Information
Stolen and Sold
Broadcast: 24/02/2009
Reporter: Sally Sara
What would you do if you discovered your adopted children were stolen and trafficked, and not willingly given up by their parents, as you’d believed?
South Asia correspondent Sally Sara investigates the insidious trade of children in India, and joins an Australian family in their moving search for the truth.
Sara reveals that dozens of Australian families are oblivious to the true background of their adopted youngsters, because of bureaucratic bungling and government ineptitude both here and in India.
It’s a remarkable story that reveals a shocking truth about some overseas adoptions.
We follow the journey of the Rollings family from Canberra.
For ten years Barry and Julia Rollings believed their son Akil and daughter Sabila had been given up willingly by their birth parents in Chennai. But after hearing suspicions reports about Indian orphanages, they set out to locate the childrens’ birth mother. The news was shocking. Akil and Sabila had been taken from their mother, and sold to an orphanage.
The Rollings have now embraced their ‘Indian family’ as part of their own - Akil and Sabila have ‘two mothers’.
It’s an inspirational story of one family’s courage.
Sally Sara also investigates claims that dozens of trafficked Indian children may have been placed for adoption in Australia - their new parents oblivious to the background of the youngsters.
She speaks to heartbroken couple Fathima and Salya, whose child Jabeen was kidnapped from the streets of Chennai by traffickers. Jabeen was adopted to an Australian couple, and now lives unaware of her background, while her adoptive parents live in anguish.
It’s a story of crime and cover up - its victims both here and in India.
Camera: Wayne McAllister, Geoffrey Lye
Editor: Simon Brynjolffssen
Research: Simi Chakrabarti
Producers: Trevor Bormann, Vivien Altman
