Without realizing it, Babs Oudenhuijzen from Terheijden had a photo album full of suffering from dozens of people in her closet. It is a reminder of her time in Motherheil, an institution in Breda where unmarried mothers came to give birth. The babies were given up for adoption, sometimes under duress.

It is a small album bound in imitation leather with dozens of black and white photos of babies. The first names are there, but they have sometimes been changed later by the adoptive parents. It is unknown who those babies later became. Babs is now making her photo album available for research, so that the babies from that time can be traced. And maybe finally have a baby picture of herself.

Babs worked from June 1965 to July 1967 as a caretaker at Mother Health. She was 18 when she started and had a lot of fun with nice colleagues. “I went to work there because there were those lovely little children. I loved babies. ”

"I was there for the kids. Maybe very stupid, but it was."

Babs was unaware of all the suffering behind the adoptions: “I was 18, but actually still as a 16-year-old child. I think I was a very innocent girl who really enjoyed working with children. And what the background was, that didn't matter at all to me. It was not talked about, not at work or at home. I was there for the kids. Maybe very stupid, but it was. ”

AIKEN, S.C.. (WRDW/WAGT) - A father from Aiken County had to go to court and fought for months to get his daughter back. But now, they’ve been reunited.

His daughter was put up for adoption without his permission, all because of an outdated South Carolina law. Now, this father is working to make sure this never happens to anyone else.

“When the one thing that you love is deprived ... something as simple as...feeling the warmth of her skin, seeing her eyes. It’s an experience and a moment one language can’t put into words. It’s very hurtful.”

Christopher Emanuel knows the pain of a father losing his daughter.

“There wasn’t anybody that I could talk to that could tell me I was going to get my daughter back,” he said.

When they learned the truth, a world collapsed: That it was the donation of sperm from an anonymous stranger that they were conceived with. A group of half-siblings are fighting for what they are legally entitled to for a long time: To know who their real father is.

Wolfgang Büscher Stand: 3:47 pm

Perhaps the most ardent longing human beings are capable of is those for truth. For the truth about yourself. And sometimes the search for it takes a crooked path. A boy grows up with his older brother in an intact family, his mother is a high school teacher, the father a physicist, both love their jobs and their children. And yet the boy sometimes has the feeling that something is not what it should be.

Just a faint doubt - is something really wrong, or am I just imagining it? What the boy sees is not just imagination: father and older brother get on well, they share a soft spot for science. He, Alexander, loves languages.

There are similar differences in other families as well. And yet it depresses him to hear father and brother talk shop about chemistry for hours, for example on long Christmas days, and he's out. He then, says Alexander B. today, threw something in to draw attention to himself, so that he could appear. And at school he chose subjects that weren't really his thing. "I wanted to make father proud."

Coline, Marie-Laure and Pattie-Maëlle were all born in Guatemala and adopted in Europe. But the first two were stolen from their birth families, and the last one grew up with a false mother name on her record. To help people in a similar situation shed light on their history, they created the Lost Roots Foundation.

Helping adoptees born in Guatemala to reunite with their families: this is the main goal of Lost Roots. The foundation was created in early 2021, created by people themselves born in this small Latin American country and adopted in Europe.

Some of them were victims of child trafficking during the Guatemalan armed conflict (1960-1996). This is the case with Coline , born Mariela in Guatemala in 1986, and adopted in Belgium when she was eleven months old. When she becomes a mother, she begins a quest for her origins to answer her daughter's questions.

Many times in her life she had tried to find answers, without success. "There was no structure to do research, so it was a bit like wild research," she explains.

Child trafficking involving the ex-sister-in-law of dictator Oscar Mejia Victores

YERSEKE - Following the news about a temporary adoption stop, Maya Kik from Yerseke has decided to release her story. She was born in Indonesia 40 years ago and adopted by a Dutch couple. Growing up in the Netherlands was not always easy for Maya. For a long time she struggled with a void that she thought she could fill with her family from Indonesia, which has remained unknown to this day.

“I wrote my story because I like to share it,” says Kik. “You hear so many negative stories about adoption, but for me it went very well. I wanted to illuminate the other side. Being adopted was certainly not always easy and finding my own happiness, discovering who I am and especially accepting myself was quite a journey. This is the case for many young people, but if you are adopted, this journey will take a little longer. ”

Emptiness

Kik has been looking for her biological family, but has now stopped this search. “I found out that not my family in Indonesia can fill the void I always felt, but that only I can do that myself. The love of God, my children, husband, my dear girlfriends and boyfriends, but especially my own strength that I have developed, have made me strong. I feel happy and happy with myself. I now know that I could feel at home anywhere in the world, because I always have myself with me. ”

Counterfeit

Coline, Marie-Laure and Pattie-Maëlle were all born in Guatemala and adopted in Europe. But the first two were stolen from their birth families, and the last one grew up with a false mother name on her record. To help people in a similar situation shed light on their history, they created the Lost Roots Foundation.

Helping adoptees born in Guatemala to reunite with their families: this is the main goal of Lost Roots. The foundation was created in early 2021, created by people themselves born in this small Latin American country and adopted in Europe.

Some of them were victims of child trafficking during the Guatemalan armed conflict (1960-1996). This is the case of Coline , born Mariela in Guatemala in 1986, and adopted in Belgium when she was eleven months old. When she becomes a mother, she begins a quest for her origins to answer her daughter's questions.

Many times in her life she had tried to find answers, without success. "There was no structure to do research, so it was a bit like wild research," she explains.

Child trafficking involving the ex-sister-in-law of dictator Oscar Mejia Victores

We can vote again on March 17th . To get into the mood, we will give you a picture of the person behind the politician in the near future. This time: Kees van der Staaij (SGP).

We know Cornelis Gerrit van der Staaij (52) as a politician , but who is he as a person? How was his childhood, who are his loved ones? Libelle looked it up for you.

5 FACTS ABOUT KEES VAN DER STAAIJ

Household: Married to Marlies, two children: Michaël (20) and Camila (17)

Education: Law in Leiden

The government has been clear that it wants to promote the mental health of children and young people and announced in the spring amendment budget for 2017 an investment of SEK 100 million extra for this.

The Social Services Act also states that the municipality has a special responsibility for children who have been adopted.

But now the activities at the Erica Foundation are threatened as Stockholm County Council has decided not to extend the choice of care. The same applies to Duvnäs' parental support, open the Spira preschool and Resurscentrum when the City of Stockholm wants to save money.

Good businesses must be developed, not wound up! The knowledge and expertise on adoption issues that has been built up over many years is invaluable and should rather be more widely disseminated in the form of a national resource center. The activities show that it is possible to provide adoptees and their families with qualified support and professional help.

If you want to show how important these activities are for adoptees and their families with demands that the activities be developed instead of being wound up, sign this name collection today!

DCI Belgium \ Structure and team

Structure and team

MEMBERS OF THE TEAM

Benoît Van Keirsbilck

Benoît Van Keirsbilck

In 2018, the Mumbai Police had rescued six children, claiming they were sold by their biological parents to couples looking to adopt children through middlemen, including staffers of hospitals and fertility clinics

A MAN booked by Mumbai Police two years ago for allegedly purchasing a child has approached the Delhi High Court, seeking to make the legal adoption procedures comprehensible and stating that he fell victim to the illegal adoption process and faced separation from his son.

In 2018, the Mumbai Police had rescued six children, claiming they were sold by their biological parents to couples looking to adopt children through middlemen, including staffers of hospitals and fertility clinics. The man, a Delhi resident, had claimed that he was fooled into believing that he was adopting a nine-year-old boy through a legal adoption process and that many like him fall for the “lies of touts who offer adoption through illegal ways”.

Last year, a civil court in Mumbai granted him and four other couples the legal custody of the rescued children, who spent over a year in an adoption centre.

Following this, the man found an organisation named Yathartha Foundation to create awareness about the adoption process, in a bid to ensure that others like him do not fall prey. In the petition before the Delhi High Court through this Foundation, the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and others have been named as respondents. The petition seeks that the legal adoption process should be made lucid and comprehensible and awareness should be created among masses with regard to “rampant illegal adoptions in the country”.