312 Lynelle Long
/Transcript
Full shownotes:https://www.adopteeson.com/listen/312
E312 Lynelle Long
Haley Radke: [00:00:00] This podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Nothing stated on it either by its hosts or any guests, is to be construed as psychological, medical, or legal advice.
You are listening to Adoptees On the podcast where adoptees discuss the adoption experience. I'm Haley Radke. Lynelle Long has been an adoptee advocate for nearly 30 years. The founder of InterCountry Adoptee Voices (ICAV) Lynelle has built a network of thousands of adoptees around the world to both connect with each other and to affect change at every level of government, as high up as the United Nations.
Today we get to hear some of her personal story, including her choice to have her adoption discharged in 2022, and about her role as an active observer to the Hague [00:01:00] Convention. Lynelle also has some advice to adoptee advocates for our efficacy and longevity in adoption reform spaces. We do mention sexual abuse at a couple of points in this conversation, so please take care while listening.
Before we get started, I wanna personally invite you to join our Patreon adoptee community today over on adopteeson.com/community, which helps support you and also the show to support more adoptees around the world. We wrap up with some recommended resources and as always, links to everything we'll be talking about today are on the website, adopteeson.com. Let's listen in.
I am so pleased to welcome to Adoptee on Lynelle Long. Hello Lynelle.
Lynelle Long: Hi there, Haley. Great to be on here. Thank you for inviting me.
Haley Radke: At long last. I feel like this is so overdue. I didn't realize you've been doing adoptee activism for almost [00:02:00] 30 years with InterCountry Adoptee Voices. That's incredible.
Lynelle Long: Yeah. See all my white hairs.;
Haley Radke: I'm pretty sure I have more than you, but that's so funny. Okay we'll put, we're gonna get to that. But can you start first please by sharing a little bit of your adoptee story with us for folks who might not know you?
Lynelle Long: Yeah, sure. So I was born in Vietnam in 1973, so just before the war in Vietnam finished. And I was taken as a five month old baby by white Australian parents who had organized a private lawyer in Vietnam. It's what they called independent proxy adoptions back then to facilitate obtaining me. It looks like from all my decades of trying to find my origins that I came from a hospital, a maternity hospital as a three day old infant, seems to be the likely scenario. And they took me into their own private creche, of which they looked after me for five months until they got my adoptee father to [00:03:00] fly into Ho Chi Min City, take me out.
And all I had at that stage that I've ever had is actually a passport. I've never seen any adoption paperwork. My parents brought me back to Australia in 73 and they sat with me for 16 and a half years until they went, oh, we haven't done your adoption. We better do it because at that stage, I was trying to get my driver's license and I had no identity documents.
So they contacted the Victorian adoption department. By then, the adoptive parent organizations had disappeared and gone because the government in Australia centralized adoption and got rid of all the private agencies in around the nineties and took over adoption. So this was now hitting that stage, and my adoption was then facilitated by the Victorian department who proceeded to rubber a stamp my adoption, even though they had absolutely nothing on me.
So no birth documents, no identity records, no [00:04:00] relinquishment, nothing from Vietnam as a government to even state that I was eligible for adoption or even anything about my background or origins. And so it's one of the strangest adoptions possibly, where a government has actually done an adoption based on thin air, literally.
And proceeded to give my parents access and approval to formally adopt me at the age of 16 and a half, even though I'd been in the country for 16 and a half years.
Haley Radke: So when did you get any documentation from Vietnam?
Lynelle Long: I still haven't got any.
Haley Radke: You have none.
Lynelle Long: I've been searching, I'm now 52. I've been searching all of these years for some kind of record about my birth, my identity, and I did hire a private detective in Vietnam who had some success with other Vietnamese adoptees because of my network.
And he found and sent me a blurry photograph of what appears [00:05:00] to be a birth certificate and one adoption paper that had my adoptive parents' details. I believe it's legit because it actually has their address on it at the time, which was, now 52 years ago, which he possibly could not have forged or falsified because he wouldn't have known.
Haley Radke: Right.
Lynelle Long: Where they lived at that time. So I do believe he found probably what appears to be documents, but maybe they're so hidden and sealed down. He, he had told me the location of where they were. They were in the police precinct of district one which is right in the heart of the city. But to this day, despite sending that information and the document to the Vietnamese government they have, they spent then two years looking for my documents and said that they can't find anything, which is quite bizarre given that he found something.
It's quite a mystery, my adoption and how it even came about. It's all just guest ation. [00:06:00] So it's a very bizarre one. Hence why I say that my adoption is completely illegal. Illicit does not meet any criteria for a decent process at all. It's just so many problems with my adoption, if you even wanna call it that. It's more it's more like a
Haley Radke: Yeah, like you, you could literally be a kidnapped child.
Lynelle Long: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Who was raised for, 16 years by people and then they're like, hey, can we need a driver's license? Can you give us some papers? That is outrageous.
Lynelle Long: Yeah. And then they used adoption as a way to get me an identity. Which is, not uncommon for people to basically use adoption procedures to create you with a new identity so that all your past is wiped out. I've actually met a Korean adoptee who's, came from a very wealthy family in Korea and they used adoption very specifically, sent him to America to wipe out his ability to have any inheritance to his [00:07:00] very wealthy father. So adoption is used very consciously by people to actually, wipe out identities, create a new one, which has happened in my case.
Haley Radke: Yeah. Wow. That's super unusual, but of course not unheard of.
Lynelle Long: Yeah.
Haley Radke: Another thing that's unusual but not unheard of is that you had your adoption discharged.
Lynelle Long: I have had, because my adoption, despite being with that family for that 16 and a half years, the department did a very dodgy poor job of checking on that family. If they had, have actually spent any time with me asking about how my adoption actually was with that family for 16 and a half years, they would've learned that I had a history, a massive history of sexual abuse in that family from five different perpetrators. And I've actually held them to account through the courts.
Now, three years ago, my adoptive father plead guilty, and I at the time also discharged my adoption [00:08:00] for many reasons, but also largely because that family, had given me a whole history of trauma and, I never felt safe or really truly valued or loved in that family.
Haley Radke: Yeah, I'm really sorry. That's brutal.
Lynelle Long: Yeah. No, that's okay.
Haley Radke: One of the issues in having your adoption nullified in some fashion over here is that there's a requirement that there's a parent on your birth certificate, and so what? What's your situation? Are you as if born to no one?
Lynelle Long: No, actually, because that private detective found what appears to be a birth certificate. I actually gave that to birth, death, and marriages when my adoption got nullified, and I was able to place my birth mother's name on my birth certificate. So the beauty of doing the adoption discharge was in fact, I could revert back to being legally related to my mother, should I ever find her? And [00:09:00] if it is true, what is on that birth certificate, which is what that private detective found for me.
So that's one of the biggest reasons why I actually wanted to undo my adoption was because I believe as all adoptees should have the right to be legally connected to our birth families, especially if we find them, it's an injustice that many of us, there's 1.2 million of us documented around the world as intercountry adoptees.
It's an injustice that when we reunite and find our birth families and prove through DNA, that they are specifically our biogolical family, that we are legally not allowed to claim them as family. For instance, I always said that if I found my birth family, I would love to be able to bring them to Australia as my family legally.
Whereas being adopted under immigration, they would not be considered my family at all. So these are some of the rights that are, that we are not granted if we keep our adoption intact.
Haley Radke: How [00:10:00] did it feel when you had it discharged?
Lynelle Long: I felt very liberated for many reasons, because I of so much trauma with that adoptive family, but also to be able to reclaim my original identity. The other important part of my discharge process here in Australia was that I was actually allowed to choose the name that I had going forward. So I actually chose three names from three parts of my identity my life. So I have one part from my birth name. One part from my adopteds, which I kept as Lynelle and I have one part as my married name.
So I've been able to incorporate all three major aspects of who I am into my actual legal identity now, which has been beautifully empowering and just, yeah, really amazing to be able to finally have some sense of control over who I am and what I walk through in life going forward.
Because so much of our life, as is completely out of our control. We are adopted as infants. [00:11:00] Often we have no say over who we even get sent to. We have no say as to where we belong in terms of nationality. So yeah, it's huge. And an un you can't understate how much it means to us as an adoptee to be able to have some form of say over who we are.
Haley Radke: Certainly, I've heard you talk about this before too, where you highlight that most of us can't just discharge our adoptions. Adoptive parents can. At any time, most of them. So just the agency that we've lost in this legal process is just not respected by, and not understood by the majority of kept people.
Lynelle Long: I don't think we ever lost any legal capacity. It's more that we were never given any legal ability.
Haley Radke: Uhhuh,
Lynelle Long: It's very small difference, but important one. And that is to say that the legal system of adoption was always made for adoptive parents. It was never made for adoptees to be able to focus [00:12:00] on our rights and needs long term.
And it definitely was never there for the birth family. And I don't like using the word birth family, but that's the jargon that most people typically understand. So I'll use it in this conversation. I typically prefer specifically family. But yeah, just so your viewers and listeners can understand easier.
Haley Radke: Yes. Okay. Another thing that I heard you say, which I actually haven't heard, I've had a lot of conversations, I don't recall, how about, I'll put it that way, talking with another inter-country adoptee or transnational adoptee talking about, this shared loss, of course, of, rejection or being given up by a first mother, specifically mother. But you spoke of, you're also being given up by your country. Can you speak to that?
Lynelle Long: Yeah. Like at some, in my own story, in some way, the Vietnamese government has given some form of immigration approval for me to leave that country, [00:13:00] and yet they've done nothing to protect my identity in that process of doing so.
And so for me, I have not only spent decades trying to find my origins, but I've also subsequently been asking Vietnam through the formal channels to the Justice Department for access to a reprint of a birth certificate so that I can claim citizenship. But again, there are so many barriers in the way to even be able to do that and it feels every time that I have to deal with this, that, it's a rejection from your whole country because when you think about our lack of rights, why should we lose access to our own birth country yet through adoption we do. So not every country, luckily there are some countries like Guatemala, Chile, Colombia who have allowed adoptees to still have their identities that they were born to in their birth countries, and they're still allowed to claim citizenship. [00:14:00] They're still allowed to vote, et cetera, et cetera, and buy property and whatever else. But for people like me from countries like Vietnam, which is a communist country. We are not even recognized as part of their population. So they've done nothing like the Korean adoptees, where at least Korea as a birth country has given them a special visa to allow them to come back and live for certain years as adoptees.
They recognized them legally as a specific category of immigrant who've left and wanted to return. Vietnam has done no such thing, and there are, thousands of us because we were as early as the Korean adoptees in the seventies, early sixties, sent out from our countries on mass, especially Operation Baby Lift, and yet no recognition of us as descendants from this country.
Also, with some kind of rights to be able to reclaim, what we would like in our birth countries. I would love to live in Vietnam for certain periods of [00:15:00] time, but as yet, I still have no pathway to be able to do that. Especially because I still can't get them to reprint me a birth certificate, even though I've shown them evidence that one existed, but yet they can't find it in the same location that I've given them.
So it's very difficult and yeah, I guess for me, I have felt it very overtly that I am rejected from my birth country as well as my birth family. If they indeed did relinquish me, which I doubt having come from possibly a maternity hospital, I know that the most of this likely scenario is that children and babies were often kidnapped from these maternity places.
Because you gotta think about it, we're in a war, there's thousands of babies in an orphanage. Why get such a healthy infant out of a hospital when you could have gotten thousands of babies out of an orphanage that were sitting there? So somebody has obviously been quite concerted in their efforts to get a baby that's from a [00:16:00] completely different source compared to the average and the on mass group.
Haley Radke: And yours was very different than Operation Baby Lift.
Lynelle Long: Yes.
Haley Radke: You're not a part of that, that
Lynelle Long: it's before. It's before this.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Lynelle Long: Yeah. My adoption was before Operation Baby Lift.
Haley Radke: Oh my goodness. That is chaotic. So honestly, if I heard someone that had your situation. And wanted a path to citizenship or, to connect with their country of origin and wanted to find the path there. I would send them to you, right?
Lynelle Long: I do get thousands coming to me. Yes.
Haley Radke: And so like we're talking to the expert, capital T, capital E here, and yet it, it's justifying,
Lynelle Long: I never even solve it for myself.
Haley Radke: No.
Lynelle Long: That's right.
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Lynelle Long: But that's why I do provide it, is because I know how important it is to adoptees where when you've got no known pathway, no connections in the community if you don't know where to turn. Yes, I have been [00:17:00] providing that one stop shop for adoptees so that if they have absolutely no idea, I refer them to all of the massive network that I've built over 27 years to adoptees, to allies, to people who I know are there with our interests in mind.
Haley Radke: Yeah, you're the connector for sure. I feel similarly to you, except I don't have thousands of connections nor the expertise in any I have the expertise in, in feelings.
Lynelle Long: Yes.
Haley Radke: You wanna share feelings? I'm your girl.
Lynelle Long: Yes, that's right.
Haley Radke: One thing I wanted to speak to you about is this idea of how do we change people's viewpoint on their quote unquote to parent a child?
Lynelle Long: It's such a tough question. Yeah. I am a parent myself. When I speak about this, I speak about it [00:18:00] knowing what it's like to want to have a child of your own. I know how desperately people want that, and it's interesting, I've learned a lot about the international conventions.
But I do know that currently up until now, there has not been a right to be a parent convention, but there is a right to children having rights. So it's interesting that parents want children and will go to all sorts of lengths to get one, including today's boom in surrogacy, which is the new form of intercountry adoption.
But I guess I would like to caution people about that, to do their research and to really look into children's rights and to understand how your desire to be a parent can impinge upon and put as second priority the rights of the child to know very important things about themselves, such as their origins and their identity.
And I know [00:19:00] that money is the biggest push for the parents being able to meet their needs. But what you've gotta juxtapose that against is the child who is unborn or the child who's about to be born is completely vulnerable and has no say. Whereas you as the parent, you have all the power, all the privilege, all the resources, and all the voice because you actually have a voice at that point in time.
Whereas your child has none. People like me, we are those children who are grown up. We can now articulate and explain to you how your demanding for a child can actually obliterate our right to know who we are and to stay where we belong and where we are born to and how important that is to have that connection and that knowledge.
So I think it's really important for those parents who are thinking about parenting like that to [00:20:00] really, truly try to inform themselves about how people like me experience life and what kind of rights we talk about. I've actually literally written an intercountry adoptee charter that specifically spells out the lack of rights that we've fo we've all experienced en masse as a global community of intercountry adoptees.
And if you actually read that, you'll actually see at the heart of what, of how our rights are not protected mostly, and how, and then if you look at what you are doing and how that can create the very environment that doesn't protect our rights, that you need to seriously consider what you're doing and how that affects us.
Because at the end of the day, we are your children who we're gonna grow up in the future and at least, I would hope that you'd wanna listen to them and hear their perspective and understand their point of view and understand why they might grow up feeling a [00:21:00] little bit jaded and upset about what you've participated in and how you've contributed to their loss of identity origins, et cetera, et cetera. So there's a lot to unpack in that.
Haley Radke: You know what I loved you on a different show. An adoptive parent was like, we'll know better and we'll do better in the future, kind of thing. That was the sentiment given, and you were like. No we know this now we've known it for a long time, and these adoptive parents are, I'm not, this is not verbatim, okay?
But these adoptive parents are being willfully ignorant and, it's let's just, cover our ears, cover our eyes, and, oh, I heard some bad thing, but like everything we're doing is super ethical. We've got the good path here. And, people just continue to lie to themselves [00:22:00] to get what they want. It's very upsetting.
Lynelle Long: And the biggest red flag, if you are paying money, you're definitely participating in a trade of children in whatever capacity that you are paying money in. Whether that's a donation, whether that's a gift, whether that's a, oh, I'm buying her clothes, or housing, or whatever. It's a trade and you're commodifying the child.
And so you need to seriously look at what am I contributing to in a systemic capacity? When I actually conduct myself in this manner and I'm literally exchanging a resource that I can give financial, usually in exchange for helping me to obtain a child and this is the industry of child buying, unfortunately.
Haley Radke: Yep. And you specialize in intercountry adoptions. Of course. This is happening domestically, especially in North America to this day.
Lynelle Long: Absolutely.
Haley Radke: Let's go [00:23:00] to the Hague Convention. Can you tell us about your invol? I'm not sure exactly how you're involved or your deal there, if you can tell us that, and then just while we're recording, this is gonna release, a little bit later on, but I just heard, oh, Korea has now officially been accepted to the Hague, although they signed it 12 years ago and now it's, I don't know. I'm just quickly paraphrasing. Don't take that as the news. Look it up for yourself just to get for the facts.
Lynelle Long: It is actually true today.
Haley Radke: Okay. 12 years. Okay.
Lynelle Long: Yes.
Haley Radke: I'm trying. So can you speak to a little bit of that, because I think a lot of adoptive parents will hear, oh, it's a Hague convention country or something, and then it's oh, so everything's good, everything's above board. But of course, that's not necessarily the case.
Lynelle Long: Yeah, a lot of people don't understand the Hague at all. I guess I'm privileged, very privileged to actually sit at the Hague as an observer. So any international [00:24:00] adoptee led organization can apply to become an observer and sit in on Hague meetings.
Now, for those who don't know, the Hague is the International Convention and Space, a government agreeing from country to country that they're agreeing to the rules of the Hague Intercountry Adoption Convention as to how they will send and receive children to each other. So it's a forum and they gather together fairly regularly.
It is government to government meeting, usually only, and if you are there as an observer, you get to speak, but you don't get any voting rights and they don't have to take what you say seriously, they can listen. You can try to influence, but you have no real say 'cause you're literally there as just an observer.
I, as ICAV, have always gone there to be quite critical thinking voice. I speak out, but I speak out very respectfully and [00:25:00] I respect that this is the way that government to government, country to country has agreed on doing things. I don't pointedly target countries specifically, but I'll speak about the system in general and that's why I am continued to be invited and allowed there.
If you took the approach of being antagonistic and being very angry and aggressive and directly targeting people or specific governments, you would most likely probably not be invited back because when you get in, when you apply to be an observer, the governments actually vet who is allowed in and who's not allowed in.
So if you have a reputation for being aggressive, attacking, then they generally don't allow you in. If you have a reputation for being able to be respectful, having diplomatic dialogue, then you will be allowed in. So I have been attending working groups, both the one on illegal [00:26:00] adoption practices to create a toolkit for the central authorities and also for the financial aspects.
So the two that have run since I've become an observer, which has been probably the last eight years. I've also been at the last special commission meeting, the longstanding group that has been there is IKAA International Korean Adoptee Association. It's a big umbrella that internationally brings all the other Korean adoptee led orgs underneath them.
They have been at that meeting for since it started for 15, 20 years. But yet they've never spoken out. They never talk. At every meeting I've been at, they're dead silent. So hopefully that will change because they've seen ICAV bring in. And when I've come, I've actually brought in leaders like I did in the US with the symposium that I was invited to, that I spoke to you about earlier.
I have brought in adoptee leaders from other adoptee organizations with me as ICAV, so that there is broad representation from around the world, from all different birth countries and [00:27:00] adoptive countries and different perspectives. That's why they continue to invite ICAV because I facilitate others. With voices to come in and speak.
So they're not necessarily ICAV representatives, but they are leaders who I have built up years of respect with and good dialogue. And I know that they'll conduct themselves in a way that's appropriate for this forum. So that's how I operate. So last time I went to the special commission, I brought in eight leaders two from the US, one from Canada, one from Spain, one from France, one from me from Australia, one from the Netherlands.
And I had, a pretty good spread of birth countries between them all because for me it is so important that these governments hear from a broad range of voices, not just me. I never pretend to be able to be the sole spokesperson for all intercountry adoptees around the world. I'll always say, here are all the leaders look how many there [00:28:00] are. I maintain a list. I have hundreds of adoptee led groups around the world and my list of my network, and I call on them regularly for all sorts of different forums like this to get involved and to have a say same thing for the United Nations, which I did. So this is the kind of work that I do.
I try to harness our voices on mass and bring those voices to the very tables where policy practice legislation are discussed at very high level and where it's really important that our lived experience is incorporating into what they do because very often these central authority government workers, they literally just work in the field, but they never really have a lot of contact with adoptees, with lived experience who are actually, you hear it all the time, Haley, what people are literally going through the emotional content, the physical, these situations that they find themselves in, the issues that they have.
Often these government workers have no idea about all of those [00:29:00] complexities because they're not literally dealing with adoptees on the ground. So that's why it is so important to bring this lived experience in, to meet the very people who are designing, deciding and governing how this trade of children actually operates.
So it's not to say that I am for the trade of children. I'm absolutely against it. And people at The Hague know that because they hear very critically from what I say, that I'm against this trading of children. I'm in these forums saying we have to take out all money out of all of this equation, but yet, it falls on deaf ears because they can't possibly do that for whatever reasons.
Yeah, but there will be a lot of people out there who misjudge me or don't understand what I do and believe falsehoods that are out there, and they will literally believe that I'm pro adoption, that I'm there upholding the Hague Convention, when in fact I'm in there influencing with a very critical voice.
Because when you actually understand the mechanisms of the Hague, [00:30:00] it is like this. It's like a beautiful bible that tells you, oh, this is the utopia of how you could live life and do adoption nicely. Okay, but the problem is there's no judgment day, there's no mediator, there's no authority that sits above and judges each of these signatory countries who sign up like Korea and go, why are you not making sure that your citizens have citizenship when your adoptees arrive in your birth, in your adopted country, why are you deporting them back? Or why are you allowing so much abuse to happen? There is no one monitoring what these countries do. They will send their reports to the Hague Permanent Bureau to say, oh, yes, we're doing all this. But of course, it's a very skewed perspective because they're not actually talking to real lived experience adoptees to actually give any feedback that's actually off the ground.
They're just reporting what they see in their [00:31:00] data, but their data does not include ever following up on us. Asking us what's actually happened in our lives on mass Now, this is why things like the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission have been so important because it's one of the rare few occasions where you publicly see on mass a whole heap of adoptees and their files actually been looked at and investigated to see what has actually gone on at a systemic level.
And this is why I'm one of the few people in the world because I've dealt with adoptees from all different births from adoptive countries for decades, and I've heard thousands, literally of their stories every day that I can bring a big picture that says to people at The Hague, this is actually what's going on.
No matter what country, we all have these similarities. Our documents are typically falsified. Our birth parents are typically not [00:32:00] advised properly about what this legal concept of adoption is, blah, blah, blah, and on we go. So I could rattle off heaps of that stuff. But the problem with the Hague fundamentally at the end of the day is it's a beautiful utopia, but there's no enforcement mechanism to protect our interests at all.
And there's definitely no mechanism for us to make a complaint to an independent body that says, hey, like me, my adoption, how the hell was this done? Who the hell can investigate it? There is literally nobody that we can even go to who has any oversight, who has any understanding of the intercountry adoption systems and legislations to even figure it out.
So we are literally left with nowhere to go, and that's why it is a terrible convention, and so will be the surrogacy one as well, and any others that are made to look like it gives us rights or protections, but actually, in real effect does not [00:33:00] because it relies on the countries who are signatories to monitor themselves.
And that is the fundamental problem. How can you expect a country to monitor itself when it's conducting its own trade of children?
Haley Radke: Thank you for that education, and you explained it so very well, and thus the reason people like yourself have to go back to your sending country and hope they'll deal, but they don't like there's no recourse anywhere.
Lynelle Long: They don't even, they don't even consider me a citizen, so they've got no, I've got no legal standing to even take any action in Vietnam. Because I'm not even technically even a citizen there to even have any rights, even there. You can see the dilemma for us. We are literally displaced and we are left with absolutely no, hardly any routes, methods for recourse. If I wanted to be repatriated back to Vietnam, how on earth would I even do that? [00:34:00]
Haley Radke: Yeah, just impossible. Wow. So in almost 30 years, have you seen any movement? Have you seen any changes, any people listening more? Give us some hope. It sounds like a slow grind where you have to censor yourself.
Lynelle Long: Yeah, you're right on one aspect. But there has been massive change. And what you've, what I haven't told you is the beginnings of when I first started Intercountry Adoptee Voices. ICAV my network is the very basis of me beginning my network 27 years ago was because nothing existed. Your voice was not out there Haley, neither were many others that I know of now, but literally, there was literally nothing on social media, internet, or anything for adoptees. There were no voices heard. There were no stories. Today, 27 years on, my God, I can't keep up with the number of adoptee led [00:35:00] organizations. They're just like proliferating at a momentous rate.
So adoptees have become so active in 27 years that I've been involved and there's, almost everyone's now an advocate or a spoke spokesperson or speaking, creating resources and so much content out there that the internet is inundated with content by adoptees, which is just absolutely amazing and such a massive change.
Now, that is the first step towards change is getting, going from silence and nothingness and never having even a voice or even having our stories heard to completely being inundated en mass, surrounded by so many voices. So that's the beginning. Second to that though, is, and you see a bit of a, what I'm seeing is a momentum building where these voices that have now been, 15, 20 years on are quite mature.
And what they're doing is they're mentoring and building up the knowledge base of the newer generation of adoptees. So what I'm excited [00:36:00] to see is the Chinese adoptees coming to me in their twenties speaking about advocacy already, right? I was 25 when I first started adoptee my space, and I had no no desire to be involved in politics at all. It took me 15 years to even, get brave enough to weather that, because even just dealing with just adoptee to adoptee was daunting at my early stages. So these adoptees at the same age as I was, but now, years on, are just growing so rapidly in their knowledge, in their understanding because of people like me sharing that knowledge and passing it down.
What it does is it helps build that community awareness and that community activeness, and that's what's changing and starting to really snowball. Particularly now I'm just writing a blog on all the adoptees who've actually taken legal action in the last five years. You've just, I've just seen such a snowball [00:37:00] of intercountry adoptees in this space around the world now. Going from advocacy to we want legal justice and demanding it in whatever ways we can find, which we have to invent because we are new and it's the first time and this is that momentum building. So you are getting so many more. So once you get the full 1.2 million of us becoming very active, we're gonna be a force to reckon with.
And that's what I'm excited about is that this community is definitely growing and definitely becoming much more aware of our rights or lack of, and what we should be able to have and fighting for that and demanding justice and pathways for reparation. So these are all things that, 40 years ago weren't even talked about, weren't even on the radar.
Now it's common knowledge. Almost every week I'm posting some news article about some adoptee taking legal action somewhere, or some [00:38:00] country, adoptive country doing some investigation on their historic adoptions. All of this stuff lately about the adoptions that were illegal and elicit. It is not new.
This has been seventy 70 years in the making. That's how long Intercountry adoption has formally been conducted, and that is why the Hague Convention even got created in the 1990s was because they knew in the 1980s, the 1970s, there was so much trafficking going on mass that they knew they had to try and curb it somehow.
Now, the Hague Convention arguably has been a little bit successful in doing that because you've definitely seen a slowdown in the trafficking on mass, but it hasn't. What it has failed to do is actually provide any mechanism for truth, justice, and reparation for the victims. 1.2 million of us are actual victims, and that's just the adoptees.
That's [00:39:00] not counting your birth families, which is of, is replicated. And also that many adoptive parents have been the victims because they went into it naive, gullible, blind, maybe willingly, not so willingly, but they are now finding themselves that, wow, what did we participate in? You're talking 3 million impacted people. When you look at the actual triad as a bare minimum of documented numbers. And there were people like me who are not in those documented numbers because a lot of our adoptions done before the Hague were not documented.
Haley Radke: Sure. And the ones that are like under the table somehow.
Lynelle Long: Yes. All those private, independent adoptions
Haley Radke: Yeah.
Lynelle Long: That are still not done under Hague conditions or between Hague countries. And there's still a lot of those. And what bothers me the most about the Hague Convention is that countries sign up to the Hague, and yet they'll still go outside of the Hague and have their own bilateral agreements with a country that's not a Hague country and still have an agreement about sending [00:40:00] children. And you're like what's the bloody point of this convention if you're still gonna have your own agreements that are outside of it anyway? It's like really ridiculous when you actually think about it. Yeah.
Haley Radke: No kidding. I don't wanna pass over this. You talked about legal action, so I'm sure I can think of a few. Like I'm thinking of Kara Bos suing to have her Korean father recognized. So she would be on his birth record in Korea, one of the first, if not the first to do so we have an interview with her rolling to in the show notes when she completed that. Can you give us some more examples? It doesn't happen to even be specific people necessarily, but like what sorts of actions are adoptees taking that you see more and more of?
Lynelle Long: There's been a lot lately of those suing for their illegal adoptions. You've got Norway just very latest. Uma you've seen Jenny Rogneby in Sweden. She filed a police report on a number of [00:41:00] adoptions from a number of countries. She's actually Ethiopian herself, but reporting the illegal and illicit practices that Sweden as a whole, as a country has done.
You'll see I've got them here. Got a Bangladesh adoptee suing for their illegal adoption. You've got another Sri Lankan adoptee in, in, in the Netherlands. You've got French adoptee parents in France suing for their Sri Lankan adoptee that was illegally adopted as well. You've got Malian adoptees in France.
You've got, you had Adam Crasper from South Korea suing Holt Korea, and he won that. You have Alex Gilbert, he was a Guatemalan adoptee. He actually sued his adoption sorry, his orphanage, which was run by Americans, where he was, literally put through a lot of abuse for years he sued them.
You got Patrick Noordoven, the most well-known and first major adoptee to, to sue the Netherlands and win his right to identity. And he sued his parents as well for his illegal adoption in the Netherlands. He was from [00:42:00] Brazil. You've got yeah, there's a whole heap. And I'm actually in the middle of writing a blog about all of these because.
Haley Radke: As soon as it's done we'll link it in the show notes. It might be out by the time we this comes out.
Lynelle Long: It will, yeah. It should be out. But yeah it's really important for people to understand. That adoptees on mass are awakening up to realize that their rights, their human basic rights have been obliterated through their intercountry adoption.
And the very basic one of that is our right to identity. We have a right. Every child has a right to know their origins, who their mother, father, uncle, grandparents, sisters, brothers are. And yet, how many times do we see intercountry adoptees, where the worst case that I can really highlight is twins, where they've actually been separated by adoption, not even told that they're a twin.
How basic a right should you have to even be able to know that you're actually a [00:43:00] twin, and both get sent to different countries and yet never told by that adoption agency or whoever facilitated it that they're in fact, a twin. So these rights are just so basic and simple, and yet you know the hardest thing Haley has been that we are struggling to find lawyers who even have the capacity to know how to fight for our rights through a justice mechanism.
Because in fact, this is the worst that every country that signs the Hague, they've also failed the very basic of the Hague, which is to make sure legislation exists to protect us so that when we are indeed trafficked through illicit or illegal means there is a law to prosecute against. Now, this is the biggest problem, is that when we discover that we've been obtained through the dodgiest means possible that there is no law in place to even prosecute through, [00:44:00] to allow us a right to justice.
This is the hugest failing of the Hague Convention. It has not made countries to even define what a legal adoption even is, hence no law that exists that we can even prosecute against. The biggest legal law that exists that we can prosecute against is usually falsification of papers. But that says nothing to the impact of that falsification of papers or to our displacement from one country to another, nor to how the hell we would even be able to find our original parentage.
So that falsification of paperwork is such a minuscule part of the big picture of what we've actually, endured. So this is why if countries were to take the Hague convention seriously and to take our [00:45:00] rights seriously, they should actually be putting in place like Belgium has just done a criminal code that actually defines what a legal adoption is, that it is trafficking, and that there is a route and a pathway for actual justice to hold the perpetrators accountable.
The fact is that almost every perpetrator who's conducted our adoption has gotten away with it, with literally a slap over the wrist or some tiny fine, because there has been nothing legally in place as a law to even hold them accountable to, for the actions that they've done. So just to make that clear, there is no laws in all countries that define what an illegal adoption is in order for us to even prosecute against, and that has been the biggest battle for us.
So you can literally traffic a child and get away with it because no laws exist to hold you to account. And that's why this trafficking has kept on going for so many [00:46:00] decades. Completely. There is no deterrent against it.
Haley Radke: This doesn't surprise me. And it should like, it should, I don't know. It's just scandal. There's so much work to be done. That's what I hear. Yeah. So much work to be done. Okay. Before we do our recommended resources, I would love for you to speak to adoptees who wanna advocate, who want to make change, what are the best and most effective ways to get involved and to speak up about things like this, like glaring issue.
Lynelle Long: That's hard because not every adoptee is ready for this. This is the big picture stuff where you've really gotta be quiet stable. Very balanced. Being able to really withhold the hugest criticisms and adoptees typically we've gone through so much trauma. It's a big ask to be expected, to be able to [00:47:00] stand at that level and really be able to hold your ground and be, be able to sustain it.
And to be able to stay in that space and cope with the stuff you have to hear, which often denies, minimizes and gaslights our whole experience. So I don't encourage everybody to just step in there, but I do say take it a step at a time. Do what you're capable right now, and if that means literally doing things like providing support as a peer to another peer, each of your actions are meaningful and add to the growing momentum of this community. And that's my key message is you don't all have to be advocates like me. We all have a different role. The role that you play, Haley, in educating people about the impacts, it is all so important because there is so much work to be done in this space.
To get change requires a lot of things to change. If we want substantial change, which for me is to end this trade of children. But to do that, we need [00:48:00] so much awareness. We need so much research. We need so much understanding of the impacts of adoption on all of the triad. We need so much work and we can't all possibly just do each of that all on our own.
We all have a part to play. And even though that might not be an orchestrated playing of parts, it all adds to the eventual momentum of what the community's doing. Even those who hate me in this community, they've got a very active and a very important role to play. Because there's still educating the community and doing the part that is so important, so that's my message is each of you do what you can at the stage that you're at. And that's all important because it all contributes and grows. And definitely when I first embarked in this, I had no intention of getting to where I am. I had no goal for this because I didn't even know it existed. To be honest.
I only learned it over the years. And as I [00:49:00] connected to more adoptees over the years, and as I did my own personal journey over the years, I came to realize, that it was so important to fight for the change that's affecting us all. So it's not just a personal journey it's actually a whole global community that needs this change. It's gonna take us all.
Haley Radke: I agree. How have you sustained yourself over all these years doing this?
Lynelle Long: I think it's because I've had the ability to pop in and out of the space as I need. Like I don't work in it. I don't get paid. I think if I did, I wouldn't have lasted anywhere near as long, because as soon as it becomes a job, it's tedious, it's terrible, and it's, you feel like you're not in control.
Whereas being able to just informally come and go in the spaces I need I guess for most people who see me, they probably think I'm just never not in the space. But little do they know that I [00:50:00] do take my step backwards. Like this year for example, you've not seen me run a single webinar or single thing event because I'm literally taking a bit more of a step back this year because I'm tired and exhausted and I'm just like trying to figure out how to leave the space.
It is like surely there's enough other people doing this now and and I'd like to move on, but. Something that, you know, and Facebook was awesome 'cause it wiped me out at the beginning of the year for six months. And suddenly I lost all of my connections and went, oh, maybe this is a great godsend that suddenly I can just leave like this.
Awesome. But no, it, I had so many people write to me saying the ICAV space is so important to them. And I just thought, oh, I can't leave yet. And then Facebook brought me back on and I'm like, ah, there you go.
Haley Radke: You're back. You're back.
Lynelle Long: Yeah. It's not to be yet. And I'm very much I do believe in, a greater force a greater power that kind of, if you eventually find yourself, [00:51:00] find a work your way through your trauma. Like I have come to a very peaceful place in my life where I am completely open to whatever the universe has for me to do. And if it's meant to be that I stay in this space, I stay.
If it's meant to be that I'm out. And it's not like I have to control anymore. I'm quite open to just letting it unfold as it's meant to be. So I guess it's been such a journey for me over these many years of finding my own self, empowering myself, taking action against my own perpetrators.
That was a huge part that I felt I had to do before I ever stepped outta this space. And now that I've done that, I do feel like largely a big part of my journey's finished, but yet I see that there's still, this big part about the illegal adoptions and us fighting for some justice and legal pathways still seems to be something that I am carrying in terms of, that's a load that I want to see some change in.
So I continue on, [00:52:00] I would love to one day get to the point like I've had for my sexual abuse, where I have a formal apology and a formal reckoning of, how my adoption was actually conducted, but on a mass scale for all of us, because I know I'm not the only one. And I'd love to see that, that recognition and that yeah, just that validation that, yeah, what has happened to you has been wrong on such a massive scale. And if that can happen, then I would very much be at complete peace and feel like I've achieved everything I wanted.
Haley Radke: I hope in our lifetime, Lynelle.
Lynelle Long: I do too. And I know it could be another 20 years or more because I'm, I'm know. I've been around for a long time and I know how slow change is in this area, but I think it's possible and, and I'm very hopeful that as our, as I was speaking before about how our generations are maturing and growing in awareness and growing in a desire for change as well, that we might get that on mass voices to be able to push [00:53:00] enough to tip it over so that we can see the end of adoption as it's done today.
And a new form of, I'm not people often mistake my anti adoptioness for not wanting children to be cared for, and that's not the case at all. I completely want vulnerable children to be looked after in the right, settings and conditions, but we shouldn't be doing it in the way that we are because there are just too many pitfalls and lack of follow up and lack of check-ins to ensure that all vulnerable children are placed in safe homes in good conditions with their rights intact. We need a whole new revisit of how we actually look after vulnerable children, and we need to keep away from the word adoption because it's just had decades of bad connotations and implications for those who've lived it.
Haley Radke: Yes I know you're a strong advocate for family preservation, as am I.
Lynelle Long: Yes.
Haley Radke: Also.
Lynelle Long: That's a lot.
Haley Radke: It's a lot. But I want to make sure to [00:54:00] recommend your organization, InterCountry Adoptee Voices, and the website is intercountryadopteevoices.com. You have so many resources for, all the sending countries. All the links are there. You have collected just a massive database wealth of experience. It's incredible. It's really incredible. So thank you for your volunteering work. In all that for those almost 30 years, I keep saying that's just wild. That's wild. How can people best support ICAV?
Lynelle Long: That's an interesting question because I don't necessarily need support in that sense, in the sense that I never ask for funding or anything like that. It's more, I think people should ask how can they support the intercountry adoptee community?
Haley Radke: Okay.
Lynelle Long: And to do that, I would ask that you go to my page on adoptee led groups where I list many from around the world that are in my network that I'm in contact with. And find ways to support your locally placed one. [00:55:00] A lot of them need people with certain skill sets. A lot of them are happy for donations. But, this is the work of our whole community and for domestic adoptees too, and trying I recognize that you're all there and that you need that support too.
It's just, I don't ever speak and step into that space because it's not mine and I don't wanna try and, pretend to be an expert in it when I'm not. But definitely look for your adoptee spaces, wherever you are around the world, and reach out to them and ask, how can we support you? That's what I asked people for.
Haley Radke: Wonderful. And what did you wanna recommend to us?
Lynelle Long: All those adoptee groups.
Haley Radke: Okay, that's perfect.
Lynelle Long: Who are doing this work every day? Just like me, who are providing peer support to our community, who are doing advocacy, who are doing research, who are doing, so much writing, blogging, podcasting, documentaries, like there are just so many of our community doing this work. It's not just me, it is thousands of us all doing this work and it is [00:56:00] all just as important.
Haley Radke: Where can we connect with you online Lynelle?
Lynelle Long: You can through my website. I'm also on LinkedIn as Lynelle Long and I'm on Facebook. So Facebook is where I connect to adoptees. LinkedIn is where I connect to a lot of the professionals and allies because they can't go through Facebook. And yeah, those two places is where you are mostly find me.
Haley Radke: Thank you for your work. Truly.
Lynelle Long: Thank you for yours too, Haley. It's all very important.
Speaker: Just wait, you let me gush on you at just a second. Your work has been so important to so many people, and I don't think you'll ever know all the ripples you've made, and so I hope all those good vibes come back to you in some fashion.
Lynelle Long: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
Haley Radke: Such an honor. What a delight to talk with you. That was amazing. Thank you so much.
Lynelle Long: Thank you.
Haley Radke: So Lynelle is too modest [00:57:00] to share some of the things she has had influence over, but we were talking privately after we recorded, and I mentioned a couple of items that I had seen, big changes in the last several years.
And she would say, oh yeah, I helped with that. And she's a volunteer. She volunteers her time. It is incredible the impact she's had. She mentioned her critics and things. I haven't really seen that, but yeah, anyone in the public gets criticized for doing something quote unquote wrong by people who aren't doing anything.
So I hear, I see that. I hear that. I see that. But I thought was so interesting how she talked about just we have to be so respectful and slow and the [00:58:00] consistency that she's shown. I think that is remarkable. I don't necessarily have al I haven't always been super respectful to the people who I have problems with, and that's just a, a Haley personality trait.
And so I go about my advocacy in different ways by calling things out. And by now you likely have heard that I have been working on a brand new podcast. I can't wait to bring this to the world if my work has impacted you. If you are passionate about family preservation, please support this new project.
We will have details in the show notes for you or if you go to adopteeson.com, there will be details there as well. Thank you so much for listening. [00:59:00] Let's talk again very soon.
