Claims in remote mothers case dismissed

The District Court of The Hague has today rendered a decision in a case concerning the question of whether the Child Protection Board has acted unlawfully towards mothers in the Netherlands who, in the period 1956-1984, gave up their child against their will (remote mothers). . The case had been brought by the collective interest group Clara Wichmann, which stood up for a group of give-away mothers, and by one individual give-away mother. The court dismisses the claims.

Background

In the period between 1956 and 1984, it is estimated that between thirteen and fourteen thousand women in the Netherlands gave up one or more children for adoption. At the time, unmarried pregnant women were stigmatized as 'fallen women' because they had had sexual intercourse outside of marriage. Social attitudes have since changed significantly. It is difficult to comprehend with 'nowadays' how people thought about relinquishing a child in those days. The renunciation of adoption has deeply grieved the distance mothers. Many of them are still struggling with it. They want recognition for this suffering and that is why the claimants have started this procedure.

statute of limitations

It has been a long time since the women involved gave up their children. The State has therefore invoked limitation. The court is of the opinion that there are good reasons that the claims of the claimants are time-barred. But because it has not been established that the Council made errors that are legally culpable at the time, the court rejected the claims for that reason.

?No legally culpable errors

The court bases this judgment with regard to the collective action of Clara Wichmann to a large extent on a scientific report from 2017. This report shows that the mothers involved at the time felt compelled to give up their child, which ensured that they had no real freedom of choice. had. This coercion was partly the result of pressure from the environment, prompted by social, social and religious relationships in that period. Therefore, it cannot be said that the Child Protection Board in particular acted unlawfully with regard to the remote mothers. Nor was it the task of the Council to advise mothers about practical and legal options for raising their child themselves.

This general assessment of the actions of the Child Care and Protection Board does not in itself exclude the possibility that the Board has acted unlawfully with regard to foster mothers in specific individual cases. In the case of the individual surrogate mother, the parties took a different position on the actual course of events at the time. Now, more than fifty years later, the court cannot establish that the Council has made legally culpable errors in this waiver.

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