Right of reply from the adoption agency Les Enfants de Reine Miséricorde
Following the publication of our article "Ethiopia's Adoption Scandal: Did the Good Samaritans sin only through negligence?" "In our June 2021 issue, the adoption agency Les Enfants de Reine Miséricorde sent us the
Chat 29 Jun 2021
The newspaper Causette (June 2021) seriously calls into question our adoption organization "The Children of the Queen of Mercy (ERM)" by titling "adoption scandal in Ethiopia" and by publishing testimonies of particular cases, concerning adoptions in Ethiopia carried out through us.
Certain elements of the report reveal a profound ignorance of adoption procedures. Body authorized for adoption by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ERM's mission is in strict compliance with the legal requirements in force at national and international levels as well as in the highest ethics. In Ethiopia as in all countries, the decision to make a child adoptable is the sovereign responsibility of the authorities. Only these authorities can establish, after investigation, the history of the child and decide to offer him for adoption. These are the documents that are given to the adoption agencies and the adoption agencies are not allowed to exercise any control. All ERM adoptions have been adjudicated by the Addis Ababa court and are fully legal. In addition, the whole is monitored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and adoptions are submitted to French justice. Ethiopian law does not allow abandonment of a child (except in the case of parents with AIDS). This is why parents have sometimes been able to pretend to be dead or missing, without the knowledge of the authorities and without our knowledge, in order to allow an adoption, in this country where no social assistance is available for a family in distress. Ethiopia's lack of civil status has facilitated such practices. The decision to give a child up for adoption is no less real and has been verified in almost all cases where the biological family has been found. ERM is bound by the secrecy imposed by law and cannot therefore provide concrete answers to the cases described by Causette.
ERM has always been vigilant and continuously improved its practices over the years: insistence on collecting children's stories from social services; end of adoptions of children from Addis Ababa orphanages after discovery of anomalies; exchanges with the Ethiopian authorities who have changed their procedures; setting up sponsorships to find local solutions whenever possible (today still 1070 Ethiopian children are sponsored); organization of “return to Ethiopia” supervised trips with adoptees (around 100). ERM was approached by adoptive families saying that their children were telling them about biological parents who were still alive. Gilbert Bayon, then president of ERM, took the initiative from 2004, through his many trips, to research the Ethiopian origins of adopted young people in an attempt to re-establish the truth and transmit to families the information he had obtained on the spot. This is how ERM found Julie Foulon's biological mother in 2007 and informed her adoptive parents. The Causette newspaper allowed itself to be diverted from the truth by this young woman whose testimony is in total contradiction with the evidence at our disposal. How can we imagine that its members would have mobilized with so much energy to help the reunion with biological families if ERM had something to hide in the scandal of which it is accused?
Causette’s article also seriously prejudices the 1,575 children of Ethiopian origin adopted by ERM who receive with pain such destructive comments suggesting that they have been victims of organized trafficking. We express our solidarity and our compassion to them. Let us not forget that any adoption is initially based on a tragic experience, illness, accident, death, abandonment, a source of suffering for the young adopted, as well as for their adoptive and biological families. We are aware that the questions sometimes go beyond the information we manage to gather. However, our association has always imposed great ethical standards on itself and deserves to be recognized for the help it still kindly provides to the families and young people who turn to it.
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