Lara van Barneveld (48) from Enschede always found great comfort in a fairytale story about her adoption. That was based on what the orphanage had said about it. But a few years ago Lara discovered that things were very different. Now she does everything she can to find her biological mother. Her hopes are pinned on an advertisement in the newspaper.

"My adoptive parents were told that the orphanage staff in India opened the door in the morning and saw a box on the sidewalk. In the box was me, a cute baby barely a day old," says Lara. “And when I was little I imagined that I was the daughter of an Indian princess who for some reason couldn't keep me.”

But when Lara speaks to other people from the same orphanage, she finds out that they have all been told the same story. "That story is not correct, because we could never have all been found in a box in front of the orphanage." Since then, Lara has been searching with all her might for her biological parents in India.

Mistakes are often made when adopting from abroad because the system is susceptible to fraud. A well-known example of this is the story of the adoptive nun Gertrudis Kuijpers. She is accused of hundreds of illegal adoptions :

Lara van Barneveld (48) from Enschede always found great comfort in a fairytale story about her adoption. That was based on what the orphanage had said about it. But a few years ago Lara discovered that things were very different. Now she does everything she can to find her biological mother. Her hopes are pinned on an advertisement in the newspaper.

Dr. Aurangasri Hinriksson receiving the Order of the Golden Falcon at the President’s House in view of National Day of Iceland 

During most of my adult life I was interested in international affairs, violation of human rights and the harm caused by  racial and religious prejudices

All adopted children have the right to find their biological parents, but the parents do not have the same right as they have signed a document giving up 
that right

In my opinion, a mass DNA analysis of the mothers  who gave away their babies for adoption, is the only way to locate some of the adoptees´ 
biological parents

Over the years I have formed a network of  searchers and informers in various parts of Sri Lanka

I also got inolved in raising funds to build a music school in Isafirdi using my eastern cultural knowledge and also managed to raise funds to buy a life-saving boat for the Accident Prevention Society. In appreciation of the above charitable activities, I was awarded immediate citizenship. Today my son and I are dual citizens

Some of the cases that I investigated, demonstrated that newborns were stolen from hospital from unsuspecting mothers and whisked away to Colombo and kept in safe houses run by the above said lawyer in Kotahena and in Punchi Borella, till such time they were ready to be adopted by a prospective adoptee parent from Europe

Adoptions these days are very few and mainly from the Czech Republic and last year there were none. The Icelandic Adoption Society became a registered legal binding institution during the years 1999 to 2000. The Society follows strict rules and regulations set out by the 1993 Hague Convention on intercountry adoptions

Nowadays, when I find a mother, I use different tactics. I tell her something like that she has won the lottery because her son or daughter living abroad is looking for her and the best period of her life has dawned etc. I say that her lucky stars are shining before I determine whether I have found the correct person or not 

 

In early 1980s, Dr. Aurangasri Hinriksson decided to settle down in Isafirdi, Iceland with her husband and little son. Her interests to serve the community were such that she not only taught English and Mathematics to her community, but even went to the extent of reuniting adopted children from Sri Lanka with their families. Back in the ‘80s, Sri Lanka was infamous for its baby farms and baby smuggling rackets. According to Dr. Hinriksson, during the 1985/86 period, Sri Lanka not only had baby farms, but there had been active child abductors, child agents and sellers who fell into the illegal child trade. On June 17, Dr. Hinriksson was bestowed with the Order of the Golden Falcon, the highest honour awarded by the Icelandic government to appreciate individuals who have done an exemplary service to society. In a candid interview with the Daily Mirror, Dr. Hinriksson shed light on how 
Sri Lankan babies were smuggled to countries such as Iceland, her experiences dealing with baby rackets and reuniting these children with their families and living the greater part of her life in one of the happiest countries in the world. Excerpts :

Q : Tell us about yourself and how it has been to live in a country like Iceland?

Ben and Leoni van den brink, whose children have been unlawfully taken by the state and are also abused, fight with all their might to get their two daughters Demi and Nirvana back home. Here is a photo of the Brink family. http://martinvrijland.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/fotofamilievandenbrink.jpg Here is a brief overview of the facts:

1. 2009. Ben van den Brink discovers that his 2 daughters Demi and Nirvana are being abused and mistreated by his father-in-law and his friends. Shortly afterwards his wife says that the same thing happened to her. Ben wants to seek redress from his father-in-law, who has now called the police, and is surrounded by 11 police cars.

2. September 15, 2009. Ben reports to the Alkmaar police station, is arrested there and imprisoned for 6 months for threatening his father-in-law. An influential man with many contacts.
http://www.argusoog.org/corrupte-rechtsgang-ben-van-den-brink/

3. September 24, 2009. While Ben is in prison, Nirvana and Demi are taken from their home and transferred to the OCK Het Spalier in Zandvoort . Ben and Leonie are shocked that their abused children are also taken from the family. There is hardly any contact with the children. The father-in-law is allowed to visit Demi and Nirvana.

4. During this period, when she is home alone, Lenonie is repeatedly raped by her father and a number of his friends, several times involving a police officer from Schoorl.

5. Early November 2009. Doctor from OCK Het Spalier examines both girls and determines possible sexual abuse.

Nigel Cantwell has worked with children's rights since 1974. Throughout the 80s, he contributed to the drafting of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and later the Hague Convention .

It is this that forms the basis for today's Norwegian adoption system.

Cantwell believes that the problems associated with international adoption have been swept under the rug, and that there is still a long way to go before foreign adoptions can be defended.

- Adoption must be about the individual child's needs. Not that a country has decided that they will export 50 children a year, says Cantwell to TV 2.

- Known the challenges for a long time
 

A Pākehā mother in a same-sex relationship sought the help of a Māori sperm donor so she could have what she described as a “half-caste” baby.

But the friendship between the mother and donor broke down, and now a court has appointed the man as a guardian and granted him three-weekly contact to ensure the child’s cultural needs are met.

The 5-year-old girl’s mother, now single, opposed guardianship, saying the man had little involvement in the child’s life and his intermittent visits were “confusing” to the young girl.

According to the decision published by the Family Court this month, the child, identified by the pseudonym Elle to protect her real identity, was born in 2018.

The other parties aren’t identified, although the man is described by the judge as having a “nationally important role in New Zealand’s cultural heritage”.

Don Demidoff , alias Udo Erlenhardt, was a lot. Textile retailer, editor-in-chief, innkeeper, witness of the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) in the Kießling affair and thus renamed Father. And now Don Demidoff is also becoming webmaster. On his dispatches page he complains about the old communists, the decadence of the West , the western democracies with their new leftists and the Romanian Orthodox Church. Now the Don has launched over 10 new domains on which he wants to express his thoughts in several languages. He has big plans for this, but it will certainly be good for his increased ego. What's not so good, of course, is that he finances all of this with his donations, which is proven by the invoices that have now appeared

Permalink Comments Off From the depths of the mirror August 21, 2008 at 8:36 (Don Demidoff, Udo Erlenhardt) We became aware of an old article from “Spiegel Wissen”. In 1983, the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) investigated allegations that General Kießling was homosexual and frequented gay bars. These findings were based, among other things, on investigations by the Cologne criminal police. In the “TomTom” and “Café Wüsten” bars, several people identified Kießling’s photo as “Günter or Jürgen, definitely something with ü, from the Bundeswehr.” The colorful witnesses of the then Defense Minister Wörner were the businessman Udo J. Erlenhardt, the insurance agent Gerhard August, the “Tom-Tom” buffet man Micha Lindhahr and his boss Hans-Albert Wichert. In this old report from 1983, the witnesses are examined again in detail. After it became clear that the allegations against Kießling could not be proven, the affair was ended through the intervention of the then Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1984: Kießling was returned to active service for a short time and immediately afterwards was honored with the Great Tattoo retired. The then Defense Minister Wörner was immediately “exposed to ridicule”. Permalink Comments Off Don Demidoff's anonymous laughing stock May 7, 2008 at 8:22 (Don Demidoff, Dr. Roland Giebenrath, bullying, Udo Erlenhardt) Today we want to report on a very funny website and his story about anonymity. Udo J. Erlenhardt through his lawyer Dr. It is well known that Giebenrath tries to intimidate critics. And in Germany it is not particularly difficult to deal with legally due to the warning system. The operator Robert Schlittenbauer had to close his critical website http://www.sekteninfo-bayern.de at the instigation of Dr. Close Giebenrath. But this campaign did not go quietly in the blogging scene. So other blogs started dealing with the hate preacher? to employ Don Demidoff. Since these blogs are now becoming increasingly difficult for German censors to reach, the Don can no longer intimidate his critics so easily. And so it was through Dr. Giebenrath tries to blame all new internet reports about the Don on Robert. When all of that didn't work, you now show yourself to be a very bad loser. Under a pseudo-anonymous Internet address http://www.schlittenbauer-versuchte.org , Don Demidoff is now slandering the whole thing. Pseudo-anonymous because, funnily enough, the webmaster, in pre-emptive obedience or in the heat of the moment, has a domain http://www.schlittenbauer-versuchte.deregistered with Denic in order to have it deleted again as quickly as possible. Well, with Denic you just have to provide all the information. Thus, by providing your email address from

31/10/2007 - In war-torn regions in both Chad and Sudan SOS Children's Villages provides psychosocial care to children and women suffering from trauma and trauma-related symptoms. It is especially in emergency and crisis situations such as these that exceptional care should be taken to prevent the separation of children from their families. SOS Children's Villages regrets the situation in which the 103 children in Chad find themselves and we hope that every effort will be made to reunite them with their families and that their well-being be protected at all times.

SOS Children's Villages aims to support children and families in need. The central principle of our work is that every child should grow up in a family, where possible in his or her own family and in his or own familiar environment. It is our aim and conviction that children should grow up learning their native language within their own culture. When a child is at risk of losing parental care we seek to strengthen the support system through programmes aimed at strengthening their coping skills, ensuring their access to essential services, and providing medical, educational, and psycho-social support. A second line of support stems from the extended family and the community.

When parents are unable to take care of a child in spite of interventions, in first instance a solution is sought within these spheres. A child may be considered for admission to an SOS Children's Villages when there are no possibilities for long-term care within the extended family or the community. By rule SOS Children's Villages works with local and national youth welfare authorities. Not only do we depend on this cooperation with and support of the government, we consider the building of local capacity for long-term family based child care a vital element of our work. In our work with children who have lost parental care, in most cases the legal guardianship over children is not with SOS Children's Villages but with the parents, some other relatives, or the youth welfare authorities.

SOS Children's Villages principally has a positive attitude towards adoption as it is one channel to find good care for a child. International adoption can offer a good solution if and when the local possibilities have been exhausted, the proper legal channels have been followed and the fundamental principles of international adoption, as established by the Hague Convention on Intercountry adoption, have been met. The same principles apply for adoption as for admitting a child to an SOS Children's Village: one has to consider whether it is the best way to care for that particular child. One important principle in our work is that siblings should not be separated. This can be problematic in cases of adoption as it is usually considered for individual children.

Lilian Thybell

Lilian Thybell is a nurse and midwife. For 25 years, she has worked and lived in various Asian countries, including Vietnam. In the years 1996 – 2002, she worked for a SIDA-funded project aimed at reaching vulnerable groups in remote villages in northern Vietnam. Lilian specialized in teaching illiterate ethnic women. It was like breaking ground, no one believed that non-literates could learn anything and the perception was that they were less intelligent. The program was a success, Vietnam's Ministry of Health adopted the curriculum and continued to develop it further to reach more women among the minority groups. Lilian has been a valued tour guide for both study trips and holiday trips in, among other places, the Philippines, Thailand, India and Israel. During her six years in Vietnam, she built up a network of contacts which she maintained.

"Was my mother paid to give me up?" Looking for government recognition for mistakes in adoption


Eight adoptees from Sri Lanka are holding the Dutch state liable for abuses during their adoptions. Sam van den Haak, one of them, explains the extent of the damage and the questions she has struggled with all her life.

Anneke StoffelenJuly 25, 2023, 6:43 PM
In a personal interview in the newspaper, it is customary to mention the age of the interviewee. In the case of Sam van den Haak, who was adopted from Sri Lanka, this is not easy. If you base it on the date in her Dutch passport, she would have celebrated her 42nd birthday at the beginning of this month. Or do you, like Van den Haak herself, follow the version of her later found Sri Lankan grandmother? She said that her granddaughter was born on December 17, 1981. In that case, Sam van den Haak is now 41.

A date of birth is an obvious detail for others that you rarely think about. For Van den Haak it has become a crucial part of her story. 'Every time I request a repeat prescription from the pharmacy, I give an incorrect date of birth and am reminded that I am a victim of adoption fraud.'

Van den Haak published a book about that turbulent history last year with the telling title Not born on my birthday. Together with seven other adoptees, she is now starting a collective lawsuit against the Dutch state. The adoptees argue that the government, as supervisor, is liable for the abuses during their adoptions, which were arranged by the Flash foundation. Since the late 1970s, Flash has been publicly associated with baby trafficking and adoption fraud. But according to lawyer Mark de Hek, the government deliberately looked the other way.

About the author
Anneke Stoffelen is a reporter for de Volkskrant and writes, among other things, about the multicultural society. For the podcast series A Kind of God, she investigated how people end up in a cult.

As a result, some of the Sri Lankan adoptees will probably never manage to find their biological family again. The adoption files are missing all kinds of basic documents, such as waivers from the biological mothers. Personal data is also regularly falsified.

Little information in adoption file
When requesting her adoption file, Sam van den Haak discovered that 'there's actually not much in it'. It does not contain the details of her biological mother, let alone a document in which the woman declares that she is renouncing her daughter. Her birth certificate is also missing. Strangely enough, her Dutch surname is already mentioned in the Sri Lankan passport with which the adoption was arranged at the time. "So that must have been forged," Van den Haak concludes. On the handwritten document, the numbers have been scribbled with a pen, so it is not entirely clear which day of birth is meant - in her adoption file it was April 7, in her later Dutch passport it was July 4.

Also missing is a report from the Child Protection Council showing that her adoptive parents were screened before they were allowed to pick her up from Colombo as a toddler. That's strange, Van den Haak thinks, because the couple who adopted her already had three sons, two of whom have severe multiple disabilities. "In the 1980s, relatively little was known about the consequences of adoption, but was there no one who could have imagined that there was no room in this family for another child with special care needs?" she wonders.

As a lively little child, she ended up in a Hoorn household where, in her memory, it always had to be quiet. 'I used to, and still do, prefer to do things together with someone else. But in our family it was always every man for himself. One was doing a puzzle and the other was reading the newspaper. I didn't fit in there at all.'

Sexual abuse
Van den Haak saw little love in the marriage of her adoptive parents. In her opinion, this was the reason why her adoptive father sexually abused her from the age of 6 onwards. As a girl who craved attention and affirmation, she often crawled into her adoptive parents' bed in the morning, looking for cuddles. Once her adoptive mother left, those hugs turned into "things an adult should never do to a child."

For years, Van den Haak was under the impression that this was normal. 'I thought this was the way you, as a parent and child, show that you love each other. Until I was 14 and started having boyfriends, and discovered that you're not supposed to do these things with family.' Years later, when she wanted to file a report, she heard from the police that the case had already expired. Her adoptive father has always denied the abuse. Her adoptive mother kept a low profile and did not support her daughter. Van den Haak therefore no longer has contact with them.

Her unhappy childhood made the question that almost all adoptees ask themselves at some point even more pressing: how would my life have turned out if I had not ended up in a strange country, with strange parents?

Address on a note
Van den Haak traveled to Sri Lanka for the first time in his twenties. An intermediary there initially had bad news: based on the scant information in her adoption papers, it seemed impossible to find her biological family. But there was a blessing in disguise: when her biological mother gave her daughter to the Dutch in 1984, she had placed a note in the hands of Van den Haak's adoptive mother with her address scribbled on it. The note had been kept all these years. And although her biological mother died of cancer in the 1980s, Van den Haak was able to use that information to find her grandmother, plus a brother and a sister.

'At the first meeting I was sceptical. The intermediary who had helped me with the search told me that relatives of adoptees often ask for money very quickly. So I had planned to keep an appropriate distance. But when I arrived at that little old house without electricity, it turned out that my brother was even more skeptical. The first thing he did was take my hand and study my fingers. I thought: what is he doing? Until he discovered the scar he was looking for. “Nangi,” he said, which means little sister.”

The scar was proof to him that Sam was who she said he was, he said later. 'He could still remember me helping him cut bamboo as a small child. I then had to hold the stems. He once accidentally chopped my finger, that's what left the scar.'

In the passport photos he showed of their mother, she immediately recognized the woman from the photos from her own scrapbook, taken by her adoptive parents. Then all doubts were gone.

The meeting with her brother and grandmother was warm (with her sister, whom she only meets later, the contact is more complicated). This caused Van den Haak to wonder how necessary it actually was for her to be given up, if there were family members who would have wanted to care for her. Her grandmother, now deceased, said that her mother harbored a secret. She is said to have feared that she would be expelled from their village if the truth about her daughter's conception came out.

Compensation
But Van den Haak was never able to unravel the complete story surrounding her adoption. 'Was my mother paid to give me up, temporarily or otherwise? I do not know. My file does show that my adoption cost more than 10,000 guilders, a large part of which went to mediation organizations.'

In the upcoming lawsuit, adoptees will demand compensation for the costs they have had to incur in the search for their family - searches that in many cases have not led to anything. In addition, it will also involve compensation for the psychological suffering: growing up in an environment in which you find little recognition and the feelings of uprooting that follow some people for the rest of their lives.

Yet Van den Haak wants to emphasize that as far as she is concerned, it is not an exclusively gloomy story. 'I've been through a lot and there was a period when I didn't even want to live anymore. But my story shows that you can get out of it.' As a former Dutch teacher, she has written her book especially in understandable language for young people, so that they may find hope in it when they are going through a difficult time. 'I believe that you can always choose to make something of your life. I am now very happy with my son. I am also proud of the company I founded, with which I organize pub quizzes for companies.'

For her, the lawsuit is not about compensation. However, she does want the government to acknowledge the mistakes of the past, so that these problems are prevented in the future. And what would be the best and most important outcome for Van den Haak: that a passport would one day be arranged for her with her real date of birth in it.

Former social worker Thea Ramirez has developed an artificial intelligence-powered tool that she says helps social service agencies find the best adoptive parents for some of the nation’s most vulnerable kids

Some are orphans, others seized from their parents. Many are older and have overwhelming needs or disabilities. Most bear the scars of trauma from being hauled between foster homes, torn from siblings or sexually and physically abused.

Child protective services agencies have wrestled for decades with how to find lasting homes for such vulnerable children and teens –- a challenge so enormous that social workers can never guarantee a perfect fit.

Into this morass stepped Thea Ramirez with what she touted as a technological solution – an artificial intelligence-powered tool that ultimately can predict which adoptive families will stay together. Ramirez claimed this algorithm, designed by former researchers at an online dating service, could boost successful adoptions across the U.S. and promote efficiency at cash-strapped child welfare agencies.

“We’re using science – not merely preferences – to establish a score capable of predicting long-term success,” Ramirez said in an April 2021 YouTube video about her ambitions to flip “the script on the way America matches children and families” using the Family-Match algorithm.