Children who have been trafficked, adoptees introduced to the wrong biological family, distance mothers who have been robbed of their babies: the examples of wrongdoing resulting from international adoption are poignant and legion.

The harsh report that the Joustra Committee presented on Monday leaves little to the idealistic ideas that so often surrounded adoption in the past. According to the research, a 'demand-driven adoption market' has emerged 'in which large amounts of money are involved'. The committee led by former top civil servant Tjibbe Joustra has established that the system 'works like a' money laundering operation 'for children'.

It hardly comes as a surprise after reading all this disaster that the committee advises to limit international adoption completely. It is remarkable that the cabinet announced on Monday, through Minister Sander Dekker (Justice), that it would follow the advice immediately. No new adoption procedures are being started for prospective parents who want to get a child from abroad.

That is a break with the past. When in 2016 a report by the Council for the Application of Criminal Law and Youth Protection advised the government to ban foreign adoption , the criticism was still dissipated. In the past, something may have gone wrong, but for some situations adoption is the only solution, was the reasoning in The Hague at the time.

Loud voice

"In our case, adoption is not shady. There was no question of child trafficking and misery." Chantal and Dirk-Jan de Boer have to defend themselves for the adoption of their son after Joustra's hard report about abuses in adoption in the past.

Chantal and Dirk-Jan from Eagum in Friesland have just received permission for the adoption of a second child from the United States. Outgoing minister Sander Dekker announced a provisional ban on adoption on Monday. A new cabinet must look at it again. Four hundred parents who were already very far in the procedure are still allowed to continue, including Chantal and Dirk-Jan.

'Terrible Time'

The days before the report came out, they heard that the minister was going to intervene. They feared their adoption would not go through either. “It was terrible leading up to the report. We knew it was going to come and cause dust. We never expected any adoption to be called 'child trafficking'. Until yesterday it was terrible, we are there all weekend sick of it. "

The adoption may therefore continue with Chantal and Dirk-Jan, but mixed feelings still dominate due to the hard conclusions of Tjibbe Joustra. "We feel that we have to justify ourselves. We are very sorry that it is pretended to be all adoptions. People think that we are keeping it going, the child trafficking."

Colombian María Orfi Cifuentes has fallen victim to the Dutch adoption scandal. She did not want to give up her child at all, documents were forged and she was told that her son had died. She didn't see him again until 40 years later. In the Netherlands.

“I only got a glimpse of his foot,” María tells NOS. “Then they wrapped my newborn son in a blue hospital blanket and took him away. In the hospital they said he was dead, but it turned out that he had been adopted. ”

“A nun came over to my bed and said the baby was doing very badly,” she says of the day her child was born. “She had two blank sheets of paper with her and told me to sign them. That would allow me to have my son baptized before it was too late. She also asked me to give him a name. A little later a nurse came to me and told me that my son had died. ”

Psychologically heavy

It happened in 1977, but the loss carried them with it for years. “It was very difficult psychologically. I considered suicide, but I passed on for my other children. ”

Interest groups of Dutch adoptees are satisfied with the report of the Joustra Committee presented today. That committee concluded that international adoptions as currently organized can no longer take place.

"There have been many abuses in the past, but the adoption system is still susceptible to fraud and abuses continue to this day", said committee chairman Tjibbe Joustra. The government has temporarily halted all adoptions .

Many adoptees have been looking for their biological family for years and encounter all kinds of abuses and shady adoption practices. It is therefore often impossible to find out what the real reason for their adoption was and whether it was legal. For Chamila Seppenwoolde of United Adoptees International, the conclusions are not new: "We have been denouncing abuses for years." She thinks the temporary stop on adoptions should be a permanent one. "Because apologizing means not only saying sorry, but also not going to do it again."

Judy Aubrain of Plan Kiskeya from Haiti supports the conclusions of the Joustra committee and appreciates the government's apologies. "That is a great recognition for many adoptees and families in Haiti," said Aubrain.

It is not the first time that a critical report on adoptions has appeared. In 2016, the Council for the Application of Criminal Law and Youth Protection also came to the conclusion that it would be better to stop international adoptions. Much attention has also been paid in the media to shady adoption practices. Already in 2007 made network a story about stolen children from India. Zembla made several broadcasts about adoption fraud and Nieuwsuur paid attention to shady adoptions a number of times . Since the late 1960s, approximately 40,000 children have come to the Netherlands. In 2019 there were 145, mainly from Hungary and China.

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:

31:39

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.