Latest news with #searching
BBC News
16 hours ago
- Politics
- BBC News
Police searches to be based on biological sex
Police Scotland has issued interim guidance around searching transgender people after the landmark UK Supreme Court ruling on the definition of a force's new five-page document, which covers searches carried out by transgender officers and staff, says searches will be undertaken on the basis of biological April a judge ruled that under equalities law, sex is binary - meaning legally it should be interpreted as referring to either a biological man or a biological Chief Constable Catriona Paton said the new guidance was designed to provide clarity around a "complex and important area" of policing. The force, the UK's second largest after the Met, said it must ensure it is acting in line with its duties under the Equality Act and the Human Rights added that officers and staff must feel confident that they are conducting searches guidance said all searches - in custody or elsewhere - must be undertaken on the basis of biological also covers scenarios such as an individual, whose lived gender differs from their biological sex, requesting to be searched by an officer of their lived that happen then efforts will be made to ensure an appropriate officer conducts the search as long as it is "operationally viable".The guidance said written consent would be required from the authorising officer, the person to be searched, and any officers involved in the day after the Supreme Court ruling British Transport Police confirmed trans women arrested on the railways would in future be strip-searched by male also said same-sex searches in custody would be conducted "in accordance with the biological birth sex of the detainee" under updated guidance for public bodies. 'Legal duties' Assistant Chief Constable Paton said: "This is a complex and important area of policing and searching members of the public is a significant intrusion of their personal liberty and privacy."It is critical that as an organisation, Police Scotland continues to fulfil its legal duties as well as ensuring officers and staff feel confident that they are conducting searches lawfully."While the guidance will bring clarity to both our colleagues and members of the public, we are acutely aware of the impact and depth of feeling around this issue, both among the transgender community and those who hold gender critical views."The senior officer said the force's priority was to ensure decisions were made in line with its service values of "integrity, fairness, respect and upholding human rights".Assistant Chief Constable Paton said the interim guidance would be kept under review as the force awaits the publication of revised national guidance around this week women's rights campaigners handed the Scottish government a deadline to comply with the UK Supreme Court's ruling on biological response the Scottish government said it accepted the Supreme Court judgement and was awaiting new guidance from the Equality and Human Rights new police guidance was developed following advice from the force's legal team and independent human rights advisor, Jane including businesses, staff associations, trade unions, the Scottish government were also Scotland said its wider review into sex and gender was ongoing and further updates would be issued in due Scotland News has asked the Scottish Police Federation and the Scottish government for comment.
ABC News
25-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
Adoptees from war in Vietnam return with DNA kits in desperate search for family
There's a fear that lives within Sue-Yen Luiten, a building terror that propels her as she cycles alongside the paddy fields of Vietnam's Mekong Delta, searching. It's a fear that has haunted Sue since she was a girl growing up in Western Australia and with each year it gets stronger: what if her biological mother and father are looking for her and she's not even trying to find them? And so, she searches. "I don't know if they're alive; I don't know if they'd have any interest in finding me," Sue, 51, tells Australian Story. "There's only hope that they'd be looking for me and that if I found them, there'd be value in that reunion." In May 1974, as the war in Vietnam entered its final chaotic year, four-week-old Sue was whisked out of her ravaged birthplace and into the arms of her adoptive parents, Marlene and Richard Luiten. A year later, as US-aligned forces scrambled to leave the country, thousands more Vietnamese children were flown out to be resettled around the globe in what was dubbed Operation Babylift, the largest ever war-time adoption program. Sue had a good life in WA: loving, comfortable, safe. But the older she got, the more she became aware of her "difference" and the more a void inside her yearned to be filled. "As an adoptee, there's a space which is always carved out; we call it the void, the miasma, which we hold within ourselves about our origins, about who we are … and that, for me, has always been there," Sue says. For 25 years, the now Melbourne-based architect has trawled records, visited Vietnam multiple times, followed leads and been left deflated when they go nowhere. But over the course of her search, she's met others like her — children born in and displaced by war who are now in their 50s and desperate to know their ageing birth parents. They know time is running out. Adoptees have a unique bond, says Sue, a kind of family with shared experiences, questions and hopes, despite living in countries as far-flung as the United States and the Netherlands. Through Viet Nam Family Search, an organisation Sue co-established, these adoptees continue to look for their birth parents, registering their DNA on ancestry sites and hoping for a match. But without the DNA of Vietnamese relatives, a crucial piece of the puzzle is missing. Which is one big reason why Sue and about 40 others, adoptees and their supporters, saddled up and took on an emotional five-day bike ride through southern Vietnam last month. The moment Sue held her newborn daughter Ashika, the years of prevaricating about launching her search to find her parents were over. "The first feeling that occurred to me the seconds after I held her and looked at her was how inadequate I felt in what I had to offer her — about 50 per cent of who she was," says Sue. She began her search, cobbling together what documentation she could, a name here, an address there, including the orphanage where she was cared for after birth. But before heading to Vietnam for the first time, Sue wanted to consult a veteran of the war. "There was a missing door that I was pretty scared about opening and walking through," Sue says. "Maybe the end result of my search would be that a veteran would be my father, whether American or Australian." She contacted then-WA federal politician Graham Edwards, a veteran who lost both his legs in the war. He'd recently returned to Vietnam and, despite his reservations, found it cathartic. He listened to Sue's concerns about causing more trauma to her biological father if he was a veteran, but urged her to go. "I just wanted to encourage her to go back with some confidence and to feel positive about the experience," Graham says. Within a week, Sue was in Vietnam. She went to the maternity hospital where she was born, where an elderly nurse who had cared for thousands of babies during the war wept at her first reunion with one of those children. She found an address listed as her mother's and set off, only to find it was a long-gone refugee camp, now a throbbing metropolis. She visited the orphanage she'd been in before she was adopted and "felt an instant connection to the space" but found no relevant records. What Sue did find there, however, was almost more powerful: adult orphans, people about her age, the children who had never left. "Just that moment of thinking, how easy could it have been that I was you and you were me," says Sue. "I couldn't speak Vietnamese, they couldn't speak English, but we didn't have to. Sue returned to Australia, no closer to finding her parents but with a stronger connection to her origins, to the girl who had been born Luu Thi Van. She spoke publicly about her quest and broadened her contact with other adoptees. One of them was My Huong Le, now the director of Nha Xa Hoi Long Hai, a centre for underprivileged children in Vang Tau. She had returned to live in Vietnam and later found the woman she believed was her mother. The excitement of My Huong's reunion filled Sue with hope. But on trips back to Vietnam, Sue grew concerned about the ad hoc nature of family searches. She learned of rogues who faked DNA tests to "match" families for financial gain. A better system was needed and in 2015, Sue and My Huong began Vietnam Family Search. It provides DNA testing and other comprehensive search services, working with the Vietnam-based Catalyst Foundation to assist mothers and adoptees looking to connect. For years, Sue had been hesitant about doing her own DNA test but in 2016, after exhausting all leads, she did. With her DNA registered in a database, Sue waited for contact. None came. Last year, she did a new test that found she was 100 per cent Vietnamese. Having laid to rest the idea she might be the daughter of a Vietnam veteran, a week later, more compelling news came. She had a match. There was a second cousin out there, also searching. She sent an email. Now, she waits for that person to make contact. "Fifty years of never having any sign of a human being that is actually related to me, it was like a tree with roots … just that sense of having that root there, even if it's a mystery." Of all the sights and sounds that filled the senses of adoptees Barton Williams and Kim Catford on the bike tour of their birth country, nothing was more striking than the sea of faces of Vietnamese women who came to welcome them at a government-run ceremony in the Mekong. Perhaps some of those women were there because 50-plus years ago, they gave birth to a child they had lost or given up in the throes of war. Perhaps they were searching too. "I eyeballed one lady," says Barton, who has written a play about life as a Vietnamese adoptee. Kim adds: "We're all thinking, 'Could this be our mother, or could this be a relative of some type?'" DNA testing is key. The group knows how vital that step is through My Huong's tumultuous experience — 14 years after she moved to Vietnam to live with the woman she thought was her mother, My Huong discovered it was all a lie. Another woman came forward and after a DNA test, it was proved that she was My Huong's mother. Secrecy, shame and deception live alongside many Vietnamese women's desires to find their children, and Sue and her group were determined not to add to the pain. They advised women in advance of their trip that DNA testing would be available and left it at that. No-one came forward on the day of the welcoming ceremony. But 24 hours later, about 25 women expressed an interest in taking a test. "It's been really encouraging," says Sue. "We'll spend some time with them, talking about privacy and … making sure we get consent. For Sue, the trip stirred a jumble of emotions but the loneliness she has often felt in her search for her origins was not one of them. She knows she may never find her birth parents, but she knows she'll keep looking — and that she shares her quest with other adoptees. "That solo journey you're on, that isolation, the frustration, the immensity of the task at hand can just be such a lonely and strange and obscure place," Sue says. "After this trip, I definitely feel less lonely … having gone on the ride, the experiences that I now carry with me will become a strength, something that I can lean on and refer to in those times where things are tough and I am feeling lonely and isolated. "They'll become a really solid base for me to continue my journey." Watch Australian Story's Missing Pieces, 8:00pm, on ABCTV and ABC iview.
