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By: Catherine A. Ross

Elton's plan to adopt criticised by children's charity

Sir Elton John's announcement that he wants to adopt a 14-month-old boy from a Ukrainian orphanage has been criticised by an international children's charity, saying that the answer to the country's deepening HIV and AIDS crisis does not lie in international adoption.

 EveryChild said that while it praised John's efforts to raise awareness of the plight of children affected by HIV in Ukraine, it feared that another high-profile adoption may result in more children being abandoned in children's homes.

It argues that 95 per cent of the children in Ukraine's institutions are not orphans and that the children of HIV-positive mothers face the worst discrimination, being separated from their mothers and often placed in children's homes and institutions segregated from children not affected by HIV.

"High-profile adoption stories involving celebrities send out the wrong message," Anna Feuchtwang, chief executive of EveryChild said.

"Research conducted in Ukraine by Liverpool University found that vulnerable mothers were encouraged by news of wealthy foreigners adopting from children's homes to place their own children in care in the hope that they would get a better life. Most children placed in children's homes are not adopted internationally; the majority face a bleak future.

"Children who grow up in a children's home are much more likely to end up in prison, involved with drugs and prostitution and go on to abandon their own children. The actions of celebrities like Madonna, and now possibly Elton John, could be actually increasing the number of children in children's homes in countries like Ukraine."

Ukraine has seen the fastest increase in HIV rates in Europe. Two years ago, John gave a free concert in Kiev's main square attended by tens of thousands of people to raise awareness of HIV and Aids.

On Saturday he performed for the children - most of whom had lost their parents to AIDS - at an orphanage in Makeyevka while visiting the country with his AIDS foundation. At a press conference afterwards he was asked whether he and his partner David Furnish had thought of adoption.

"David and I have always talked about adoption. David always wanted to adopt a child and I always said 'no' because I am 62 and I think because of the travelling I do and the life I have, maybe it wouldn't be fair for the child," he said.

"But having seen Lev today, I would love to adopt him. I don't know how we do that but he has stolen my heart. And he has stolen David's heart and it would be wonderful if we can have a home. I've changed my mind today.

"I don't know what the procedure is to adopt a boy from Ukraine. I don't think that I can because England has a treaty with Ukraine but David is Canadian so we might be able to work through something like that."

If John can overcome the law in Ukraine, where same-sex partners cannot adopt, and adoptive parents must be fewer than 45 years older than the child, he will still face a problem in Britain, where ordinarily the parent should be no older than retirement age when the child is 18, although Furnish would be 63 at that point.