In this weekly column, people talk about something they 'never want to' experience again, never want to do or never want to do again. This week: Sam van den Haak (40) was born in Sri Lanka and adopted as a toddler by a Dutch couple. She later found out that her adoption had been fraudulently committed. For example, the date of birth on her passport appears to be incorrect, something she is often confronted with.
"In my adoption file there is not a single signature for approval. Not from my biological mother, and not from the Dutch or Sri Lankan government. I often wondered to what extent there was permission to take me with me. And yet I was picked up my adoptive parents in Colombo and took them to their home in Hoorn.
According to my passport I was three years old then, but in fact I was six months younger. I only remember fragments of that time. I remember having to learn to eat with cutlery. In Sri Lanka I was used to making a ball of the food with my hand and then eating it. The Netherlands must have been a big culture shock for me."
"My adoption was never a secret at home. That makes sense, because of course I had a different skin color than my parents and three brothers. It was a complex family, because two of my brothers were disabled and needed a lot of care. A lot of attention was paid to my background I didn't know anything about Sri Lanka, it wasn't talked about much and we never went there as a family again.
It wasn't warm or cozy at home, and I didn't feel like I belonged in the family. I was different, even at school. Because although we lived in a big house and there was a lot of money, I wore old clothes of my brothers. I was bullied for that, I was met by other children and beaten up. I was not safe anywhere: not at school, but also not at home. That's because I was abused by my adoptive father from a young age. As a child I sought safety by crawling into bed with my parents. As soon as my adoptive mother got out of bed, my adoptive father sat on me. The secret of that abuse weighed more heavily on me then than my adoption. I was trying to survive."