans-identifying minors has emerged: teenage girls.  This demographic now predominates at gender clinics worldwide.  And again these girls are fast-tracked to hormones and surgery, even though there is no evidence that these will help and good reason to think they will not.  The message is spread by social-justice warriors on social media alongside the medical profession and schools, which have added gender-identity ideology to the curriculum.  Tragically, this story will end in shattered lives.  I know that I will be called unkind, and worse, for writing my book. Some of what I say is bound to be perceived as deeply hurtful by some.  But I believe that it is rare to be able to pass as a member of the opposite sex, especially if you are male; that the feeling of being a member of the opposite sex, no matter how deep and sincere, cannot change other people's instinctive perceptions; that such a feeling does not constitute licence to use facilities or services intended for the sex that you are not; that children who suffer distress at their sex are ill-served by being told that they can change it.  But as gender self-identification is written into laws around the world, the collateral damage is mounting.  Women have lost their jobs for saying that male and female are objective, socially significant categories.   Female athletes are forced to compete against males. Children are sterilised.  These things are happening partly because of an admirable but poorly thought-out sense of compassion for trans people. What finally pushed me to write my book was meeting some of gender-identity ideology's most poignant victims.  They are detransitioners: people who took hormonal and sometimes surgical steps towards transition, only to realise that they had made a catastrophic mistake.  They speak of trauma from experimental drugs and surgeries and having been manipulated and deceived by adults.  I have seen them abused and defamed on social media.  Their most obvious wounds are physical: mastectomies; castration; bodies shaped by cross-sex hormones.  But the mental wounds go deeper. They bought into an ideology that is incoherent and constantly shifting and where the slightest deviation is ferociously punished.  They were led to believe that parents who expressed concern about the impact of powerful drugs on developing minds and bodies were hateful bigots and that the only conceivable alternative to transition was suicide.  This new ideology of body-denialism at the heart of gender-identity politics is especially harmful for women, since female bodies make demands in ways that male ones don't.  Female bodies bear almost all the burden of reproduction and ignoring that fact doesn't change it.  Governments, companies and charities now talk of 'people who menstruate', 'pregnant people', 'abortion seekers' and 'birthing parents', where they would once simply have said 'women'.  As such, women are being erased.  The NHS explains that 'the concept of virginity for people with vaginas has a complicated history'.

Teen Vogue offers a 'no-nonsense, 101 guide to masturbation for vagina owners'. Information campaigns from cancer charities tell 'anyone with a cervix' to get regular smear tests.   An advert for Tampax enjoins the world to 'celebrate the diversity of all people who bleed'.

This language depicts women as orifices, providers of genetic material and vessels for growing offspring. This is not just dehumanising: it also obscures the fact that these body parts and functions come as a package.  How much harder it would have been to argue for the vote for women, or for paid maternity leave, or to end the exemption that allowed men to rape their wives at will, if the only way to refer to the beneficiaries of such policies had been to list bodily secretions and sexual organs.  If the stated reason for such language, to be inclusive of transmen (females who identify as male), were sincere, we would see similar linguistic manoeuvres so as not to exclude transwomen (males who identify as female) when talking about males.  There would be articles and advertising campaigns aimed at testicle-havers, semen-producers and the like.   'Anyone with a prostate' would be told to get it checked. But no such language is used. The inconsistency is flagrant.  It's not just today's world which gender ideology seeks to change the past is up for review, too.   Any woman who by force, luck or guile smashed social stereotypes is at risk of being retroactively transitioned. Boudicca and Joan of Arc are both often described as transmen.  So are lesbian icons such as the poet Radclyffe Hall. Fictional characters aren't safe either: George of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books, a girl who hates dresses and long hair, and loves sailing and climbing; Jo of Little Women, who whistles, walks with her hands behind her back and promises her father to be the 'man of the house' while he is away at war, are now said to be trans.  These are not harmless reimaginings. They reinforce old-fashioned stereotypes about how men and women are 'supposed' to behave and dress.  Indeed, teaching materials and books on gender identity often seem about to make an excellent point, only to miss it spectacularly.  If boys want to play with dolls, and girls want to play with trucks, they are taught about changing their bodies to match dated stereotypes. What they should be taught is that those stereotypes no longer matter and that there is room for difference.  Bish, a British sex-education website for teenagers, recommends young people determine where they lie on a 'gender scale', with boys at one end and girls at the other.  Another harm to children concerns safeguarding.  As the belief takes hold that biological sex is overwriteable by self-declared gender identity, institutions are abandoning the protocols which it was hoped would prevent a repeat of child-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, residential homes, boarding schools and many other institutions.  Guidelines written by trans lobby groups and adopted by schools, sporting federations and social clubs mean that toilets, changing rooms and dormitories are now segregated according to the sex that children and adults say they are. Parents are left in the dark.  In 2018, Helen Watts was expelled from the UK Girl Guides for objecting to the organisation deciding to allow males to become members and group leaders, provided they identified as girls or women.  The new rules say there is no need to inform girls or parents if males will be sharing sleeping accommodation or washing facilities.  Watts wonders whether Girl Guides has considered the consequences for personal care (her questions have gone unanswered).  The history of institutional child abuse has shown how predators can 'groom' people and organisations to accept behaviour that should have raised red warning flags.  For example, the Paedophile Information Exchange was tolerated by the Labour Party and the civil rights group now called Liberty.  Its followers gained a hearing partly by persuading Leftists that their enemies' enemies were automatically friends in this case, the enemies were Conservatives and evangelicals who opposed gay activists and paedophiles.  They speak of trauma from experimental drugs and surgeries and having been manipulated and deceived by adults.  I have seen them abused and defamed on social media.  Their most obvious wounds are physical: mastectomies; castration; bodies shaped by cross-sex hormones.  But the mental wounds go deeper. They bought into an ideology that is incoherent and constantly shifting and where the slightest deviation is ferociously punished.  They were led to believe that parents who expressed concern about the impact of powerful drugs on developing minds and bodies were hateful bigots and that the only conceivable alternative to transition was suicide.  This new ideology of body-denialism at the heart of gender-identity politics is especially harmful for women, since female bodies make demands in ways that male ones don't.  Female bodies bear almost all the burden of reproduction and ignoring that fact doesn't change it. Governments, companies and charities now talk of 'people who menstruate', 'pregnant people', 'abortion seekers' and 'birthing parents', where they would once simply have said 'women'.  As such, women are being erased.  The NHS explains that 'the concept of virginity for people with vaginas has a complicated history'.  Teen Vogue offers a 'no-nonsense, 101 guide to masturbation for vagina owners'. Information campaigns from cancer charities tell 'anyone with a cervix' to get regular smear tests.  An advert for Tampax enjoins the world to 'celebrate the diversity of all people who bleed'.

This language depicts women as orifices, providers of genetic material and vessels for growing offspring. This is not just dehumanising: it also obscures the fact that these body parts and functions come as a package.  How much harder it would have been to argue for the vote for women, or for paid maternity leave, or to end the exemption that allowed men to rape their wives at will, if the only way to refer to the beneficiaries of such policies had been to list bodily secretions and sexual organs.  If the stated reason for such language, to be inclusive of transmen (females who identify as male), were sincere, we would see similar linguistic manoeuvres so as not to exclude transwomen (males who identify as female) when talking about males.  There would be articles and advertising campaigns aimed at testicle-havers, semen-producers and the like.  'Anyone with a prostate' would be told to get it checked. But no such language is used. The inconsistency is flagrant.  It's not just today's world which gender ideology seeks to change the past is up for review, too.  Any woman who by force, luck or guile smashed social stereotypes is at risk of being retroactively transitioned. Boudicca and Joan of Arc are both often described as transmen.  So are lesbian icons such as the poet Radclyffe Hall. Fictional characters aren't safe either: George of Enid Blyton's Famous Five books, a girl who hates dresses and long hair, and loves sailing and climbing; Jo of Little Women, who whistles, walks with her hands behind her back and promises her father to be the 'man of the house' while he is away at war, are now said to be trans.  These are not harmless reimaginings. They reinforce old-fashioned stereotypes about how men and women are 'supposed' to behave and dress.  Indeed, teaching materials and books on gender identity often seem about to make an excellent point, only to miss it spectacularly.  If boys want to play with dolls, and girls want to play with trucks, they are taught about changing their bodies to match dated stereotypes. What they should be taught is that those stereotypes no longer matter and that there is room for difference.  Bish, a British sex-education website for teenagers, recommends young people determine where they lie on a 'gender scale', with boys at one end and girls at the other.  Another harm to children concerns safeguarding.  As the belief takes hold that biological sex is overwriteable by self-declared gender identity, institutions are abandoning the protocols which it was hoped would prevent a repeat of child-abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, Boy Scouts, residential homes, boarding schools and many other institutions.  Guidelines written by trans lobby groups and adopted by schools, sporting federations and social clubs mean that toilets, changing rooms and dormitories are now segregated according to the sex that children and adults say they are. Parents are left in the dark.  In 2018, Helen Watts was expelled from the UK Girl Guides for objecting to the organisation deciding to allow males to become members and group leaders, provided they identified as girls or women.  The new rules say there is no need to inform girls or parents if males will be sharing sleeping accommodation or washing facilities.  Watts wonders whether Girl Guides has considered the consequences for personal care (her questions have gone unanswered).  The history of institutional child abuse has shown how predators can 'groom' people and organisations to accept behaviour that should have raised red warning flags.  For example, the Paedophile Information Exchange was tolerated by the Labour Party and the civil rights group now called Liberty.  Its followers gained a hearing partly by persuading Leftists that their enemies' enemies were automatically friends in this case, the enemies were Conservatives and evangelicals who opposed gay activists and paedophiles.  That made speaking out about paedophile infiltration on the Left nearly impossible.  The worry is not that trans people are unusually likely to be child abusers. Of course they are not. Gay people obviously aren't, either, and yet their movement was infiltrated by those who were.  Anyone who cares for the welfare of either children or trans people should want to avoid history repeating itself.  Transactivists generally dismiss fears that females will be harmed if transwomen access female single-sex spaces and services.  Transwomen are merely going about their business, they say, and any concern is prejudiced, even prurient in the cutesy catchphrase that has spread from the US to other countries: 'We just need to pee.'

Under gender self-identification, transwomen are not objectively distinct from other male people, so there is no way to calculate robust statistics about them.  The little evidence that exists shows that at least some of the males who identify as women are very dangerous indeed.  Of the 125 transgender prisoners in English prisons in late 2017, 60 were transwomen who had committed sexual offences a share far higher than in the general male prison population, let alone in the female one.  So either transwomen are more likely than other males to be sexual predators, or more probably gender self-ID provides sexual predators with a marvellous loop-hole.  Whichever is true, allowing males to self-identify into women's spaces makes women less safe.  Most women in prison have been victims of male violence, some from childhood. Why are we retraumatising them?

If the UK prisons inspectorate is right, and two per cent of male prisoners identify as women, that's more than half of the total number of female prisoners.  Not very many men will need to seek transfer before women's prisons are overwhelmed.  Much of the work to further trans ideology has been carried out by groups founded to fight for gay rights, which adopted gender self-ID to keep donations coming in after gay marriage was won.  In the UK, Stonewall is the most influential force. More than 850 organisations, employing a quarter of the national workforce, are signed up to the charity's 'diversity champions' scheme.  Falsely, the training and materials claim that UK law gives employees and customers the right to use single-sex spaces that match their self-declared identities.  Companies rise in the rankings if they put up signage encouraging this, or by making facilities gender-neutral.  Most businesses are happy to play along. In an age of corporate social responsibility, it is convenient to have a tiny oppressed minority to focus on.  Rainbow lanyards, pronoun badges and 'all-gender' toilets cost little or nothing.  Opening a creche, offering paid internships for working-class youngsters or adapting the workplace for disabled employees would do more for genuine diversity and inclusion. But these policies would be expensive and, without powerful lobbies promoting them, do less to burnish a company's reputation.  Meanwhile, firms that resist are risking a social-media storm and perhaps a boycott.  In academia, too, women who have argued against self-ID have found themselves 'no-platformed' at universities and conferences.  There is a general pattern throughout criticism of the ideology is met with threats and silencing.  Meanwhile laws are changed via 'policy capture': the distortion of policy-making to benefit a minority at the expense of the general public. As one country after another introduces gender self-ID, very few voters know this is happening, let alone support it.  In 2018, research by Populus, an independent pollster, crowdfunded by British feminists, found that only 15 per cent of British adults agreed that legal sex change should be possible without a doctor's sign-off.  A majority classified a 'person who was born male and has male genitalia but who identifies as a woman' as a man, and only tiny minorities said that such people should be allowed into women's sports or changing rooms, or be placed in a women's prison if they committed a crime.  Think what would have to happen if gender identity were truly to supplant sex, right across society.  Everyone would have to stop caring whether other people were male or female and instead concern themselves only with identities.  Women would undress in front of males as comfortably as in front of females, provided those males identified as women.   No other consideration would count not religion, modesty, trauma or anything else.   An Orthodox Jewish woman would willingly receive an internal examination from a male doctor and a rape victim would pour her heart out to a male crisis counsellor again, provided those males identified as women.  At the very least, we need open discussion about this whole issue.  But the gender-identity debate has become so heated and the political climate so poisonous, that engaging in good faith looks difficult.  To tackle all the harms I describe the destruction of women's rights, the sterilisation of gender non-conforming children, the spread of post-modernist homophobia and the corruption of medical and scientific research will require taking a renewed commitment to two interests shared by everyone in a secular, liberal democracy: freedom of belief and freedom of speech.

© Helen Joyce, 2021

Edited and abridged extract from Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, by Helen Joyce, published by Oneworld on July 15 at £16.99.  To pre-order a copy for £14.44, go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193 before July 18. Free UK delivery on orders over £20.

What reviewers say

'A frighteningly necessary book: well-written, thoroughly researched, passionate and very brave.' Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist

'A courageous, intelligent and important work, rooted in good science and common sense.' Jenni Murray, ex-Woman's Hour presenter

'If anyone doubts that gender ideology poses a threat to all of us including trans people you really should read this book.' Simon Fanshawe, founder of Stonewall

53
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-9730697/A-quarter-million-unmarried-mothers-babies.html

It’s the story that shames Britain a quarter of a million unmarried mothers made to give up their babies. Now they, and the children callously wrenched away, want justice. Here, five victims reveal: The cruel legacy of forced adoption

    Quarter of a million women had their babies taken away in 1950s, 60s and 70s
    They gave birth at a network of church-run homes before a forced adoption
    Catherine James was age just 14, when she gave birth in South London in 1964
    Social services repeatedly told her that it would be selfish to keep her daughter

By Alison Roberts For The Daily Mail

Published: 22:08, 27 June 2021 | Updated: 22:08, 27 June 2021

Every night, Alison Devine used to lie in bed planning how she would escape with her baby son. At 17 she’d fallen pregnant after a one-night stand with a ‘Jack the Lad’.  And when she started to show at six months, she was swiftly packed off to an unmarried mother and baby home called The Haven, run by the Baptist church, in Yateley, Hampshire. It was 1961.  At night she could hear the babies cry in the nursery, but wasn’t allowed to go to them. ‘I often thought I’d just take a pram and do a bunk with him,’ she says. ‘But they had someone on guard at the nursery door, and anyway, I thought they’d catch me and lock me up.’

Alison was one of an estimated quarter of a million pregnant women and girls almost all unmarried and under the age of 24 who, in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, were sent away to have their babies at a network of church-run homes that stretched across the UK.  Shamed and stigmatised, and under huge pressure from social services, doctors, the Church and often their own families, the majority were forced to give up their newborns for adoption against their will. Last month, campaigners renewed calls for an official government apology for their treatment, which in many cases left a lifelong legacy of internalised guilt, anger and profound sadness.  ‘As soon as my mother found out I was pregnant, what free will I had was completely taken away from me,’ says Alison, now 78. ‘When I got to the home, the matron and the nurses were all verbally abusive and I can remember standing there on the first day with tears streaming down my face.  There were 30 girls in the home, ranging from my age to 22. Then there was one who was 15 and looked like a little girl. We were all green as grass in those days and she’d had no idea what she was doing when some other children had dared her to go with a boy.’

Alison took the younger girl under her wing and the pair became friends until tragedy struck. ‘She was called Elizabeth and we ended up having our babies at the same time, but her body wasn’t really up to it. The baby was fine, but she started to have seizures shortly after delivery, and in the end she actually died. I don’t know what happened to her baby, but I presume he was adopted as usual.  When I gave birth and my son was laid on my chest, I felt ecstatic. I looked after him for seven weeks we all had to breastfeed and I didn’t ever really believe they’d take him away. But they did.’

One morning, Alison was sent home in a taxi without the baby she’d named Stephen. That afternoon, his new parents picked him up.  ‘I sat in that taxi in floods and floods of tears and my mother said: “There’s no good you crying.” And that’s how it was. He was never spoken of again.’

Alison blames her mother for colluding with a system of institutionalised misogyny, where unmarried pregnant women and girls, many of whom nowadays we’d call victims of sexual assault were regarded as ‘fallen’ and a stain on a family’s reputation.  ‘Someone had taken some photographs of me and another girl with our babies wrapped up in shawls in the garden at The Haven, and I was ever so pleased with those photos. I took them home and put them on a table, but when I was out shopping one day, my mum took them and burned them.’

Perversely, it was regarded as deeply selfish to want to keep your baby and an indication not only of a rebellious streak, but even of emotional and mental instability. But most of the women and girls were never asked what they wanted.  When Catherine James got pregnant in 1964, she was just 14. Today, she’d be called a victim, though she says she wasn’t ‘blameless’.  ‘The police came to interview me and my boyfriend, who was 22, but because we were ‘together’, there was no prosecution. It was very scary.’

When she started to show at five months, she was sent to an unmarried mother and baby home in Streatham, South London, not far from her home in Balham, run by the Methodist church.  ‘We’d go off to have our babies at St George’s Hospital in Tooting and then come back to the home for six weeks with them before they were given away. I was given an injection to dry up my milk, so I couldn’t breastfeed, though I still tried.  We had a rota for looking after the babies at night one girl for six or seven babies. I loved having my turn because it meant I could stay awake all night and be with my daughter.  The matron wasn’t an unkind woman, but there was no question of us keeping our babies and the thought of that was agony.  One of the girls there was hiding from her father, who would have beaten her black and blue if he’d found out she was pregnant. Her baby was stillborn. I remember all the rest of us were envious because she didn’t have to face the trauma of that moment where the baby leaves you.'

In Catherine’s case, it was social services who forced her to give her baby away.  ‘My mum was a single mum and there was huge pressure put on us that this was the “right” thing to do. We were repeatedly told by social services that the baby would have a life that we’d not be able to provide, that we’d be selfish for keeping her. We were on the breadline, and because I was under 16, I wasn’t eligible for the £25 maternity grant. So there was financial pressure too. But we could have looked after her between us.  I still find it very hard to talk about the day I gave her away. I had to take her on the bus to Wandsworth Town Hall and hand her over to the Children’s Officer. It was just horrific.  Mum blamed herself. I don’t think she ever forgave herself for letting them take her granddaughter.’

Later, a terrible bureaucratic mistake meant Catherine and her mother were sent her baby’s new surname with the adoption papers, plus enough information to piece together an address. Susan was living in Roehampton, less than ten miles away.  ‘I didn’t ever go there. The whole thing screwed me up, but I actually thought it was unfair on her adoptive parents that I’d been sent that.’

Only later did she discover that Susan’s new family were living in a council flat. The adoptive parents were loving, but the idea sown in Catherine’s mind by social services that Susan would have a materially much better-off childhood in a big house ‘perhaps with horse-riding lessons and private school’ was a lie.  The emotional fallout of forced adoption spread across generations and lasted lifetimes. Often, the adopted children lived with a sense of uncertain identity or even guilt.  Peter Brady’s mother, Kathy, gave birth to him in a mother and baby home in North London in 1963, when she was 15. His biological father was her cousin, a 30-year-old man who later served eight months in prison for rape.  Kathy was allowed to keep Peter for eight weeks in the home and was then told prospective adopters were coming down from Hull in East Yorkshire to ‘see if they liked the look’ of her baby.  ‘That seems particularly cruel, that she didn’t know whether at the end of the day she’d still have me or I’d be gone,’ says Peter. ‘In the end, they did take me and my adoptive mother says, as they left, she heard a girl screaming the house down, shouting that she wanted her baby back. That haunted her for the rest of her life.’

Peter’s childhood in Hull was happy, but he was aware of a ‘whole well of emotion underneath the surface’ connected to his early life. In his 40s he decided to try and find Kathy, and requested access to the file held by the adoption agency.  For the first time he read about the prosecution and conviction of his biological father.  ‘Kathy took the stand in court, but used it to tell the judge that all she wanted was her baby back. It was made very clear in the file that she didn’t want to give me up and that her parents and the authorities at the time forced her into it against her will. She sounded like such a strong character. It made me even more convinced I had to find her.’

It wasn’t easy to track her down by then Kathy had emigrated and was living in a town south of Melbourne, Australia but Peter persevered, and as soon as he phoned and told her who he was, she got on the next flight back to the UK.  ‘Something that stuck with her was that a stern priest once told her that her baby me would never think about her or have any interest in her. But that wasn’t true. I did think about her. I was told I was adopted and I thought about her almost every day. I think it meant a huge amount to her to hear that when we finally met.  For my part, I remember at one point writing a letter to her apologising for all the trouble and pain I’d caused her. Rationally, of course, I know it wasn’t my fault, but I did feel somehow to blame. She told me I had nothing to apologise for and I found that very healing.’

Peter and his wife visited Australia once, in 2017, where he met his half-sister, but Kathy died the following year.  ‘I was told at her funeral that she’d always had a look of sadness in her eyes but that it went away when she found me.  She was angry about it still. She had a deep-seated mistrust of organised religion.’

Indeed, the role of the church in the coercion of girls and young women was often crucial.  Janet Henley was 19 when she took a complete layette in two suitcases to a church-run mother and baby home in Finchley, North London, in 1962. ‘Sundays we could go to church but only sit at the back and we were never allowed to take communion until after we’d given birth because we were considered so bad,’ she says. ‘We had to leave the church before everybody else so we wouldn’t be seen. Every so often, a lady would come and interview us so that they could place our babies with the “correct” parents.  At no stage were we offered an alternative. It was a foregone conclusion, and they implied they were doing us a favour.’

It’s a measure of how deeply and enduringly the women wanted their children back that so many signed up to tracing services as soon they could, though the law on contact was confusing and agency provision patchy until the mid-2000s.  When Catherine and her daughter Susan were reunited in 1989 through the now-defunct adoption database Norcap, they were amazed and delighted to discover how similar they were and how well they got on. But both felt a tremendous sense of loss, too.  ‘Before we met we exchanged photographs through Norcap. I remember getting Susan’s through the post,’ says Catherine, who went on to marry twice and have six more children. ‘She was a beautiful young woman, then in her early 20s. I opened it and it hit me. I felt completely bereaved because suddenly I realised what I’d lost.’

Now Susan is 55, a mother and grandmother herself, who runs a pub/restaurant in Warwickshire.  ‘I had a very happy upbringing with my parents and it was a wonderful opportunity for them to become a family,’ she says of being adopted.

‘I know I’m one of the lucky ones, but I also know that for many it wasn’t such a happy experience. In fact, I was later told I could have been placed with any one of 13 families.  My question would be: who had the right to take my destiny into their hands? I would like the Government to make a formal statement of recognition to all the mothers who had their babies taken away and to all the children who weren’t so lucky in the choices that were made.  Back then there was so much shame, not just for the poor girls who suffered such a great loss, but for many adopted children, too. There was definitely a stigma attached to being an adoptee and none of it was our fault. We can’t turn back the clock but we can all stand tall and say it happened to us.’

Alison and her son now Paul, not Stephen both began to looking for each other and made contact seven years ago.  ‘He’s married to the loveliest woman,’ says Alison. ‘When I went round to their house, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck because I thought they had a picture of me on their mantelpiece. Of course it wasn’t me; it was Paul as a much younger man with long hair. The resemblance was extraordinary.’

They’ve since forged a close relationship. After having Paul, Alison went on to marry and have three more children, who have also embraced their newfound half-brother.  'Meeting him again, I felt at peace for the first time in very many years,’ she says. ‘I can’t explain it really. There was always something there that I couldn’t get over. And then I found him and it went away.  I would like to hear someone apologise, if only to remind people that this happened and not that long ago. In some ways I’m very glad girls nowadays find what we went through incomprehensible. Things have changed, but we mustn’t forget.’

54
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9742099/Pope-meet-Canada-indigenous-amid-demands-apology.html

Pope Francis agrees to meet with survivors of Canada's Catholic-run 'Indian' residential schools after ANOTHER 182 children's bodies are found in an unmarked grave

~  Pope Francis will meet with Indigenous survivors of Canada's residential schools in December, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Tuesday
~  He will visit separately with three groups First Nations, Metis and Inuit
~  The visit was announced after another 182 bodies were found in unmarked graves at a school near Cranbook, British Columbia 
~  Last week, the bodies of 715 more children were recovered from graves outside another Catholic-run institution in the Cowessess First Nation
~  In late May, 215 children were found buried at a residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia
~  The discoveries prompted calls for a papal apology for the Catholic Church's role in the abuse and deaths of thousands of native children

By Wires

Published: 17:17, 30 June 2021 | Updated: 07:01, 1 July 2021

Pope Francis has agreed to meet in December with Indigenous survivors of Canada's notorious residential schools amid calls for a papal apology for the Catholic Church's role in the abuse and deaths of thousands of native children.  The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said Francis had invited the delegations to the Vatican and would meet separately with three groups First Nations, Metis and Inuit during their December 17-20 visit.  The pope will then preside over a final audience with all three groups December 20, the conference said in a statement Tuesday.  It came as officials announced that another 182 bodies had been discovered in unmarked graves at a school near Cranbook, British Columbia following the recovery of more than 900 bodies at two other sites since May.  The Vatican didn't confirm the pope's visit on Wednesday, but the Holy See's in-house news portal reported on the bishops' statement.  The Canadian bishops said the trip was contingent on the pandemic and that the delegations would include survivors of the residential schools, Indigenous elders and youths, as well as Indigenous leaders and Canadian bishops.  In recent weeks, investigators using ground-penetrating radar have reported finding hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of three residential schools for Indigenous children.  In late May, 215 children were found buried at a residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.  Last week, the bodies of 715 more children were recovered from graves outside the former Marieval Indian Residential School another Catholic-run institution in the Cowessess First Nation.  And on Wednesday, the Lower Kootenay Band announced it had found 182 bodies at a site close to the former St Eugene's Mission School, which was operated by the Roman Catholic Church from 1912 until the early 1970s. It said the search found the remains in unmarked graves, some about 3ft deep.  From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. Thousands of children died there of disease and other causes, with many never returned to their families.  Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, with others operated by the Presbyterian, Anglican and the United Church of Canada, which today is the largest Protestant denomination in the country.  The government formally apologized for the policy and abuses in 2008. In addition, the Presbyterian, Anglican and United churches have apologized for their roles in the abuse.  The Canadian bishops didn´t mention the demand for a papal apology in the statement, saying only that Francis was 'deeply committed to hearing directly from Indigenous peoples.'  It said he had personally invited the delegations of Indigenous and would use the meetings for 'expressing his heartfelt closeness, addressing the impact of colonization and the role of the Church in the residential school system, in the hopes of responding to the suffering of Indigenous peoples and the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma.'  A papal apology was one of 94 recommendations from Canada´s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but the Canadian bishops conference said in 2018 that the pope could not personally apologize for the residential schools.  Pope Benedict XVI, who retired in 2013, met with some former students and victims in 2009 and told them of his 'personal anguish' over their suffering. But he offered no apology.  After last month´s discovery of the 215 bodies, Francis too expressed his pain and pressed religious and political authorities to shed light on 'this sad affair.' But he didn´t offer an apology, either.  The Argentine pope, however, has apologized for the sins and crimes committed by the Catholic Church against Indigenous peoples during the colonial era conquest of the Americas. He begged forgiveness during a 2015 visit to Bolivia and in the presence of Indigenous groups, suggesting that a similar in-person mea culpa might be in the offing in December.  The Canadian bishops said they hoped the meetings would 'lead to a shared future of peace and harmony between Indigenous peoples and the Catholic Church in Canada.'

55
https://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/family/nanny-still-looking-after-couples-24341494?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_evening_newsletter2&utm_medium=email

Nanny still looking after couple's surrogate baby 10 months after birth

Kristie Baysinger, a nanny from Texas, took to TikTok to share the heartbreaking story of 10-month-old surrogate baby Alexander in a video that has been viewed almost one million times

By Paige Holland Showbiz Audience Writer

17:14, 17 JUN 2021Updated17:18, 17 JUN 2021

A nanny who was hired to look after a couple's baby has revealed how she ended up raising him for the first 10 months of his life.  Kristie Baysinger, a nanny from Texas, collected baby Alexander from his surrogate in Oklahoma after his parents were unable to fly from the UK to pick him up due to coronavirus restrictions.  But little did she know she'd still be caring for him almost a year down the line.  She shared the heartbreaking story of how rewarding, yet challenging it has been in a TikTok video that has racked up almost one million views.  In the clip, she explained: "My agency called me and said: 'Hey, can you come pick up this new surrogate baby from this surrogate who does not want to take him home?'  So, we went to Oklahoma to pick him up."

However, the process of getting a social security number has been "a struggle," she admitted.  We've been getting no feedback. We've called social security administration and they say we're in the loop just like everybody else is.  We're just doing our best over here and just raising this little boy and just being as sweet as we can until he can return home to his parents."

She went on to say how they're waiting to see whether his parents can get their passports sorted so they can come and pick him up, if not she'll be travelling to Scotland with Alexander and her family to "help with the transition."  "They miss him terribly and want to see him, and they talk to him daily," she said.

"Hopefully his social security gets here soon so that I can apply for his passport and we can get him back home."

In another video, the nanny, who is a mum of three children, said that she treats Alexander like one of her own kids.  She explained: "We give him all the hugs and love and attention and everything that he needs so that he can grow.  We don’t hold back, he’s spoiled, he’s loved, and played with, and sang to. Just like he was my own kid."

Since being posted, the original video has racked up more than 113,000 likes and hundreds of comments from people who were heartbroken by the situation.  One person said: "This is the saddest situation ever. Poor baby when he has to go to strangers who are his actual family by no fault of their own."

Another added: "Poor baby. The trauma he is going to go through once he's away from you. Breaks my heart just thinking about it."

While another wrote: "So sad his parents are missing his first year of life."

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https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/long-lost-family-hidden-siblings-24197478?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_campaign=daily_morning_newsletter2&utm_medium=email

Long Lost Family hidden siblings astounded by unexpected revelation once filming ends

Alice Jones reunited with her half-brother and discovered she had two other siblings but there is another bombshell as we return two years later on Long Lost Family: What Happened Next

ByKyle O'SullivanTV Features Writer

20:00, 27 MAY 2021

Once the cameras stopped filming on Long Lost Family, the surprise bombshells carried on coming for Alice Jones.  The grandmother originally appeared on the ITV show over two years ago, after spending decades desperately searching for her little brother Sam.  But there were unexpected revelations as Alice discovered she had other siblings who were closer than anyone could possibly have imagined.  Alice's birth parents were both Windrush migrants from Jamaica, who left their families at home and had an affair before their spouses arrived in the UK.  They briefly set up home together, but when Alice was 18-months-old their partners came over and the decision was made for her to live with her birth father and his wife.  Alice was raised by her father and "amazing" step mother, but she could never forget about the birth mother she was separated from and always wondered if she was loved.  It was only after her birth mother had been widowed that 12-year-old Alice was invited to visit her.  Their final ever meeting was not a happy one as Alice wanted to be loved but remembered her mother being "cold and stern".  However, Alice did remember meeting her "cuddly" younger half-brother, Sam, who she instantly bonded with but never saw again.  The Long Lost Family team sadly discovered that Alice's birth mother had died, but luckily the records led them to her brother Sam who was still living in south London.  Then he told them something extraordinary, he has two older brothers, Richard and John, who Alice had absolutely no idea about.  Sam explained that he remembered being confused by Alice's visit but his questions "quickly got swept under the carpet" by their stern mother.  Richard didn't want to appear on camera, but John and Sam desperately wanted to meet their half-sister.  In an emotional reunion, Alice told her brothers not to "let her go" as they welcomed her into the family and spoke about their mother together.  It's now been over two years since Alice found her brother and learning about their lives has made her see their mother in a completely new light.  Alice has formed amazing bonds with all her brothers, but is closer to John than anyone could possibly have imagined.  In an amazing coincidence, Alice and John have discovered that they live at different ends of the same street and now see each other almost daily.  "Practically in front of us. I could not believe where he lived. I feel so close," explains Alice.

"I'm so happy he's in my life, the brother I never had."

The siblings formed a bubble during lockdown and now go on a daily walk together.  "It's magic having a sister. We might not have grown up together but we will grow old together," says John.

They may not have shared a childhood but they did have similar experiences, as John admits he didn't know his parents and they were "like strangers" to him.  The fracturing of families was common for the Windrush generation and John didn't join his mother in the UK until he was 13.  "When I heard that John also didn't grow up with our biological mother I felt kind of sad," admits Alice.

"John told me she was a very hard worker, sending money back home to her older children, but she missed out on years of motherly love."

The revelations about her mother's struggles help Alice come to terms with the feelings of rejection she has carried all her life.  Learning about my mother's story, I didn't feel rejected anymore. She was in difficult circumstances. She couldn't have all of her children together," says Alice.

"I am at piece. She did what she had to do, what she thought was right."

Alice's understanding of her mother's experience has inspired her to commemorate her, so they lay a beautiful new headstone at her grave.  I think she missed not having all her children with her, but if you want a better life you have to make sacrifices. That's what she did to get us to where we are now," explains John.

Alice adds: "I hope she's looking down happy that I've found my family."

Over the past decade, Long Lost Family has reunited 418 people with missing relatives.  There have been 98 parents who have found children they thought they would never see again, while 209 siblings have been brought together, often for the first time in their lives.  But meeting is just the beginning, as What Happened Next explores how easy is it to build relationships after a lifetime apart.  Also featured on tonight's show is Anne Clegg, who "never felt completely and utterly loved" and spent most of her adult life searching for her birth mother.  But the team found mother Janet had never forgotten her first born and always longed to reconnect with Anne.  In What Happened Next, Anne reveals the impact their successful mother-daughter relationship has had on her life.  But tragically, two years ago, Janet suffered a massive stroke and now it is Anne’s turn to offer emotional support  The Long Lost Family team also catch up with Sharon Harte and her half-sisters Carole, Terri and Sandra, who found each other nearly three years ago.  We find out how they have supported each other through the best and the worst of times - from tragic bereavements to family celebrations.

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http://theotheredwoman.com/2018/07/06/what-is-adoptive-breastfeeding-and-why-so-many-adoptees-are-against-it/

July 6, 2018 by Cherish Asha Bolton
What is Adoptive Breastfeeding and Why So Many Adoptees are Against It

Visit any mixed adoption group (mixed meaning it includes adoptive parents, first parents, and adoptees), and one topic guarantees a war zone of a thread: adoptive breastfeeding.

WHAT IS ADOPTIVE BREASTFEEDING?

There is a trend among adoptive moms especially in mommy groups to apply the “breast is best” principle to adopted kids even if the woman has never lactated before. This alone leads to a lot of questionable advice since one of the leading ways to induce lactation in a never-been-pregnant woman is medications which can pass through the breast milk to the child. Which, logically, defeats the purpose behind breastfeeding as being the most natural feeding option. (We aren’t even going to get into how the breast vs. formula debate can lead to shaming woman who can’t breastfeed nor how it attempts to claim a lack of intelligence and development in formula-fed people.)

WHY IS THIS SO CONTROVERSIAL IN THE COMMUNITY?

If you’ve experienced the heightened emotions surrounding the breast vs. bottle debate elsewhere, multiply it tenfold for the adoption community. There are a lot of adoptees and first moms who are for it and there are a lot who are against it. Either way, the fact that we can’t come to any modicum of consensus SHOULD give any prospective adoptive parent pause. Many of us in mixed groups hold that adoptive parents should at the very least give reasonable consideration to the experiences of adult adoptees and first parents because 1) the first parents may be voicing concerns their child’s first parent may also have but feel too afraid to voice and 2) adult adoptees represent the way your adopted kid might feel in 10, 20, or 30 years.

I know, I know. You can find plenty of people who agree with you one way or the other, and that makes the opinions you don’t agree with moot, right?

Well, you don’t have a guarantee on how your adoptee will feel someday. Even THEY don’t have a guarantee on how they will feel. Just ask any adoptee who has gone through what some call “the fog” and the massive personality change they had in that transition. (First moms often go through their own “fog” experience.) So, some of us feel the best practice is to consider the views of a variety of adoptees and first families before making decisions, because you don’t know the way your 5-year-old will feel about your choices when they are 35. But you have a plethora of 35-year-olds who can give you a clue.

SO WHY ARE ADOPTEES AGAINST IT?

Before we get started, we need to set a baseline understanding on a common rebuttal:  THE PROBLEM OF ADOPTIVE BREASTFEEDING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GENERAL HISTORY OF BREASTFEEDING. I say this first because all conversations eventually end up back at this first point over and over, and we almost never move past it.

Most (if not all) people who are against adoptive breastfeeding recognize that 1) breastfeeding is natural and 2) breastfeeding kids who aren’t yours (nursemaids) have existed throughout history. No one is disputing that it is normal and historical to offer a lactating breast to a hungry child, biological mother or not. This biological and social history of the breast and babe are not on trial here. This conversation has to do with adoption.

Another rebuttal is that “people have always adopted (and we presume fed them with their breast), so it’s ok; it’s historical!”. But MODERN ADOPTION DOES NOT HAVE A LONG HISTORY. Yes, children who do not have parents for various reasons have been taken in by their local communities since the dawn of man. Prior to modern adoption, communities raised children. They were not separated from their birth families, even in the event of death. More often than not, they were still raised by extended family. From Hinduism to Islam to European bloodlines and more, historically, preserving the child’s tie to their birth family has never been in question. The child is born to their mother and father. Period.However, we have created a situation through our strange concepts of individualism that make such communal connections foreign, that the preference is adoption by strangers.In the last 100 years or so, we have completely changed the way we view the status of children. We now define “orphan” ambiguously: it is NOT a child with no mother or father or extended family willing to take them in, as we generally learned in grade school. “Orphans” for the purpose of adoption can have a living father and/or mother and/or grandparents/aunts/uncles. We now have legalities and contracts that remove a child from one family and make them part of a new one as if they never existed within the first family. These legalities enable states to bar first families from contact, keep adoptees from their own vital information, and enable the complete erasure of an adoptee’s past. (We aren’t even getting into the problems of intercountry adoption, trafficking, and ethics.)

 

    WE HAVE TO PROBLEMATIZE THE OBJECTIFICATION OF BIRTH MOTHERS. Current adoption rhetoric tends to claim that some woman “gave up” her baby, was abusive toward her baby, or was a martyr passing along the gift of motherhood.  Such characterizations makes her into either the saint (for choosing adoption) or the sinner (for being forced to relinquish), both gives her second-class citizen status, and this lesser designation gives the adoptive parent a free pass to do whatever they please.Yes, there are some women out there who gave up their babies for selfish reasons and are quite horrible to their adult children in reunion. We have no dearth of those stories. But spending some time in with birth mothers and in mixed groups, one sees that the vast majority of birth mothers felt pressure to relinquish by family, by society, by agencies, and by the prospective adoptive parents. And…again…we have to remember that a large number of adoptees in the US are intercountry, and intercountry adoption is replete with coercion.Imagine if you were a mother whose baby was taken from you–whether by the state or by your mother or some other way–and learning that the bonding experience that was meant for you is being experienced by someone else. Yes there are some birth mothers who do agree and encourage adoptive breastfeeding. But we can’t take a few examples and build a monolith.

WE HAVE TO RECOGNIZE OUR CULTURE’S RELATIONSHIP WITH BREASTFEEDING AND THEN CONSIDER HOW THIS SOCIAL EDUCATION AFFECTS THE ADOPTIVE EXPERIENCE.Before you read further, take a minute and consider what I’m trying to say, rather than reacting the language being used. This is the part that raises the most hackles in the larger conversation, but it is a necessary part of the conversation. We socially construct unnatural behaviors all the time and then punish people for what they were raised to believe or punish them for pushing against what they were raised to believe. Either way, walk into this next bit understanding that I’m discussing social construction of the breast and awareness of strangers.Our culture sexualizes breasts, implicitly and explicitly. We (Westerners) ALL IMPLICITLY view breasts as secret, personal, and sexual, by nature of the vast majority of messages we get on policing women’s bodies. Regardless of one’s stance, we are conditioned to feel uncomfortable with breasts. We are taught as young children not to come in contact with other people’s private parts. Any contact with the private parts of an adult is dirty and inappropriate, even molestation.

So how can we expect adoptees to be ok with sucking a non-related woman’s nipple at the same time we teach children to avoid non-related nipples? We’ve constructed socially the exact reason why a natural act is unnatural to the adoptee. It doesn’t matter how much one believes in freeing the nipple. Society is going to pound into the child’s head that it’s sexual. And we can’t ignore the repercussions of that.

AN ADOPTEE IS NOT A TABULA RASA, NO MATTER WHAT AGE THEY WERE ADOPTED. Much work has been done on pre-verbal trauma and its connection to infant adoptions. Babies spend nine months with their mothers. They learn the sound of her heartbeat, her voice, the voices of those around her, and the sounds of their neighborhood. They learn the cuisine she prepares. They learned the language she speaks. The prepare for the world they are about to enter. They experience the trauma of birth with their mothers. They (are supposed to) calm down from the trauma of new life with their mothers. They recognize their removal from their mothers. We have so much research on this, it’s sad how disregarded it is.We are happy to talk about the connection between fetus and mother when people keep their babies (just look here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and…you get the picture), but we reject the existence of a fetal-maternal connection in adoption.The baby knows your breast isn’t their mother’s.They were preparing for their mother.

And they are seeking their mother.

It is confusing for a non-verbal being to have a different voice, different heartbeat, and yes, a different breast and milk, than what they were preparing for. Yes, there is evidence of bonding between any baby and any woman who breastfeeds, but our bodies and minds were not made to transfer attachment fully in this artificial way.

BUT WHO ARE YOU AND WHY DO YOU THINK YOU CAN SPEAK FOR ALL ADOPTEES?

You are right. I can’t speak for all adoptees. As I said earlier, you will find PLENTY of adoptees who are for breastfeeding. But you will also find PLENTY of adoptees who are adamantly against it. I’m simply writing this post to lay out some of the common arguments put forward in adoption groups against adoptive breastfeeding, because, sadly, there aren’t enough resources available online that explain these views fully.

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https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9608817/Italys-Eurovision-winner-denies-snorting-cocaine-live-show.html

Italy's Eurovision winners DENY singer was snorting cocaine on camera and offer to take a drugs test after shocked fans spot him making a 'suspicious motion'

    Damiano David denied allegations he was taking cocaine during Eurovision
    The lead singer of winners Maneskin was seen dipping his head to a table
    Maneskin even offered to take drugs tests, insisting they have 'nothing to hide'
    People on social media suggested David was acting suspiciously on screen
    David denied any illegal drug use when questioned after his Eurovision victory

By Darren Boyle for MailOnline

Published: 01:59, 23 May 2021 | Updated: 13:03, 23 May 2021

The lead singer of Eurovision winners Maneskin has denied suggestions he was caught on camera taking drugs and offered to take a drugs test to prove it.  Damiano David was seen on camera during Saturday night's Eurovision song contest bending down towards a table in what was interpreted by observers as a snorting movement.  But Damiano has refuted the idea he was taking cocaine, while a statement from Maneskin saw the band members offer 'to get tested' as they have 'nothing to hide'.  Maneskin took the top prize with Zitti e buoni scoring 524 points, ahead of French entry Voila by Barbara Pravi and Gjon's Tears' song Tout l'Univers which came third.  The Eurovision winners took to Instagram stories to address the video of Damiano, insisting that they have 'never used cocaine' and were 'shocked' by the rumours.  The statement continued: 'We are really shocked about what some people are saying about Damiano doing drugs.  We really are AGAINST drugs and we never used cocaine. We are ready to get tested, cause we have nothing to hide.  We are here to play our music and we are so happy about our Eurovision win and we wanna thank everyone for supporting us.  Rock'n Roll never dies. We love you.'

When asked about the incident during a press conference, Damiano said: 'Thomas (guitarist Thomas Raggi) broke a glass I don't use drugs, please guys, do not say that.  Don't say that really. No cocaine please, do not say that.'

Britain's entry James Newman received zero points from both the European public and professional juries across the continent.  Some 7.4 million people in the UK tuned into BBC One to watch James Newman disappointingly score zero points in the final of the Eurovision Song Contest, giving  the channel a 48.5 per cent share of the audience.  It was a disappointing night for the British hopeful, who was the only contestant to scored zero points from the jury vote and from the public vote, coming bottom on the leaderboard.  While some UK fans blamed Brexit for the poor showing, Australia, who were also part of the competition gave Britain zero points.  Maneskin's win was only Italy's third victory in the immensely popular contest and the first since Toto Cutugno took the honor in 1990.  The music festival was cancelled last year amid the pandemic but this year's event in Rotterdam's Ahoy arena with its regime of testing and strict hygiene protocols was seen as a step toward a post-COVID-19 return to live entertainment.  We think that the whole event was a relief. We think that we were really thankful to have had the chance to be part of this huge event,' Maneskin lead singer Damiano David said.

'This Eurovision means a lot, I think, to the whole of Europe. It's going to be a lighthouse. So thank you, everybody. Really,' he added.

On stage after the band's victory, Maneskin frontman Damiano David shouted into the microphone: 'We just wanted to say to the whole of Europe, to the whole world, rock and roll never dies.'

Italy, the bookmakers' favorite, trailed Switzerland, France and Malta after the national juries delivered their votes but were propelled to victory by votes from the viewing public.  'The audience is the most important thing, of course,' said bassist Victoria De Angelis.

'So the fact that so many people vote for us, it's the most meaningful, because that means that those people are coming to our gigs, they are listening to our music. And this has much more value than a jury'

A crowd of 3,500 fans, who all tested negative for the coronavirus, watched the finalists perform live.  Maneskin is Danish for moonlight, a tribute to De Angelis' home country. The band, which honed its musical style busking in Rome, won with a total of 529 points from second-placed France. Switzerland, which led after national juries had voted, finished third.  United Kingdom singer James Newman's song, 'Embers,' failed to ignite any love at all and did not score a single point, finishing last, just as the U.K. did at the previous Eurovision two years ago.  U.S. rapper Flo Rida didn't manage to translate his star power into points for tiny San Marino's entry that was sung by Senhit. They finished with just 50 points.  For lovers of kitsch, German singer Jendrik played a sparkling ukulele and danced with a woman dressed in a giant hand costume optimistically showing the victory sign. He finished close to last.  Lithuanian band The Roop danced in bright yellow costumes in a tongue-in-cheek homage to 1980s synth pop.  Pravi's song. 'Voila,' was a restrained ballad that built to a swirling crescendo on a largely darkened stage, but there was still plenty of the over-the-top spectacle that has become Eurovision's trademark.  Norwegian singer Andreas Haukeland, whose stage name TIX is a reference to growing up with Tourette syndrome, sang 'Fallen Angel' in a pair of giant white wings while chained to four prancing devils.  At the other end of the spectrum - Finland's hard-rocking Blind Channel played their song 'Dark Side' amid bursts of pyrotechnics and Ukraine's Go-A performed surrounded by skeletal white trees.  Ahead of the show, crowds gathered outside the arena in the Dutch city of Rotterdam. Drag queens mingled with families as a man in a gold suit waited to get into the venue.  Milo Mateo and Carlo Sossa, wearing matching sequin-covered hats and draped in Italian flags, came from Italy for the show and were hoping for a Maneskin victory since that would bring next year's contest to Italy.  'If we win, it will be very, very nice, because the next year will be in Italy. That's very good. Let's hope. Fingers crossed,' Mateo said as he waited to get into the arena.

The popular Icelandic band Dadi og Gagnamagnid, known for its kitsch dance moves and green leisurewear costumes, could not perform live because one member tested positive for the virus earlier in the week. Instead, viewers saw a recording of one of the band's dress rehearsals.  'The point was to go and actually experience how it was to compete in Eurovision, and that's just really not happening,' lead singer Dadi Freyr said from isolation in Rotterdam.

Maneskin lead singer David said the victory was a vindication of the band's career trajectory that started with them busking on the streets of Rome.  'We feel like everything we did since the day we met and since the day we started playing and playing on the streets is really making sense and it's worth it,' he said.

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https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/party-loving-mum-30-banned-24162202?utm_source=mirror_newsletter&utm_campaign=12at12_newsletter2&utm_medium=email

Party-loving mum, 30, banned from drinking after kicking female paramedic in head

Danielle Williams, 30, attacked the female ambulance worker before then turning on a police officer who tried to help her

By Kirstin Tait & Kara O'Neill Reporter

11:37, 22 MAY 2021

A mum who kicked a paramedic in the head has been banned from drinking alcohol for 90 days as part of her punishment.  Danielle Williams, 30, had attacked the female ambulance worker before she then turned on a police officer who tried to help her.  She was charged with two counts of assault and use of threatening words likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress, reports Hull Live.  The party-loving mum, of Redmire Close, in Bransholme, Hull, pleaded guilty at Hull Magistrates' Court on May 14.  Williams was sentenced to a 12-month community order and a 90-day order to abstain from alcohol.  She was also ordered to attend rehab for 10 days and pay £200 in compensation.  Her party lifestyle meant she often shared photos of social media of herself posing with pints of beer and tins of lager.  Alongside the snaps, she also shared her crude life motto with Facebook friends which read: "F*** every c***."

She will now be required to cut out alcohol for 90 days though, putting a stop to her partying in the following weeks.

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https://www.iol.co.za/sunday-tribune/news/dutch-ngo-calls-for-probe-after-kzn-girls-adopted-without-fathers-consent-8e555e4c-b6d5-4824-9c80-03d15ca5a552

Dutch NGO calls for probe after KZN girls adopted without father’s consent

By Siboniso Mngadi Time of article published Sep 27, 2020

Durban - A Netherlands based non-governmental organisation, Against Child Trafficking (ACT), has called for the Dutch government to do a comprehensive review of all adoptions from South Africa and open a criminal investigation.  The children’s right advocacy organisation which opposes inter-country adoption alleged that inter-country adoptions in the Netherlands have been “riddled with scandals”. The organisation was responding to the recent reports by Sunday Tribune where a father of two daughters from Kwangcolosi, near Hillcrest, complained about the adoption of his girls by a Netherlands couple in 2014.  The father believed there were discrepancies in the adoption process as he was not made aware, he now wants the process reviewed and his girls returned home.  The girls, aged six and eight at the time of adoption, lived in Ikhethelo Children’s Village in Kwanyuswa near Bothas Hill, after their mother died.  The Camperdown Children’s Court granted an order for the girls to be adopted by a foreign couple after an investigation by an adoption agency which facilitated the process.  Arun Dohle, director at ACT, said inter-country adoptions in the Netherlands were riddled with scandals, calling the Dutch government to take the case seriously. He said there were several adoption cases from South Africa that had to be reviewed, and others were still before the court.  According to the Netherlands government, there were 16 children adopted from South Africa last year.  Dohle said they had written several requests to Central Adoption Authority and Committee Investigating Inter-country Adoption in the past, in the Netherlands to review all South African cases.  “In 2008, it was already clear that adoptions from South Africa were a mess and there is corruption. Given the current case, we request that all the adoptions from South Africa will be investigated,” he said.

Dohle said although there has been a decline in adoptions over the years, it was sad to learn about parents or relatives complaining about their children being taken from their country.  He said the inter-country adoption had become a demand-driven market.  It is much better to help children and their families where they are.  “Inter-country adoption undermines the setting up of social support systems. Children are not commodities. There was a Parliament advisory committee that was established in 2016 which made a recommendation that inter-country adoption should stop, but it continues.  It has been legal trafficking since the 1970s, and it is really sad to read about it. Kids should be returned to their parents and they need to be compensated,” he said.

Dohle said he was still waiting for the response from the government on their request, which would inform their way forward.  Neither the Netherlands’s Central Adoption Authority nor the investigating committee has responded to the Sunday Tribune questions by the time of publishing.  The matter was also receiving attention from the KwaZulu-Natal Department of Social Development, which has instituted an investigation into the adoption of the two girls.

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