The adoption by white lesbians of a girl from the Muslim Somali community has been halted after protests.
The three-year-old was due to be handed over by Harrow Borough Council but a week of protests have left the Council with no alternative but to put the adoption on hold.
More than 50 women from the Somali community demonstrated outside the headquarters of Harrow Council to protest against the decision and urge the local authority to reconsider the adoption.
Tory-controlled Harrow say the girl and two older siblings were ‘taken into care’ after they decided the children’s mother had ‘mental health problems’. In a cultural context, children of a mother who could not cope would always be taken in by relatives, but despite offers from the family, Harrow told the child’s mother by letter that there were no Muslim Somali adopters available.
According to the Daily Mirror, a family member named Ibrahim told the Sunday Times they want the little girl to be brought up by a family who share their religious and ethnic background.
He claims four blood relatives on the mother’s side were willing to adopt the toddler but were turned down.
A spokesman for Harrow Council said: “Adoption decisions are taken after lengthy and extremely thorough consideration of what is in the child’s best interests.”
Ministers have said they want adoptions to be carried out more quickly and preferences that children should be placed in similar racial or cultural environments to be swept aside. Ofsted has introduced (in 2012) a new target for speed in adoptions. But as more and more adoptions are done against the wishes of parents, and at a time when cases where children have been taken into care wrongly are increasing, speed will inevitably lead to injustice.
(When adoptions are carried out against parents’ wishes the children are euphemistically ordered by the court to be ‘freed for adoption’.)
The 2002 Adoption Act allowed same-sex couples to adopt and that in turn has led to complaints from biological relatives of adopted children.
In 2009, one mother in Scotland went public when her children were placed with homosexuals after an offer to adopt from their grandparents was turned down. Councils have been receiving as many as 50% of their applications to be considered as adoptive parents from pairs of homosexuals.
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If I was a little girl, I would rather be brought up by lesbians than by Muslims intent on chopping bits off my genitals, an important part of Somali culture. Even if the lesbians allow her to go to the mosque for old time’s sake, I reckon her genitals will probably be pretty safe with them .
Good point. Although you are not, of course, and it’s a bit of a ‘rock or a hard place’ comparison. (Not sure ‘safe’ is a word I would have used in that context either.) Anyway, by your logic, every Somali girl is at risk and should be taken into ‘care’. I wonder why our brave and resolute councils don’t do that?
Because as soon as Social Services get involved, websites like this start complaining and criticising everything they do?
That hasn’t stopped them taking more children into care last year than ever before, has it?
And ? I highly doubt that you have the case notes and files for every single child who has gone into care for the last 12 months, so you’re not in a position to comment on whether it was the right thing for the child or not!
You display a complete and heartless contempt for justice.
Why does not having enough information to make a balanced judgement mean I have a contempt for justice?
Because you are perfectly happy to see children taken from innocent parents.
But you don’t know that all the parents are innocent. I don’t suppose Jane Glover (whether she is the famous musician or not) would be perfectly happy to see children taken from innocent and entirely satisfactory parents.
My impression is (1) that secularists actually believe the state owns the nation’s children and (2) that they do not care about injustice – so long as they are not on the receiving end of it, of course. I try to be more altruistic and my heart grieves for the innocent parents, as well as for those who go to SS for help and just get ultimata and when they can’t measure up, have their children taken. I venture there are actually very few actual abusive parents in proportion to the numbers we hear. Jane is not the famous musician, she is a secretary.
> Because you are perfectly happy to see children taken from innocent parents.
And where is your evidence for this ? Since you’re so keen on people quoting chapter and verse to support a point, where is your hard evidence for the above statement.
> I venture there are actually very few actual abusive parents in proportion to the numbers we hear.
See above.
Just shows the influence Islam has out of all proportion in relation to its size in the general population. When Christians raise any issue in relation to gay / lesbian people they are ridiculed, accused of bigotry and are taken to court for example If Christian women had protested over the adoption……. ……?
Poor little girl I didn’t think much of either option for her.
If I was a little girl, I would much prefer my genitals to be in the hands of lesbians.
In Somalia in 2013, 98% of women were “affected by” genital mutilation, according to UNICEF.
I’m sure it’s totally wrong to suggest that all, or even many, lesbians are paedophiles. They used to staff expensive private girls’ schools in large numbers, or so it was popularly believed, and they were tolerated in that role. The girls went on to become healthy and successful débutantes or Oxbridge dons.
The answer for Somali girls living with their families in the UK is surely regular medical inspections at school, and very very harsh penalties on offending parents, no matter where or by whom the deed was done. Frankly, we can’t do anything to stop this practice in Somalia, if this is what they want in their own country. Send troops ? I don’t think so. There was a certain amount of trouble about a similar tribal practice in Kenya. We couldn’t stamp it out even when we ran the country.
‘If I was a little girl, I would much prefer my genitals to be in the hands of lesbians.’
You are being metaphorical, aren’t you?
My wife and I adopted 2 girls one of them handicapped and I know that adoption will always raise difficult issues. However I was impressed by the strong liberal left bias of the whole social work system. They are at best suspicious about Christian adopters and usually go to great lengths to avoid placing black and Asian children with white couples. This case raised some interesting questions. I wonder why it hasn’t been mentioned by the BBC? As mentioned, it would probably have made a big story if it was Christians rather than Somali Muslims.