NewsThe Blantyre court in Malawi failed on Thursday to start the case against Dutch national Wim Akster, who is accused of abuse. At the start of the hearing it was discovered that the case file was missing.The former development worker has been charged with sexually abusing students and employees of Stichting Timotheos.Victor Jere, the lawyer representing the victims, said that senior magistrate Andrew Mmanga could not find the case file. ‘This morning the magistrate said he did not have the file. The case was adjourned to 2pm to give him time to contact the Chief Resident Magistrate (CRM), but that also failed. So we will contact the CRM to discuss the next steps,’ he said.
Chilean adoptee Mirjam Hunze is starting a lawsuit in Chile for child abduction to the Netherlands. She is holding the Chilean state liable for illegal adoptions by 'nun' Truus Kuijpers. She is also demanding that the Netherlands provide access to adoption documents and question those involved, including Kuijpers' sister and former employees of the Las Palmas orphanage.
Human rights lawyers from the Chilean Colombara office filed the case on Mirjam's behalf with the Santiago Court of Appeal. The court has accepted her complaint of child abduction. Later, other Chilean adoptees will also start proceedings.
During the Pinochet dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, some 20,000 Chilean children were systematically adopted illegally abroad. This was done with the cooperation of doctors, notaries, judges, hospitals, orphanages and churches. "Thousands of people were harmed because their sons and daughters were taken and deprived of their right to identity, through deception and probably through a form of fraud from which many people benefited financially," says Jennifer Alfaro, coordinator of Colombara.
Truus Kuijpers ran the Las Palmas orphanage in Santiago since the 1970s. She presented herself as a 'nun', while she was not. She managed to have at least 155 children adopted from Chile, most of them in the Netherlands. Adoptees and their biological mothers accuse Kuijpers of having taken babies from hospitals without permission and offered them for adoption. Kuijpers was a suspect in a criminal investigation in Chile, but she died in January 2023.
The authorities in our country wanted to forget about the fate of children adopted abroad in the early 1990s. They assumed that they would all lead a fulfilled life, without the deprivations and traumas of Romanian orphanages at that time. When the children grew up and began to search for their roots, physical and psychological abuse, unhappiness and destinies broken by lovelessness came to light. Lucian was 7 years old when he was adopted by a Belgian family. His life was a torment and he sued the Romanian state for trafficking in minors and crimes against humanity. A new disturbing episode in the "Written in DNA" campaign.
Lucian is "a little boy", born into an absurd world in 1984. He was abandoned at birth and ended up in an orphanage in Mangalia. He vaguely remembers the gray and tormented days, but immediately after the Revolution, it seemed that everything would change. The visits of families from abroad who wanted to adopt children from the orphanages brought hope to the little ones' souls. The first vacation with those who would become his parents seemed almost a dream.
Countless internationally adopted children uncover the lies surrounding their adoption
The investigation reveals the lucrative business and the crimes hidden behind these adoptions
Since the 1950s, more than a million children around the world have been adopted by Western families. The investigation carried out by one of those adoptees, now a journalist, reveals in the documentary The Adoption Scandal how this colossal and lucrative market has been able to flourish and why it still exists today. From children stolen from their mothers during the Pinochet dictatorship to false orphans from Africa or Asia , international adoption is at the centre of an unprecedented scandal .
Korean children in Sweden
The children adopted by Western families in recent decades are now between 30 and 40 years old . Interested in finding their identity and, thanks to social networks, many of them were shocked to learn that a large majority had been illegally separated from their biological parents.
Historians and demographers estimate that more than a million children have been adopted over the past six decades . South Korea, Vietnam, Colombia, Chile and Ethiopia are just some of the hundred countries that have given their children up for adoption to Western parents over the years.
It is hard to believe that it has only been 7 days since we have arrived in Malawi. It seems like a lifetime ago that we boarded the plane in Toronto. Some things are being adjusted to very easily, others not so much. The weather is probably the easiest to adjust too, as it is unimaginable that it is winter back in Canada. Here it is warm everyday, and it rains every other, and the thought of snow actually doesn’t cross any of our minds. The slow manner in which things are done around here definitely does take some getting used to.
Boarding the plane
So, what has this week been like? A few examples I suppose. We landed at Chileka airport in Blantyre last week Wednesday, and were completely shocked to find that all 17 suitcases, 8 hand luggages, the stroller, and the booster seat had all made it on our plane!!! Out of the 4 previous times that I have visited Malawi, 3 times the luggage was missing, so you can understand that now we were very surprised. We were warmly greeted as Wim Akster and Charles Paundedi came to the back to help organize the visa’s and to load up all the luggage. It was nice to see some familiar faces. We also had a surprise as we walked out of the building, to see a couple from Tillsonburg, who attend our church in Ontario, standing there to greet us and say “welcome to Malawi”. This couple was visiting his family in Malawi. When we came “home” (the guest wing at Wim Akster’s house is our temporary home) we had coffee, followed by a meal which we ate together with Wim Akster and Thera Verdouw. Shortly after this we went to bed, exhausted after 21.5 hours of flying, plus driving, and waiting at the airport. We had an interesting night of sleep. Or rather, lack of sleep. Half of the kids could not sleep until 2:30, while the other half slept really well until about 2:30. Thankfully that has all straightened out after 2-3 nights. Thursday was spent exploring some of the city of Blantyre. We did some groceries, bought some SIM cards for our phones, and took a quick stop at our rental house in Mpemba, which is just south of the city of Blantyre. On Friday I went with Clement Gopanikufa, the secretary of Timotheos Malawi, to immigration and put in the paperwork for the Employment Permit. This was all accepted, and we should hear back within a month. This was a very positive outcome, as that process can take many trips and papers, etc. Also, on Friday, a container arrived from Holland with donated school furniture and many shoeboxes filled with gifts for the orphans and students. The container was supposed to be at Wim’s place at 8 a.m. but didn’t show up until 1 p.m. The container also could not be unloaded unless a government official was there, for customs and duties purposes. This government official was supposed to be there at 1, but didn’t show up until 3. During this time there are many people sitting around, waiting, waiting, and waiting some more, but no one is upset, no one is impatient, and no one is worried. Waiting is part of life in Malawi. On Sunday we went to church in Mbulumbudzi. This is a village where one of the Dutch projects is located. (In the Reformed Presbyterian Church they have church at 10 a.m. and have two services following each other.) There was a translator there, as there are also two of the Dutch employees attending. Church was good, although we had a fairly difficult time trying to understand the translator. His English was quite good, but he had a very Malawian accent. On Monday we went back to our patience training, as we had to go for curtains (curtains are a necessity for security). This included arranging to pick up a tailor who then measures the windows of your house, going to a store to pick out material, measure it, cut it, and then to bring it down to the tailor who works on the front porch of the store; all this took more than 5 hours, and that’s just normal. That’s what Malawian life is about. Everything takes long, and if you accomplish something in a day, that’s great! So after a week even though it feels like we haven’t gotten a whole lot done, we still have immigration arranged as far as we can; we have a duty waiver arranged for the container, whenever that shows up; we have arranged curtains; we have arranged a painter for our rental house; we have made some headway in looking at cars; and we have made many contacts.
The Swiss-based NGO Terre des hommes is losing $10 million in annual contributions as a result of the suspension of humanitarian aid by the United States administration.
US President Donald Trump’s decision to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USAID) has “serious” and “immediate” consequences, said Terre des hommes Lausanne, which is Switzerland’s largest children’s aid organisation.
The NGO explains that projects in nine countries have been affected, with around 1.5 million beneficiaries losing “vital support”.
In detail, projects in Bangladesh, Kenya, Lebanon, Egypt, Afghanistan, India and Burkina Faso are directly affected. Due to the cessation of contributions to UN partner organisations, activities in Romania and Nigeria are also affected.
The end of US aid also means that the contracts of 440 employees, including over 200 in Bangladesh and more than 100 in Egypt, have had to be suspended or terminated.
On January 6, 2025, Congressman Rob Wittman (VA-01) announced the re-introduction of his Adoption Information Act. According to a press release, this act “…would require family planning services to provide information on nearby adoption centers to anyone receiving their services. A family planning services’s eligibility to receive federal grants or contracts through the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) would be contingent upon providing this information.”
An adoptee, Congressman Wittman also shared his perspective about adoption:
“A lot of people say they would not be where they are today without their parents—for me, that is the absolute truth….When I was eight months old, my mom and dad adopted me. My birth mother’s decision to choose adoption gave me more opportunities than she felt she could provide, and my parents’ decision to adopt instilled in me a passion for public service and a desire to give back. That’s why I’m proud to reintroduce my Adoption Information Act so that all mothers know what options are available to them. This legislation is a simple step that can make a world of a difference.”
In addition to being a constituent of Congressman Wittman, I’m also an adoptee who believes the Adoption Information Act would cause more harm than good.
Please forward this to the person who deals with FOIA requests.
I would like to request the following to be made public under FOIA:
Letter from Condoleezza Rice dated 17 January 2006, addressed to European Commissioner Olli Rehn, copied to European Commission President Jose-Manuel Barroso. The letter was transmitted by fax on 20 January 2006 by your Embassy.
Foreign applicants who desire to adopt Sri Lankan children are required to forward their joint applications to the Commissioner of Probation and Child Care Services
Every application for adoption of a child must be in conformity with the provisions of the Adoption of Children Ordinance (Chapter 6)
By Lakmal Sooriyagoda
The Minister of Women and Child Affairs has issued an Extraordinary Gazette notification limiting the number of adoption orders that may be made by all courts in Sri Lanka for foreign applicants during the calendar year 2025 to 100.
The subject Minister, Saroja Savithri Paulraj, issued a Gazette notification under Paragraph (b)(i) of Subsection (5A) of Section 3 of the Adoption of Children Ordinance.
