In search of biological parents, Brazilian changes rule of adoption in the Netherlands
Patrick was taken from Brazil by a newborn, by a Dutch couple who could not have children; 40 years later, Dutch government recognizes mistakes and suspends international adoption
BRUSSELS
Ana Estela de Sousa Pinto(https://www1.folha.uol.com.br/autores/ana-estela-de-sousa-pinto.shtml)
There were so many lies, lucky strikes, setbacks and perseverance that the
story of Patrick Noordoven, 41, will become a book in Holland. This month, two new
facts added twists to the life of this Brazilian who left his native country recently,
adopted by a Dutch couple, and one day decided to meet his biological family.
The first novelty arrived on the 8th of this month. A committee created in the
Netherlands after repeated complaints from Patrick pointed out the State's
responsibility (https://www.committeeinvestigatingintercountryadoption.nl/wpcontent/uploads/2021/02/COlA_Rapport_DIGITAAL.pdf) for “various types of abuse that have occurred
structurally”, and the government has stopped international adoption processes in the
country.
The story begins in February 1980, when a baby of days was taken from the maternity
ward to Lar Jumbinho, in São Paulo. From there, it was handed over to the Dutch
couple Noordoven, whose wife (then 27) had lost the possibility of becoming pregnant
after cancer treatment.
In March 1980, Patrick arrived in the city of Gouda (62 km south of Amsterdam), where
he grew up knowing he had been adopted. But only when he became interested in his
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05/03/2021 In search of biological parents, Brazilian changes the rule of adoption in the Netherlands - 02/26/2021 - World - Folha
origins, 20 years later, did the Noordoven tell him a secret: they had forged his birth
certificate, and there was no document in which he could find the names of his
biological parents.
The "legal" parents, as Patrick calls them, asked him to forget the idea of "looking back
over the past". But the boy did not forget. He saved his scholarship as much as possible,
squeezed the Noordoven until he got the name of a contact in São Paulo and embarked
for Brazil without a date to return.
The doors slammed in his face in the first few days: the supposed intermediaries of the
adoption denied everything, shouting, he says. The boy then asked for accommodation
at the director of Lar Jumbinho, hoping that Dalva would remember some clue.
A month later, he was almost giving up when he met Daniel, Dalva's driver and brother.
“I took a Dutch girl to Beneficência Portuguesa, and we came back with a baby,” he
Photo in a report on international adoption published in February 1984 by the magazine Algemeen
Politieblad, a Dutch police publication that reported investigations - Reproduction / Algemeen Politieblad
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05/03/2021 In search of biological parents, Brazilian changes the rule of adoption in the Netherlands - 02/26/2021 - World - Folha
said.
It was little, but it was the only end of the ball, and Patrick started to pull it. In the
maternity ward, he surveyed the dozens of cases of women who had given birth to a
boy in February 1980 and, still in an era of Internet pre-search, he used the phone book
and the sole of his shoe to go after each one, in a work that lasted ten years and, on
average, one trip per year to Brazil. By exclusion, he came to a name: Maria do
Nascimento.
A MARIA IN THE HAYSTACK
We still had to find the right Maria, and for that Patrick had the luck and help of a
researcher, who found an application for RG made in 1979. When he saw the photo, he
was sure he would find his mother. Confirmation of identity came with the DNA test of
his sister, Ana Paula, but Patrick never saw Maria, who died when he was five, in 1985.
“It was two years of mourning,” he said. Then he closed the chapter on his mother's
discovery and opened two more.
In the first, Patrick left in search of his father's identity, information that no one in the
maternal family knew how to give him. In the second, he dedicated himself to
understanding how a child could be removed from his country and have his past
completely erased and what responsibility the Dutch government had in this matter.
In the surveys, mention was made of a report in the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf
about illegal adoption of Brazilian children. He spent the night looking in the digital
archive cover by cover of the publication, since 1979, until he found the one he was
looking for, published in 1983 (https://www.brazilbabyaffair.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/DeTelegraaf1983.pdf) .
With the name of the police officer in charge, he found the report of the investigation,
which began in 1981(https://www.brazilbabyaffair.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/AlgemeenPolitieblad-4February1984.pdf)
to ascertain large-scale criminal complicity in irregular adoptions.
In that document Patrick found out that the Noordoven were interrogated in 1982 —64
parents with children born in Brazil, a fraction of the total, were heard, and 42
admitted to having made false birth certificates to bring them to Holland, which was a
crime in both countries.
To the investigators, the "legal parents" said they resorted to the scheme for fear of
being refused because of their age.
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GOOD INTENTIONS VS. ALIENATION
No one was prosecuted after that investigation. The Public Prosecutor's Office
understood that everyone acted in good faith, with no intention of causing harm,
something that Patrick - and others involved in the rights of the child - disagrees:
“Taking a child out of the society in which he was born and erasing his origins is a
attack on their right to identity. It causes a feeling of emptiness, of loss, enormous,
which many adoptees discover only as adults ”.
From the 1960s, when they began to grow, until the 1990s, international adoptions
were seen as a boon for children, especially when they left poor countries towards the
richest. This mentality changed, however, at the turn of the century, when
international legislation to guide the issue emerged - the Convention on the Rights of
Patrick Noordoven between the Brazilian sisters Josilene (left) and Ana Paula (right), who managed to find
about 30 years after being taken to Holland - May 31 , 2019 / Personal archive
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1989, and the Hague Convention on International Adoption (https://crianca.mppr.mp.br/pagina1073.html) , in 1993.
From then on, the consensus expanded that the child should only be separated from
his larger family and from his country as a last resort and is entitled to his identity (of
which his origin is part).
Patrick, who stumbled over obstacles to discover its origin, ended up suing the Dutch
state for omitting information. In 2018, a special committee
(https://www.commissieonderzoekinterlandelijkeadoptie.nl/) was created to investigate irregularities
(https://www.commissieonderzoekinterlandelijkeadoptie.nl/) in these cases, the conclusions of which were
made public two weeks ago: “The Dutch government has stopped acting for years,
deviating from abuses in international adoption and not intervening, which allowed
them to perpetuated ”.
NETHERLANDS APOLOGIZES
There were "structural abuses, such as document forgery, child trafficking, fraud and
corruption," says the committee's report, which in addition to Brazil investigated
adoptions in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Colombia and Indonesia. He also cites "unethical
acts, such as forcing parents to give up their children under false pretenses or moral
pressure, deliberately creating uncertainty or ambiguity about someone's origins and
taking advantage of poverty".
In presenting the document, the Dutch Minister for Legal Protection, Alexander
Dekker, asked for forgiveness on behalf of the State
people deserve recognition for the mistakes of the past. They must be able to count on
our help in the present. And, for the future, we must ask ourselves critically if and how
we will continue with the adoption from abroad ”.
For Patrick, founder of an NGO to defend the rights of international adoptees, the
decision is far from necessary: “Excuses are welcome, it means a lot to all of us, but the
Netherlands should have definitely ended international adoption, a practice that it
hurts fundamental rights (https://www.brazilbabyaffair.org/publications-and-resources/opinion-articles/pushing-forintercountry-adoption-is-a-human-rights-violation/) ”.
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Although in decline, the practice has not disappeared in Europe. From 2004 to 2014,
(https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/583860/EPRS_BRI(2016)583860_EN.pdf) 11,610 officially
adopted in the bloc came from outside the EU
(https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2016/583860/EPRS_BRI(2016)583860_EN.pdf) , and the Netherlands
was the fourth country of destination, with 687.
In the same period, Brazilians were the eighth most numerous group among adopted
children (3,239), and were most often taken to Italy, France and Holland itself.
Prohibiting this “expatriation” is one of the current flags of the Patrick organization,
alongside international NGOs, such as Icav (https://intercountryadopteevoices.com/individual-stories/stories/) ,
and national projects in countries such as Australia and France. In Brazil, he also works
for the Justice to consider unconstitutional the rule that allows maternity hospitals to
destroy their birth records after 18 years. “These papers are one of the only sources
where illegally adopted parents can find. Without them, I would never have found out
who my mother was. To destroy them is to undermine the right to identity, ”he says.
THE NAME OF THE FATHER
Technology has recently opened up new avenues, and it was through one of them that
Patrick began to approach his paternal lineage: the DNA banks. Through MyHeritage,
he was contacted by a second cousin on his father's side. In common, therefore, they
had great-grandparents, a new path for a hunt, which has lasted ten years.
Patrick found birth and marriage records for his great-grandparents and data on the
ten children who survived - one of them, his alleged grandfather or grandmother. While
completing a master's degree in law at UnB
(https://repositorio.unb.br/bitstream/10482/37285/1/2019_PatrickNoordoven.pdf)- on international adoption
(https://repositorio.unb.br/bitstream/10482/37285/1/2019_PatrickNoordoven.pdf) - he started looking for probable
relatives one by one and asking for genetic tests.
“Of the 10 families, 9 agreed. I met more than 30 cousins. The physical similarity in
some cases was impressive, but the results did not indicate direct ancestors ”, he says.
The tenth, his probable grandfather, by exclusion, had already died, and his only son
refused the DNA test.
In order to investigate the relationship to the end, Patrick went to court. He asks that,
as a last resort, the body of the tenth brother, his supposed grandfather, be exhumed.
Last Monday (15), Judge Daniele Machado Toledo, from the 1st Civil Court of the
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District of Ibiúna (SP), determined that, while there is no final decision, the remains in
question are preserved.
Patrick says he expects the only son to review his position and avoid exhumation. But
even when he finally gets that DNA test, he still won't have killed the riddle, he says.
The strongest evidence is that his biological father is not yet the man who refused to
take the test, but another son of his grandfather, born out of wedlock.
If this hypothesis is confirmed, the Brazilian should embark on a new mission that is
almost impossible, but this theme will have to stay for a second book. The first,
according to the publisher's plans, will be launched later this year.
.