Lies, Deceit and Thoughtless Accusations

Quote from Molly Holt:

“We wanted to place the children only in Christian families but there were not enough Christians to adopt. But we pray for each child to meet our Lord.”
(Taken from the exellent book “The search for Mother Missing” by Janine Vance)

Wow! Are the Holt agency, who send thousands of thousands of children out of Korea each year, God’s Messengers and Saviours for those poor children?

It’s really hilarious that the Holt organization couldn’t find more Christian families. Just when did they run out? Was it before 1970, when I got shipped away? And how could they play God and still send us out? Every year tremendous sums of money, millions of dollars, end up in their pockets. Thanks to their business skills in this game of trading with souls, today they have several agencies around the world that make even more money. How many more lies will they be allowed to tell, and how many more lives will they be allowed to destroy?

They have shown precious little concern for the children once they had been sent away. Instead, they only saw how much more they could earn, a deceitful and corrupt agency very much alive today. They even takes fees (presently US$400) from adoptees who want access to their own journals, their truth. Well, the truth in the journals are, sadly, mostly rather negotiable.

My adoptive parents received a letter of appreciation which dates back to November 15th, 1974. Here is what it says:

The valuable supports you have provided through Holt children Service with your humanitarian Love and devotion toward the improvement of the welfare of the underprivileged children has been of a great help to the growth of the children as well as to the promotion of the friendly ties existing between our two countries. In recognition of and appreciation for your contribution toward the development of child welfare programs in Korea as well as to the peace of mankind. I take great pleasure in awarding this letter of Appreciation.

Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, Republic of Korea.

This smells of politics and commerce to me, and lots and lots of money! Its makes me sick. Just think about it. There are more than 200,000 adopted Koreans now spread out over the hole world. When they ran out of Christians they just took everyone who wanted to adopt, so they become like Mammon in the Bible.

“There are millions of reasons, and all in dollars!”
(Edgar the butler, from Disney’s “Aristocats”)

When my adoptive parents received this letter they tore it in half in anger, because they were not satisfied with the girl they had received and paid for. A while later they put it back together with tape, and it is an ugly reminder from my very abusive childhood. It makes me puke when I see this letter, and I wonder if all adoptive parents got this back in the 1970s.

In the book “The Search for Mother Missing”, Janine Vance writes of an episode at an adoption forum where one adoptee told her story, and an adoptive mother responded by lashing out with the words “You know what? Too fucking bad”, in a room full of adoptees and natural parents. How can adoptive parents be so damn insensitive?

I could be the one standing on that stage one day, telling my story, and if I had received a comment like that then I would have exploded.

You adoptive parents do not own us! You did not write the first pages of our lives, they were already written. Get that into your heads! And please think before throwing out crap like that. Have you ever been in our shoes? My shoes? I lost everything that I had! My mother and my father, and my sisters, all other relatives, my home, everything that was dear and safe to me. Even the memory of my Umma and Appa, my mother and father, are gone! It was all taken away from me, and I knew nothing of my life until I had grown up, things that it should have been my birthright to know from the start! All those things that you who are not adopted take for granted! Can you imagine what it would be like to lose all that, every scrap of what your identity really is, and have it replaced with lies?

The biggest lie of them all is that Holt ships out children as orphans, even when many of them are not! I was not an orphan. I was not even supposed to be adopted. I had a father, who came back for me, but by then it was too late, I had already been sent away, and he never knew where to. He spent the rest of his life searching for me in Korea. I was put up for international adoption by the children’s home as an orphan, a child with no parents. And there are many more like me.

And even the ones who are orphans could still have grown up with relatives, be raised by uncles and aunts, or other family members, with their identities and histories intact. If Korean society would only change and grow out of their old ways where orphans are at the bottom rung of the social ladder.

I want one thing: The truth, and nothing but the truth.

~ Khara

I also recommend the excellent, warm-hearted book “The Search for Mother Missing” by Janine Vance, which I have just finished reading, and will probably read again and again. It’s available through The Vance Twins website.