Adoption has been viewed through naive rose-colored glasses for far too long

Children who have been trafficked, adoptees introduced to the wrong biological family, distance mothers who have been robbed of their babies: the examples of wrongdoing resulting from international adoption are poignant and legion.

The harsh report that the Joustra Committee presented on Monday leaves little to the idealistic ideas that so often surrounded adoption in the past. According to the research, a 'demand-driven adoption market' has emerged 'in which large amounts of money are involved'. The committee led by former top civil servant Tjibbe Joustra has established that the system 'works like a' money laundering operation 'for children'.

It hardly comes as a surprise after reading all this disaster that the committee advises to limit international adoption completely. It is remarkable that the cabinet announced on Monday, through Minister Sander Dekker (Justice), that it would follow the advice immediately. No new adoption procedures are being started for prospective parents who want to get a child from abroad.

That is a break with the past. When in 2016 a report by the Council for the Application of Criminal Law and Youth Protection advised the government to ban foreign adoption , the criticism was still dissipated. In the past, something may have gone wrong, but for some situations adoption is the only solution, was the reasoning in The Hague at the time.

Loud voice

How is it possible that it does come to a stop five years later? An important explanation is the increasingly louder voice of the adoptees who were brought to the Netherlands in the 1970s and 1980s, the peak years of foreign adoption. In the words of Joustra, they have started to speak for themselves. Lawsuits have been filed against the Dutch state, petitions have been filed, wob proceedings have been conducted, and numerous interviews have been given.

It is not that the knowledge about abuses was not already there. "The Dutch government was aware of adoption abuses from the late 1960s," according to the report. But there was a completely different sentiment in society at the time. 'With the advent of television, wars such as in Vietnam and Bangladesh, natural disasters and emergency situations in developing countries are visible in everyone's living room', the researchers write about the rise of adoption in the 1960s.

'Even if you save one,' said writer Jan de Hartog in 1967 in the TV studio at Mies Bouwman, about his own motivation to adopt a child. The interview, to which hundreds of viewers responded by offering to adopt a child themselves, is in retrospect the starting point of a period in which international adoption could flourish from an idealistic point of view. Giving a poor child from a distant land a new future in the rich West, what could be wrong?

The Joustra Committee has now established that adoption has been viewed through these naive rose-colored glasses for far too long. 'Because of this prevailing view of' doing good ', timely action was not taken against abuses.' Crucially, adoption met the desire of Dutch parents to have children. "The idea that 'everyone wins' in an adoption has been an important factor for the government and intermediaries not to intervene," the report says.

Search

To change that, persistent adoptees were required to shine the spotlight on the painful abuses time and again. The fact that their sound has been heard more in recent years may partly be due to their age. The peak adoptees are now in their thirties and forties. For many individuals it has been a process of years - first the doubt about their own origin, a sometimes hopeless search for biological family and then often a confrontation with lies, messing around with files and sometimes downright child trafficking.

Only after that individual quest does room for the anger against the broader system of adoption arise: how is it possible that this injustice has continued for years under the eyes of the Dutch authorities?

For some adoptees, the will to change has taken over their daily lives. One of them is Marcia Engel, a Colombian adoptee who, with her Plan Angel foundation, volunteered to help others find their families and set up DNA projects in Colombia for this purpose .

Plan Angel has lobbied in The Hague in recent years for legal restoration for adoptees, just like the Indonesian adopted lawyer Dewi Deijle. Deijle was also preparing a mass claim against the Dutch state to ensure that the government would recognize mistakes made.

Marcia with her biological mother Martha Lilian Ramirez. Image Stephen Ferry

The Joustra Committee writes that these and other lawsuits have contributed to a growing focus on adoption abuses.

Minister Sander Dekker went through the dust on Monday and apologized. "It is painful to conclude that the government has not done what could be expected of it." A national expertise center will be set up to support adoptees in quests.

Foreign adoptions will be stopped immediately. It is true that the minister will leave it to a new cabinet what will happen in the future, but as far as Dekker is concerned, his successor has little room to come to a different conclusion: 'The options for sufficiently supervising the adoption process are limited.'

Dewi Deijle, who for years made fruitless attempts to bring up abuses at the Ministry of Justice, could hardly comprehend on Monday afternoon that the minister had expressed real regret. Euphoric: "It has n't been in vain."

DNA DATABASE FOR MOTHERS IN COLOMBIA

For some adoptees, the fight against the injustice of adoption has taken over their everyday lives. This is also the case for Marcia Engel, who was adopted from Colombia in 1981. The difficult search for her biological mother was the reason for the foundation of the Plan Angel foundation, which offers help to adoptees to find their families. 'In fact, we are doing the work that the government should do, because it has made it possible for children to be brought here in a dubious way,' says Engel. In Colombia, the foundation distributes DNA kits that allow women who have ever given birth to register in an international DNA database in order to find their child. According to Engel, about 80 percent of these mothers say they did not agree to the waiver procedure at the time.

Plan Angel is one of the parties that has lobbied heavily in The Hague in recent years against international adoption and for better support for adoptees.

Marcia Engel takes some cheek gum from a Colombian woman who is looking for her child that she has put up for adoption. Image Stephen Ferry

'PEOPLE JUST WANTED TO SEE THE GOOD OF ADOPTION'

The Joustra Committee's harsh judgment on Dutch adoption practices leads to a sense of recognition among those involved. They knew there was a lot wrong. "And there are still files missing, there are still a lot of questions open."

For a long time Ina Hut was considered 'crazy'. How did the former director of adoption mediator Wereldkinderen come up with associating adoptions with child trafficking?

'I've had a lot of misery over me. People only wanted to see the good things about adoption ', Hut responds to the work of the Joustra committee. Following that alarming report, Minister Dekker of Legal Protection immediately suspended the adoptions of children from abroad.

Hut, now director of the Comensha coordination center against human trafficking, has been calling for international adoptions to stop. She gradually came to that insight after she started as director of Wereldkinderen in 2003. 'The demand was much greater than the supply, then a business-economic principle will apply. But people refused to believe that adoptions involved fraudulent practices and child trafficking. '

Whistleblower

Hut thought he could improve the system from within. She wanted to investigate the adoption of Chinese children, but according to her the Ministry of Justice threatened to withdraw the permit of Wereldkinderen. She then stepped forward as a whistleblower; she could no longer support adoption.

Hut did not expect the Joustra Committee to express itself so sharply about the adoption issue and the role of the Dutch government. 'Fortunately, however, this committee now also concludes that there is almost no way to properly bring about adoptions. In 2016, the Council for the Application of Criminal Law and Youth Protection also called for an adoption stop.

Yet few dared to say such a thing, Marcia Engel agrees. She was adopted from Colombia with forged birth certificates and is fighting with her organization Plan Angel for the reunification of adopted children and their Colombian mothers. 'You were ungrateful if you were critical of adoptions. It was never considered that the rights of children and their mothers have been systematically violated for years.

Not a twin brother

Documents that Patrick Noordoven, who was illegally adopted from Brazil, together with his lawyer Lisa-Marie Komp, obtained via the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob), prompted the investigation. Noordoven now does not want to respond to the report, Komp is happy that the committee has established 'that it was not an incident in a particular country'. "But files are still missing, there are still a lot of questions open."

The truth about the adoption of Sri Lankan born Deborah Hageman (35) also turned her life upside down. She always thought she had come to the Netherlands with her twin brother. But when she was 15, her father said his real twin sister had died in Sri Lanka. According to the registry office, she still has the name (Mary) and date of birth of the deceased girl, despite requests to change this.

"I feel fooled," Hageman says about her adoption. 'I blame my parents for how it went. If you choose children, you are obliged to be honest with them. '

Hageman also speaks of a hard report. 'But one that comes much too late. I think the adoptions are now better organized than when I came to the Netherlands as a baby. But the damage has long been done. '

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