The adoption of children from abroad has been temporarily suspended, following harsh criticism from the Joustra Commission. Marijke Bleijenberg worked in a children's home in China and is not surprised, as is Antony Vinke, who discovered errors in his own adoption file.
'Even before this research report brought it to light, I was already aware that adopted adoption procedures are not always correct. My own adoption papers also contain errors and forgeries, 'says Antony Vinke (34). His parents adopted him as a baby from Sri Lanka. He doesn't blame them, he emphasizes. 'They have acted in good conscience and conscience. I am now happy with my family in the Netherlands. But if no mistakes had been made in Sri Lanka, I probably wouldn't have ended up here. '
'A mess', is how Vinke summarizes the papers that his parents received upon his transfer. "For example, the medical document said I was a girl." In 2016, when he was 29 years old, he decided to look for his biological parents in his native country.
He received the assistance of a Sri Lankan who is an expert in such quests. 'I ended up on an emotional rollercoaster. You start with the basic information you have, but in the hospital where I was born I saw my name, but the name of my biological mother was missing. ' Then they tracked down a couple whose husband had the same surname as stated on Vinke's papers. 'It turned out that he had a son from 1986, but he lived in Sri Lanka. So that trail also ended. '
Vinke had a photo of the woman who gave it up. Its publication in the national newspaper in Sri Lanka resulted in a reaction from a woman, but her story did not match what Vinke knew about the transfer at the court at the time.