Do You have an Adoption Complaint? Every Life Matters.
Below is a list of questions. Feel free to answer one or all of them and return email to actusa@riseup.net with Adoption Complaint on the subject line. And then share this questionnaire with your adopted friends. We want to leave no adoptee behind.
*If you were not adopted from South Korea, but were abused inside the adoptive home, you may also fill out this questionnaire. A potential letter advocating for all adoptees (domestic, transracial, intercountry) will also go out to various other governments and to the United Nations.
*Also, if you are a mother/father or family member of adoption-loss, you may write a letter of complaint and it will also be included in the correspondence.
Did the adoption agency:
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Place death certificates of your Korean family in your adoption file to prove that you were truly orphaned?
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Permit you permission to maintain contact with your Korean parents, siblings or extended family?
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Include police reports proving that they searched for your family before sending you overseas?
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Give you an emergency contact number prior to sending you overseas?
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Alter your birth identity in any way?
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Document and report for you transparent answers on why and how they gained guardianship of you?
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Does this information match the story given to you by your Korean family?
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Refused access to your adoption documents? For what reason?
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Did the adoption agency instruct your adopters to apply for your US citizenship?
Did your adoptive parents:
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Speak well of your Korean family/ethnicity?
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Permitted you to talk about your Korean family?
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Did you ever feel unsafe in your adoptive parents home? Why?
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Allow you to voice your feelings and concerns about adoption?
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Diagnose you with some sort of mental disorder or illness?
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Force you to take medications?
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Inform you of your basic human rights as enshrined in the UNCRC?
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Permit you freedom from religion?
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Inflict some type of corporate punishment? If so, how? What age?
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Were you ever fearful of your adoptive parents or someone within your adoptive family?
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Ensure that you became a US Citizen (or a citizen of the adoptive nation you were sent to)
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Ever tell you, you were lucky or to be grateful for being adopted?
- Allow you to speak Korean at home?
Were you ever abused:
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Physically: (hit or smacked. Deprived food or meals or force-fed.)
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Mentally: (told you were bad or sinful? Was your ethnicity ridiculed?)
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Emotionally: (deprived of affection or given less affection than others in the family)
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Sexually: (touched inappropriately by a male/female or raped)
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Spiritually: (forced you into one type of religion or cult, spoke disrespectfully or prevented you from learning about other philosophies)
Did you feel safe to tell an adult about the treatment you received? Why or why not?
Did your adoptive community:
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Hurt you in any way (physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually) based on your race?
Feel free to answer one or all of these questions and return email to actusa@riseup.net with Adoption Complaint on the subject line. And then share this questionnaire with your adopted friends. We want to leave no adoptee behind.
For narratives from Korean adoptees, pick up The “Unknown” Culture Club: Korean Adoptees Then and Now, available here
or other international adoptees, pick up ‘Adoptionland, From Orphans to Activists‘ here.
Ever wondered what it's like to be adopted? Read Adoptionland: From Orphans to Activists.
