It starts with a relatively innocent question. Three years ago, a cousin of Liesbeth Struijcken (56) asked on Facebook whether their last name is now spelled with an 'ij' or a 'y'. What difference does it make, she thinks. But she still decides to dive into the trunk in the basement containing all her adoption papers. Surely the correct spelling of their last name is in there, she reasons.
Once in her basement, she feels dizzy as she realizes she'd never really looked at the pile of papers before her. Struijcken is adopted; she discovered this by accident at age nine, during a vaccination at school and a name she hadn't known was read aloud. It turned out that the name she hadn't known was hers.
For the first time, she now sees two documents in the basement that she had always overlooked: one in which the Breda Child Protection Council informs her parents that they can have their adopted daughter's personal record rewritten, omitting all information relating to her adoption. The second letter confirms that her information has indeed been destroyed, with the authorization of the Minister of the Interior.
Struijcken is stunned. “I felt utterly betrayed. That identity card is much more than a simple card. It symbolizes that entire adoption history. Your identity card tells you who you are. That's true. Not for me.” Until 1994, the Dutch government kept information about its residents on identity cards; now all that data is stored in the Personal Records Database.
Personal identity cards of adopted children were permitted to be destroyed after a 1970 ruling by the Council of State. At the request of adoptive parents, the Council ruled that adopted children were entitled to a new personal identity card, on which their biological parents were no longer listed.