This article is about selling mainly for non-exploitative adoption. For selling for exploitation, see trafficking of children. For sale as part of ongoing slavery, see child slavery.
For the illegal acquisition of children by purchase or otherwise, see child laundering.
Child-selling is the practice of selling children, usually by parents, legal guardians, or subsequent masters or custodians. After a sale, when the subsequent relationship with the child is essentially non-exploitative, the usual purpose of child-selling is to permit adoption.
A legal guardian is a person who has the legal authority to care for the personal and property interests of another person, called a ward. Guardians are typically used in three situations: guardianship for an incapacitated senior, guardianship for a minor, and guardianship for developmentally disabled adults.
Georgia Tann, of Memphis, Tennessee,[1] was employed by the Tennessee Children's Home Society.[2] According to reporter Barbara Bisantz Raymond, Tann, in 1924–1950,[3] stole many children[4] and sold 5,000 children,[5] most or all of them white.[6] The children were adopted by families[7] in exchange for substantial fees[8] (ostensibly for transport[7] and hotel[9] but Tann charged multiple times for a single trip[9] and collected the money personally rather than through the Tennessee Children's Home Society)[7] and processed the adoptions without investigating adoptive parents[10] except for their wealth.[11] Amounts charged for adoptions ranged from $700[12] to $10,000[13] when "reputable agencies ... [charged] almost nothing".[13] Tann, in a 1944 speech accusing others of unlicensed adoption placements, did not admit selling children herself.[14]
Beulah George "Georgia" Tann was an American child trafficker who operated the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency in Memphis, Tennessee. Tann used the unlicensed home as a front for her black market baby adoption scheme from the 1920s until a state investigation into numerous instances of adoption fraud being perpetrated by her closed the institution in 1950. Tann died of cancer before the investigation made its findings public.
Memphis is a city located along the Mississippi River in southwestern Shelby County, Tennessee, United States. The 2017 city population was 652,236, making Memphis the largest city on the Mississippi River, second-largest city in Tennessee, as well as the 25th largest city in the United States. Greater Memphis is the 42nd largest metropolitan area in the United States, with a population of 1,348,260 in 2017. The city is the anchor of West Tennessee and the greater Mid-South region, which includes portions of neighboring Arkansas and Mississippi. Memphis is the seat of Shelby County, the most populous county in Tennessee. As one of the most historic and cultural cities of the southern United States, the city features a wide variety of landscapes and distinct neighborhoods.
Tennessee Children's Home Society was an orphanage that operated in the state of Tennessee during the first half of the twentieth century. It is most often associated with its Memphis branch operator, Georgia Tann, as an organization involved in the kidnapping of children and their illegal adoptions. Tann died in 1950 before the state of Tennessee could release its findings on her activities. A story reported by 60 Minutes in 1991 renewed interest in Tann's black market adoptions in collaboration with Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Camille Kelley.
According to Raymond, Tann made adoption socially acceptable.[15] Previously, when the first U.S. state adoption law was passed in 1851, adoption was "not immediately popular".[16] Early in the 20th century, adoption was "rare".[17] Low-income birth parents from whom children were taken were generally considered genetically inferior, and the children, considered adoptable, were considered therefore genetically tainted.[18] Before Tann's work, indenture was applied to some children with the duties to educate the children and to provide them with land scarcely enforced,[19] and the Orphan Train Project gathered children and transported them for resettlement under farmers needing labor, using a procedure akin to a slave auction.[20] Some children's custody was changed "through secretive means"[21] between sets of parents, some willing and some unaware.[22] Baby farms, where many children were murdered,[23] sold children for up to $100 each.[24] Tann, apparently disagreeing with the prevailing view,[25] argued (against her own belief)[25] that children were "blank slates",[26] thus free of the sin and genetic defects attributable to their parents,[25] thus making adoption appealing,[15] thus providing a way for children who might otherwise have been dead[27] to survive and receive care, her waiting lists including much of the U.S., Canada, and South America.[27] One person adopted through the Tennessee Children's Home Society was wrestler Ric Flair.[28]
An indenture is a legal contract that reflects or covers a debt or purchase obligation. It specifically refers to two types of practices: in historical usage, an indentured servant status, and in modern usage, it is an instrument used for commercial debt or real estate transaction.
The Orphan Train Movement was a supervised welfare program that transported orphaned and homeless children from crowded Eastern cities of the United States to foster homes located largely in rural areas of the Midwest. The orphan trains operated between 1854 and 1929, relocating about 200,000 orphaned, abandoned, abused, or homeless children.
The United States of America (USA), commonly known as the United States or America, is a country comprising 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, and various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is slightly smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U.S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D.C., and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico. The State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U.S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The extremely diverse geography, climate, and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Augusta, officially Augusta–Richmond County, is a consolidated city-county on the central eastern border of the U.S. state of Georgia. The city lies across the Savannah River from South Carolina at the head of its navigable portion. Georgia's second-largest city after Atlanta, Augusta is located in the Piedmont section of the state.
Wichita is the largest city in the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Sedgwick County. As of 2017, the estimated population of the city was 390,591. Wichita is the principal city of the Wichita metropolitan area which had an estimated population of 644,610 in 2015.
Midwifery is the health science and health profession that deals with pregnancy, childbirth, and the postpartum period, in addition to the sexual and reproductive health of women throughout their lives. In many countries, midwifery is a medical profession. A professional in midwifery is known as a midwife.
In 1955–1956, passage of U.S. Federal legislation to ban baby-selling failed.[31]
Philosophical background
The libertarian US economist Murray Rothbard (1926-1995) wrote in his book 'Ethics of Liberty', that parents should have the right to put a child out for adoption or sell the rights to the child in a voluntary contract. Rothbard suggested selling children as consumer goods in accordance with market forces, would benefit "everyone" involved in the market: "the natural parents, the children, and the foster parents.[32] In Rothbard's view, "the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights." Thus, parents should have the legal right to let any infant die by starvation. However, since "the purely free society will have a flourishing free market in children" he wrote, "the existence of a free baby market will bring such 'neglect' down to a minimum".[32]
Murray Newton Rothbard was an American heterodox economist of the Austrian School, historian, and a political theorist whose writings and personal influence played a seminal role in the development of modern right-libertarianism. Rothbard was the founder and leading theoretician of anarcho-capitalism, a staunch advocate of historical revisionism and a central figure in the 20th-century American libertarian movement. He wrote over twenty books on political theory, revisionist history, economics and other subjects. Rothbard asserted that all services provided by the "monopoly system of the corporate state" could be provided more efficiently by the private sector and wrote that the state is "the organization of robbery systematized and writ large". He called fractional-reserve banking a form of fraud and opposed central banking. He categorically opposed all military, political and economic interventionism in the affairs of other nations. According to his protégé Hans-Hermann Hoppe, "[t]here would be no anarcho-capitalist movement to speak of without Rothbard".
Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting of another, usually a child, from that person's biological or legal parent or parents. Legal adoptions permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities, along with filiation, from the biological parent or parents.
In economics, a free market is a system in which the prices for goods and services are determined by the open market and by consumers. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities. Proponents of the concept of free market contrast it with a regulated market in which a government intervenes in supply and demand through various methods, such as tariffs, used to restrict trade and to protect the local economy. In an idealized free-market economy, prices for goods and services are set freely by the forces of supply and demand and are allowed to reach their point of equilibrium without intervention by government policy.
Cambodian children to the U.S.
In 1997–2001, Lauryn Galindo "made $8 million by arranging eight hundred adoptions of Cambodian children by unwitting Americans", one being Angelina Jolie.[33] For Galindo, baby buyers, often taxi drivers and orphanage managers, offered low-income mothers (chosen by baby recruiters) money or rice for children, whom Galindo claimed were orphans and for whom adopting families paid around $11,000 in fees.[34] Galindo, saying she intended "to save children from desperate circumstances" and that she felt she acted "with the highest integrity", was convicted in the U.S. and sentenced to a year and a half in prison.[34]
United Kingdom
Lawrence Stone reported some attempted sales of children accompanying wives sold by husbands to new husbands, one in 1815 and another discussed in 1763.[35] (Wife sale in England was illegal but believed to be lawful and widely practiced in southern England and the Midlands.)[36]
Historian E. P. Thompson reported a sale of two children with a sale of a wife to an American in 1865 for £25 per child (the wife being sold for another £100).[37] In atypical cases, a wife and four children were sold for a shilling each, apparently to preclude an expulsion to be forced by poor law officials,[38] and a wife and child, born after she started living with her lover but before the sale, were sold.[39] In another case, a wife and baby about a year old were sold at an auction,[40] where the selling husband said, "[c]ome on wi' yer bids, and if yer gies me a good price fer the ooman, I'll gie yer the young kid inter the bargain.... I'll tell thee wot, Jack ... if thee't mak it up three gallons o' drink, her's thine, I'll ax thee naught fer the babby, an' the halter's worth a quart. Come, say shillins!"[41] In various cases, when wife sales split families, it appears that the youngest children go with mothers and older children go with fathers.[42]
Procedures for selling children were often like those for selling wives when they relied on the contractual method, even if the contract was not legally enforceable.[43]
Ireland
In 964, there was "'a great and insufferable famine' in which men sold their sons and daughters into slavery in return for food.... The practice of selling children is referred to in 1116 and... they were usually sold into areas remote from their homes."[44]
Legal adoption was introduced to Ireland by the passage of the Adoption Act in 1952, which took effect from 1 January, 1953. Prior to and after the enactment of this law, children were regularly trafficked for the purposes of adoption, usually to the United States, by religious orders who ran adoption agencies and mother and baby homes. Journalist and author Mike Milotte estimates that as many as 4,000 illegal adoptions took place.[45][46][47]
According to Frank Dikötter, in 1953 or 1954, when there was starvation, "across the country people sold their children"[48] and a 1950 report by the Chinese Communist Party on Shanghai "deplored... the sale of children due to joblessness"[49] and, Dikötter continued, sale of children by "many" of the unemployed also occurred in south China,[49] near Changchun "some families sold their children",[50] in 1953 during a famine in some provinces "desperate parents even bartered their children",[51] and one price in 1950–'53 in Nanhe County was "a handful of grain",[52] another price in 1953 or 1954 having been 50 yuan, enough for the father (the seller) to buy rice to last through a famine.[53]
According to a 2006 report, low-income families and unwed mothers sell babies, often girls, in the underground market in China, and the sales are to parents who want servants, more children, or future brides for sons.[54] "Relatively few Chinese brokers are caught and prosecuted."[55]
According to a 2007 English newspaper report,[56] in China, 190 children were snatched every day, but the Chinese government did not acknowledge the extent of the problem or the cause of the problem.
According to a 2013 English-language Chinese newspaper report,[57] Chen Shiqu, director of the Chinese Ministry of Public Security's human trafficking task force, said that since a DNA database started in April 2009 it has matched 2,348 children with their biological parents. Zhang Baoyan, founder of the 'Baby Back Home' non-government organisation, said the database is the most effective way to reunite families. Baby Back Home receives an average of 50 inquiries a day from abducted children and their parents; Baby Back Home gives blood samples to the ministry for DNA testing. However Zhang Baoyan, founder of Baby Back Home, said that "there are still some parents of missing children who have no idea about the DNA database".
A 2013 English news magazine report[58] describes Xiao Chaohua, a campaigning parent of an abducted child, as believing that the authorities could be doing a lot more. Mr Xiao says that buyers of abducted children still often get away without punishment — they usually live in villages and sometimes enjoy protection from local officials. He says orphanages sometimes fail to take DNA from children they receive.
Malaysia
In 2005 in Malaysia, baby-selling rings were believed by some to be "thriving," although this activity was still considered criminal.[59] A 2016 report by Al Jazeera exposed that baby selling have ongoing in Malaysia for a long time with the babies brought in from countries like Thailand and Cambodia. Some babies will be bought by couples desperate to start a family while those unfortunate babies are sold to traffickers and forced to become sex slaves or beggars.[60] Prostitution rings also offer babies from their foreign sex workers who get pregnant with some of the sex workers even willingly to contact any couples by themselves to offer their babies as Malaysian laws does not allow migrant workers to bear children in the country.[61]
Other cultures and worldwide
In Greece, "babies of ... young women are sometimes sold to adoptive parents before their mothers even leave the hospital."[62] In 2007, brokering was being investigated by Interpol in Greece.[63]
Worldwide, in recent years, according to reporter Barbara Bisantz Raymond, brokers steal and sell children.[64] In France, Italy, and Portugal, in 2007, brokering was being investigated by Interpol.[63]
International law
The Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption is a treaty which bans the buying and selling of children and attempts to impose controls and regulation on inter-country adoption, which gives rise to the practice.[65]
In Pete's Dragon, a Disney movie released in 1977, Pete, the title character, was found to have been sold to the Gogans; an uneducated family; who used him as cheap labor until he ran away.
In Oliver Twist, Mr. Bumble sold Oliver to an undertaker.
Child abandonment is the practice of relinquishing interests and claims over one's offspring in an extralegal way with the intent of never again resuming or reasserting guardianship over them. Typically the phrase is used to describe the physical abandoning of a child, but it can also include severe cases of neglect and emotional abandonment, such as in the case of a parent who fails to offer financial and emotional support for his or her child over a long period of time. An abandoned child is referred to as a foundling. Baby dumping refers to parents leaving a child younger than 12 months in a public or private place with the intent of terminating their care for the child. It is also known as rehoming, in cases where adoptive parents use illegal means, such as the internet, to find a new home for their child. In most cases, child abandonment is classified under a subsection of child abuse statutes and is punishable with a felony. Following felonious charges, one or both guardians give up their parental rights over the child thus severing their relationship with the child. Some states allow for a reinstatement of parental rights, in which case the parent or parents can have a relationship with the child again. However, it is unlikely that the parents can ever regain custody. The perpetrator can additionally be charged with reckless abandonment if the victim dies as a result of his or her actions or neglect.
Historically, an orphanage was a residential institution, or group home, devoted to the care of orphans and other children who were separated from their biological families. Examples of what would cause a child to be placed in orphanages are when the biological parents were deceased, the biological family was abusive to the child, there was substance abuse or mental illness in the biological home that was detrimental to the child, or the parents had to leave to work elsewhere and were unable or unwilling to take the child. The role of legal responsibility for the support of children whose parent(s) have died or are otherwise unable to provide care differs internationally.
Herbert Henry Lehman was a Democratic Party politician from New York. He served from 1933 until 1942 as the 45th Governor of New York and represented New York State in the US Senate from 1949 until 1957.
International adoption is a type of adoption in which an individual or couple becomes the legal and permanent parent(s) of a child who is a national of a different country. In general, prospective adoptive parents must meet the legal adoption requirements of their country of residence and those of the country whose nationality the child holds.
Trafficking of children is a form of human trafficking and is defined as the "recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, and/or receipt" of a child for the purpose of slavery, forced labor and exploitation. This definition is substantially wider than the same document's definition of "trafficking in persons". Children may also be trafficked for the purpose of adoption.
In the United States, adoption is permanently placing a minor with a parent or parents other than the birth parents.
To Be the Man is an autobiographical book written by professional wrestler Ric Flair and Keith Elliot Greenberg, and edited by Mark Madden. It was published by WWE Books and distributed by Simon & Schuster in July 2004. The book's title was taken from Flair's famous catchphrase: "To be the man, you gotta beat the man!"
Child laundering is a scheme whereby intercountry adoptions are effected by illegal and fraudulent means. It may involve the trafficking of children, the acquisition of children through monetary arrangements, deceit and/or force. The children may then be held in sham orphanages while formal international adoption processes are used to send the children to adoptive parents in another country.
The Hague Convention on Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption is an international convention dealing with international adoption, child laundering, and child trafficking in an effort to protect those involved from the corruption, abuses, and exploitation which sometimes accompanies international adoption. The Convention has been considered crucial because it provides a formal international and intergovernmental recognition of intercountry adoption to ensure that adoptions under the Convention will generally be recognized and given effect in other party countries.
Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.
Child harvesting refers to the systematic sale of human children, typically for adoption by families in the developed world, but sometimes for other purposes, including trafficking. The term covers a wide variety of situations and degrees of economic, social, and physical coercion. Child harvesting programs or the locations at which they take place are sometimes referred to as baby factories or baby farms.
Adoption fraud also known as illegal adoption can be defined as when a person or institute attempts to either illegally adopt a child or illegally give up a child for adoption. Common ways in which this can be done include dishonesty and bribes.
Camille McGee Kelley was an American juvenile court judge and author. She was investigated by the state of Tennessee for using her judgeship to aid Georgia Tann's ongoing adoption fraud operation conducted under the auspices of the Tennessee Children's Home Society and resigned shortly after this information became public.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to adoption:
Kidnapping in China has its history since the ancient times. Such issues have been heavily studied and discussed by investigators and researchers.
↑ Raymond (2007), p.6 (according to Governor Gordon Browning, Tann was "employed by the Tennessee Children's Home Society") and see p. 1 ("[h]er orphanage or Home, the local branch of the Tennessee Children's Home Society").
Menefee, Samuel Pyeatt (1981). Wives for Sale: an Ethnographic Study of British Popular Divorce. New York, NY: St. Martin's Press. ISBN0-312-88629-2.
Raymond, arbara Bisantz (2007). The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption. New York, NY: Union Square Press. ISBN978-1-4027-5863-8.
Stone, Lawrence (2002) [1990]. Road to Divorce: England 1530–1987. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN0-19-822651-9.
Thompson, Edward Palmer (1993). Customs in Common. New York, NY: New Press. ISBN1-56584-074-7.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
