Damaged Goods?

*edit

Another video here.
Thanks to Arun Dohle and ICASN

I’m still trying to wrap my head around this one, but find it nearly impossible. Either way I look at it, poor Jade is the one who comes up short through no fault of her own. I can’t imagine what it must be like for her to have been abandoned twice. Not only was she abandoned a second time but publicly blamed for it?

Oh but wait, let me back up. In an earlier report, Raymond Poeteray stated,

“I don’t have anything to say to the public. It is something we have to live with. My foreign ministry knows about my situation. I have also been in touch with the Hong Kong government and they have been very helpful to me and so has my own employer.”

Obviously:

“Peter Mollema, a spokesman for the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs in The Hague, said the ministry was giving the Poeterays its full support “at a difficult time”. Mollema told the Guardian: “This is something which is a private matter and belongs within the family”

So what they’re both saying is yeah, they don’t owe an explanation to the public for leaving this little girl in limbo. Abandonment is “all in the family” since “As far as we know they have behaved within the boundaries of the law and have done nothing wrong.”

Am I getting this right so far? For one thing, we know that “legal” doesn’t always walk hand-in-hand with ethical. It may be legal for one to adopt a child, raise that child for a few years then change one’s mind, but is that ethical? Secondly, “legal” by who’s standards? Still, it seemed they felt justified in “surrendering” little Jade to the Hong Kong system without any need for further explanation.

But ooops…

A spokesman for the South Korean consulate in Hong Kong said the couple had found it difficult to raise the little girl because of “culture shock”.

“[The Poeterays] now have their own children,” the spokesman said. “They decided it was difficult to raise [Jade] because of cultural shock. They said she’s not willing to eat their food. That’s one of the reasons. It’s a strange reason. She was raised from a very early age. It’s a very uncommon case. It’s a difficult situation for us to understand.”

WTF? A culture clash?! From a girl who was adopted at four months? She wouldn’t eat their food?! What? Did she have a genetic memory of Bulgogi and Kimchi? Later on, I guess someone changed their mind because slowly “explanations” did start to appear.

News reports in the South China Morning Post said that after their Korean-born daughter developed behavioural problems, the couple decided to give her up in 2006.

Jade was adopted in 2000, when she was four months old. Later the Poeterays had two children of their own. The girl has been placed in foster care with a non-Chinese family in Hong Kong. In their declaration, the Poeterays rejected the allegations, and said their eight-year-old daughter Jade was suffering from what they called “commitment anxiety”.

They wrote that “contrary to what has been written in the media, we do not want to get rid of our daughter. We never even considered giving her up.”

and this:

Illustrated by a photograph of the couple in evening dress, the paper says Raymond and Meta Poeteray were told to make a statement by the foreign affairs ministry.

In this statement, they tell the paper that they have not formally given up daughter Jade, as reported in the press, and continue to take full responsibility for the girl.

As soon as she joined the family as a baby, it was ‘very hard to make contact with her’, the consul writes. And in 2004, she was diagnosed as having an extreme fear of forming relationships.

Intensive family therapy failed to work and the rest of the family began to suffer, the consul says.

In 2006, specialists in Hong Kong said that it was in Jade’s best interests if she was removed from the family. ‘That was an extremely painful moment for us, but we did not have another choice,’ Poeteray writes.

and this:

Jade, a seven-year-old of South Korean origin, is the focus of an escalating dispute across two continents. At the age of four months she was adopted by a Dutch consular officer based in Hong Kong, Raymond Poeteray, and his wife Meta. But the couple have now surrendered Jade to the Hong Kong social welfare department for readoption, reportedly because the child could not adapt to Dutch culture.

The revelation has sparked protests amid claims that the couple were treating the child as if she were an unwanted present. She had been discarded like “a piece of household rubbish”, said the Dutch daily De Telegraaf.

Mr and Mrs Poeteray, back in the Netherlands yesterday, defended their actions, claiming that they had acted on medical advice.

and finally this:

The senior Dutch diplomat who gave up his adopted Korean child says she was suffering from a severe fear of bonding when the family handed her over to the Social Welfare Department last year.

The statement came as a woman who babysat for the family in Indonesia in 2001-02 said the girl, now 8, was treated differently to the couple’s natural offspring.

Social welfare lawmaker Fernando Cheung Chiu-hung said he had been told by the Social Welfare Department that the girl’s condition had improved remarkably since she left the Poeteray family. She was now happy and healthy with no mental problems. Mr Cheung, who will meet the girl, said she would remain in Hong Kong.

Raymond Poeteray and his wife, Meta, said in the statement last night that the girl’s condition became so serious in the middle of last year that, on the advice of medical specialists and staff from adoption agency Mother’s Choice and the Social Welfare Department, a decision was made to place her in temporary care.

“After our daughter became part of our family, it proved very difficult to get through to her,” they said.

“In Jakarta, where we were transferred in 2000, it was not possible to identify the cause of the problem. Only after we moved from Jakarta to Hong Kong did medical specialists make the diagnosis that our daughter suffers from fear of bonding in a severe form. We tried to cure her through intensive family therapy, but to our great disappointment she did not get better. On the contrary, the situation got worse and the family began to suffer greatly from it.”

The statement also confirmed the family has since not had any contact with her. “That was a terribly painful and sad moment for us, but we saw no other option.”

Phew! That’s a lot of explaining for someone who doesn’t feel the need to explain. I suppose I can’t blame them considering the amount of criticism the Poeterays received from individuals and organizations like G.O.A.’L (pdf press release)

Still what about the Poeterays failure to get Jade naturalized? Hmm..well:

The Poeterays never applied for Dutch citizenship for Jade, but claim that this was an administrative oversight.

An oversight? Come on! I think we can do a little better than that!

The couple said they had followed Korean law for the adoption.

“The reason [she] does not have a Dutch nationality is simply a result of the fact that all her medical problems have prevented us from completing the naturalisation process. We hope this explanation will evoke some sympathy for our situation.”

Sorry but sympathy for them just isn’t what I’m feeling right now. My thoughts remain with “Jade.” She’s the one who lost everything…twice. And why? Because she was damaged goods and “the family began to suffer greatly from it.” But I thought Jade was “family.”

And see, this is one of the many reasons why this story rubs me in all the wrong ways. If Jade had been one of the birth children, would they have left her in Hong Kong? She was the expendable one, sacrificed for the “the good” of the family of which she is no longer a part.

When all goes well, it’s within the power of the adoptive parents to confidently declare, “We are their real parents.” It’s also within their power to take that away. As an adoptee, Jade’s story drives home that truth. I’m not saying it’s the same for everyone. It’s just one of the many “painful truths” I’m reminded of every time I hear stories like Jade’s.

That’s all aside from reports suggesting that “the damage” might have been done to Jade by the Poeterays. The more I read about this, the stinkier it gets. I don’t think these people should have ever been allowed to adopt Jade.

A nanny who cared for an adopted Korean girl given up by a senior Dutch diplomat and his family claims the girl was not treated like a normal daughter, a news report said Friday.

She was rarely in her mother’s arms and always in the care of someone else, according to a former Indonesian maid quoted in South China Morning Post Friday.

The woman, who has requested not to be named, worked for the Dutch vice-consul Raymond Poeteray and his wife Meta in Hong Kong and when the family was based in Jakarta in 2002.

She said she thought it strange that the girl, now eight, was so quiet.

‘They did not treat her the same way as the son. There was not the love there,’ the maid told The Post.

The statement by a representative for the Korean Residents Association in Hong Kong stands out most for me:

“It is an unfair situation, many Koreans want her to find a new family,” said a representative for the Korean Residents Association in Hong Kong. Hong Kong’s Social Welfare Department said foster parents were now caring for the girl, but declined further comment. “She is Korean and her situation after seven years of adoption is that she is hurting,” the South Korean consular official said.

One of the few bright spots that came from this tragedy is the amount of criticism and outrage that reverberated throughout the adoption community, especially from adoptees and adoptee organizations. It was a loud statement saying, “No Mr. Poeteray, you do owe an explanation because Jade and others like her are no longer invisible and we are watching.”

More here.