Source: Radio New Zealand
ASamoan teenager was adopted by a New Zealand resident in a ‘coerced relocation’. Unsplash / RNZ composite
A tribunal has been told a Samoan teenager was adopted by a New Zealand resident in a ‘coerced relocation’ which led to violence and her baby being taken into care.
Immigration New Zealand (INZ) was trying to have her deported for not revealing she was in a relationship when she arrived in 2022.
Allegations of child abuse, a lack of welfare safeguards and unsafe adoptions from countries which are not signatories to Hague Convention protocols prompted a partial ban on international adoptions last September.
The immigration and protection tribunal had two cases involving adopted Samoans last year.
In the latest, the immigration and protection tribunal overturned the woman’s deportation, saying she was blameless as a then 18-year-old schoolgirl for the circumstances of her adoption and failing to tell INZ about her relationship.
“The tribunal notes that no allegations of trafficking have been made in this case, but that there have been cases where young people from Samoa have been adopted at a similar age to the appellant and trafficked to New Zealand using the Family (Dependent Child) residence category as a vehicle.
“The tribunal has heard evidence in a number of cases from these young people about the exploitation they have experienced at the hands of their “adoptive parents” in New Zealand, including being subjected to forced labour.”
The associate justice minister Nicole McKee announced in September a temporary ban on international adoptions from certain countries, and said she would introduce a bill this year to create a longterm solution.
The tribunal said that move meant the woman’s situation would not happen again.
“[She] did not know she was being adopted,” it said in its hearing notes. “To any reasonable observer, the appellant was not [her adoptive mother’s] “dependent child”. [She] was a stranger with no relationship to the appellant and her brothers.
“It is unfortunate that immigration policy at the time allowed for the appellant’s “adoption” and her coerced relocation to New Zealand. There were clearly welfare concerns in the setting she was placed, given the later involvement of Oranga Tamariki.”
The woman was six months pregnant when she arrived and had a caesarean birth, but fled the house when she was subject to violence, leaving her baby behind. Her brother had also been assaulted and she showed a phone video she had filmed of the attack to a social worker.
Oranga Tamariki took him into care and sometime later the woman’s daughter was put into foster care for about five months. Mother and child have since been reunited.
In an earlier tribunal decision from March last year, a man who was adopted as a teen described being ‘exploited and frightened by his adoptive parents who treated him like a slave’.
His aunt and uncle adopted him and forced him to work long hours in their factory. “His uncle beat him severely, on one occasion, breaking his arm. He did not receive wages for his
work and was only given $20 a week. He was not allowed a phone and could not maintain contact with his parents in Samoa.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand