Sibling pair separated by Danish adoption agency in violation of the rules

Just a week ago, Denmark's only adoption agency had to turn the key. But the skeletons continue to tumble out of the closet.

Over the course of several months, Danwatch has dug into the workflows of Denmark's only adoption agency, Danish International Adoption (DIA). They can now uncover how the organization has deliberately bent the rules for adopting sibling pairs.

An internal email correspondence that Danwatch has come into possession of shows that DIA did not try to find a solution that could keep a pair of siblings together.

In the email correspondence, an employee from DIA writes several times to a colleague from an African country that they must wait to proceed with the adoption of one child to Denmark until the other child has been adopted to France.

According to international conventions, the act is illegal, as you, as an adoption agent, must do everything you can to avoid separating siblings.

The revelations come in the wake of Social and Housing Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz Theil suspending the last five countries from which DIA brokered adoptions.

The reason was that, after several cases, the minister no longer had confidence that the organization could handle adoptions in a legal and professional manner. DIA then chose to shut itself down.

DIA was the only Danish body for mediating international adoptions, and it is therefore currently no longer possible to adopt from abroad.

Expert calls it "an assault"

Professor of social law at the University of Copenhagen, Stine Jørgensen, has been presented with the email correspondence and calls the proceedings "highly criticizable".

- When DIA deliberately asks an employee in a country in Africa to wait for the adoption of one child to Denmark until the adoption of the other child in France has gone through, this is a deliberate circumvention of the rules, she tells Danwatch .

Stine Jørgensen has researched international adoption and believes that DIA violates the children's right to be together.

Klaus Josefsen, who is an external lecturer in administrative law at Aarhus University, also believes that the case goes against "completely basic rules and conditions" in the field.

- You try to keep siblings together because it is obviously in the children's best interest. After all, those children have nothing but each other. I would call this an assault, he says.

Siblings separated 22 years ago

But it is not the first time that siblings have been separated via adoption into Danish families. If we turn back the clock to 2002, the then six-year-old Aaron Sadowsky had just come to Denmark from an orphanage in Haiti.

But at the orphanage there was also another boy – Aaron's little brother Jonathan.

Jonathan did not come to Denmark, but was instead adopted to a family in France.

Aaron Sadowsky says that at first it did not occur to him that he had been adopted. He thought he was going on holiday in Denmark.

- It felt like a movie. You sat on the lap of some adults who talked about some things that were about you, but you didn't know what the significance was, he explains to TV 2's podcast 'Dato'.

Aaron Sadowsky explains that it is only when he asks his Danish adoptive mother when he will return home that it dawns on him that he must stay in Denmark.

- I get extremely hurt and angry. It's a feeling of powerlessness to know that you probably won't see the people who gave birth to you and the siblings you lived with again, he says.

Aaron Sadowsky tells how he and his little brother were each other's "backbones" and to separate them was to inflict a wound that could not be healed.

- I cried for several days and was very sad. After the crying came the anger, and I have been very defiant for a long time because I could not handle that powerlessness and what it did to me psychologically, he says.

Aaron Sadowsky himself believes that in his case, more consideration has been given to the fact that there were some parents who wanted to have children than that there were some children who were destroyed in the process.

- I have spent many years thinking about what could have been and what kind of childhood we should have had. I have thought a lot about the fact that it is a childhood that we will never have, because they have stolen it from us, he says.

Parties want the adoption area 'bullet pitted'

If we turn the clock forward again to 2024, there is another pair of siblings who have been separated and must grow up in separate countries.

And, according to Klaus Josefsen from Aarhus University, it is ultimately the Board of Appeal that has failed the siblings because they also approved the adoption.

- The Board of Appeal should have asked more questions when the extreme consequence is that you separate two siblings. It does not appear that they have done that, and it is highly criticizable, he says.

The case of the separated siblings is not the first adoption scandal. After DIA's closure, DR has also revealed how several adopted children from India between 1978 and 1982 were tricked from their biological parents and adopted away to Denmark.

This has caused several parties in Christiansborg to demand a legally binding investigation in the area of ​​adoption.

- We simply have to scrutinize the entire adoption area and place responsibility, says group chairman of Enhedslisten Trine Pertou Mach to DR.

Confidentiality in adoption cases

TV 2 has seen DIA's internal email correspondence, which Danwatch came into possession of. For the sake of the sibling pair, who were recently separated, and the adoptive parents of the child in Denmark, we do not describe details that could identify them.

TV 2 has also been in contact with DIA, which states that they "are subject to confidentiality in adoption cases as a result of the Public Administration Act", but that the case of the two siblings "is part of the overall complex, which DIA must learn from."

In addition, TV 2 has been in contact with the Danish Appeals Board, which approved the adoption. They reply that, according to the rules on confidentiality, they cannot comment on specific personal cases. They therefore do not have the opportunity to answer questions relating to the specific matching case.

But they would like to explain what they generally do to comply with the Hague Convention, which must ensure the rights of families and children.

- If there are circumstances in a case that make it not possible to place siblings in the same adoptive family, it will therefore depend on a concrete assessment of what is the best possible solution for the child, writes the Danish Appeals Board in an email for TV 2.