Saira: Zweifelhafte Aufnahme eines «verlassenen» Babys - Forschungsprojekt Adoptionen 1973-2002 ZH/TG

Saira* had settled into the family "wonderfully", wrote the Rieders* in the canton of Zurich in their adoption application of September 1983. The Rieders had adopted Saira as an infant two and a half years earlier through the children's charity Terre des Hommes in Lausanne and its partner organisation Terre des Hommes (India) Society in Calcutta (now Kolkata). This had enabled them to fulfil their wish of having a child, preferably a girl.

The district court in Alipore, a suburb of Calcutta, had transferred custody of the child to this employee in February 1981 and allowed her to bring the child to Switzerland. It was common for staff from the adoption agencies to escort the children to their new country.

Birth announcement in pink: "It wasn't the [stork] but the [aeroplane] that brought me to my new parents.”

The aeroplane as the mechanical 'bearer' of the baby was a common motif in 'birth announcements' for adopted Indian children.

Birth announcement in pink: "It wasn't the [stork] but the [aeroplane] that brought me to my new parents.” (Zurich City Archives, V.K.c.25.:4.1.402.)

Birth announcement in pink: "It wasn't the [stork] but the [aeroplane] that brought me to my new parents.” (PDF, 636KB)

The aeroplane as the mechanical 'bearer' of the baby was a common motif in 'birth announcements' for adopted Indian children.

Zurich City Archives, V.K.c.25.:4.1.402.

For some babies and toddlers, the flight to Switzerland was not the first time they had been on a long journey. Often they had already travelled long distances within India to New Delhi, Calcutta, Bangalore or Bombay (now Kolkata, Bengaluru and Mumbai) to be looked after in children's homes until they were placed for adoption abroad.

Zeitungsausschnitt mit einer indischen Landkarte, die den Weg eines adoptierten Babies innerhalb von Indien aufzeigt.

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Missing birth certificates and deeds of surrender

According to the adoption application, Saira was born in 1980 and had been "abandoned". As evidence, Mr and Mrs Rieder enclosed two illegibly stamped court orders in English that did not bear the judge's signature. The Rieders* stated that they enclosed these documents in place of the birth certificate of the child and deed of surrender from the mother. The guardianship authority at their place of residence did not consider this documentation to be adequate and pointed out that the consent of the child's biological parents was required by law. This Swiss adoption file was not the only one lacking these documents.

Brief communication from the Winterthur guardianship authority regarding the deed of surrender

Brief communication from the Winterthur guardianship authority regarding the deed of surrender (City of Winterthur)

Brief communication from the Winterthur guardianship authority regarding the deed of surrender (PDF, 475kB)

City of Winterthur

Swiss Civil Code Art. 256a (version of 1972, valid 1983)

Swiss Civil Code Art. 256a (version of 1972, valid 1983) (Swiss Confederation)

Swiss Civil Code Art. 256a (version of 1972, valid 1983) (PDF, 319KB)

Swiss Confederation

A deed of surrender, the document required to prove the biological parents' consent, was missing from every file in a sample of 24 adoptions in the two cantons of Zurich and Thurgau and from the files of all Indian children adopted in Thurgau during the focus period for the study. The missing documents had no effect on the authorities' decisions and the adoptions were granted in breach of the legal provisions.

Fears for the child's well-being

By law, a guardian appointed by the authorities to oversee the child's foster care also had to agree to the adoption. Saira's official guardian agreed, stating that the child had quickly become accustomed to her new family and was developing very well, and that a "truly loving relationship" had formed. He was therefore able to recommend the adoption for the "well-being of the child, a good upbringing and the requisite warm and loving home". This assessment was surprising for two reasons.

Firstly, the guardian had not been appointed until five months after Saira's arrival, so had not been able to judge the foster care relationship from the outset. The analysis of 24 adoptions of Indian children in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau found that many of the children did not in fact have an official guardian for the entire duration of their foster care as was required by the law in Switzerland. Experts at the time also pointed out the children's interests were inadequately represented by a state-appointed guardian.

It is also surprising that the guardian would consent to the adoption, because he was aware that there had been "complaints about mistreatment of the foster child". The district youth welfare services had informed him that they had heard from the Rieders' neighbours that the father was quick tempered and the mother had been threatening the child with physical violence. This neighbour had quoted the mother as saying, "You’ll get a beating if you take the pacifier".

The youth welfare service saw this as a sign that the family was not coping and asked the guardian to assess the situation. A few weeks later, the guardian informed the youth welfare service that he had spoken to the Rieders and received the impression that the "accusations" were "in part greatly exaggerated". They were satisfied with this response, but the guardianship authority considered it "unsatisfactory". It instructed a foster carer to check up on the family. The carer's assessment turned out to be positive. She reported that Saira was "cheerful and lively", behaved "like a child of her age", had "caught up in her development" and "obviously felt at ease".

This enabled the Rieders to resubmit their application to adopt Saira, which the district council granted in spring 1984. The missing deed of surrender was no longer an issue. By granting the adoption, the district council accepted Terre des Hommes' placement of the child without the legally required proof of Saira's parents' consent. The council also lacked the expertise to question the failure of the Swiss Federal Aliens Office to request this document when it approved the visa application.
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At district, cantonal and federal level, the authorities thus turned a blind eye to the missing surrender documents. Meanwhile, in autumn 1983, a note attached to an internal file transfer at the Federal Department of Justice and Police read "The child trafficking continues", indicating that in the offices of the Swiss federal capital, staff were aware of the situation.

Author: Sabine Bitter

Topic texts

Girls preferred

Of the 2,278 Indian children adopted in Switzerland between 1979 and 2002, 1,550 (or 68%) were girls and 728 (32%) were boys. This striking girl-to-boy ratio was also observed in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau in the same period. While couples in Switzerland preferred to adopt Indian girls, couples in India preferred boys.
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Social science research cites several reasons for this. If a married couple in India adopted a son, the line of inheritance remained intact. When their son married, they did not have to provide a dowry. Patriarchal norms played a part. A son had more say within the family whereas a daughter's role was to obey. Statistical surveys from the 1980s show that son preference could have serious consequences for daughters. Daughters were more likely to suffer from malnutrition and were less likely to receive medical care, leading to higher rates of morbidity and mortality among girls.

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Couples in Switzerland who wanted to adopt an Indian child usually indicated their preference in the application they submitted to the agency. The future adoptive child's sex was negotiable. Adoption International noted in one family's file that "If there were no other option, they would also take the boy. But they are still set on a girl." Some couples also explained their preference: "We would like another girl [...]. We have the feeling that we will have fewer problems with two girls." Thinking in terms of traditional gender roles, the Swiss Federal Aliens Office also thought a girl would have an easier life: "Access to social and professional life also poses more challenges for boys than for girls."

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Quellen / Literatur

Autorin: Sabine Bitter

Inadequate representation by an appointed guardian

The Indian courts would only transfer custody of the children to the foreign couples and did not grant adoptions. An adoption could only be granted in Switzerland, at the earliest after two years in the foster care of the prospective parents. In other words, the adoptive parents did not have 'parental authority' (nowadays known as 'parental responsibility') over the child until this time. This meant that in Switzerland, a person had to be appointed to act as the child's guardian until the adoption decision was issued. In the 24 adoptions analysed in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, 20 out of 24 children remained in a legally precarious situation for a long stretch of their time in foster care and were only appointed a guardian months after their arrival in Switzerland. One boy was appointed an official guardian only at the last minute in order to fulfil the formal legal requirements for the adoption. A girl went without a legal guardian to represent her interests for the entire duration of her foster care. Her file said that "Apparently all those involved were of the opinion that a guardian had been appointed; this was, however, not the case." The absence of a guardian could have serious consequences, for example if there was no one around to consent to medical treatment or surgery. Moreover, not every child was given a guardian whose sole priority was to act in their interests. Sometimes, the guardian was also the child's future adoptive father or an employee of the adoption agency. This situation had already been criticised as a "regrettable lack of representation" as early as the 1980s.
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Serious situations arose in the cases of Indian children placed in the care of families in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau, in which the involvement and dedication of an appointed guardian would have been particularly important. For example, there was a strong suspicion that four children who had arrived in 1997 may have been sexually assaulted before or during their journey to Switzerland. The cantonal police informed the guardianship authority and their appointed guardians that an investigation was under way. The guardianship authority asked the children's appointed guardians whether they had seen any indications of sexual abuse. The guardians stated that the four children had been placed by the Missionaries of Charity home in Bombay. Two of the children had been brought to Switzerland for adoption through the services of Helga Ney. It is unclear from the files whether the guardians had sought to investigate the case further. Despite extensive research in the Zurich cantonal archives, it was not possible to determine the outcome of the police investigation.

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Quellen / Literatur

Autorin: Sabine Bitter

Missing declarations of consent

In April 1973, amendments to adoption provisions that had first been enshrined in the Swiss Civil Code (CC) of 1907/12 came into force. These changes introduced a new legal concept. Until the new provisions were introduced, certain legal ties, such as rights of inheritance, were preserved between the child and the biological parents of the child. There had, however, been increasing criticism that this did not adequately integrate adopted children into their new families. In the 1972 revision, the concept of ‘simple adoption’ was therefore replaced by that of ‘full adoption'. Full adoption dissolved all ties between the child and their family of origin. In the adoptive family, the adoptive child had the same rights as biological children. This decoupling was anchored in a newly introduced provision on ‘adoption secrecy’. The biological parents were now no longer permitted to know who had adopted their child.

Despite this new approach, a basic principle of the adoption law remained unchanged: both biological parents had to consent to the adoption of their child. Only in exceptional circumstances could the consent of one of the parents be dispensed with. The examination of 24 adoptions of children from India in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau found that this legal requirement was not met. The deed of surrender proving the Indian parents' consent was missing in every case. The deed of surrender was also missing from a further 24 cases in Thurgau. In total, this proof of the biological parents' consent was missing from 48 successful adoption applications.

In an interview, the Indian adoption lawyer Rakesh Kapoor said that the documents remain under seal in the archives of the courts to this date. The original documents were systematically placed under seal and access to the biological parents' surrender documents by the Swiss adoption agencies and authorities was not provided for by the Indian authorities. The Zurich district and Thurgau cantonal council members that issued the decisions in adoption cases in the two cantons should nevertheless have requested these documents in order to fulfil the legal requirements under Swiss adoption law. Instead, they put their faith in documents in which Indian adoption agencies such as the Missionaries of Charity stated that the biological parents had completed a deed of surrender. In other cases, they stated that the child had been abandoned or was an orphan and that no documentation was available. The Swiss authorities did not insist on the submission of the biological parents' deeds of surrender or death certificates and failed to question the systematic absence of these documents. Each authority instead simply repeated the assertion that the child was parentless before handing the file over to the next authority. This approach, which covered up the problems and rights of the birth mothers, was also widespread in international adoptions of children from other countries.

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Quellen / Literatur

Autorin: Sabine Bitter

Overwhelmed

Many of the couples who adopted a child from another country had previously sought to adopt a child in Switzerland. The Swiss adoption centres were often unable to meet their wishes.

In Switzerland like in other European countries, the number of children given up for adoption fell from the 1970s onwards. To avoid long waiting lists, some couples were willing to consider intercountry adoption.

Some of the adoption agencies recognised the particular challenges faced by parents adopting a child from a country in the global South. The association Adoption International organised conferences to share insights into such psychological and educational challenges However, the adoption agency also said it doubted the efficacy of such efforts: "It is probably extremely difficult to work prophylactically to prepare the future adoptive parents for their great responsbility. Wishful thinking usually covers up the possible warning signs."

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Based on 13 interviews with parents, the study of adoptions of children from India in the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau shows that prospective parents were mostly ill-prepared to deal with the consequences of such an adoption. While in India and Switzerland laws and regulations have been put in place to sever the ties between birth parents and their children, little has been done to help foster and adoptive parents integrate the children into their new families.

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The couples interviewed spoke of an emotional burden that sometimes continues to this day. They found that Swiss educational and healthcare providers were ill-equipped to address the backgrounds and needs of their children. Many adoptees have faced persistent psychological issues and ill health.

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Quellen / Literatur

Autorin: Nadine Gautschi

The journey to Switzerland

Some couples from the cantons of Zurich and Thurgau had their future adoptive child brought to them from India. Others travelled to India themselves to collect the child. Flight attendants were often asked by Terre des Hommes and Adoption International, for example, to accompany the children.

The Indian babies and toddlers were flown from what were then the cities of Bombay, Calcutta, Bangalore and New Delhi to Zurich Kloten or Geneva Cointrin airports. Several airlines proved particularly helpful in facilitating intercontinental transfers of children. In 1981, Christina Inderbitzin, an adoption agent based in the canton of Zurich, emphasised the helpful role played by Swiss Air, in the Swiss women's magazine Femina: "We have established a travel/transport agreement with a Swissair contact person in Switzerland and in Bombay that works very well." In the Air India in-flight magazine, Geneva-based adoption agent Jo Millar also stated that this airline had "once again shown itself to be generous and helpful".

In India, however, the 'air escort system' was criticised. For example, in 1982, the Indian legal scholar M. J. Antony described this transfer of babies abroad by off-duty airline staff as often "clandestine and inhumane". The renowned Indian lawyer Laxmikant Pandey took a critical stance on intercountry adoption. For him, the children risked their lives on the way to foreign countries, were often inadequately cared for and were in danger of being exploited and abused. He therefore petitioned the Indian Supreme Court to establish guidelines to ensure the babies' safety.

The 'Laxmikant-Pandey guidelines' came into force following the court's landmark judgment in 1984..

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Quellen / Literatur

Autorin: Sabine Bitter

Saira: An 'abandoned' baby placed for adoption in dubious circumstances

Missing birth certificates and deeds of surrender

Fears for the child's well-being

Mother Unknown

Adoption stories

Topic texts

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