Joy, that was the first reaction of the adopted Dilani Butink when she heard that new adoptions from abroad are being temporarily halted . This was decided in response to a damning research report on the Dutch adoption culture and the role of the government. "I am very happy with the report from the committee and the temporary halt. This just confirms what we have been fighting for all this time, that it has not been in vain."

Dilani Butink was adopted from Sri Lanka in 1992 by Dutch parents. She filed a lawsuit in connection with her adoption procedure, in which, according to her lawyer, serious mistakes were made. Last year, the judge ruled that the case was time-barred , so the court would not deal with the substance of the case. An appeal is still pending.

Butink thinks it must sound crazy to respond happily to such a damning report, but these conclusions make her feel familiar in her grief. "We actually knew what went wrong, but it's nice that it is now being confirmed. And I was shocked to see that things are still not going well."

Mirjam and Doriet also went wrong with their adoption from Indonesia. They later turned out not to be sisters and recently told about this:

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Following a damning report , the adoption of children from abroad has been suspended . Amsterdam's Dilani Butink (29) took the Dutch state to court last year for 'shoddy' around her adoption and is pleasantly surprised by the decision.

“There were some tears when the report's conclusion came out ,” says Butink. “It feels like a kind of emotional rollercoaster that suddenly explodes. In a positive way."

Butink discovered, during a trip to her native Sri Lanka in 2015, that her adoption papers were incorrect . As a result, she will probably never find her biological parents again. The court in The Hague ruled last year that the Dutch state is not liable for this , because the fraudulent practices surrounding Butink's adoption were time-barred. The court also found it impossible to determine whether there had been illegal adoption. “I found, and still think, that an easy legal solution. They looked away again, ”says Butink.

The latter happened for years, according to a committee headed by former top civil servant Tjibbe Joustra. The committee noted in its conclusions yesterday that there were already signs of adoption abuses as far back as the 1960s. Butink was born thirty years later. “Looking away, I had low expectations of the research. I was positively surprised to learn that the report was so critical. ”

Biological mother

The adoption of children from abroad will be suspended immediately. Minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) announced this on Monday, in response to a damning report on international adoption in the Netherlands. This also raises the question of whether foreign adoption should be continued in the future.

New applications for adoption from abroad will not be processed for the time being. Parents who have already received permission to bring a child to the Netherlands are allowed to complete the procedure after an additional test.

According to Dekker, the Dutch government has failed to act for years by looking away from abuses during adoptions and not intervening. "It is painful to find that the government has not done what could be expected of it," he said.

According to the minister, for a long time the idea prevailed that parents with adoption were doing 'good'. He called this a well-intentioned but also a somewhat naive sentiment. 'It does offer an explanation for the actions of the government, but no justification.' Dekker apologized on behalf of the government.

Serious wrongs

Adopted child According to Chamila Seppenwoolde, who was adopted from Sri Lanka, something is lost forever with every international adoption. "You can't go back to how it should have been."

It would have been close if Chamila Seppenwoolde (34) had ended up in another family. Her adoptive parents had ticked a girl on the form, but had been assigned a boy. In the van on the way to the lawyer in Colombo, it was other adoptive parents who convinced them not to agree. "They said, you have ordered a girl, so you must have a girl too."

Sri Lanka was a popular adoption country in the second half of the 1980s, as many newborn babies were offered here. Often this was not done voluntarily. Chamila's mother thought she would give up her daughter temporarily, until she could be financially independent again. "Only when she saw in court that I was being picked up by two white people did she realize she had lost me."

The Sinhalese baby that was handed to the couple Seppenwoolde was called Dilrukshi Chamila, but the Seppenwooldes did not like the first name and was deleted. Her passport therefore states Chamila Chandrani - the middle name is that of her Sinhalese mother. A loss, says Chamila. "My real names are all my mother gave me."

In the Seppenwoolde family not much was said about Chamila's origins. It wasn't until she was in high school that she was shown a picture of her mother. "I was always told: your mother could not take care of you and gave you up out of love."

The cabinet will receive the research report on adoption from abroad on Monday. After reporting from the AD on Friday, insiders said that the Commission for the Investigation of Intercountry Adoption, led by Tjibbe Joustra, advises to stop adopting children from abroad altogether. Too many abuses would have come to light to be able to proceed responsibly.

It is not yet certain whether the cabinet will fully adopt the recommendations from the investigation report. According to insiders, this is still being discussed, partly because of the question of whether current proceedings may still be completed.

Dutch officials may have been involved in illegal adoptions from Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s, it was previously known. This was followed by the order from Minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) to investigate the case further. Adoptions from Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Colombia were also scrutinized.

Dekker did not want to respond on Friday, after the recommendations from the report were leaked. "It is really important that the committee is given the opportunity to present the report with all due care, to show exactly what it contains." The minister found it inappropriate to respond to "such a sensitive topic" on Friday. Prime Minister Mark Rutte also said on Friday that he did not think it wise to respond to the issue.

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A temporary ban on the adoption of children from abroad is a step in the right direction. But it does not give Jyoti Weststrate (37) from Deventer a sense of justice. For Yanien Veenendaal (50) from Apeldoorn, it feels like a small victory.

They let this know in response to the decision by outgoing minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) to immediately suspend the adoption of children from abroad. That became known Monday morning.

In the opinion on the Dutch adoption culture and the role of the government in this, reference is made to 'serious abuses'. According to Dekker, the Dutch government has fallen short of looking away from abuses for years. The committee identified child theft, child trafficking, corruption, forgery and theft of documents, unethical acts of civil servants and the transfer of children to the Netherlands under false pretenses.

Presented to a priest

Weststrate was about 2 years old, although she does not rule out the fact that she was older, when she was taken away from her biological parents in India and 'given' to a priest . She ended up in Zutphen, where questions about her origins have been waiting for answers for a lifetime. Now she tries to expose abuses in international adoption.

When I decided to adopt orphaned twins from Ethiopia, it felt like the most natural thing to do. But it raised many questions about motherhood and the bond we have with our children

I assumed I would conceive naturally when John and I decided to start a family. I didn’t. We turned to fertility drugs with ambivalence. Reports of the mood swings the drugs sometimes caused worried me. I had only gone through one round when I broke a wooden dish-drying rack over John’s head. I don’t remember what he said, but I’m sure it was something I’d otherwise have considered innocuous. Instead, a growling, uncontrollable rage emerged from nowhere and then overcame me like an emotional tsunami. We decided the drugs weren’t for us.

I had gone along with fertility treatments for the same reason I went along with other non-decisions I’ve made in my life, like having an enormous wedding, because people whom I loved wanted it for me. I thought I was supposed to want it, just like I was supposed to want to get pregnant by any means. Yet I cried genuine tears when, month after month, I was unable to conceive. I felt like a failure.

My friend Lisa, a scholar of the Bible, sat with me once as I confessed that another fertility treatment had failed to take. “This is your pain,” she said. “You must bear witness.”

Her words gripped me physically. I stopped crying. I was erect, alert and full of purpose. From that moment, I paid attention to the more important presence in my insides: not the drugs but the little door in my heart that had always been closed to them. Behind that door was my truest self and she didn’t want to conceive that badly.

Adoption of children from abroad must be halted for the time being. This conclusion can be found in the yet to be published report of the Joustra Committee. Under the leadership of former top civil servant Tjibbe Joustra, this committee advises the cabinet on international adoptions and the role of the Dutch government in this culture.

The verdict of the leaked report feels like recognition for Patricia Steenstra from Groningen. She was adopted from Indonesia as a five month old baby. She is looking for her biological family in her native country. This did not work, her file appears to be forged. She is one of the thousands of children who were brought to the Netherlands for adoption from countries such as Sri Lanka, India, Indonesia and Colombia in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, and now find out during their search that their adoption file has been tampered with.

Serious wrongs

Due to the continuing flow of adoption abuses, Sander Dekker, Minister for Legal Protection, announced that an investigation would be conducted in 2018. The report will be presented next Monday. Sources around the cabinet leaked to the Algemeen Dagblad about the content. According to the newspaper, it appears that this investigation shows serious abuses in the adoptions of children from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka in the period of 1967 and 1997. This problem continues to this day, the committee finds .

No comment

HOOGE MIERDE - Immediately stopping adoptions of foreign children is a major step that is not necessary. Adoption is and will remain valuable for many children. This is the response of Inez Teurlings, chairman of the Stichting Interlandelijk Geadopterden, to the most important recommendation of the Joustra Committee, which investigated the Dutch adoption practice.

Teurlings, born in Bangladesh and raised in Hooge Mierde, is aware of abuses that are mentioned in the report of the Joustra committee revealed by this newspaper on Friday. Child trafficking, child theft and forging adoption documents, for example.

But such cases mainly took place in the 1970s and 1980s, according to Teurlings. “Then hundreds of children were adopted every year. With such numbers I can imagine that something will go wrong. Nowadays it is still about 125 children per year. ”

Prove

Teurlings emphasizes that she has not yet read the report of the Joustra committee. “I am curious about the evidence of wrongdoing. From our contacts with permit holders who mediate in adoptions, I do not get the impression that much goes wrong. Parties I know are doing well with adoption. ”

The adoption of children from abroad must be stopped completely for the time being. A committee led by former top civil servant Tjibbe Joustra draws this conclusion in a report to be published, sources around the cabinet report to the AD .

The report on the Dutch adoption culture and the role of the government in it mentions 'serious abuses' in Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The committee pointed to child theft, child trafficking, corruption, forgery and theft of documents, unethical acts of civil servants and the transfer of children to the Netherlands under false pretenses. Because today's adoption practice is still not good, bringing children to the Netherlands should stop for the time being, the advice is.

Council of Ministers on report

Friday, the Council of Ministers will talk about the report that will be published on Monday. Not everyone in the government would feel in favor of a complete stop on adoption. The ongoing adoption procedures should go ahead, some believe. A stop should therefore relate to new applications.

Zembla paid attention to abuses in intercountry adoptions in four programs. In response to that broadcast, Minister Dekker said that the “primary responsibility” for a careful adoption procedure lay and lies with the sending countries. But on the basis of later information, Dekker said he saw reason to take a closer look at the actions of the Dutch government.