Calls for better follow-up of adopted children: - Mum, I want to be like the others

GOOD MORNING NORWAY (TV 2): Being adopted to Norway does not necessarily mean that you have drawn the winning lottery ticket. Alexander Skadberg knows all about that.

When Alexander Skadberg was 22 months old, he was adopted from an orphanage in Colombia to Bodø in Norway. But for all these years he has known little about his adoption story.

- What I know is not really too much, but that my biological mother could not look after me then. Which ended in an adoption, the bodøværingen tells Good Morning Norway.

This has led to him being stuck with many questions growing up.

- But based on what I experienced, things started to be different very early on. Unger asked: "What do you look like, you have big lips, you look different", before adding:

- I quickly came home to my mother and said: "Mum, I want to be like the others". So I felt the difference incredibly early on.

An eternal struggle for identity

Skadberg grew up in Bodø with his parents and his four year older brother, who was also adopted.

He says that the mother was good at telling what little she knew from the adoption papers she had received, but that he did not think it was enough information.

- So the eternal struggle to find out where I'm from, it was very clear.

As a 13-year-old, Skadberg ended up in a drug and criminal environment. He was subjected to several abuses from a pedophile network, against whom he has subsequently testified in court proceedings.

When he was 14, his mother intervened, asked for help, and Skadberg ended up in a youth home.

- I think this happened because we longed to be seen as children then. Children spell love very simply: "T, I, D". And spending time. I don't think we got quite the time we needed as kids back then.

Skadberg has a good relationship with his mother today, and is grateful that she asked for help when he ended up in the wrong environment as a teenager. He ended up in an emergency home, in psychiatry and at the Yttrabekken youth home.

Then he got to see himself with different eyes.

- I had the opportunity to go to school every day, do homework every day. And got people around me who saw me, and who had faith that this little "kid" here was going to make it.

Calls for better follow-up of adopted children

Skadberg says that when you adopt a child, you also adopt the child's history. As an adult, he himself found out that as a child he lay in a bed for a year without much human contact.

He is therefore calling for better follow-up in the transition from adoption to fitting into his new family.

- I have often been met with: "But your mother or your father, they had a responsibility". I have also thought like this: "Yes, they had".

But he also believes that Norwegian society has a responsibility when adopting a child. He believes there must be better follow-up of the adopted child from the time they land.

- What happens in the first days, weeks, months, years? That follow-up was not present.

Looking for answers in Colombia

Today, Skadberg travels around Norway and gives lectures about his own experiences and about mental health.

In December and January, he returned to Colombia for the first time to look for his family in the hope of finding out more about what happened when he was a child.

There he got to meet and thank the woman who found him as an eight-week-old infant. He also got to meet his biological older brother, who was 13 months old when the woman found them alone in the apartment, before they ended up in an orphanage.

The brother was not adopted, and Skadberg says that today he is an outsider.

- So the meeting between him was very special. I just remember, there is a man 1.90 tall. I am 1.80. And he lifted me up. So that feeling that; "Yes, now we're there", it's magical.

His biological father died in 1996. He had to travel to Spain to meet his biological mother.

- It was special. And unfortunately, I had hoped that she had more to tell me, more information. And it looks like I may have to look even more. And I have to, because there is something I still wonder about. And she says she doesn't remember everything, so I might have to travel down again to find out the latest.

- But did you get an answer to anything?

- I received an answer that she returned to the orphanage, and then she was told that I was adopted. They also said that there is nothing we can do, says Skadberg before continuing:

- And it shows that the feeling I've had when it comes to this matter of a mother always longing for something she had, and that I always longed for her, is very clear then.

Skadberg returned to Norway shortly after Norway behind the facade and TV 2 started telling more stories about adoptions to Norway. Skadberg thinks it is good that the government initiates an external review of adoptions to Norway.

- It is so incredibly important. For now, adoptive families may find out what really happened to them. What the story really is, concludes Skadberg.