Birth Identity Disputed or Deliberately Concealed

Concealed by the adoptee/fosteree, parents, or authorities (includes foundlings and feral children).

Andal

In Tamil Nadu tradition, Andal was a girl (by some considered to be a manifestation of the goddess Bhoodevi) found under a tulsi bush in the flower garden of the temple of Vishnu at Srivill... [more]

Argentinian Orphans of the Dirty War

Between 1976 and 1985 the military dictators of Argentina operated a policy of kidnapping, torturing, murdering and "disappearing" their political opponents. Children of their vic... [more]

Ashcroft, Edith Margaret Emily

Ashcroft was German Jewish and Danish on her mother's side and English on her father's side. Both her parents (Violetta and William) died before she was 20. She began acting before her p... [more]

Audubon, John James

Audubon was born in what is now Haiti, the son of a well-to-do married French naval captain and slave trader and his Creole servant-mistress. His mother died soon after his birth and his fa... [more]

Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children

For several decades from the 1920s to the 1960s, the Australian government operated a deliberate policy of cultural genocide, taking young Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children fro... [more]

Baiteke (under Kiribati)

The Pacific island country of Kiribati (formerly the Gilbert Islands) includes the atoll of Abemama, inhabited by the tribe of Abemama, Kuria and Aranuka. The hereditary high chiefs of thes... [more]

Bálint, Lea

Balint spent part of World War II living under an assumed name in a Polish convent in Brwinow, near Warsaw. Her parents placed her there when she was five and she emerged at the end of the ... [more]

Bhattacharya, Namita Kaul

Bhattacharya is the adopted daughter (some political opponents claim she is also his birth daughter) of Indian Prime Minister and Bharatiya Janata Party leader, Atal Behari Vajpayee. She is... [more]

Bloodvessel, Buster

Douglas Trendle was born in Stoke Newington, London, and raised by his great-aunt and -uncle, believing his mother was his Auntie Lily. He overheard that he was adopted when he was seven: &... [more]

Burnum, Burnum

Burnum was born Harry Penrith (he took an Aboriginal name after his great grandfather in 1976) into a nomadic Aboriginal family at Wallaga Lake, New South Wales. When his mother died soon a... [more]