For the past two days, an interview with Julienne Mpemba has been circulating in the national media space. The aforementioned presents itself as the victim of a monumental instrumentalization. Outraged by this media outlet, Dieu-Merci Kitambo, co-founder of the NGO “Planète Junior – Les Amis de la Paix” came to our editorial office to give a completely different version of the facts.

ABCOMMUNICATION: Hello sir and can you tell us a bit about yourself?

GOD – THANK YOU KITAMBO: My name is Dieu-Merci Kitambo, I am the co-founder of the NGO “Planète Junior – Les Amis de la Paix. »

ABC: How do you know Ms. Julienne Mpemba?

DMK: Mrs. Julienne Mpemba, I know her, since she is the director of the Tumaïni Orphanage, which is here in Kinshasa. She is Congolese naturalized Belgian, for the moment she is in Belgium

When he was eight years old, James Sugrue was fostered out to live on a farm with an elderly couple and their adult son in Kilgarvan, Co Kerry. 

James and his two brothers – Michael and David – had been abandoned by their mother at the County Home in Killarney in 1959. Their father was in London for work.

Over the course of several years, James and Michael were abused, isolated and worked like slaves.

"We are the forgotten children," James, who is now 69 years old, told Prime Time. 

Tens of thousands of children were were fostered out, or "boarded out", in a system arranged by the State, according to Prof Conor O'Mahony, the Special Rapporteur on Child Protection.

‘Long procedure giving rise to grey market’

Lengthy and cumbersome adoption procedures of the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) and the increasing number of childless couples have given rise to a “grey market” for adoption, an NGO told the Delhi High Court on Wednesday.

NGO Yatharatha Foundation told the High Court that as per information on CARA website, around 30,000 couples have registered for adoption. But only 2,989 children are available. Therefore, there was a “huge prospect for grey market of adoption, and which has been thriving due to cumbersome, lengthy, tedious procedure under the CARA”.

A Bench of Chief Justice D.N. Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh issued notice to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, Delhi government, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and CARA seeking their stand on the NGO’s plea seeking simplification of the adoption procedure.

Hotspot for middlemen

Without realizing it, Babs Oudenhuijzen from Terheijden had a photo album full of suffering from dozens of people in her closet. It is a reminder of her time in Motherheil, an institution in Breda where unmarried mothers came to give birth. The babies were given up for adoption, sometimes under duress.

It is a small album bound in imitation leather with dozens of black and white photos of babies. The first names are there, but they have sometimes been changed later by the adoptive parents. It is unknown who those babies later became. Babs is now making her photo album available for research, so that the babies from that time can be traced. And maybe finally have a baby picture of herself.

Babs worked from June 1965 to July 1967 as a caretaker at Mother Health. She was 18 when she started and had a lot of fun with nice colleagues. “I went to work there because there were those lovely little children. I loved babies. ”

"I was there for the kids. Maybe very stupid, but it was."

Babs was unaware of all the suffering behind the adoptions: “I was 18, but actually still as a 16-year-old child. I think I was a very innocent girl who really enjoyed working with children. And what the background was, that didn't matter at all to me. It was not talked about, not at work or at home. I was there for the kids. Maybe very stupid, but it was. ”

AIKEN, S.C.. (WRDW/WAGT) - A father from Aiken County had to go to court and fought for months to get his daughter back. But now, they’ve been reunited.

His daughter was put up for adoption without his permission, all because of an outdated South Carolina law. Now, this father is working to make sure this never happens to anyone else.

“When the one thing that you love is deprived ... something as simple as...feeling the warmth of her skin, seeing her eyes. It’s an experience and a moment one language can’t put into words. It’s very hurtful.”

Christopher Emanuel knows the pain of a father losing his daughter.

“There wasn’t anybody that I could talk to that could tell me I was going to get my daughter back,” he said.

When they learned the truth, a world collapsed: That it was the donation of sperm from an anonymous stranger that they were conceived with. A group of half-siblings are fighting for what they are legally entitled to for a long time: To know who their real father is.

Wolfgang Büscher Stand: 3:47 pm

Perhaps the most ardent longing human beings are capable of is those for truth. For the truth about yourself. And sometimes the search for it takes a crooked path. A boy grows up with his older brother in an intact family, his mother is a high school teacher, the father a physicist, both love their jobs and their children. And yet the boy sometimes has the feeling that something is not what it should be.

Just a faint doubt - is something really wrong, or am I just imagining it? What the boy sees is not just imagination: father and older brother get on well, they share a soft spot for science. He, Alexander, loves languages.

There are similar differences in other families as well. And yet it depresses him to hear father and brother talk shop about chemistry for hours, for example on long Christmas days, and he's out. He then, says Alexander B. today, threw something in to draw attention to himself, so that he could appear. And at school he chose subjects that weren't really his thing. "I wanted to make father proud."

Coline, Marie-Laure and Pattie-Maëlle were all born in Guatemala and adopted in Europe. But the first two were stolen from their birth families, and the last one grew up with a false mother name on her record. To help people in a similar situation shed light on their history, they created the Lost Roots Foundation.

Helping adoptees born in Guatemala to reunite with their families: this is the main goal of Lost Roots. The foundation was created in early 2021, created by people themselves born in this small Latin American country and adopted in Europe.

Some of them were victims of child trafficking during the Guatemalan armed conflict (1960-1996). This is the case with Coline , born Mariela in Guatemala in 1986, and adopted in Belgium when she was eleven months old. When she becomes a mother, she begins a quest for her origins to answer her daughter's questions.

Many times in her life she had tried to find answers, without success. "There was no structure to do research, so it was a bit like wild research," she explains.

Child trafficking involving the ex-sister-in-law of dictator Oscar Mejia Victores

YERSEKE - Following the news about a temporary adoption stop, Maya Kik from Yerseke has decided to release her story. She was born in Indonesia 40 years ago and adopted by a Dutch couple. Growing up in the Netherlands was not always easy for Maya. For a long time she struggled with a void that she thought she could fill with her family from Indonesia, which has remained unknown to this day.

“I wrote my story because I like to share it,” says Kik. “You hear so many negative stories about adoption, but for me it went very well. I wanted to illuminate the other side. Being adopted was certainly not always easy and finding my own happiness, discovering who I am and especially accepting myself was quite a journey. This is the case for many young people, but if you are adopted, this journey will take a little longer. ”

Emptiness

Kik has been looking for her biological family, but has now stopped this search. “I found out that not my family in Indonesia can fill the void I always felt, but that only I can do that myself. The love of God, my children, husband, my dear girlfriends and boyfriends, but especially my own strength that I have developed, have made me strong. I feel happy and happy with myself. I now know that I could feel at home anywhere in the world, because I always have myself with me. ”

Counterfeit

Coline, Marie-Laure and Pattie-Maëlle were all born in Guatemala and adopted in Europe. But the first two were stolen from their birth families, and the last one grew up with a false mother name on her record. To help people in a similar situation shed light on their history, they created the Lost Roots Foundation.

Helping adoptees born in Guatemala to reunite with their families: this is the main goal of Lost Roots. The foundation was created in early 2021, created by people themselves born in this small Latin American country and adopted in Europe.

Some of them were victims of child trafficking during the Guatemalan armed conflict (1960-1996). This is the case of Coline , born Mariela in Guatemala in 1986, and adopted in Belgium when she was eleven months old. When she becomes a mother, she begins a quest for her origins to answer her daughter's questions.

Many times in her life she had tried to find answers, without success. "There was no structure to do research, so it was a bit like wild research," she explains.

Child trafficking involving the ex-sister-in-law of dictator Oscar Mejia Victores

We can vote again on March 17th . To get into the mood, we will give you a picture of the person behind the politician in the near future. This time: Kees van der Staaij (SGP).

We know Cornelis Gerrit van der Staaij (52) as a politician , but who is he as a person? How was his childhood, who are his loved ones? Libelle looked it up for you.

5 FACTS ABOUT KEES VAN DER STAAIJ

Household: Married to Marlies, two children: Michaël (20) and Camila (17)

Education: Law in Leiden