International adoption to Denmark has stopped. At least for now, because politicians are closing the door.
En December morning in 1978, Claudia Alejandra Svane sat on a plane to Denmark. She had a stack of papers with her. If the five-year-old Claudia could read, she would see that she was born out of wedlock and that she therefore now had to go to Denmark to be an adopted child.
The papers also contained gruesome details: She had allegedly been found abandoned and hungry in front of a church in Santiago de Chile – the capital of Chile. She had no parents.
That was the story her Danish adoptive parents Alisa and Ole were told. That was the story she herself grew up with in an otherwise incredibly safe childhood home in the small town of Manna near Brønderslev in North Jutland. That was the story she and the adoptive parents believed. That was the truth.
But it was all a lie. The papers were fabricated.
In the real world, at the age of three or four, little Claudia had come to the hospital in Chile's capital with an inflamed head wound. Records show how the hospital would keep her overnight. And when her mother came to collect Claudia the next day, the doctors told her that the young girl had died. The mother demanded to see her daughter's body, she came several days in a row, she protested, complained, maybe cried, but the doctors refused to hand over the body. And so it turned out. And all the while, money changed hands, and Claudia was secretly sent to Denmark.
All that Claudia found out 20 years ago when her biological brother found her.
Claudia's world came crashing down. “ What the hell is going on?” she thought.
“ It was very hard. Because who can I trust now? Can I trust what people tell me? I didn't feel at home here at all, because I just thought that the Danish government had lied to me - and my family - to my face."
Fra to be an almost doubly clever solution for both the involuntarily childless in Denmark and poor poor children around the world, the very idea of international adoption today is something we doubt. For the record, let me state: There are thousands of adopted children who have come to Denmark and who have had – and have – a fantastic life. Children who have been saved from misery, perhaps even an early death in their childhood, if they had not come to Europe, to Denmark.
But several media – TV 2, Danmarks Radio and Danwatch, for example – have in the last more than ten years brought so many violent revelations of problems with adoptions in India, Ethiopia and Chile, among others, that adoption has now come to an end .
A very few approved parents are still waiting to receive their adopted children, but the last agency that has been responsible for adoptions to Denmark finally closed down a few days ago. As of Friday, November 1, 2024, all cases of adoption will be handled by the state. Denmark has gone from adopting 600 children a year to almost none.
Claudia thought " jubii" when she heard that the adoptions were over.
“ Those who adopt do not know if the children may have been stolen. Whether the parents have been enticed to sign some paper. After all, this is what we have experienced firsthand, and this is what we have found out in all these years - and questioned."
Today, she is not sure that it is a good idea to adopt children.
“ If it has to be done, then it has to be done legally. But what is legal?”
And now something a little surprising has happened: Because a majority of the Danish politicians say to Danmarks Radio that they are prepared to get adoption back to Denmark again. If you can just get a handle on all the illegal things and can ensure that there will be decent conditions for the children.
But it raises a fundamental question:
Should we - now and here, in our time - move children thousands of kilometers around the globe? Is adoption in 2024 still a good idea?
In this story, you will hear from two of the more than 21,000 children who have personally tried to be adopted to Denmark. It is Claudia Alejandra Svane and then Manuel Tom Kaalund, who were on board the very same flight from Chile to Kastrup back then in 1978. We will return to him.
I have previously interviewed Manuel and Claudia in connection with a series about missing Chilean children. It was then that I was a journalist at Kristeligt Dagblad. Read the article here .
Claudia Alejandra Svane was in her early 30s before she knew the truth about her own life, her origins. That there was a mother who might have had a hard time looking after her, but who didn't leave her and disappear. That there was an alternative reality where she was raised in a completely different life in South America. Where she had learned to eat pastel de choclo instead of strawberries with milk. Where she had sung Canción Nacional instead of There is a lovely country .
Claudia is not alone. A Chilean commission of inquiry has determined that at least 8,000 children illegally disappeared during Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship and ended up in adoptive families. Most of them were sent to the West. And now I said 8,000 children, the number is probably much higher.
In some cases, parents were tricked and influenced into signing papers they couldn't quite read. Maybe they were told that their children would be coming home soon - or maybe they would come home when they turned 18. In other cases, there were priests who told the parents that their young children had died of a sudden illness, and instead the little boys and girls were sent by plane to the West. Quite like Claudia Alejandra Swan.
In 2007, she got in touch with her biological mother, Viviana, who for more than 30 years had thought that her daughter was gone forever. They managed to meet digitally on a Skype connection, crying, before the mother died shortly after.
Why is it important – as a person – to know your history?
“ Well, that's how you find out who you are. Who am I?”
Several parties have opened the way for a commission of inquiry to be set up, which must once and for all scuttle international adoption to Denmark. Something that Claudia has been fighting for for several years.
Today, Claudia says that she is not out to get an apology. She just wants to keep track of how many mistakes have actually been made. How many lies have been spread.
Why is it important to you?
“ Because there are many more cases. We are going to find many more who have been through the same thing. And then they have to admit that they have made a mistake. That's it. The authorities simply have to stand up and say: We screwed up. I need them to acknowledge that they have done some shit. Without saying sorry.”
DR can now say that a majority of politicians are ready to reopen adoptions in Denmark. This applies to seven of the 11 parties in the Danish Parliament. They all talk about needing one “ more robust and secure” system. But once it's secured, then yes, thank you.
" There are vulnerable children for whom it can be absolutely crucial, and Danish parents with both commitment and the ability to take care of them," says Christian Friis Bach, a former radical who is now Social Affairs Minister for Venstre.
And this is what Sophie Hæstorp Andersen, Minister of Social Affairs and Housing, says.
As a social democrat , I believe that international adoption is a way in which we both reach out to some children who are in very difficult situations around the world, and at the same time make a match for some parents who passionately want to have it here child to whom they would like to give their love.”
So what does Claudia think about it?
“ I feel like shit, to put it nicely. After all, this is what we have been fighting for. We have been with the politicians so much that we know the corridors at Christiansborg, and they promised us that they would have the whole thing excavated. And then they turn their backs on us with this," she says.
She believes that in the future there will also be the possibility of the poor being tricked into giving away their children.
“ No one knows what lures are being used. It may be that someone offers that you can get a cow if you take the children. This is what we are dealing with.”
Manuel Francisco Humeres Salinas was on the same plane as Claudia in 1978. A four-year-old boy with dark hair and brown eyes who, according to the adoption agency's information, was born out of wedlock and abandoned by unnamed parents. He was perfect. The medical examination stated that he was both " loving", " devoted", " dark, but quite light" and not least a child there " falls in easily".
In Denmark, he was given the name Manuel Tom Kaalund, and when he became an adult years later, he had to find out that his whole story was also based on a lie. Although he had been officially given up by unknown parents, he found medical certificates where the mother's name was listed. The baptismal certificate was fabricated, and with the help of the Danish embassy in Chile, he has found out that he never actually left the country. In records in Chile, he still lives in Chile and is still called Manuel Francisco Humeres Salinas.
He has been searching for his origins for years and describes how he has never really felt like a whole person in Denmark. Still, he is not as categorical as Claudia when it comes to whether international adoption should be abolished altogether.
He calls it " a difficult question".
" Basically, I think that the fact that you can adopt, that you can take care of a person who may have lost everything, I think is a really good idea. You just have to be careful how you do it.”
Manuel believes that to a greater extent adoption from very nearby countries should be pursued. Countries that we can trust more. Countries where the children are more similar to most other Danish children.
I ask Manuel if he thinks that the illegalities or irregularities that have been documented with adoptions from Chile and a large number of other countries can be avoided.
“ We have to call a spade a spade, and no, I don't think you can avoid that. There will always be someone who will circumvent the systems in one way or another.”
Manuel Tom Kaalund never found his mother . The trail of her ended up in a cemetery in the region of Chile from which Manuel was most likely adopted. The lack of clarification is a condition that Manuel must live with. The lack of clarification equals questions. Questions that will probably always remain in limbo.
“ She was most likely a woman who would do anything for her child. But wasn't allowed to. So you have thought: ' It's fine, bad, the child won't suffer, he'll end up in a better place.' Yes, it can be! But what about the child's mental health?"
Manuel compares the situation to having your puppy stolen.
" Of course you get upset, but then you go out and buy a new puppy. You can't just go out and buy a new human. You can't get the same person again. A small infant. You just have to take note of that. So now I can ask you, Mathias, how would you feel if your children disappeared? Mathias?”
It is an unbearable thought.
" Yes, that's the thought you have to get into. It's no use watching it on TV and thinking: ' Well, they came to Denmark, that's fine enough.' No, think if my child was stolen from me, what then?”
Contribution from Zetland members
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative Journalist • 4d • edited
Dear everyone
Thank you for listening/reading along. What do you think about international adoption? Is it a thing of the past, or should adoptions from abroad be resumed if the authorities assess that the conditions are in order?
If you have become curious about the story of Claudia and Manuel and the Chilean children, I have previously done a larger, investigative series on another newspaper. Here is a link: https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/liv-og-sjael/manuel-claudia-og-luis-ankom-som-de-foerste-chilenske-adoptivboern-i-1978-i-dag
In addition, I would like to recommend this story by my colleague, Nanna Schelde. Here she talks to one of the parents who are currently expecting a boy from South Africa, and whose adoption therefore appears to be completed, as one of the last in Denmark for the time being. It's a powerful story: https://www.zetland.dk/historie/s8D3q9pG-ae6Ewl5D-63570
Good day!
Bra, Mathias
Answer
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Thank you, Connie. And yes, it is exactly the same difficult considerations that I am sitting with
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A
Alexandra
4d • edited
If we look at the big perspective, access to contraception and education for women has meant that there is no longer a large group of unwanted children globally.
The global fertility rate has just fallen and fallen and is now below 2 children per woman on every continent except Africa, where the number is also steadily falling.
Although it is unbearably hard for the Danish couples who cannot have a child, it is really good news that parents around the world have the opportunity to plan the size of their family and take care of the children they have.
Of course, there will always be some children without parents, but I think I agree with Manuel that it is probably best that those children get a home closer to their place of birth.
1 answer
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A
Alexander
4d
I have always thought that there is something double standard about international adoption. On the one hand, you want to give a child who is an orphan in a third world country a good life in Denmark, but at the same time it is with a desire to have your "own" child that you can raise as you wish. In Denmark, we also have many children who are forcibly removed to foster families and children who need adult friends and support people, but these types of help are very difficult to find volunteers for and do not give the same ownership over the child, who is often at the same time a social task associated with the associated family. There is something "easy" about international adoption in that you can simply disregard the child's parentage and take a child out of context and think that you have done a good deed, without it becoming a major social task at the same time.
1 answer
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IN
Inge
4d
a problematic aspect of international adoption, which Emmanuel also touches on, is that you also deprive the child of its language, culture and history by assuming that you can uproot it. Adoptive parents would like to have their own child, but not necessarily the child on his own terms. I find it hard to see how you can get beyond this. - And then there is the whole lack of legality in many of the cases that have been so well uncovered.
Answer
M
Mette
4d
Hello Mathias Mencke
The adoption scandal is catastrophic, and already in the early 90s I chose not to adopt because we knew very well that some children were stolen from their parents.
According to Mads Prammimg, thinking that the legal basis for Danish adopted children is in place is a mistake. He says that Danish forced adoptions are equally illegal and violate Human Rights. Read the Lobben case.
I do not think that a better and more good piece of professional work is done in connection with forced-living adoptions than is done with placements.
Hanne Ziebe Placement of children outside the home - legally speaking
· Ordering notifications: high-level crime A couple of parents received a number of files this week through a file inspection. When the parents went through the files, they found, among other things, a letter from their case manager, which had apparently been included among the files by mistake, and where the case manager had tried to "order" a notification from the institution where the child was being treated. The case manager explained in the letter that she unfortunately did not succeed in a recommendation for the compulsory placement of a child who was now returned to the parents instead of going to an institution. When the case manager was dissatisfied with the decision, she wrote to the treatment institution where the child was being treated and requested the institution to write, that they assessed that the parents could not take care of the child, so that the municipality would be able to "react relevantly to the institution's concern". The treatment institution's response was also in the pile of files. Here they wrote that they had the child in treatment and that they were not worried about either the child or the child's parents. The institution therefore did not want to make a notification. One can fear that some treatment institutions will be able to feel an increased incentive to fulfill the municipality's requests for ordered notifications in order not to lose future tasks ordered by the family department in question. As a lawyer in cases of forced removal of children, experience I regularly see anonymous notifications pop up that more or less appear to be ordered. However, I have not previously been able to prove with certainty that the notifications were ordered. I see it as a very big problem that a case manager orders notifications to support their placement cases and thereby add false files to the case, with the aim of having a child forcibly removed on an incorrect basis. If you cannot fully rely on the files in the case, a relevant examination of whether the child will now also go to an orphanage or whether the child would be best in his own home cannot be carried out.
WHAT IS A NOTIFICATION? - THE APPEAL BOARD
A notification is an inquiry about concern for the well-being and development of a child or young person . A notification can be information about a concern from a professional or a private citizen.
Answer
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Hi Mette
Yes, it really is something we have focused on for many years. Totally agree. Regarding forced adoptions, I have done quite a few stories on it. For example these two:
1) a series about pregnant women who flee Denmark to avoid forced adoptions: https://www.zetland.dk/historie/sOJvbLWE-a8l4XGdY-16758
2) a short story from this year about the increase in forced adoptions: https://www.zetland.dk/historie/sO0VqWag-a8l4XGdY-48703
Bra, Mathias
See all answers (1)
K
Claus
4d
Couldn't the lawlessness of it be eliminated by eliminating the economic motivation to steal/sell children? Then there are 'only' the ethical questions left...
Answer
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Good idea Klaus! And something that has actually been presented as an idea several times. This means that the process is cleaned of all financial incentives in the mediation itself. I'm not going to get smart about how, but I know it's a proposition that's often up for grabs
Bra, Mathias
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K
Catherine
3d
Completely and utterly pedantic comment here... Manna is pronounced as Nanna just with an M
I just couldn't move on until I fixed it...sorry
Answer
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Ahhh! Trying so hard to get a handle on the Spanish pronunciation of cancíon that I was felled by my lack of knowledge of North Jutland. I won't make it again ;). Once I also came to say Aalbæk as Ål-bæk and not Øolbæk, and that was also pointed out, I must say hello. Thanks for writing and correcting, Katrine :)
Bra, Mathias, raised in Copenhagen
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Frederick
3d
I was adopted from China in the 90s, and I'm a little sad that the narrative of adoption has been turned around. I think stories like Claudia's and Manuel's are really important and I have every sympathy for them. I'm just sorry that the news picture chooses to focus exclusively on such stories rather than nuance the debate, especially when it comes to identity issues. Unfortunately, I also experience being alienated in Denmark on the basis of my appearance, but I don't think it is as significant as adoption, if it took place legally, is wrong. Rather, I think it is wrong that we do not get rid of that kind of racism. I may well be a little disturbed that many people now have the opinion that adopted children should be adopted to neighboring countries so that they look like their future adoptive parents. Shouldn't we rather make an effort to make it normal in Denmark that Danes are not only associated with white people?
Answer
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Hi Frederik
Thanks for the contribution that makes a big impression on me. And I kind of agree. I myself have friends with similar stories (admittedly adopted from other countries), but who also experience alienation or outright foul language and racist comments. There are so many nuances and angles in this debate that we journalists should rightly address.
Bra, Mathias
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A
Andreas
3d
To what extent are children from Danish orphanages adopted?
For me, it would be obvious that these children should have the highest priority in being adopted.
Answer
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Hi Andreas
Well, good question. I don't actually know, but there aren't really orphanages in the traditional sense anymore. Today, vulnerable children are placed. This can be, for example, in foster or network families or in so-called residential institutions. Especially the children who need more specialized support than is typically possible to provide in a foster family. However, I can say that in recent years we have seen a significant increase in the number of national forced adoptions. In other words, adoptions where the authorities decide that a child is best served by being adopted away against the will of the biological parents. Therefore, the waiting list for people waiting for national adoption has also grown in recent years as international adoption has become more difficult.
Have previously written quite a bit about it.
Here is the first episode in a series about pregnant women who flee Denmark to avoid forced adoptions: https://www.zetland.dk/historie/sOJvbLWE-a8l4XGdY-16758
Here is a short story from this year: https://www.zetland.dk/historie/sO0VqWag-a8l4XGdY-48703
All good!
Mathias
See all answers (1)
Zetland
Mathias Mencke
Investigative journalist • 3d
Dear everyone
Thanks for the many contributions. You have so many good considerations and nuances. Well, this is hard. I have answered a bit and continue to keep an eye on here.
Hey, Mathias
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