Adoptive parents start petition against complete adoption stop | Inland | AD.nl
A group of adoptive parents and adopted children want to stop adopting children from abroad. She has started a petition to reverse the cabinet decision to a full adoption ban. It has been signed more than 6,300 times within a week.
The initiators themselves have positive experiences with adoption from abroad. They therefore believe that “demonstrably careful international adoptions” should be allowed to continue. According to them, the recommendations of the Joustra Committee "came about in a limited, poorly substantiated and non-transparent manner".
One of the initiators is Karen Gregory, herself the adoptive mother of two children from the United States. "You can't put all countries together, many adoptions are going well and according to the rules," she says in Trouw. "A small group of adoptees has suffered tremendous trauma - I don't dispute that - but they don't have to project that on all adoptions," Gregory told the newspaper.
Full adoption stop
Minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) announced the full adoption stop last Monday. About 450 adoption files of Dutch people who wanted to adopt a child from abroad are no longer completed. Parents who have already received permission in principle to bring a child to the Netherlands, may complete the procedure “after an extra test” has been carried out.
The decision is based on a report by the Joustra Committee, which described “structurally serious abuses” in the Dutch adoption system. The committee examined intercountry adoptions from Brazil, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Colombia and Indonesia in the period between 1967 and 1997. But it also looked at adoptions after 1998 and from other countries. "Structural, serious abuses have occurred throughout the entire period, including after 1998," said the Joustra committee. "The Dutch government was already aware of the abuses in the late 1960s, and in a number of cases government representatives were involved in adoption abuses."
The investigation was prompted by documents that Patrick Noordoven obtained through the Government Information (Public Access) Act (Wob). Patrick (NGO Brazil Baby Affair) was illegally removed from Brazil in the early 1980s with dozens of other children. The documents contain 'concrete indications' for 'active involvement' of Dutch diplomats and civil servants.
Dilani Butink is also one of the adoptees who the Dutch government took to court for the fraudulent use of her adoption. Butink's birth papers, born in Sri Lanka, were forged. As a result, she cannot trace her biological parents.
.