Adele Rickerby's Blog

I’m thrilled to share that my book The Promise Kept is now available in French! This milestone represents more than just a language shift—it’s an opportunity to connect with new readers, spark fresh conversations, and offer this story to a broader audience.

From the original inspiration to the final punctuation, every word has been thoughtfully rendered to retain the heart of the message while resonating with francophone readers.

Download your copy in French

Curious, I emailed Ramona Petrella Cummings, Founder and Executive Director of P.H.F.T.C.Inc. and asked her to tell me some things about her charity. This is her reply;

I moved to România în 2003 for a six month tour, working under a non profit organization in their private orphanage. During my time there, I was introduced to the local pediatric hospital where social babies who were either orphaned or abandoned were warehoused. I was told I could do anything I wanted to with the babies , but the hospital had nothing to aid with their care for me to use. No soap, no disposable diapers, wipes, creams, formula etc. I wrote home and asked my supporters for funds to buy these basic baby essentials and $750 came in. I started buying supplies and with the help of two friends we bathed, lotioned, changed, fed, and loved on these little ones. Many screamed at human touch or at bath time or just being lifted out of their cribs. It wasn’t initially very peaceful or happy, but after several weeks we started to see a difference. After returning home, I decided to keep trying to raise money for this cause and that found me returning every 6 months to work with the babies and buy supplies for the hospital. Soon, other people and foundations started helping in the hospital and I partnered with them by giving them supplies to work with. I turned my ministry into a non for profit about 9 years ago or so. 

Social babies are what the children are sometimes referred to when they are in and out of government care, abandoned, and require social services’ help.

Initially, the abandonment was caused by extreme poverty, lack of jobs for women, Italian men fathering the children and abandoning responsibilities after finding out their girlfriend was pregnant. Mainly, it was due to it being ingrained in the Romanians heads that the communist government took care of things like this. Ceaucescu the dictator, forced people to have children and if they couldn’t care for them they were to put them in institutions for the government to “help” raise. It just became a way of life. The Roma population and their culture also adds to the abandonment issue, with young girls being married off at early ages and having children into poverty and ignorance of mothering. That is mostly the issue now as România is becoming more prosperous and the new generation isn’t ingrained in communism. 

Ramona Petrella Cummings, Founder and Executive Director, P.H.F.T.C.Inc.

P.H.F.T.C.Inc. collaborates with and assists several Romanian Foundations working with the Roma and abandoned children, one of which is; Forget Me Not Ministries Co-op. We heard from Rachel Ross, Executive Director, Forget Me Not Ministries Co-op. This is what Rachel said;

From what I remember from conversations with government social workers in the hospital when we would have 100 abandoned babies or so at a time…they would not classify them as abandoned or social babies as they were not legally “abandoned” as in their parents had not signed away their rights. So, that was one way that they could deny having an abandoned baby crisis or issue…technically…they were not abandoned…even though some had been there for quite some time. But that was back in the day.

The majority of the abandoned children are Roma (gypsy).  

Yes, poverty is a main factor in the cause of the children being abandoned. Over 90% of the Roma face unemployment, so providing for their families can be quite difficult. 

Also, I believe it is a mentality that is left over from communist times as well, when families were encouraged to leave their children with the government and were taxed on having fewer than 5 children. Many Roma families that we have worked with do not consider that they have “abandoned” their child when they leave them in the hospital and are almost offended when I suggest that. They often think of it as receiving help for a few years with their child until they are in a better financial position. 

The only real government assistance I know of is the children’s allowance which parents receive monthly. 718 lei for children up to two years old and 291 lei for children between two and eighteen years old. 718 lei converts to $156.00 U.S and 291 lei converts to $63.00 U.S.

I do not know of any extra assistance for single mothers, only extra allowance if your child has special needs. 

I can say that I cannot think of too many moms at all that are single in the Roma community at least. In their community, it would be incredibly unsafe to stay single and oftentimes they will subject themselves to any kind of relationship, healthy/safe or not, in order to have someone to provide for them and protect them. 

Rachel Ross Executive Director Forget Me Not MinistriesRomaniafmnministries.org

Photo credit; With permission to use from Ramona Cummings facebook page. Have a look at their facebook page, which will also direct you to their website.

By Adele Rickerby

The tragedy of Romanian mother’s abandoning their babies.

According to data published on the website of the National Authority for the Protection of Children’s Rights and Adoption, (A.N.D.P.C.A.) two hundred and seventy six babies were abandoned by their mother’s in Maternity hospitals and other health facilities in the first nine months of 2022. Forty-eight less than the similar period in 2021. Of these, two hundred and twenty were left in Maternity wards, fifty-four in Pediatric wards, and two were left in another hospital ward. One hundred and three were returned to their families, two were placed with the extended family, fifteen with families/individuals and one hundred and thirty-four were placed with foster parents.

According to U.N.I.C.E.F Romania, (the United Nations Children’s Fund), one in ten pregnancies in Romania are teenage mothers and that poverty is one of a number of risk factors.
The following reports, Authored by; Andrea Neculau, Diana Negut, Mihai Vacaru and Cristina Vladu states that ”Teenage pregnancy in Romania is a complex social phenomenon”.

UNICEF Romania County Reports on teenage mothersPolicy framework to prevent teenage pregnancy and its consequencesPOLICY BRIEF: Prevention of teenage pregnancy and its consequences

Save the Children Romania reports that forty-five percent of the births registered among girls under the age of fifteen in the European Union, of which there are twenty-seven countries, are in Romania. This number is the highest in the European Union. Romania also ranks highest in the E.U. in terms of infant mortality, the main cause being premature births.

In collaboration with the O.M.V. Petrom Foundation, Save the Children Romania have launched the ”Baby Box” program, which aims to reduce infant mortality and support families immediately after birth.

https://www.salvaticopiii.ro/ce-facem/Sanatate/Cutia-bebelusului

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Adele Rickerby

From New Zealand to Australia, from Australia to Romania, this is one incredible story of finding your children.

Words by Jessica Kramer, Editor @Ruth Magazine. Summer 2021 Edition.

In these days of social media, support and community groups for adoptive parents are going strong. As little as ten-fifteen years ago, unless you happened to have a friend already who was also going through the adoption process, it was much harder to find other parents going through the same circumstances.

Now, however, is a completely different story-and it’s thanks to these strong on-line communities that the term ”the child of your heart”, has been coined. Adele Rickerby, author of ”The Promise I Kept”, explains the term with visible feeling; a biological child is born of your body, but an adopted child is born of your heart. It was a long journey that united Adele with the child of her heart in Romania thirty years ago, and was the catalyst for writing her memoir. ”I kept a diary when I was in Romania, and I wanted to keep the historical context, the family of origin context. I would wake up in the morning with whole sentences in my head and the pressure would get so great that I would have to write them down,” she explains.

While many people have a rosy picture of adoption, Adele and Loredana’s journey was far from easy. Adele had travelled halfway around the world to Romania, alone in an impoverished country recently torn apart by the revolution, confronted with the living conditions of families and of children abandoned in overflowing, understaffed orphanages. It was there she found a baby, Loredana, who had been in the orphanage since she was a week old, writing in The Promise I Kept, that the infants gaze seemed to say, ”Finally you have arrived. I have been expecting you, waiting for you”.

The voyage wasn’t over then, however, with the adoption needing to be legalized through the Romanian justice system before Adele flew back to New Zealand for the final adoption papers before arriving home in Australia. Because of the nature of International adoptions at the time, and the ill-timed news breaking about illegal adoptions from Romania shortly after Adele returned home with her daughter, she faced rumors about the nature of Loredana’s adoption and wanted to set the record straight. ”I felt I needed to write the book to respond to criticism that I had done an illegal adoption or had “bought” Loredana from her birth mother, Adele says. “Health issues forced me to retire early, but also gave me the opportunity to write my memoir.”

The Promise I Kept was originally published in 2013, but a recent reprint has seen it regain popularity once again. “I regretted not putting photos in the original version of the book, and I had seen iconic photojournalist Tom Szalay’s photos in journals and magazines. He collated photos of Romania for me and I added some personal ones.” It wasn’t an easy book to write, but Adele describes the process as therapeutic all the same. “It was hard to write the first time, hard to write the second time. But it was like when I was in Romania and had to get on the train alone- it didn’t feel like I was being brave at the time; I didn’t really think about it. There was this real sense of urgency so I just did it.” She says.

The Promise I Kept 2020 Revised Edition is available on Amazon as a paperback or kindle.

A heartfelt autobiographical work, The Promise I Kept chronicles the journey to adopt a child from post cold-war Romania. With incredible honesty, Adele shares her lifetime with Endometriosis and the resulting surgeries, her amazing first daughter, Melanie and the desire for Melanie to have a sister- leading to the decision to adopt and a difficult trip to Romania to meet her baby daughter and bring her home. It is a book that is equal parts relatable and eye-opening, at times confronting, but ultimately showcases a woman's incredible determination and love for her child.

Book review, Spring Edition of Ruth Magazine, 2021.

A brave woman searches for answers as she seeks to uncover the truth about her adoption from Romania and to find her birth family.

Following the Romanian Revolution of 1989, Western media uncovered approximately one hundred thousand abandoned children living in institutions where death, disease and abuse were the norm.

Parents from countries such as England, Ireland, America, Canada, Germany, Australia and New Zealand, travelled to Romania to adopt these children in the hope of giving them a better life.

In the early 1990’s, there were estimates of approximately 1,000 children a week being adopted internationally.

Many of these children were not orphans but were abandoned by their parents due to poverty. 

The surge in International Adoptions led to widespread unethical practices, corruption and human trafficking.

In response, the Romanian government implemented stricter adoption laws and regulations and subsequently introduced a ban on International Adoptions in 2001.

This ban was lifted in 2005, but the process of International Adoption from Romania is long and complex and restricted to couples where one of the couple is Romanian or single women who are Romanian. 

Link to watch the story below:

https://www.pbs.org/video/come-find-me-bz3tpj/

#promise #destiny #heritage #history

Newly updated for 2020, This revised and updated book documents Adele’s experiences with her daughter since the book was first published in 2013, and Adele’s ongoing involvement in highlighting the plight of Orphans in Romania. In 1991, unable to have a second child because of a medical problem and struggling to cope in a failing marriage, New Zealander, Adele Rickerby, decided to take her future in her hands by adopting a child from Romania. The misguided policies of the recently deposed Ceausescu government on family planning had led to the birth of an estimated 100,000 unwanted babies in that country. The Promise I Kept is Adele’s story of her nightmare journey halfway around the world to find and adopt a baby, to negotiate her way through the barriers created by red-tape and corrupt officialdom, and finally to carry her tiny new daughter safely home to a life where she could be properly loved and cared for.

Toni Tingle, Mereo Books, an imprint of Memoirs Publishing, Gloucestershire, U.K

Orphan advocacy and child welfare in Romania; Community facebook page; thepromisekept.co

A heartfelt autobiographical work, The Promise I Kept chronicles the journey to adopting a child from post cold-war Romania. With incredible honesty, Adele shares her lifetime with Endometriosis and the resulting surgeries, her amazing first daughter, Melannie and the desire for Melannie to have a sister- leading to the decision to adopt and a difficult trip to Romania to meet baby Natasha and bring her home. It is a book that is equal parts relatable and eye-opening, at times confronting, but ultimately showcases a woman’s incredible determination and love for her child.

Review; RUTH Magazine @RUTHmagazineAustralia  · Magazine

Copies are available to borrow or purchase from the following sites;

Dunedin Public Library, New Zealand, Heritage Room Collection.

Brisbane City Council Libraries

South Australian Libraries

Trove, National Library of Australia; https://trove.nla.gov.au/

The Book Tree, Toowoomba, Australia.

Amazon, paperback, or kindle edition.

Newly updated for 2020, This revised and updated book documents Adele’s experiences with her daughter since the book was first published in 2013, and Adele’s ongoing involvement in highlighting the plight of Orphans in Romania.

Photo of an abandoned child in a cot in the Institute for the Unsalvageables located in Sighetu Marmatiei, a town in Transylvania at Romania’s Northern border with Ukraine. 1992. Copyright, Thomas B. Szalay photography.

On the first of October, 1966, Nicolae Ceausescu enacted Decree 770, which caused untold suffering for the women and children of Romania.

Decree 770 declared abortion and contraception illegal, except for women over forty-five, women who had already borne four children ( later raised to five), women whose lives would be in danger if their pregnancy were to go full-term, and women who had conceived through rape or incest.

In 1966, the population of Romania was approximately nineteen million. With decree 770, Ceausescu’s aim was to increase the population to thirty million by the year 2,000, in the belief that population growth would lead to economic growth. By 1976, the population had increased to approximately twenty-one million. An increase of about two million or twelve percent.

Women of child-bearing age were subjected to monthly gynaecological examinations to monitor a pregnancy or ensure that an illegal abortion was not carried out.

There was a monthly tax on childless people twenty-five years and over, married or not.

Any doctor convicted of performing an illegal abortion faced a jail term of between ten to twenty years. Despite this, illegal backyard abortions took place, sometimes resulting in sterility, infections and even death.

During these dark days of Communism, thousands of babies were abandoned by their impoverished parents into State-run institutions. After Ceausescu and his wife, Elena were executed by firing squad on Christmas Day, 1989, journalists from around the world descended on Romania and discovered the horror of these institutions. Approximately one-hundred thousand children had been abandoned in these institutions, where children were malnourished, neglected and physically and sexually abused.

Children born during this time were called ”Decretei”, children of the Decree. Decretei comes from the Romanian word ”Decree” meaning ”Decree”.

Empty shop shelves and queues for food were common during Communist era Romania. Lack of food meant malnourished mothers gave birth to premature and underweight babies. Hospitals fed these babies intravenously with unscreened blood. Hypodermic needles were in short supply and used over and over again without proper sterilisation. As a result of which more than ten thousand babies were infected with H.I.V causing an epidemic of A.I.D.S.

Once a baby or child had been abandoned into a hospital or institution, it was uncommon for biological parents to visit on a regular basis or to take their child back home.