Sunday, March 10, 2013

Mercy Mercy: video, links, thoughts

A lot of people are talking about the documentary Mercy, Mercy, so I thought I'd post it here, along with some relevant links and a few thoughts.

Background on the movie: 
http://mercymercy.dk/readMore_gb.html

The movie:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTirNtngWTE or watch below:

 Some thoughts:

The adoptive parents come across as batsh*t crazy in some scenes, especially the dinner scene, but the less than one hour they are on the screen cannot possibly tell us what happened over the course of four years. I'm sure the real situation is much more complicated. The movie didn't show us any particularly challenging behaviors from Masho, but I assume there were some. This is in no way to blame a child for an adoption gone wrong; I'm just saying the family probably had a much harder time than we saw on camera.

The adoption professionals in Ethiopia were deceitful. They allowed the family of origin to believe one thing and the adoptive family to believe the opposite. They made the biological family think the two families would be connected. They didn't educate the adoptive parents about the biological family's expectations. They sat and talked with the adoptive parents about not letting the biological parents come to the airport, while the biological parents were sitting right there. Later they acted like it was the biological parents' fault for not receiving any reports of their children for four years.

The adoption professionals in Denmark were clueless. The first one completely disregarded Masho's biological family and said that she had probably never experienced a close relationship. The second one advised her adoptive parents to act indifferent toward a suffering child. I can give Henriette and Gert the benefit of the doubt, but I have a harder time with people whose job it is to know better.

The adoptive parents never had any intention of maintaining contact (see interview below). Based on what Sinkanesh and Hussein said at the beginning of the movie, this information would have been a deal breaker for them (and everyone lied about this, the adoption agency and Henriette and Gert, who said, "we have to keep in touch"). Why the hell did they not want to maintain contact? Did they think they would just erase Masho's memories? Did they think Sinkanesh and Hussein did not love their children as parents do? I know staying connected can't be required, there's no way to enforce it, but hours and hours of education on why you should stay connected can be required. Even if adoptive parents are as thoughtless as these two appear to be, adoption professionals should drill into them to the non-optionality of maintaining contact.

Interview with the filmmaker:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0212tRZ-pg or watch here:
 
I appreciate what a delicate position she was in between the two families. Still, the "I couldn't intervene because I had no one to go to" argument is weak. She had information that Sinkanesh and Hussein desperately wanted and information that Henriette and Gert desperately needed to hear, and she didn't share it.

Follow up video:
Video is in Danish but there is some English toward the end. The attorney says, "The child has a right to maintain her relationship with the family of origin." She is correct, this is stated in Article 183 of the Ethiopian Family Code. But again, how to enforce internationally?

Danish adoptions stopped from Enat Alem: 

14 comments:

  1. I'm glad you wrote about this, because my knee jerk reaction was 100% judgmental. Masho reminds me so much of my own daughter's grief. Your perspective is a bit more balanced than mine, I think.

    I, too, was dismayed by the adoptive parents' unwillingness to maintain contact, but I don't think it's something that a lot of agencies encourage, and so any of the adoption professionals working on their behalf would leave that part out or even discourage it outright. In fact, I know of more agencies who discourage it than encourage it, or at least limit it to letters that go through the agency and are screened. I think many agencies are afraid of what will happen when the two families are in touch.

    The whole thing is shameful, really, with so much deceit involved.

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    1. I was under the impression that most agencies working in Ethiopia encouraged contact, but through the agency. What reason is given by those agencies that discourage all contact (I assume a hidden reason is the fear that lies will be discovered, but what is the reason given to the adoptive parents)?

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    2. Contact was discouraged in order that families wouldn't be tempted to break the rules set out by the embassy, such as giving things of value to the family, including financial support. That's the line I was told, anyway, and I've spoken to others who used other agencies that told them the same thing. This was from the US side, and I didn't ask the Ethiopian staff; we knew we would establish independent contact eventually. We did it far sooner than we thought we would, though, after the orphanage Z was relinquished to closed, and no one could give us an answer of how to find her family when we visited; the one thing we'd been promised was that the agency and orphanage could together notify her family if we were in Ethiopia and arrange a meeting.

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    3. That's right, thanks for refreshing my memory. I now remember that we were given the same reason for why contact had to be through the agency and not done independently.

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  2. Wow...I have so much to say on this. I should probably write my own post, but I'll just hijack your's instead.

    Batsh*t is a good way to describe that dinner scene. I didn't really understand it. They seem wholly unprepared to parent a child with issues. I'm sure you are right, that there must have been worse behaviors that we didn't see. But, frankly, based on what I saw and what she told us about, Masho was a walk in the park. I will admit that I found Masho's lack of concern when they told her she was moving on was very eerie. But, I wish that the parents had had an attachment specialist that could have worked with them from the beginning. Whatever books they read were obviously the wrong ones.

    As for the filmmaker, she is the reason I decided not to become a journalist. I was a journalism major in college, and realized during my senior year that I couldn't stand by and film the burning building without running in to save the people inside.

    As for communication post-adoption, I think you are the only one doing a good job of this. I sent a six-month-home photo album, but I don't know that it ever reached our kids' birth family. In the letter (which I had translated into Amharic here), I included our contact information. I am suspicious about whether the package ever reached its destination because of that. And, don't get me started about the new service where I can pay $100 to get delivery confirmation. What a crock. It has made me think less of our agency, and I'm realizing that it really is all about the money. So sad...

    I just mailed the pictures for my one-year report today. I have been seriously wondering who reads these reports and what happens to them once they arrive in Ethiopia. Given the volume, I can't imagine that anyone actually takes the time to read them, let alone get them out to the rural families who are desperate to see them.

    The system is broken. And no one knows how to fix it.

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    1. Going to answer you privately.

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    2. "I will admit that I found Masho's lack of concern when they told her she was moving on was very eerie."

      That's not unusual for a 3 year old. She probably did not understand what was going on and might have been in shock as well.

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  3. I think all of us bought the lie that we could not stay in contact. I believe whole heartedly that many agencies do not want us to establish independent contact due to the fact that they will be "found out. Our agency, as you know, was far from professional when confronted with their wrongdoing.
    The documentary was heart breaking and yet nothing is really changing in Ethiopia. Sigh. It just continues to break my heart.


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  4. Also I have met MANY MANY AP's for Ethiopia that have absolutely no intention of ever keeping their children's families informed of their well being. I feel terrible for those families left behind to wonder.

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    1. I just can't fathom that, especially with an older child. Do people think children's memories and feelings can just be erased? Or is the biological family so much of an "other" than AP's can't understand that they would feel the same parental love as anyone?

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  5. I personally helped facilitate adoptions for known families members about 2-3 years ago as a volunteer for a humanitarian organization that was doing adoptions while doing aid work, while I lived in the country we were also adopting from at the time. I came into it completely ignorant, but when my gut (and voice) told me contact (even direct) was necessary and good I hit resistance from the director I was working with for the adoptions. Some families fought for direct contact and have it. We are included in that group. I think that for the families (first families) there is absolutely the assumption that adoption means communication, a relationship and maybe future support (even if it wasn't communicated directly about the support part). I think a lot of APs are told a line by their agencies and they believe it completely about first families. I posted my response to the film on my blog, but there was more that I can't even articulate yet or may never be able to publicly. I have changed in so many ways since the day I stepped into IA 3 1/4 years ago, so much. I have made so many mistakes, some are ones I will forever regret. So, I keep talking and fight to make change happen, it comes at a cost, but it will never be comparable to the cost paid by children that are wrongfully taken from their families. Thank you so much for the post. You had a much more rational review of it than I did as I am still quite emotional about it because seeing the reality again of what I saw hits hard.

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    1. Thank you for your comment. I came across your blog pretty recently and I have enjoyed reading it. I will look for your post about this movie.

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  6. I am glad you wrote this because I know enough about the documentary film world to know that anything can be edited to favor one point of view, and that a documentary does not need to adhere to journalistic integrity. And I cannot wrap my head around not wanting to stay connected to your child's birth family. They made the biggest sacrifice, shit why can't the adoptive family at least try every avenue possible to keep that connection?

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  7. Is there anywhere to still view the film?

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