A radio report out of the Netherlands that is to air tomorrow, (Transmission Date: Sunday 8 July 2007) has brought together a panel to discuss international adoption.

Before getting into this, let's take a minute to look back over recent history on what we've seen of the Dutch take on international adoption.

Back in May, a story hit the headlines of a Dutch couple who had adopted from India, The child reportedly had been with the Dutch family for eight years before it was allegedly discovered that he had been kidnapped from his Indian parents and sold to a children's home with false documents. (The report also indicated that there were 50+ other children from the same orphanage adopted into the Netherlands, although no outright mention of kidnapping was made in the other cases. Apparently, however, the implication was established.)

It was said that the Indian parents of the one child in question wanted their child returned to them.

Of course, a case like this could have huge repercussions which would warrant wall-to-wall coverage and discussion on every level of adoption. Debates over ethics, if nothing else, would clog the Internet, organizations would be jumping into the fray, adoptive parents would be contacting agencies by the thousands to double check the process that brought their children home, and so on.

That didn't happen. The story popped up here and there, but with strikingly similar content, then quickly faded away.

When I followed the story from link to link, always with the exact same information ... or lack of ... every single thread led directly back to one Dutch television program that had aired a week or so previously and provided every shred of what was being passed along.

A couple of weeks later, news out of Denmark suggested that another television program, this one Danish, had broadcast a similar program, so the country was suspending adoptions from India.

A bit later, Holland was back in the news ... not with any new information, just rehashing of the same story with the same one root, and reporting that the impact was now indicating that international adoptions in the Netherlands could now be expected to take eight to ten years.

So, what do we have so far? Two TV shows, possibly related, being quoted here and there, and a great deal of reaction.

A few more weeks pass, and Radio One Netherlands is about to broadcast an interview program that starts like this:

It's estimated that at least 40,000 children are adopted internationally every year. The aim of the system is to give abandoned children in developing countries a home, and childless couples in the West a family. It would seem an ideal solution.

"...Every child has the right to grow up in a loving family or a family replacing situation." (The UN Treaty of the rights of the child)

But recent reports in the Dutch press show that there is a decidedly darker side to the system.

One example is the story of Rahul, a young boy adopted from India by a Dutch couple ...

Continued in the next post.