by abufarsi » Thu Feb 24, 2011 1:58 pm
You bring up an interesting point...
Lots of children on the street in the Philippines. I have had 3 foreigners friends/acquaintances who took street children into their homes. One was a woman who paid all the fees to run a legal orphanage, last I heard she had 35 kids, some infants, most boys in the 6-12 range. This woman and I did not get along well, she was so strict with the kids, she ate better than the kids, she smoked like a chimney, she lived off the donations to the home, and constantly asked me for cash when I tried to help them on other ways like repair the fences.
Another guy simply offered to give food to those he saw hungry. Never ran them off after they ate either. He had a very big heart for kids. When you visited his home he would have 15 boys lying about here and there, various degrees of clean. He ran into LOTS of problems. Adults simply showing up for free food, drunkards mostly. Kids who sheltered in his home at night often stole things, things he considered junk mostly as things he thought valuable he kept locked up. Silverware for crying out loud, he could hardly keep it in the house. Several kids brought drugs in, hidden up inside themselves. He hired people to cook meals, but they often stole the food. He had parents drop off kids at his house for free child care, without so much as a "hi there".
Yet another guy claimed he got into the child care business backwards. When he and his wife settled in the Philippines, he made friends with many police in town. When there visiting (drinking)with the police, he noticed that some babies were abandoned and the police took care of them, he offered for both he and his wife to care for these babies (3 the first year). Later his wife died in a car accident. But the police never forgot him as he resolved a problem they had no other solution for, at one time I remember he had 18, mostly girls, sheltered, beds stacked 4 high in the bedrooms. All went to school. There is a law in the Philippines that essentially says that a foreigner can't spend the night with a child unless they are a relative. After 12 years of helping children, he had a claimed "relative" of one of the babies come by and say they wanted "their' child back, no proof of parentage was offered, but a demand for cash was. He was already fully bonded with this little girl. He refused. The "family" filed a complaint with the welfare dept. They investigated, and even though the police quickly told them that they were the ones to give him the kids he must adopt all or give all up.
Some of the girls who stayed with him that the police sent his way were overtly sexual, when I visited him they would be very "careless" in exposing themselves, at 10-15 years of age. They obviously had been working for a living in the sex trade before going to his shelter. It destroyed his reputation as most other foreigners felt he was a pervert as the girls were so "friendly" with him. He died before everything was resolved. To this day I don't know if he was indeed a child molester, or not. He had a GF move in with him that was young, but legal.
Well... these are problems I NEVER had with any of my kids. They are older and on their own now. Frankly adopting scares me.