International adoption in Denmark is suspended indefinitely. Where does that leave a family form that has been around for over 50 years?

AONLY A FEW MINUTES AFTER I enter the door, Louise Stenstrup shows me into the bright children's room in the apartment in the middle of Copenhagen. Or, it is probably more accurate to say the room that might become a children's room. It resonates a little when we talk, because right now there is only a light blue chest of drawers and on top of it a framed picture of a four-year-old boy with a nice smile and a gray sweatshirt.

" He is the one I am matched with," she says.

Louise knows from a thick case file that the boy in the picture loves watermelon and doesn't like scary movies, and that he is caring towards small children. And that he lives in an orphanage in South Africa, where he was born out of wedlock to a woman who gave him up at birth. Louise also knows that the biological mother later confirmed at the court in South Africa that she does not want him.

Since August 30, 2023, 43-year-old Louise Stenstrup has known that she and the four-year-old boy had been matched, as it is called, and that she was to be his mother. He was supposed to be her son. She has seen videos of him and feels a strong bond with him already. “ It was overwhelming to see him for the first time. I think you can compare it to when you see the scan image for the first time. And here you could really form an impression of who he is. Is he happy? Now I have tried both things, both seeing a scan image and then this. After all, it's a completely different idea when you don't just see a fetus, but a very small human being.”

Since August last year, she has been waiting for the South African authorities to issue a release certificate for her son, a so-called section 17c, so that she can travel to South Africa and meet him and, after a month there, take him to Denmark. Now she has no idea if that will ever happen. " It is extremely difficult that you suddenly do not know whether the ideas you have had will become real. It is the same fear that you have as a pregnant woman, that you will lose the child, which I think most people who have been through it can nod in recognition of.”

“ Right now there is a risk that it will never happen.”

NYEAR I STAND HERE IN THE CHILDREN'S ROOM with Louise Stenstrup, it is of course to hear her personal story and to try to understand the limbo she is in right now. But I'm also here because I'm trying to find some answers to some pretty big questions.

Let me outline the matter: Louise Stenstrup is among the 36 Danish adopters who are on the list for international adoption at Denmark's only adoption agency, DIA . She is a sole adopter, while most of the others are couples. Now the families on the list have one thing in common, that they are waiting with fearful forebodings to see what is going to happen. They do not know if they will be allowed to adopt the children they have been waiting for for years.

In the middle of January, the adoption agency DIA decided to liquidate itself after a series of sanctions from the Danish authorities - specifically from the Danish Appeals Agency and the Ministry of Social Affairs. As early as December 14, the Appeals Board had temporarily suspended all adoptions from South Africa, and just over a month later the agency threw in the towel and announced their own liquidation. At the same time, Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil chose to suspend international adoptions from all other countries on the grounds that Children have been stolen, maimed or bought - and sent to the other side of the Earth. Nobody wants that. That is why the government has stopped international adoption.”

So the big questions are these:

Where does that leave adopters like Louise Stenstrup?

What exactly has happened?

And what does the immediate halt to international adoptions mean for the way we look at the type of family form that has existed in Denmark for more than 50 years?

That's what I'm trying to find answers to, because it also tells me something about what kind of society we are and what kind of society we're on our way to becoming when a state with the stroke of a pen shuts down a certain way of being a family and leaves those affected with a long list of unanswered questions. How should the adopters and the adopted now perceive themselves when they look in the mirror?

AFIRST OF ALL, HOWEVER, I WOULD LIKE TO UNDERSTAND why Louise Stenstrup has chosen international adoption, which is perceived by many as the very last resort. Today she is the political head of an agency, but her educational background is anthropology. And since she was little, she has always wanted to adopt internationally, she says. “ I myself was without parents at an early age and have therefore always had the view that family is much more and much more than just biology. So I've kind of always had a desire to adopt internationally. And I decided to do that back in 2021, when I applied for approval for international adoption.”

Her father was never a big part of her life and she lost her mother to cancer at 18.

“ Family is not just what you get biologically. That's what you create relationally. So for me it has never really played a role that it should be a biological path.”

Now you said before, as I understood you, that you had also tried to be pregnant?

“ I have, and I lost it very late in the process with a number of serious complications as a result. Which also made me think that I didn't need it again. I don't need to become a family that way.”

So, since the end of 2o21, Louise Stenstrup has gone through a fairly extensive approval process, which she calls both thorough and rewarding, because you really get to know what it means to be the parents of an adopted child. And which she hoped would end with her becoming the mother of a child from South Africa. Because she is a single adopter, South Africa is the only option. The same also applies to gay adopters – they can also only adopt from South Africa – or could.

LOUISE STENSTRUP DESCRIBES 16 January 2024 as a day " where the lights went out and everything became uncertain". She was at work and sitting at the computer when she received an email that made time stand still. The sender was the international adoption agency DIA , which was responsible for communicating her adoption case, and the email was signed by the agency's director Kasper Bro Larsen on behalf of the board.

The letter began like this:

Dear adopters on the waiting list for adoption

It is with great regret that DIA must inform you that we are beginning a controlled winding down of our mediation of international adoptions.

“ I don't know exactly what's going through my head, some kind of panic, I think. I just think it can't be right.”

Louise Stenstrup and the other adopters on the South African waiting list were well aware that the adoption agency DIA was in trouble. Already in mid-December, they had been verbally informed about the temporary suspension of adoptions from South Africa. But they had also gotten the clear impression that it was in the process of being resolved. And that it could be solved.

It was a question of employment law, and the mistake had been made in Denmark.

Louise and the other families gained insight into the fact that the case was specifically about the employment of an elderly South African woman called Pamela Wilson. For a number of years, she had worked for the South African organization Impilo, with which DIA collaborated. She was the one who helped foreign couples when they came to pick up the children they had been matched with. It was probably also she who would have welcomed Louise when she had to pick up her son.

Louise Stenstrup has given me insight into the communication she has had with the adoption agency DIA.

INJULY 2022, PAMELA WILSON WAS HIRED DIRECTLY by DIA to devote herself only to Danish adopters. The only problem was, it turned out, Wilson was still employed by Impilo when she signed with DIA . In other words, it was double employment, and that is illegal.

Dagbladet Information has gained access to key documents in the case, which show that the Danish Appeals Board assessed that DIA had deliberately tried to circumvent the rules. DIA explained that they were simply trying to ensure that there would continue to be someone to help the Danish adopters in South Africa. Although DIA terminated Pamela Wilson to appear before the Board of Appeal, the Board of Appeal chose to suspend all adoptions from South Africa.

Louise sat at her desk and was completely stunned. It was cod stupid, as she says, that DIA had not simply corrected the Danish Appeals Board's criticism, regardless of how good it might otherwise be to have an employee, so that you ensure that Danish tasks are carried out. Of course, the adoption agency had to comply with the law, but:

" Never in my wildest imagination could I have imagined that this could lead to a shutdown of all international adoptions here at home."

In the email to Louise Stenstrup and the other families on the list, DIA wrote' s director Kasper Bro Larsen that he and the board knew very well that the decision to close down would cause many questions and concerns.

We will continue, he wrote, to inform you on an ongoing basis in collaboration with the Danish Appeals Agency and hope that in the future a unified, politically sustainable solution will be found on how Denmark can contribute to international adoption for the benefit of the children.

Barely had the news about DIA' s controlled self-dissolution hit the media before the story became a political dispute that caused all the media to go into breaking yellow.

In this article in Information, the process with the Danish Appeals Agency and the adoption agency DIA is unfolded.

DA LATER THAT DAY, LOUISE TURNED on the TV in the office and saw Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil appear on the screen. Now she took action as minister and suspended all international adoption. South Africa closed. The Philippines, India, Taiwan, Thailand and the Czech Republic also closed indefinitely.

The total shutdown was due, the minister explained to DR , to the fact that they could not guarantee that terrible situations would not arise in the area of ​​adoption, “ where children have been trafficked, or parents have believed that they have handed their children over to orphanages and could come and pick them up again, and then they couldn't. It just must not happen.”

Suddenly the narrative was completely different. A current case of messy employment was presented as a case of child theft.

In the days that followed, it was as if the whole story about international adoption in Denmark exploded. The media was filled with stories of adult adopted children denouncing their adoption. A Danish woman who had been adopted from Korea as a child wrote in a chronicle in Politiken that she “ would have had a good life in a poor family in Korea, because I would have been with my family”.

And on January 23, Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil spoke again, this time on her Facebook profile. She recommended that everyone watch the DR documentary The Great Adoption Theft , which is about the past adoption failures of children from India. As a reason, she wrote: Children have been stolen, maimed or bought - and sent to the other side of the Earth. Nobody wants that. That is why the government has stopped international adoption.”

It was, of course, difficult to disagree with. But was it also completely connected?

DIT IS IMPORTANT TO EMPHASIZE that international adoption has in a number of cases been a dark and rather unregulated chapter in Danish history. As it appears in the DR documentary, there were among other children from India who. were estranged from their parents. It is also important to say that it has changed significantly. The number of international adoptions has been plummeting since the 1970s, when Danish parents adopted up to 700 children per year. In 2010, 418 adopted children came to Denmark, while in 2022, the number had fallen to 43 children per year. It has simply become much more difficult to adopt internationally and the adoption processes have changed significantly. First came the UN' s Children's Convention in 1991, and subsequently the Hague Convention from 1993 with a focus on the protection of children in international adoptions has been incorporated, and the legal framework has been tightened tremendously.

And what does that mean? It's a bit technical, but for example this: Since 1 January 2016, in Denmark it has been the Danish Board of Appeal's task to check and approve the so-called 17c declarations. The declaration is an expression of the Danish authorities' assessment that the information in the adoption case shows that the adoption will be in the best interest of the child and does not contravene the legislation of the donor country, Danish legislation and international conventions up to the time of matching.

So when Louise Stenstrup heard the Minister of Social Affairs argue for her decision, she couldn't really make sense of it. The minister apparently mixed up historical and current adoption processes. The mistakes of the past were used as justification to stop today's adoptions. And that's really also why I'm trying to say, there is a very, very big difference between the past and the present in this scene. It's not like you can just go down to the orphanage and pick up your child.”

We have to remember that it is a mistake made solely by the Danish side according to Danish legislation. And which in no way has anything to do with the fact that some children have been removed from their parents. And that is what I am appealing to - that you separate things. That the present is not the past, and the past is not the present. The mistakes of the past must not define the future.”

The number of international adoptions to Denmark has fallen sharply since the 1970s.

Louise Stenstrup was not the only one who thought that something did not quite add up. The minister's rhetoric also puzzled the members of the Folketing's social affairs committee. On 21 January, Karina Adsbøl of the Danish Democrats asked the Minister of Social Affairs two clarifying questions on behalf of the entire committee. The first read:

Question No. 169: " How does the minister assess the conditions for international adoption in South Africa in relation to living up to the Hague Convention's framework for adoptions that take place across national borders?"

And number two:

Question No. 170: " Would the minister explain whether it is correct that since 2015 the Board of Appeal has approved every single matching case from South Africa and that no adoption cases have been stopped in the previous supervision?"

In her answers to the two questions, Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil wrote that she had requested the Danish Appeals Board for help in answering the questions and that she could " refer to what the Board of Appeal wrote". The answers sounded in condensed form like this:

Since 2016, when the Danish Appeals Board has overseen every single case from South Africa, they have found no errors. They have thus in all cases approved what is called §17C (the release certificate), which is issued by the South African authorities.

The Appeals Board has not found a single error in the adoption cases from South Africa. The Board of Appeal has so far also not rejected a matching proposal from South Africa.

So why does the minister say it is about the theft of children? On what basis has she actually made this decision, which affects people so directly? In fact, I'm thinking: Is what happened even legal?

JI CALL FREDERIK WAAGE, who is professor of administrative law at the University of Southern Denmark, and catch him in a lounge at Heathrow Airport. Via Dagbladet Information, he has gained insight into the central documents in the case, just as he has followed developments closely. He has also had the opportunity to discuss the process at a meeting with DIA' s board of directors, who would like to hear about their legal position.

The law professor wonders about several things in the process. From the documents in the case and the conversation with DIA , he knows that the Danish Appeals Board had set in motion a process in which DIA had been given six weeks to send a number of documents and consultation responses. But already a few days after the process had begun, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil decided to suspend all international adoption on the grounds of child theft. The process thus barely got started before the plug was pulled.

I'm talking to DIA' s secretariat, which confirms the course of the six weeks, but who otherwise will only speak for background, because the case is unfinished.

Frederik Waage finds the minister's mixing of past and present deeply problematic. There is no doubt, he says, that there have been terrible cases in the past and that it is an inflamed area, but it should not be confused with the present.

“ The Minister's statements are out of proportion and are close to being libelous. I hardly know what is worse than being accused of stealing other people's children. Especially when there is no suspicion of it," says the law professor, referring to the fact that the Danish Appeals Board has not found any indications of this in recent times.

" I think there is a problem in the Minister of Social Affairs going in and linking a DR documentary, which is about something that has nothing to do with DIA at all , to this case processing process. When she steps in and becomes a case manager in a case, she must comply with the general rules of administrative law.”

And she hasn't?

I don't think she does in this case. I believe that it is not good management practice at all to write the way she does on Facebook. Her coupling is out of step with reality.”

So there may be reason to believe that what the Minister of Social Affairs has done is not entirely by the book. Professor Frederik Waage believes that it would be a case for the ombudsman to go into. But any criticism from the ombudsman in a year and a half will not solve the current situation.

DIA will not comment on the quote, but refers to updated information on the organization's website.

VYOU HAVE TO GO RIGHT BACK TO THE FIRST of my three big questions for this case. Namely, where does this leave Louise and the others on the waiting list for international adoption? It turns out that it is not easy to get an answer. Not even if you have direct access to the Minister of Social Affairs.

On the morning of Tuesday 27 February, the Norwegian Parliament's family and social affairs rapporteurs met in the Ministry of Social Affairs. They were called by Social Affairs Minister Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (S) to a meeting of three quarters of an hour on international adoption, but without an agenda. " It was 45 minutes with a thousand questions and complete frustration," says family spokesperson for the Conservatives, Mette Abildgaard, when I call her.

Her impression is quite clear that the matching cases like Louise Stenstrup's will be followed to the door and completed. Because Louise Stenstrup has already been matched with her son, it is likely that at some point she will be sent a release certificate so she can pick him up. But it is more unknown what will happen to the other families on the waiting list.

Right now, there are many discussions about whether the area should be shut down or whether it should continue . There is talk of transforming DIA into a knowledge center for international adoption. It is on the political decision-makers' table whether there is a temporary solution for those who had their hopes extinguished on 16 January. And what will happen in the long run.

In the meantime, there is another side of the problem that we have to deal with. Namely, the adopted children who are already here, who are suddenly presented with a story that they have been stolen. As if they are all wrong. “ It is a very difficult story. Not only for the children who will come in the future, but also for those who are there now," says Mette Abildgaard.

I am of course also trying to get an interview with the Minister of Social Affairs, but she is fully booked for the next few weeks, says her press advisor.

For information, however, Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil has recently said that she has no knowledge of children who have been adopted to Denmark, after the new adoption law came into force in 2016, to have been stolen, mutilated or bought. " The decision was not made on the basis of specific knowledge about specific children, but on the basis of the risk that it could happen," said the minister.

Moreover, Denmark is not the first EU country to temporarily suspend international adoption. In February 2021, the same thing happened in the Netherlands. As a result of a report by an independent committee, the Netherlands chose to suspend all new applications for international adoption, a so-called Moratorium. This, the Dutch authorities announced, could have led to a real halt in international adoptions to the Netherlands. But a year later, in April 2022, the Dutch government decided to lift the ban again, "because it was in the best interest of the children, so they were not forced to grow up in orphanages."

PELVOM LAW PROFESSOR FREDERIK WAAGE SAYS that the minister does not have the authority to speak out as she does, words help to create reality. There is weight behind when the Minister of Social Affairs says that she is closing international adoption because she wants to stop the theft of children.

This not only has consequences for Louise Stenstrup and her son, but for all adoptees in Denmark. On social media, parents of adopted children living at home experience in several cases being hanged for having stolen their children. Louise Stenstrup herself was called " human trafficker" and " thief" on Facebook after she had taken part in a media feature. " It is lucky for your son that he has not come to Denmark," several wrote.

The reality is that international adoption today is a regulated and controlled form of family. It takes several years to be approved for adoption. And today, the history is not hidden from the children who are adopted to Denmark. On the contrary, says Louise Stenstrup. You live with it and make it part of the shared history you create together. And I think that will still be important. I'm just worried that children will now have to sit and feel that their history or themselves are wrong when the rhetoric that is used about international adoption in the public here at home is so fierce."

I can't quite get this out of my head: A family form that has been recognized in Denmark for more than 50 years, the minister did away with in a single Facebook post. It is a very abrupt showdown. Especially because it is happening at a time when the legislation is moving in the direction of more national adoptions. With the Children's Law, it is a declared policy on the part of the government to forcibly remove and forcibly adopt more Danish children. In certain cases, the Appeals Board has rejected one in five cases due to errors in the municipalities' decisions.

Couldn't Louise Stenstrup just choose that instead – i.e. to adopt nationally, as the government would like it? She says she is not against domestic adoptions as such. There can be many good reasons for choosing that model.

“ But I chose to adopt internationally because we have a much greater precedent in this area that we have built up throughout history, precisely learned from the mistakes of the past. I am particularly encouraged by the fact that since 2016 the Board of Appeal has not found fault in a single case. However, when they have reviewed the Danish cases, they have nevertheless found errors in one in five . I am not comfortable with the national adoptions in the same way.”

Right now, there's not much she can do but wait. Together with a group of the other adopters on the list, she has created a network where they exchange experiences. They share with each other if there is anything new. Talking to politicians and lawyers who might know something. At the same time, she doesn't really dare to believe it. The whole discourse has changed. She leans on the Hague Convention, which says that you must not waste a child's time. At the same time, the DIA still has an obligation to help the Danish Appeals Board process the matching cases.

So far, the boy has been sitting on the light blue chest of drawers in the future children's room for six months. No one knows yet how long he and his mother in Denmark will have to wait before they - perhaps - meet each other.