How people adopted abroad are trapped by pseudo-detectives

The search for the origins of adoptees now gives rise to a real business. Intermediaries offer their services for remuneration, even if it means inventing false parents.

Jessica was born in Sri Lanka in 1982. At the age of two, she was adopted in France by a loving family. She led a happy life until Christmas Eve in 2017. “I learned that adoption trafficking took place in Sri Lanka in the 1980s, right at the time of my adoption,” she explains. . " I also learned that the person who served as an intermediary for my adoption is involved in this traffic. It's a big shock. I feel the need to find my biological family.” People contacted via adoptee groups on Facebook give him the contact details of an intermediary who lives there. She contacts him to ask him to look for his biological mother.

A fake mother

The man demands 350 euros from him for food, accommodation and travel costs. “He says the search will not last more than four days. The time, he says, it took him to find other relatives.” Confident and full of hope, Jessica makes a transfer to him and sends him the information she has on his adoption. The result lived up to his expectations: “After three days, he told me that he found a woman who had information that matched my file.” According to him, it was his aunt.

Upset, Jessica decides to go meet her in Sri Lanka. “It’s a magical moment. We hug each other. We cry. I’ve been waiting for this moment for so many years!” , she remembers. Back in France, Jessica continues to talk with her aunt. But a few weeks later, her husband at the time, overcome with doubt, advised her to request a DNA test. It’s a blow: “The test is negative. She's not my aunt. I’m completely falling apart.”

However, Jessica remains hopeful. She pays the intermediary again. And after two days, the latter claims to have found his biological mother this time. “This announcement is indescribable. I’ve been waiting for it all my life.” Scalded, however, Jessica does not want to get emotionally involved before having confirmation that it is indeed her biological mother. She therefore asks him for a DNA test. And again, the verdict is negative. “I have a lot of anger. That's still twice. I feel betrayed." Today, Jessica still has not found her mother, but she wants to continue her search, “without an intermediary” this time.

10 years of therapy

Jessica's case is not isolated. Aurélie experienced the same disappointment. She was born in India in 1979 before being adopted at the age of three by a French family. After the birth of her first child, she felt a deep desire to find her biological parents. She is organizing a trip to India with her husband and daughter. Her research led her to the French association Rayon de soleil for foreign children (RSEE), through which her parents went to adopt her. It was, at the time, one of the main French associations approved for international adoption (it has just lost this approval and is now the target of a judicial investigation for falsification of documents in Mali).

Once in India, Aurélie contacts the director of the orphanage in which she was placed as a child. An establishment which would have “supplied” children to the Rayon de Soleil association. This woman tells her that her mother, whom she thought was dead, is alive and that she has two sisters. An appointment is made for the next day. Aurélie cries with joy: “I believe in it completely. I'm on a little cloud. I don't sleep at night. In addition, I am with my daughter who is very young. She is going to see her real biological grandmother. I am really happy."

But the reunion has a strange taste. The birth mother takes Aurélie in her arms and cries with joy, but she quickly implores him to help her get treatment in France. She also gives him several versions of her past. Aurélie feels a deep unease. For ten years, however, the two women remained in contact, but on a dotted line. Aurélie regularly sends him money, often without getting a response in return. Then, in 2020, plagued by uncertainty, Aurélie asks him to take a DNA test. To his great surprise, the latter refuses. “It made me angry. You can't want to be someone's mother and not agree to DNA tests. She is a very poor person, and she would do well to prove that she is my mother so that I can help her.” But nothing works. Aurélie is devastated. Ten years of therapy will be necessary, she confides to us, “to soothe my sleep which is very disturbed. My heart was racing very quickly. I still feel very tired. It cost me something monstrous physically.”

Lawyers and notaries involved

The practice of “fake mothers” also exists in Guatemala. Nathalie Parent, the former president of the Child and Adoption Federation, observed this during a mission she carried out there in 2019. What surprised her then was the profile of certain of the organizers of this scam: “Former lawyers, notaries and adoption intermediaries have created origins tracing agencies. We were told that they were charged relatively high prices. And that, if they couldn’t find the biological family, they would create it from scratch.” Two reports from the UN and UNICEF in 2000 denounced the existence in Guatemala , on a large scale, of trafficking of newborns and young children intended for adoption in foreign countries. They detailed the role played by lawyers and notaries. The same people are therefore still cracking down, exploiting years later a situation that they helped to create.

We also identified a “child psychologist” in Guatemala who presents herself as a professional in the research of origins. She charges a search $1,500, excluding costs for food, taxi rental and gas. As for accommodations, she “strongly suggests” that people coming to reunite with family stay in her husband’s Airbnb. The clean establishment charges between 50 and 60 euros per night, or two to three times the price of a well-run hotel in the country.

20,000 euros spread over seven years

Other intermediaries offer services of the same type at even more expensive prices. After trying, in vain, to find his biological mother on Instagram, Yann*, a young man born in India, turned to a detective firm. But he quickly became disillusioned: “It was a total scam. The firm charged 180 euros per email. They must have sent four in three months. I ended up stopping. I lost around 2,000 euros.”

Yann then contacted a specialist in tracing origins who has a business in India. This man offers on his site to pay 20,000 euros spread over seven years. The price of a car, he writes. “I call him and tell him it’s exorbitant,” explains Yann. “ He insists. He tells me that the payment is spread over several years, that it is profitable and that it has a very good success rate. I tell him I don't want to have anything to do with him anymore. He recalls. I ended up blocking his number.”

An offer that has evolved

The search for origins has always existed, but the phenomenon has increased recently due, in particular, to a generational factor. “The bulk of international adoption began in the 1980s,” explains Nathalie Parent, the former president of the Children and Families of Adoption federation. “ We reached a peak in the 2000s. Today, adopted people are thirty or forty, the age at which they wonder where they come from and who they are.”

Successive revelations of illegal adoptions abroad have also contributed to accentuating this phenomenon. This is what Fanny Cohen Herlem, a psychiatrist specializing in adoption, observed. “When we learned that there had been embezzlement in adoptions in Sri Lanka, a certain number of adoptees from this country said to themselves with great concern: 'Have I been adopted too? illegally? And they set out to find out.”

Faced with this increase in demand, the service offering has gradually become structured. We first relied on social networks, then, “around five or six years ago”, recalls Julia Noblanc, former volunteer of the association La Voix Des Adoptés , “ more and more people are left alone in their country of birth. I then saw people emerge who contacted us directly, telling us that they were professionals and that they were investigating. And obviously, it wasn’t free.”

An online petition

These intermediaries find customers all the more easily if they are emotionally fragile. “Someone who sets out to research their origins is ready for anything. He can spend colossal sums to put a face to his biological mother ,” explains Emmanuelle Hebert of the Network of International Adoptees in France (RAIF). She herself has been looking for hers in India for 20 years. “If I had the means, I would offer the services of a person who would be on site. But we can very well come across people who will exploit our pain and our fragility ,” she laments.

To avoid these abuses, groups and associations supporting adoptees are now calling for this research to be supervised. “It is necessary to create an official structure ,” explains Céline Breysse, founder of the Adoptés du Sri Lanka collective . Adoptees who are searching for their origins need psychological support because they are often faced with difficult stories. Legal support is also necessary. Finally, we demand legal, free and supervised access to DNA tests which are prohibited in France, to avoid being confronted with false biological mothers.” A petition has been posted online to request the creation of such a structure in France.