It has been cultural practice in India for girl children to be less desirable than their male counterparts. This belief has led to an imbalance in the male to female ration in India, as well as elevated rates of female child abandonment and even female infanticide. But some are doing their part to help counter the terrible practice.
(Shariq Allaqaband/Cover Asia Press)
Kristen Williams, from Cincinnati, Ohio, was a single high school teacher with a mission. She decided to adopt a 3-year-old Indian girl who was having trouble finding a new, loving home. After several couples decided against adopting her, Williams took the plunge. She adopted both Roopa, the 3-year-old, and also 8-year-old Munni, from India in 2012.
(Shariq Allaqaband/Cover Asia Press)
Williams had originally tried to adopt from Nepal, but the adoption program between the country and the United States collapsed and all adoptions from Nepal were stopped. She lost $10,000. Instead of giving up, Williams turned to India in her adoption search.
It was there she found Munni, a young girl who had suffered abuse from previous caretakers and left with scars on her face and body. Said Kristen Williams, “I saw her face, and it was like an electric current just shot out and hit me in my heart. She was everything I wasn’t looking for, and she ended up being everything I needed.”
(Shariq Allaqaband/Cover Asia Press)
6 months later she returned to India and met little Roopa, whose nose and lips had been eaten by animals and insects as she lay abandoned and barely alive in a garbage pile. Now Kristen Williams is her mom.
(Shariq Allaqaband/Cover Asia Press)
“It’s very unfortunate that this is an everyday event in India,” Kristen said. “Because somebody did stop, and someone did pick her up and turn her in. That’s kind of the silver lining. They could have kept walking, which many people do.”
Roopa has received reconstructive surgery to her face, and a nasal prosthesis, and Munni (now 8 years old) has also undergone cosmetic scar removal. The girls are doing well.
“I look at my girls and I’m so happy,” Williams said. “I had set out to adopt a child but this journey has brought me so much more. I feel so much love for my girls. They’re my world and I can’t wait to start our lives together. To call them my family just fills me with joy.”
