Au Mali, une ancienne magistrate continue de dénoncer des adoptions frauduleuses

Publié le : 15/06/2020 - 04:12

Modifié le : 15/06/2020 - 04:13

L'association Rayon de Soleil a organisé plus de 320 adoptions au Mali entre 1989 et 2001.

L'association Rayon de Soleil a organisé plus de 320 adoptions au Mali entre 1989 et 2001. REUTERS/Joe Penney

DCI-Liberia Wants GOL Investigate the Trafficking of 34 Children

By Hannah N. Geterminah -June 15, 2020046

Foday M. Kawah, Executive Director DCI-Liberia

Defence for Children International-Liberia (DCI-L), a child right advocacy group, has called on the government through the ministries of Justice and Labor to investigate 34 children trafficked from communities in Todee, Lower Montserrado County.

Foday M. Kawah, DCI-L Executive Director, at a press conference held in Monrovia, said DCI-Liberia during its preliminary investigation conducted in Todee communities including Zuana Town, Kpenibu Town, Dowee Town, Tokpalon Town, Gbeno Town, Juhag Town, Kaiyeah Town, Gbajah Town, Beabah Town, Nyehn town and Bona Fahn and came to a conclusion that 23 parents have been allegedly victimized by child trafficking.

Defence for Children International-Liberia (DCI-L), a child right advocacy group, has called on the government through the ministries of Justice and Labor to investigate 34 children trafficked from communities in Todee, Lower Montserrado County.

Foday M. Kawah, DCI-L Executive Director, at a press conference held in Monrovia, said DCI-Liberia during its preliminary investigation conducted in Todee communities including Zuana Town, Kpenibu Town, Dowee Town, Tokpalon Town, Gbeno Town, Juhag Town, Kaiyeah Town, Gbajah Town, Beabah Town, Nyehn town and Bona Fahn and came to a conclusion that 23 parents have been allegedly victimized by child trafficking.

Kawah, speaking on June 9, said the incident occurred ten years ago (2004-2009), during which 34 children were allegedly “abducted, smuggled and trafficked” from their parents and subsequently adopted by the West African Children Support Network (WACSN) without their consent.

He said out of a total of 34 children, there were 12 boys and 22 girls who are believed to be trafficked in the US and other parts of the world.

Kawah, therefore, is calling on the government of Liberia to investigate at the level of the Probate Court whether or not the biological parents of these children gave consent prior to adoption; ascertain whether these children were adopted with their known names and that the state party takes urgent measures to abolish informal adoptions and expedite the enactment of the Adoption Bill, as well as ratify the 1993 Hague Convention No. 33 on Protection of Children and Cooperation regarding Inter-country Adoption and the Proper implementation or enforcement of the Anti-Trafficking law.

Former nuns Sister Chantal (92) and Sister Angeli (81) worked at the Paulastichting in Oosterbeek, a home for unmarried mothers, in the late 1960s. Many of these mothers gave up their children. Like Ellen van Ree (69), who carried this trauma with her for the rest of her life. Fifty years later, she visits the nuns. How do they look back on what happened in their home?

This article was written byJenda Terpstra and Petra Vissers Published on June 13, 2020, 1:00 AM

Save

To share

Ellen van Ree was sixteen years old and a "child of her time, with trendy clothes and spiky blond hair" when she became pregnant in 1967. Her parents refused to hear of it and  sent her to the Paula Foundation  in Oosterbeek. There, Ellen was housed, along with about 29 other unmarried girls, waiting to give birth. Half of them gave up their child for adoption. Ellen's parents also refused to let her keep it.

Mother and child belong together was the creed in 1956. But after the introduction of the adoption law, that principle disappeared. How could it be that thousands of women were separated from their children in ten years? 

It's August 1967, and in Oosterbeek, nestled in the green space on Nico Bovenweg, the new building of the Paula Foundation is opened. Here, in the coming years, hundreds of unmarried mothers will give birth, and just as many babies will spend their first months, or even years. The modern, new building is opened by psychiatrist Gribling.

His speech breathes a new era. In the past, he says, the guiding principle was: mother and child belong together. But "you will be aware," he continues, "that this principle has been completely abandoned, especially in the last ten years, for reasons so obvious that we can only wonder about its application now."

The adoption law has been in effect for eleven years, since 1956. That law was inspired by the desire of foster parents to also obtain legal parenthood over their foster children. At the time, this involved small numbers. The motto at the time was: mothers, no matter how disabled, must care for their babies. A principle that now holds true again.

The adoption law seems to have unintentionally created its own dynamic

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: Against Child Trafficking

Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2020 at 23:55

Subject: Ms. Roelie Post

To: ec-president-vdl@ec.europa.eu

Suspicions of irregular adoptions in Mali: Rayon de soleil already involved in another case

by Hélène Chevallier

June 10, 2020

The adoption agency against which 9 people adopted in Mali in the 1990s complained had already been involved in an illegal adoption case this time in Peru in the early 1980s.

Rayon de Soleil had already been involved in an illegal adoption case © AFP / Patricia de Melo Moreira

Pathways to adoption SURVEY (2/2). From 1989 to 2001, more than 300 children were adopted in Mali via a French association. Many wonder about the conditions of these adoptions.

Time has stood still in Saint-Thégonnec Loc-Eguiner, in the north of Finistère. Sitting in front of two photo albums, Françoise Raoult and her son Jean-Noël, 35, relive each image one by one, with a smile on her lips and tender eyes. This October 17, 2019, nothing else exists except these pictures, vestiges of the childhood of Jean-Noël and that of his little brother Pierre-Yves. “A real bath. With water coming out of the shower head! » , Marvels Jean-Noël again, pointing to the photo where they both laugh out loud in a bathtub.

It was in December 1990. Françoise and Bernard Raoult, a Breton couple, had just adopted Jean-Noël and Pierre-Yves, who arrived from Mali at the age of 6 and 4. Thanks to the French association Rayon de soleil defant stranger (RDSEE), parents and their new children then realize their dream: Françoise becomes a mother and the two brothers discover France within a loving family, after having been "Abandoned" by their biological family. "Abandoned" , that's in any case what RDSEE has always told them ...

Read also

Nine French people of Malian origin file a complaint against an adoption agency

At the same time that pressure on unmarried women to relinquish their babies is mounting, the question of who is responsible for the thousands of children relinquished is also becoming increasingly unclear. Mothers and children are being crushed in an opaque and chaotic system.

Gertha stands at the door of the Aldegonde orphanage in Amersfoort. It's February 23, 1960, a cold and cloudy day. Gertha's then three-year-old son, Hans, lives in the stately orphanage. She was unmarried when she had him, but she gave him up under pressure from her parents.

She's picking up her son today, she thinks. She has an appointment with the Utrecht Child Protection Council: once married, she can pick up her child. The wedding is in a few days. She's getting married, and her future husband, Hans, acknowledged his paternity on February 11th. The child is legally his son; they'll take him home together.

Things take a different turn. Gertha is told at Aldegonde's door that Hans has already gone to foster care. She can't take him with her and isn't told where he is.

In the years following the introduction of the adoption law, mothers and children were crushed in a chaotic and opaque system. The life story of Hans van Rijssel (64) illustrates the consequences of this lack of oversight. "Child Protection Services made me swim. And I'm still swimming."

After his mother,  under pressure from her parents, gave up her son , Hans was initially placed in the "De Kloek" home in Leusden after his birth. After five months, he moved to "Zonnestraal" in Bilthoven, and then lived for more than two years in "Huize Aldegonde." "I was brought in there by the social worker," he recalls. "I stood in that large hall, I turned around, and I was alone. And that's how I've felt ever since."

At Huize Aldegonde , his biological mother and the man she's about to marry try to pick him up. At the home's door, the couple learns that Hans is already living with a family. What they don't know is that he had been taken away just five days earlier.  Read more about what happened here.

Van Rijssel has nothing good to say about the family he ends up with. Officially, he lived there from age 3 to 18, but in reality, he only spent three and a half years under their roof. The boy was sent to various homes throughout his childhood because he allegedly had behavioral problems. "I was stupid, always did everything wrong," he says. Throughout that time, he was under the guardianship of the Utrecht Reformed Children's Association. His foster parents never adopted him because, according to his file, "they didn't dare accept all the consequences."