Prosecutions
192. Information given to the Police by the Registry led to one prosecution for giving false information in relation to the registration of a birth. The accused was, however, awarded an absolute discharge with no conviction recorded.
Adoptions
193. An Adopted Children Register is maintained at the General Register Office under the Adoption Ordinance. Table XLIII shows the relationship of adopters to the children adopted under the Adoption Ordinance in the past five years with figures for the five years from 1st January 1963 to 31st December 1967 shown in brackets. The numbers of adoptions over the past decade have been as follows:
Male Female Total
1963
1964
1965
1966
....
1967
•
1968
1969
1970
...
1971
1972
...
Total
J
46. 99
145
51
60
111
47
76
123
45
60
105
39
54
93
57
113
170
120
151
271
...
109
146
255
140
165
305
190
198
388
844
•
1,122
1,966
It will be seen from the above that after an almost unbroken series of drops in the number of adoptions registered each year from 1963 to 1967, the downward trend was reversed in 1968. In 1972 the figures rose to a record 388, exceeding the 1971 figure by 83. During the year, 61% of the children adopted were over five years old and 82% over two years old. This appears to indicate that quite a large number of these children were already admitted into the families of their adopters before adoption. Of the 2,666 children adopted since the Adoption Ordinance came into force, 735 were under two years old, 206 two years old, and 372 three to four years old. Thus 1,313, or about half of the total number of children adopted, were under five years old when adopted. The remaining 1,353 were distributed among the age groups as follows, 5-9 642, 10-14 419, and 15-20 292. The adopters in all three classifications, namely, joint adopters, sole male and sole
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