Chile is no longer conducting a criminal investigation into possible child theft and illegal adoptions by a Dutch 'fake nun'. After the death of Truus Kuijpers last year, the Chilean investigating judge no longer decides whether she was guilty of this. His spokesperson told this site.

Adoption victims and interest groups are disappointed. They call on the Dutch government to conduct its own investigation, because new abuses continue to come to light about Kuijpers' adoption practices.

In Chile, a criminal investigation has been going on for years into the illegal adoptions of 20,000 children during the dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s. Kuijpers, who ran a children's home there and falsely posed as a nun, was one of the suspects. Chilean mothers and adoptees accuse her of stealing children for adoption in the Netherlands. This would involve at least a hundred children.

According to investigating judge Jaime Balmaceda, five hundred cases are in a final phase and six hundred have been dismissed, including Kuijpers' case. She died exactly a year ago. "Due to her death, she is no longer a suspect and no statement will be made about her possible criminal liability," said a spokesperson for Balmaceda.

Outgoing Minister Franc Weerwind (Legal Protection) sees no reason to start an investigation into illegal adoptions from Chile by a Dutch fake nun. He regrets that there have been abuses in the past, but leaves it to the authorities in Chile. He does want to talk to Chilean adoptees. He answers this to parliamentary questions from the SP.

During General Pincohet's dictatorship in the 1970s and 1980s, an estimated 20,000 Chilean children were illegally adopted abroad. Babies supposedly declared dead to mothers were stolen from hospitals. Children have also been taken from homes without the consent of their mothers and offered for adoption.

About two hundred Chilean children ended up in the Netherlands. At least half of those adoptions went through the Las Palmas children's home in Santiago, which was run by Truus Kuijpers. Previous research from this site shows that Kuijpers wrongly presented herself as a 'nun', sent children to the Netherlands without the knowledge of the mothers, falsified adoption documents and adopted children. later linked to wrong biological families.

Criminal investigation

Police and justice in Chile have been conducting a criminal investigation into illegal adoptions for years. Kuijpers, who denied all accusations, was also interrogated in 2019 during a visit to Chile, but she died at the beginning of this year. Her sister, with whom she founded Las Palmas, is still alive. “An investigation will have to reveal what exactly happened,” Weerwind writes in response to questions from SP MP Michiel van Nispen. 'I can't get ahead of myself.'

'Long road ahead before ending Europe and Central Asia’s long, painful legacy’ of institutionalisation of children, as new UNICEF report highlights rate of children living in residential care across region is double the global average

GENEVA, 18 January 2024 – Nearly half a million children – or 456,000 – across Europe and Central Asia live in residential care facilities, including large-scale institutions, according to a new report published today by UNICEF.

Pathways to Better Protection: taking stock of the situation of children in alternative care in Europe and Central Asia notes that the rate of children living in residential care facilities across Europe and Central Asia is double the global average, with 232 per 100,000 children living in residential care facilities compared to 105 per 100,000 globally.

“We have a long way to go before ending Europe and Central Asia’s long and painful legacy of institutionalising children. While there have been some improvements, progress has been far from equal. Children with disabilities have largely been left behind,” said Regina De Dominicis, UNICEF Regional Director for Europe and Central Asia.

Western Europe has the highest rate of children in residential care facilities at 294 per 100,000 children – nearly triple the global average. While facilities in Western Europe tend to be small and integrated into communities, there remains an overreliance on residential care instead of family-based care. The higher rate is partly due to an increase in unaccompanied and separated children and young people seeking asylum in Europe in recent years.

Many adoptees have a trauma behind them and feel different while growing up. When the outside world does not recognize their experiences, they join together and make each other aware - it's time they get society's support, writes Susanna Johansson.

They started adopting children from non-Western countries to Sweden in the 1950s. Sweden is one of the countries that has adopted the most children in the world per capita. Most adoptions have taken place via Adoptionscentrum and some have been done privately.

For about 7-8 years, adoption issues have been raised in the public conversation and in social media via research, books and articles by adoptees who have addressed the subject. In 2021, there was an impact with a series of articles in DN about adoption.

This is precisely why I make the comparison with the consciousness-raising political conversations of the 60s, when these radical feminist women's groups needed to share their individual experiences with each other in order to understand the extent of sexualized violence in heterosexual relationships and see that it was a structural problem.

In the same way, it is only when you as an adoptee talk to other adoptees, and when adoptees raise the issue from our perspective in the public conversation, that we become aware and take a closer look at our own experiences. Precisely because our experiences can then be problematized, mirrored, understood and reflected in conversations with others with similar experiences. The experience of living apart from other adoptees in our white families can be equated to being in the grip of perpetrators, like abused women in the 60s. A situation that has often made us blind to our own living conditions, which is also reinforced by the fact that our experiences are made invisible in the Swedish discourse on adoption. Our situation has become normalized for us as individuals living in our adoptive families.

What do you do when an NGO has a monopoly on a central service and does not deliver?

When Minister of Social Affairs and Housing Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (S) announced on Tuesday an indefinite halt to international adoption to Denmark, it gave rise to a number of questions.

Many of them cannot be answered here and now, but one of the most interesting starts from the fact that adoption is a rare, if not unique, phenomenon: a central service that has until now been 100 percent NGO-driven.

It is an area that civil society has had a monopoly on. And the interesting question is about much more than adoption.

You can put any service into the equation and ask: What do you do when the only provider of a service is a civil society organization that is no longer able or deprived of the right to provide it?

SEOUL: Born as Yoon-hwa in South Korea in 1974, she became Petra Zwart of the Netherlands at the age of one.

Her adoptive Dutch family provided a warm and welcoming home to both Zwart and her biological brother, who was adopted at the age of five.

Even so, Zwart recalls finding it difficult to fit in as a child, due to her East Asian appearance being different, “like an ugly duckling”.

She and her brother are among the nearly 170,000 babies that South Korea has sent overseas for adoption since 1953.

Minister of Social Affairs and Housing Pernille Rosenkrantz-Theil (S) expresses great understanding for the difficult situation in which the 36 families who are currently waiting to adopt are in

Earlier in the day, Denmark's only mediator of international adoptions, Danish International Adoption (DIA), announced that they are stopping their work.

It was decided at an extraordinary board meeting in DIA and takes place after the organization has been hit by a number of sanctions from both the Danish Appeals Agency and the Ministry of Social Affairs, Housing and the Elderly, which is responsible for supervising the adoption agency.

And the latter ministry makes no secret of the fact that this is a serious situation in a press release on Tuesday afternoon.

'It is the most serious crisis in the area of ​​adoption in the past ten years,' they write.

Norway announced an inquiry into its foreign adoptions. Anti-adoption activists are pleased but have yet to be convinced. "There must be a sufficient level of competence in the committee."

That the government turned around is the only reasonable thing, says adoption activist Priyangika Samanthie to the Norwegian Christian daily Vårt Land. "But we must ensure the level of competence of those who will be part of the review commission. We need experts in human trafficking with a strong legal background. What's more, what this has done to adoptees must be assessed – we can look at this not only legally, but also psychologically."

Samanthie runs the organisation “Romantisert innvandring” (Romanticised immigration), which works to uncover human rights violations in the adoption field. It took years before calls from Samanthie and other people critical towards foreign abortion were heard. "Adoption should be in the child's best interests, but then we are ignored until the authorities are pressured to take a position on it."

Kjersti Toppe, the Norwegian Minister for Children and Families, agrees with Samanthie that it has taken too long for an investigation to take place. "It shouldn't be like that, and we must work on this. For too many years, the prevailing thought has been that international adoption is "a happy thing". We must recognise that we must take the field more seriously."

Violations

Denmark’s only overseas adoption agency says it is “winding down” its facilitation of international adoptions after a government agency raised concerns over fabricated documents and procedures that obscured children’s origins abroad

Denmark’s only overseas adoption agency said Tuesday that it is “winding down” its facilitation of international adoptions after a government agency raised concerns over fabricated documents and procedures that obscured children's biological origins abroad.

The privately run Danish International Adoption mediated adoptions in the Philippines, India, South Africa, Thailand, Taiwan and the Czech Republic. Last month, an appeals board suspended DIA's work in South Africa because of questions about the agency's adherence to legal standards.

The Danish agency announced it was getting out of the international adoption business on the same day Norway’s top regulatory body recommended stopping all overseas adoptions for two years pending an investigation into several allegedly illegal cases.

37 Danish families were on a waiting list when the mediator of international adoptions, DIA, put an end to all adoptions from abroad.

The couple Sanne and Morten Kjær Tornøe from Randers have been approved for adoption since January last year. They got on the waiting list to receive a child from Taiwan in August.

It was not many days ago that they were last in contact with the organization Danish International Adoption (DIA), which is the only organization in Denmark that mediates international adoptions.

At that time, the couple was assured that there was no danger that the DIA would stop their adoptions to Denmark.