Dutch 'nun' suspected of baby theft from Chile appears to have destroyed files

The search of Chilean adoptees for their biological family threatens to become an impossible mission. Almost all files are missing or possibly destroyed. The woman who arranged many adoptions refused to provide information until her death in January.

More than two hundred Chilean children have been (illegally) adopted in the Netherlands since the early 1970s. The Dutch Truus Kuijpers, who ran the Las Palmas children's home in Santiago for more than 25 years, was involved in about a hundred adoptions.

Adoptees accuse her of child theft . Among other things, she is said to have taken babies from hospitals to Las Palmas for adoption without the knowledge and consent of the mothers. She was interrogated in 2019 by justice in Chile, who are investigating the illegal adoptions of 20,000 children in the 1970s and 1980s.

Research by this site shows that Kuijpers was guilty of deception. During her probation to become a nun, she had been expelled from the congregation of the White Sisters because she was 'manipulative and dishonest'. Yet she presented herself everywhere as a 'sister' and managed to collect hundreds of thousands of donations for Las Palmas. She later matched several adoptees with the wrong biological family, but refused to engage in conversation.

Lawyer

Chileans tried in vain to obtain their adoption files with parentage information. Wereldkinderen, which mediated most adoptions from Chile, only has thirteen Chilean files in its archives. It was recently announced that the Central Authority for International Children's Affairs may also have destroyed thousands of adoption files in 1999 .

After Kuijpers' death, Chileans, with the help of a lawyer and the Expertise Center for Intercountry Adoption (Inea), stipulated that surviving relatives must transfer all information about adoptions via Las Palmas from the estate.

A bailiff seized five boxes of administration from Kuijpers' home, as well as a laptop and external hard drive. These are now at Fiom, the center for parentage questions, which is making an inventory of everything. So far, names of fifty adoptees have emerged, as well as address books and photos, but no information yet about biological parents.

Destroyed

Adoptees fear that Kuijpers has already destroyed much crucial information about the adoptions. Last December, in one of her last interviews, she told this site that she has all the data on adoptees and birth parents, but is putting it through the paper shredder.

She refused to share information with adoptees until her death. "I contacted her by email to ask for her cooperation in the search for some adopted children," said Chilean researcher Karen Alfaro. "She has acknowledged that she knows where the children are, but would not give me or their mothers any information."

Miep Bastiaanse, Kuijpers' sister, says that she is now sorting out the rest of the estate, which is stored with the family. This also includes material about Las Palmas, such as (annual) reports. "I'm not going to keep that."

Moral appeal

The Adoptees Chile Netherlands Foundation is concerned that no one is currently checking which items about Las Palmas are still with the relatives and whether relevant information is being thrown away. “Chilean adoptees and their families are looking for answers,” the foundation said. 'We make a moral appeal to government agencies, adoption agencies, organizations and individuals who played a role in this. We ask for openness and cooperation to help those who have been wronged. There is no choice but to continue until the bottom stone is up.'

According to Inea director James Timmermans, the heirs have given up 'everything' they had. He points out that they are legally obliged to transfer all relevant information for adoptees that they still encounter. "I still assume that they act in good faith. The heirs have no interest in keeping anything back. They also want to get rid of this file.”