Elwood to honor victims of Tennessee Children’s Home Society

By TOM CHARLIER - Associated Press
Sunday, September 27, 2015

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The burials are of babies who passed away in the care of the infamous Tennessee Children’s Home Society, where operator Georgia Tann ran a highly organized and lucrative baby-selling network from 1923 until her death in 1950. Many of the children were stolen, usually from poor, uneducated single mothers, and sold to wealthy people across the nation, including movie stars Dick Powell, June Allyson and Joan Crawford.

Children who were sick or otherwise unmarketable often were allowed to die of malnutrition, neglect or abuse. Many simply disappeared.

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At Elmwood, officials are raising funds to buy a monument to honor the 19 victims buried there and “all of the hundreds who died under the cold, hard hand of the Tennessee Children’s Home Society,” as the inscription will read. The 64-inch-tall, 48-inch-wide monument is being offered by Crone Monument Co. at the heavily discounted price of $13,075, McCollum said.

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Operating out of a large house at 1556 Poplar, Tann systematically sought out babies delivered by poor and desperate mothers, often approaching them while they still were groggy from anesthesia. She manipulated them into signing papers that ostensibly authorized her to take and care for the babies temporarily. Instead, the mothers never saw the babies again.

Tann’s scheme was abetted by the bribes she paid to nurses, judges and others, according to numerous accounts, but she was a powerful figure in her own right. Widely viewed as a beneficent social worker, she enjoyed the protection of longtime Memphis political boss E.H. Crump and could count on sheriff’s deputies to help round up children from poor people’s homes.

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Many of the 5,000 or more children sold through the scheme spent decades trying to track down their relatives, and researchers and authors would later document Tann’s lasting impact on adoption in America.

~more @ link~

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/27/elwood-to-honor-victims-of-tennessee-childrens-hom/

Kampala (AFP) - Authorities in Uganda have raised fears that the east African nation's children are being left vulnerable to abuse and exploitation by a staggering increase in unchecked overseas adoptions.

An official report, details of which were published on Tuesday by the New Vision newspaper, said a boom in what it called the "international adoption industry" had led to some children who were not even orphans being taken into care for adoption or child sponsorship schemes.

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The report said the boom in adoptions had led to a "rapidly increasing number of baby and children homes", with more than 500 such institutions now operating in the country.

"These homes have been reported to be removing children from families and communities and placing them into institutional settings and gradually exploiting these children for economic reasons through child sponsorship schemes," it said.

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"The report fails to recognise the criminal, intimidating and unethical activities that are being carried out by lawyers, orphanages and adoption agencies to ensure that children continue to be made available for international adoption rather than be resettled with their own families or placed into families in-country," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/uganda-fears-children-overseas-adoptions-boom-160122097.html