Adoption agency delayed adoption. Now pairs of siblings are growing up in separate countries

The recently closed adoption agency Danish International Adoption bent the rules to avoid breaking the convention and ended up separating two siblings. "An assault", assess experts

A pair of siblings only had each other, now they have to grow up in separate countries with a thousand kilometers between them.  

The separation could possibly have been avoided. For many months, Danwatch has investigated what has been going on behind the walls of Denmark's only adoption agency, Danish International Adoption (DIA), which recently closed after several problematic cases. 

Today we can now reveal how, within the last few years, DIA has delayed an adoption, so that the two siblings today have to live a life separately. 

An internal DIA email correspondence in Danwatch's possession shows that the DIA did not work to find a solution to keep the children together after they were informed that the children were to be separated.

Instead, the DIA slows down the adoption to Denmark until the child's siblings have been adopted to France. 

"(...)This because of rules to always keep siblings together if possible", as the email correspondence reads.

When presented with the emails, Professor of Social Law at the University of Copenhagen Stine Jørgensen considers that this is a violation.  

"DIA violates the children's right to be together", says Stine Jørgensen, who has researched international adoption. 

External lecturer in administrative law at Aarhus University Klaus Josefsen believes that DIA's handling of the case goes against "all common sense and very basic rules and conditions".

"You try to keep siblings together because it's obviously in the children's best interests. After all, those children have nothing but each other. I would call this an abuse", says Klaus Josefsen, who has previously worked with the placement of children in Aarhus Municipality.  

This is how we have done it

The story of the pair of siblings, who have been adopted into their respective families in Denmark and France, began with an inspection of a correspondence between DIA and the Danish Appeals Board. 

We later came into possession of an internal correspondence in DIA and specific children's cases, including those of the sibling couple. 

We have spoken to the adoptive parents of the child in Denmark on several occasions. They have declined to participate in this article, but they have contributed important background knowledge and perspectives.

We have therefore omitted all personal details to protect the family.

Common year at orphanage 

Out of respect for the children and the families, we cannot describe the children's stories in detail, but we can say that the siblings have always been together and have lived for the past three years in an orphanage in a country in Africa. 

In the children's records, which contain a psychological assessment, a doctor's report and a police report, it is stated that the police removed them from their biological parents and placed them in the orphanage. 

Despite the fact that the police picked up the children themselves, the parents are listed as unknown in the children's file, and there are no other relatives who could adopt the children. The two siblings are therefore released for adoption.  

From central sources in the system, we know that DIA already tried a year earlier to find a couple who can adopt both children, which was unsuccessful. The children's case is then kept quiet until a Danish couple is proposed for only one of the children. 

However, the Danish couple hears nothing until many months later. Because in the meantime, the other sibling has been matched with a French family, and this is where the problems arise; the children are now going to their respective countries. 

Siblings should grow up together

According to Stine Jørgensen, siblings otherwise have the right to stay together. 

"Children's family life and thus relationships with siblings must be respected", says Stine Jørgensen, referring to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights , which states that every person has the right to respect for "his privacy, family life and his home". 

"If the countries that receive children for adoption have national rules that cannot support this, then the children must be adopted to another country where it is possible to comply with this," adds Stine Jørgensen.

Other central conventions have similar wording. Among other things , Article 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to "maintain their identity, including citizenship, name and family relationship, as recognized by law and without unlawful interference". 

Another is the Hague Convention , which sets out the rules and framework for international adoption, and which both the African country, France and Denmark have signed to follow. Here it is stated that the countries must comply with the so-called principle of subsidiarity, which means that as far as possible the child must remain in his family, including siblings. 

DIA delays adoption

DIA knows that siblings should be adopted together as far as possible. In the internal correspondence Danwatch has obtained, the DIA's employee at the office in Holte asks a colleague in the African country what is up and down in the case and why the children are being separated. 

To this, the colleague replies that the authorities in the country in question believe that it is in the children's best interest to be adopted separately. However, it does not appear from the email correspondence that DIA is asking for documentation that this is the only solution. 

At that time, the siblings are still in the orphanage and it is possible for DIA to work for a solution that keeps the children together. However, that is not what happens. 

The employee in Holte instead writes to the colleague in bold that DIA cannot proceed with the adoption to Denmark until the child to be adopted to France is approved. This is because of the Hague Convention, as it says in the email.

A few weeks later, the employee writes another email with the same message: The French family must first accept the one sibling before DIA can proceed with the Danish adoption case, again referring to the convention.

Stine Jørgensen calls DIA's action a "deliberate procrastination". 

"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", says Stine Jørgensen .

“ Problematic”

Klaus Josefsen makes a similar assessment. Based on the correspondence, it appears that DIA is slowing down an adoption to protect itself.

"DIA knows well that it is against convention to separate siblings. Still, they drag out an adoption until it is too late to find a solution that can keep the siblings together", says Klaus Josefsen.

At the same time, he believes that the DIA thus violates Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights . 

"By delaying the adoption, they break with the principle of family unity, that every person has the right to have their family life respected", says Klaus Josefsen. 

Lawyer and researcher in children's law at Aalborg University Anne Mørk Pedersen has also been presented with the course of the case for the two siblings, and she is surprised that no more has been done to place them together.

"It is problematic if it has not been investigated whether it is possible to place siblings together. It is in the Hague Convention's principle of subsidiarity that you must try to keep the family together, which must also mean, as far as possible, that you do what you can to place siblings together", writes Anne Mørk Pedersen.

For the two siblings, the adoption means that they are now dependent on the legislation of their new home country:

"The consequence is that the two children are no longer legally considered to have a family relationship", writes Anne Mørk Pedersen.  

Siblings separated 22 years ago

It is not the first time that siblings have been separated via adoption into Danish families.

In 2006, the then six-year-old Aaron Sadowsky had just come to Denmark from an orphanage in Haiti. What was not known at the time was that Aaron's younger brother, Jonathan, had stayed back at the same orphanage. He was shortly afterwards adopted to a family in France.

A long battle followed to get the two siblings together again, but it never succeeded. Instead, the two boys ended up growing up in their own families, in their own countries. 

Today, 22 years later, there is no doubt for Aron Sadowsky what it has meant for the two brothers to grow up without each other. 

“This whole premise of having a common childhood that would mean that as adults today we had someone to go to because we had the same story. We cannot have that today, because the gap has grown too large", says Aron Sadowsky. 

At the same time, he is angry about the situation that Denmark and France have put him and his brother in.

"Those countries do not understand what it means to look after the best interests of the child. It is the ultimate security. I should file a lawsuit against France for violating the conventions in my adoption case, because that is the desperation I am dealing with", says Aron Sadowsky. "We didn't get the best possible conditions because some people had other interests than the best interests of the child".

Aron Sadowsky's case resulted in the then Civil Rights Directorate suspending all adoptions from Haiti. 

No comment

Danwatch has several times submitted the experts' criticism to DIA's director Kaspar Bro Larsen, who does not want to appear for an interview about the specific case. 

Before DIA closed, deputy director of DIA, Thorsten Larsen, wrote in an email that "as a result of the Public Administration Act, DIA is subject to confidentiality in adoption cases", but that the case of the two siblings "is part of the overall complex, from which DIA must learn of".  

However, the lesson comes too late: the Danish Appeals Agency and Minister of Social Affairs and Housing Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil chose last week to suspend all mediation from the five countries from which DIA mediate children. 

Among other things, the minister did not believe that DIA was able to carry out its tasks in accordance with the Danish and international regulations in the area.

On the day of the minister's announcement to DIA, DIA's board took the consequence and turned the key. 

Expert: The Board of Appeal is failing

It is the Danish Appeals Board that ultimately approves the adoption. They do so, even though, according to the internal correspondence, at one point they are "very concerned" about the whole matter. 

Klaus Josefsen's approval of the Appeals Board is a failure, believes Klaus Josefsen, who justifies it by the fact that the board has known all along that there was a sibling to take into account. 

"The Board of Appeal should have asked more questions when the extreme consequence is that you separate two siblings. It doesn't seem like they have done that, and it is highly criticizable", says Klaus Josefsen. 

The Danish Appeals Board responds to the criticism 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. 

However, the Danish Appeals Board would like to explain what they generally do to comply with the principle of subsidiarity. 

"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 Authority in a mail. 

The Appeals Board does not write anything about the requirements they have made to DIA or the African country's adoption authorities for documentation that they have done everything they could to adopt the two siblings together. 

This is how we protect vulnerable sources

• Danwatch is in possession of the specific children's cases, internal emails from DIA and correspondence between the Danish Appeals Agency and DIA, which are all confidential material. For the sake of the children and their families and case handlers at both DIA and the Danish Appeals Authority, we have decided to omit the names and positions of persons. 
• It is institutions that come under criticism, not named individuals.