Report points to 30 years of international adoption mishandling in France
A shocking report compiled by two historians questions the 'systemic' nature of the irregularities that have persisted in some 20 countries for over 30 years.
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Pandora's box has been opened. These last few years, the growing number of testimonies of French people claiming to have been illegally adopted abroad already suggested that such abuses were numerous in France. But the "Historical Study on the Illicit Practices of International Adoption in France" published on Monday, February 6, by historians Fabio Macedo and Yves Denéchère presents an even more shocking picture of the scale of the issue.
"This raises questions regarding the commonality of these illicit practices and their systemic nature," said the two researchers attached to the University of Angers. In December 2021, the French Foreign Affairs Ministry signed an agreement to allow them to compile this independent research report.
Their study, based on 9,600 pages of archives from the government's diplomatic collections, most of them classified, demonstrates that numerous illicit adoptions have been carried out in over 20 countries since 1979, despite the incessant warnings sent by the consular services to the Foreign Affairs Ministry. These include: "Child trafficking" and "irregular adoptions" in Chile, Paraguay and Peru. "Monthly income" offered to biological parents in exchange for their child in India. "Corruption and document fraud" in Cambodia. "Abductions," "fabrication of false orphans" and the forced abandonment "of newborns by very young mothers" to meet "the demand of French adoptive parents" in Madagascar.
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Before they were banned in February 2022, the individual adoptions that enabled French couples to adopt on their own were not the only ones subject to abuses. The 150-page report reveals that adoptions in which prospective parents were accompanied by organizations authorized by the Foreign Affairs Ministry, which are supposed to protect candidates from these irregularities, have also led to much fraud. Fifteen authorized adoption organizations (AOO) are implicated in the report and five of them are still state-accredited.
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In Vietnam, the AOO Comexseo stands accused by the French consulate of "seeking direct bribes from their biological parents" for children adopted in 1994, as stated in a letter sent to the Foreign Affairs Ministry's international adoption mission (MAI), the authority in charge of controlling the adoptions carried out by AOOs. Despite these warnings, Comexseo remained accredited by the French state until 2009.
International adoptions in Vietnam, briefly suspended in 1999 following "numerous cases of abuse and proven illicit practices," resumed the following year despite persistent irregularities. "Imagine these Vietnamese children who want to know the conditions under which they were adopted when they turn 18 and discover their parents bought them," said the French ambassador during a meeting with the MAI in 2000. Despite the diplomat's warning, the country remained open to adoptions until today, becoming the main destination for French international applicants, with over 12,100 children adopted since 1979.
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