Shocked rapporteurs react to new DR podcast: 'One of the most terrifying chapters in Danish history'

The podcast series 'Falske Minder' reveals that a Danish adoption agency was involved in bribery and child trafficking in Lebanon in the 1980s.

"Sick", "scandalous" and "absolutely heartbreaking".

This is how social spokespeople from both the right and left describe the content of a new DR podcast series 'Falske Minder'.

The podcast tells the story of a series of adoptions from Lebanon to Denmark in the 1980s, which, according to experts, occurred through bribery or "outright child trafficking" .

The Danish adoption agency AC Børnehjælp was responsible for mediating the adoptions, and extensive internal correspondence reveals, according to experts, that several infants were likely traded for money and donations such as powdered milk or medical equipment before they ended up adopted in Denmark.

After listening to the podcast, the Social Affairs Spokesperson for the Danish Unity Party, Victoria Velasquez, is shocked. She calls it "one of the most terrifying chapters in Danish history."

- This is downright sick. It is an expression of a sick view of humanity, but also how one has managed and abused one's power. It is a frightening example of what kind of history we have with adoption in Denmark, and what we have exposed these children and parents to. It is scandalous, says Victoria Velasquez.

'These parents have grieved the loss of a child'

The Danish woman, Grete Buhr, was tasked with finding children for adoption in Lebanon as an employee of AC Børnehjælp.

DR has been granted access to the correspondence between her and AC Børnehjælp in Denmark. It appears that at least 18 of the 49 children that Grete Buhr brought to Denmark in the 1980s came from one particular midwife who had a reputation for being able to "produce children".

BT visited Grete Buhr in Beirut and told the newspaper how she picked up children in a small bullet-riddled Honda during the civil war in the 1980s. A total of 63 adoptees have come from Lebanon to Denmark - Grete Buhr arranged for 49 of them. Original photos and text: Erik Pedersen, BT

The podcast series 'False Memories' shows that two of the adoptees' biological parents were told by the midwife in question in the early 1980s that their child had died at birth.

The two parents have therefore, according to their own account, lived in the belief that the children did not live. But as adults, the two adoptees have found their biological families via DNA testing, and the family history has been rewritten.

This is information that makes a particular impression on the Danish People's Party's social affairs spokesperson, Mette Thiesen.

"Some of these parents have been told that their child is dead. They have grieved, they have buried what they thought was their child, and then find out many years later that the child has actually been stolen from them. It is as heartbreaking as it can possibly be," she says.

The stories have also made an impression on Helene Brydensholt, who is the children and family spokesperson for Alternativet.

- You hear some very personal stories about some children who, to put it bluntly, seem to have been kidnapped and then brought to Denmark. And at the same time some parents in Denmark who believe that they have adopted some children under legal and proper conditions, and then the reality is the opposite. It is deeply moving and deeply problematic, she says.