Clear it Up

I found this write up on one of the families adopting through CAFAC.
Dear Friends and Family:
We were hoping not to have to write this, but as we have already had two inquiries, we thought it’d be better to be proactive in this:

On Friday night, the CBC aired a documentary on Ethiopian adoptions, (and also posted an article online) particularly on the adoptions of three families who used CAFAC as their facilitator. The story was not very nice and definitely one-sided, and has given of the perception that there may be fraud in Ethiopian adoptions and that the care of the children in the CAFAC foster home is not great. CAFAC is our facilitator and Mirtalem is in the foster home. David and I want to say that we support our agency and believe that the care of the children, especially Mirtalem, is great. The three families feel they have been misled, are angry, and unfortunately they took their story to the media, rather than through the appropriate channels. In doing so, they have shed a negative light on Ethiopian adoptions and in turn; have shed a negative light on our family. We understand that there can always be improvement within the agencies, and international adoptions as a whole, and we hope those changes, if needed, are made.

A few points we’d like to make:
1) The reporter was on the adoption boards a while ago, and was looking for negative experiences with adoption from Ethiopia; therefore she was looking for a negative angle from the beginning, and chose to ignore the happy stories of so many others. By doing this, we assume she was looking for one thing, ratings, as “bad/negative” stories sell.

2) Birth family history is an unknown, or will be different than originally told in many adoptions. We were told this way back when we started the process, and were told this by our provincial agency as well. These families would have taken the same course, whether by book or by attending, that we did. This is one of the reasons we have chosen to keep Mirtalem’s history to ourselves (and few family members). First and foremost, this is her history, not ours to share and secondly, what we may know now could be different by the time we are in Ethiopia. We feel disappointment that the families chose to share their children’s very personal history on television and now not only do their friends, family, and community know, but complete strangers do as well.

3) We have a hard time believing that there is no paperwork for the one little boy, as all Ethiopian adoptions go through different processes to ensure this does not happen. First are the regional courts, then the Ethiopian federal court, and then our Canadian High Commission. There is no way a child with no paperwork would be allowed into Canada.

4) “Corporal Punishment” was a term used. What a loaded gun this can be. We guess is sounds better than, “the child received a slap on their hand”. We are not saying that we wholly agree with slapping and spanking of the children in the foster home, however, there are major cultural differences between Canada and Ethiopia. The children are disciplined in a different manner than most families in Canada are comfortable with. Remember that although CAFAC is a Canadian Agency, the foster home is staffed and run by Ethiopians. And it wasn’t that many years ago Canadians were still mostly using “Corporal Punishment” on their children.