A first in the world of international adoption in France: a judicial investigation opens for adults born in Romania.

Press release of January 26, 2024

A first in the world of international adoption in France: a judicial investigation opens for adults born in Romania.

Subject : Opening of a preliminary judicial investigation for the following offenses:

• Arrests,
• Kidnappings,
• Sequestration or arbitrary detention of minors under 15 years of age,
• Assistance with the entry, movement or illegal stay of a foreign minor in the territory of a state other than that of origin
• Distance from the family environment

The Racine&dignité group officially announces the opening of a preliminary judicial investigation decided by the Paris Prosecutor concerning illicit trafficking in the context of international adoptions and the arrival on French territory of Romanian children with short-term visas for medical care.

This approach is part of our commitment to transparency, fairness and the search for truth.

Context :

On October 5, 2022 , the members of the Racine&Dignitéissus group:

legalized trafficking in the context of international adoption,

and removed from their country and their loved ones by NGOs for short-term hospitalizations with medical visas, sent a file with a 2022 report on “trafficking and disappearances of Romanian children” with numerous annexes to Madame Laure BECCUAU, Public Prosecutor of Paris, denouncing the establishment of child trafficking and the violations of children's rights to which they have been subjected. A complaint is filed.

We demanded that a judicial inquiry be opened and that investigations be carried out against the main actors who participated in our forced exodus without the consent of our biological families. It is also essential to investigate the role of State in this matter. In particular, we drew attention to the NGO Solidarité Enfants Roumains Abanddonnés (SERA France) which brought around a hundred sick Romanian children to France via short-term medical visas in the 1990s. Most never returned to their country of origin, others arrived without the consent of their biological families. Not to mention that this NGO among many others has been an important intermediary in facilitating child adoptions since the 1990s.

To this collective complaint were added numerous individual complaints from adoptees, people who arrived via medical visas and biological mothers (Romanian).

In July 2023, the Paris public prosecutor's office took charge of the case, and referred the complainants' files to the Office for the Fight against Illicit Migrant Trafficking (OLTIM), which reports to the Ministry of the Interior.

Victims began to be interviewed in January 2024.

The objectives of the investigation are:

• Let France, Romania and the European Commission recognize all these crimes, child trafficking since the 1980s.
• Let the nature of these crimes be recognized as “Crimes against humanity” so that there is no statute of limitations.
• That the French, Romanian states and the European Commission recognize that Article 21b of the International Convention on the Rights of the Child has been misused by a powerful lobby and actors to legalize child trafficking with the establishment of the principle of subsidiarity of the 1993 Hague Convention.
• That victims (adopted children, victims arriving on short-term medical visas, biological families and whistleblowers) be recognized and compensated.
• That one of the biggest criminals in the Romanian children's case, Mr. François Polge de Combret and creator of the NGO SERA, be arrested and tried. Mr Polge de Combret carried out media propaganda, odious politics on Romania, the institutions to bring out children who were neither abandoned nor orphans. Its goal was to show atrocities so that adopted children would hate their country of origin as well as their families who never abandoned them.
• The NGO SERA Romania and Care France must be requisitioned as well as adoption authorities such as the International Adoption Mission. And all the other NGOs.
• Let the architects, actors and diplomats who participated in the destruction of the legal basis of the European Union, which is the CIDE, be heard and judged. Let impunity end.
• Let the French, Romanian states and the European Union tell the truth to victims, in the public interest, and propose appropriate solutions for the tens of thousands of victims.
• That France de-ratifies the Hague Convention and respects the CRC and that all architects and actors who participated in these large-scale crimes are no longer financed by the French state and the European Commission, for example the International Social Service and NGOs such as Sera Romania, Care France etc…. .
• That specific legal and police units (without the actors or adoption experts) be created in all European countries to support victims of illicit trafficking in an appropriate manner. Let cross-border work be put in place to arrest the actors of this organized crime.

Investigation procedure: Hearing victims takes time because complaints are added. The Judicial Police are looking for the actors who participated in this organization (lawyers, intermediaries, NGOs, OAA) even if some are deceased. Following this preliminary investigation, the service will provide a summary report to the magistrate responsible for the case who will then make decisions.

Being heard by an institution which does not know the adoption system and an asset, There is real awareness that it is a sprawling, explosive problem and that many people are involved at all levels, particularly at the political level. . Pandora's box has been open since the 1990s, everyone knows this file. 

Statements from Officials: It is important to emphasize that France is the first country to open a judicial investigation for adoptees born in Romania and to use the right words: “  illicit trafficking  ” with regard to international adoptions.

Furthermore, directing our complaints for a preliminary investigation to the Office that Fights Illicit Migrant Trafficking is very symbolically strong because we are no longer talking about adoption, charity, or saving poor orphans, but about kidnappings. , of children being removed from the family environment, which perfectly sums up our situations. Not to mention all the abuse and violence suffered by many victims.

Moreover, at the end of 2022, an interministerial inspection mission was launched to establish an inventory and identify illicit practices that may have taken place in the past in international adoption. Our group was interviewed at the beginning of February 2023. The report was submitted to the ministers concerned a few weeks after the start of the school year in September 2023. We are awaiting this report which has still not been made public.  

However, the actors of the adoption system continue to play an infantilizing and perverse game towards the associations and collectives of adoptees. We are quite angry because the presidency of the National Adoption Council invited the associations and collectives of adoptees on Thursday January 18 for Tuesday January 23 without the possibility of postponing it, or of doing it by videoconference. The letter from President Madame Limon clearly tells us “that she was able to present this report with the editors and organize the meeting on January 23.”

We were not able to go to Paris, but nearly 13 adoptees from other collectives made the effort to organize themselves at their own expense to participate. The conclusions are that this meeting was a real fiasco. The authors of the report were not present and the report has not yet been made public. The presidency of the CNA and the May were aware of this report before this meeting, how is this possible? And not all the people interviewed (170) have access, why?

We experience it as a violation of our human rights, once again. And finding the pretext for the reshuffle and that there is no secretary of state in place is not acceptable! The new ministers took up their new positions almost 15 days ago.

We know that there are enormous conflicts of interest among those involved in adoption who want to manage everything, this no longer works for us because we know that they have a very significant share of responsibility in these illicit practices which are wrong in the best interests of the child, but which destroy vulnerable families and their parental rights in poor countries.

The trafficking of Romanian children has been known since the 1990s, diplomatic archives demonstrate this in particular with the ambassadors' reports as well as the report  " For an ethics of international adoption " made public in November 2001 by Mr. Gérard Gouzes written at the request of Lionel Jospin, Prime Minister under the presidency of Jacques Chirac.

Since 2022, our file has been on the desks of French and Belgian ministers, prosecutors, European institutions, OLAF and Euro Just and members of the European parliament.

It is high time for the media to take up this serious subject that has been known for 25 years. The victims' words are in any case being freed and we will no longer be able to stop them. Silence in such matters is no longer acceptable.

France, Belgium and European Union officials must no longer turn a blind eye and brush the problem under the rug because the consequences for adoptees are disastrous.

In the case of Romanian children, many children have disappeared to feed other sectors such as pedophilia, organ trafficking, prostitution under the cover of international adoption.

Hundreds of files (404 in Romania) and reports have also disappeared.

We want an investigation, a cross-border collaboration to open at the level of the European Union with Europol to find out where all these missing children are, and to give answers to all their families who have been looking for them for years.

We are launching an appeal for all adoptees, biological families, people who arrived on medical visas to contact us to share their experiences and express themselves about the questions and abuse they have suffered.