It felt like we were doing something wrong, “she says.

A few months later she said she took the boy back home after the child welfare department made it clear to her that she could be arrested for failing to inform the authorities. The boy later told her that he spent most of his time with Randy Winslow in Illinois.

Child abuse under the guise of caring

During this phase, the then 41-year-old exchanged child pornography according to court documents. After the boy moved out, Winslow talked boastfully in a chat room about molesting boys and how to hide the abuse. "You just have to raise them to think it’s okay and not tell anyone" he was chatting with an undercover agent. Winslow is now in jail.

Even supposedly well-meaning mediators leave children to their fate

Numerous complaints can be found on the forums about children being admitted to violence and allegedly terrorizing other household members. "Many have taken over" says Tim Stowell, who ran the Facebook group last year "Way Stations of Love" founded. Stowell says he has two intentions: First, the 60-year-old father of four adopted children wants to help parents prevent their children from separating. If that doesn’t work, the Facebook group should help to find new families for the children. The group has 275 members, and only for them is it visible and accessible. You cannot join without Stowell’s approval.

Like many middlemen, Stowell says that he leaves the screening of potential buyers to the families who offer a child. In some cases, the parents and interested parties come into contact via his page and then regulate the details in private e-mails. He doesn’t know what happens to the children, says Stowell.

Give up a child because of too big feet and strange ears

Megan Exon decided to join the network in 2007 "adoption_disruption" to moderate. She wanted to help children find better homes, she says. Like dozens of other intermediaries, she was not a social worker or adoption expert, just an amateur – a 41-year-old mother who had gotten a child herself through an online forum almost two years earlier. The four-year-old from Taiwan had been handed in because his parents at the time found his feet too big and his ears strange looking.

"We just introduced people to each other" says exon. The rude awakening came after she made contact with a certain Illinois couple: Nicole and Calvin Eason. The Easons got two children, a Russian boy and an American girl. When Exon was made aware by a woman who followed the ad forums that the Easons might be lying to other parents in order to get their children, she became restless. She got in her car and drove the ten hours from her home in North Carolina to Danville, where the Easons lived. Calvin Eason finally agreed and let Exon take the two children away.

The girl is 14 today, Exon wants to adopt her. The boy, Dmitri Stewart, is 20 and lives alone. He says the Easons never sent him to school, so he stayed home and smoked cigarettes. He once asked Nicole Eason why the rooms had no doors. "I like to watch you sleep" answered Nicole. The girl slept in the Eason’s bed.

After the experience with the Easons, Exon decided to stop moderating the online network. "It felt like we were doing something wrong" she says.

Well-known women keep coming back to strangers’ children

Nicole Eason has so far managed to take in at least six children via the Internet – despite her past. In 2000, for example, authorities took away her nine-month-old biological daughter after the girl was hospitalized with a broken thigh. "that the parents couldn’t explain" according to a report from the state authorities in Massachusetts. In 2002, the South Carolina offices took care of Eason’s only one-week-old son. The sheriff’s report included a "deplorable condition" criticized the apartment of the Easons.

In interviews with Reuters, the Easons stated that authorities never took the biological children away from Nicole. Rather, they still lived with the Easons. The authorities in South Carolina and Massachusetts, however, said when asked that Eason never got the children back. Someone is lying, says Nicole Eason.

Power fantasies lived out at the children’s expense

She also says that, contrary to the child’s testimony, Dmitri’s room had a marrying a indian woman folding door and that the girl that former forum host Exon plans to adopt never slept in her bed. She describes her parenting style like this: You just have to be a little mean. She would threaten to throw a knife at someone or scare them with a hose. Eason admits that most of the children she has taken in have only lived with her briefly. But it meant a lot to her to be a mother. "It makes me feel important. I guess this might be my psychological problem, you know. I mean what would I be without her?"

Last month, the Easons lived in a hotel room in Tucson, Arizona. They had to move out of their house because, according to the landlord, they had not paid rent for two months. In front of the hotel she answered the question whether she might take in more children: "Yes." And then she adds: "There are children in my room."

International adoption: The anxious wait for Leila and Leon was worth it Verdict: No compensation after the adoption of an alcohol-damaged baby Adoption 2012: Numbers are falling for the first time in three years Adoption: change in life through adoption Adoption: Information on adoption rights, requirements and age limit

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In no other country in the European Union (EU) were fewer babies per inhabitant born in 2012 than in Germany. This was announced by the European statistical authority Eurostat in Luxembourg.

In 2012, only 8.4 children per 1,000 people saw the light of day in the Federal Republic of Germany, according to Eurostat. At the bottom of the list in the EU are Portugal with 8.5 as well as Greece and Italy with 9.0 each.

On the other hand, Ireland was the front runner with 15.7 births, followed by Great Britain (12.8) and France (12.6). Outside the EU, however, even more children are born in Turkey at a rate of 17.0. The EU average is 10.4 children.

Birth rates in Europe

The table shows the number of live births in European countries per 1000 people (Source: Eurostat):

country	Birth rate	country	Birth rate
Turkey	17.0	Slovakia	10.3
Ireland	15.7	Switzerland	10.3
Iceland	14.1	Lithuania	10.2
Great Britain	12.8	Poland	10.0
France	12.6	Romania	10.0
Norway	12.0	Croatia	9.8
Montenegro	12.0	Malta	9.8
Sweden	11.9	Latvia	9.8
Cyprus	11.8	Spain	9.7
Belgium	11.4	Liechtenstein	9.7
Macedonia	11.4	Bulgaria	9.5
Luxembourg	11.3	Austria	9.4
Finland	11.0	Serbia	9.3
Slovenia	10.7	Hungary	9.1
Estonia	10.6	Greece	9.0
Netherlands	10.5	Italy	9.0
Denmark	10.4	Portugal	8.5
Czech Republic	10.3	Germany	8.4

Conscious childlessness: what’s behind it? Desire to have children: More and more women remain childless Study: Women doubt a career with a child

Despite the low birth rate, there was a population increase in Germany

In Germany, the death rate was 10.8 people per 1,000 inhabitants last year, above the birth rate. Nevertheless, according to Eurostat, there was a slight population increase of 0.24 percent to 80.52 million people thanks to immigration.

At the end of last year, a total of 505.7 million people lived in the 28 EU countries, which means an increase of 0.22 percent within a year.

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Worries, reproaches and stress. Do these factors have a significant influence on fertility treatment? Not necessarily. Success with artificial insemination does not necessarily depend on whether women can relax while doing it. Nevertheless, doctors advise you to take care of your own well-being.

What you can do about stress

Photo series with 8 pictures

Fertility treatment – study provides information

The woman’s psyche does not fundamentally affect fertility treatment, according to Christian Albring, President of the Professional Association of Gynecologists (BVF) in Munich, according to a report by "West German newspaper". The doctor is referring to a study by Cardiff University. This involved 14 studies in ten countries. Experts evaluated data from more than 3,500 women who underwent fertility treatment and who also became pregnant as a result of this treatment.

It turned out rather surprisingly that the psyche apparently does not have any influence on whether women become pregnant during artificial insemination or not. Childlessness is primarily due to physical causes. Nevertheless, women who want to have children shouldn’t put themselves under pressure, advises Albring.

Time out and relaxation instead of fertility treatment

Even if you are plagued by worries and stressed by the unfulfilled desire to have children, medical fertility treatment may not even be necessary. It can also be helpful to take a break, relax, and then try again. Calmly let the subject rest for a while, go on vacation for a couple of weeks, or do some sports. For example, yoga is said to help get your cycle back to normal after you’ve stopped taking the pill. Often the cycle gets mixed up and makes a successful conception difficult. (What causes infertility can have)

Get professional help

However, if distractions and relaxation activities are too difficult for you and your partner and you are still under enormous psychological pressure, consider professional help. In addition to fertility treatment, visit a psychotherapeutic counseling center that could help you better talk about your worries and problems. In the worst case scenario, you can avoid falling into depression or reproaching each other. (Artificial insemination: these options exist)

Because they do not eat meat or fish, a couple in Greece are not allowed to adopt a child. Concerned that the child could not be fed a balanced diet, the responsible authority in Crete forbade vegetarians to adopt, as reported by Spyros Epitropakis, the head of the social welfare office in the island’s capital, Heraklion.

Adoption: Adoption – a bumpy road Vegetarian diet: Help, my child is no longer meat! Life in a rainbow family Desire for children: This helps if the desire for children is unfulfilled. More on the subject of desire for children

Case in court

"We consulted the University of Crete’s Faculty of Medicine and they told us that meat and fish are part of the children’s diet" said Epitropakis. "We don’t want to discriminate against anyone, but we had to look into it. Now the case lies with the judicial authorities." The couple want to go to court to have the decision overturned.

Authority in Crete cares about a balanced diet

The doctor on whom the authority cites criticized the refusal to accept the adoption.