Fraud in international adoptions turns children into commodities
- Countless internationally adopted children uncover the lies surrounding their adoption
- The investigation reveals the lucrative business and the crimes hidden behind these adoptions
Since the 1950s, more than a million children around the world have been adopted by Western families. The investigation carried out by one of those adoptees, now a journalist, reveals in the documentary The Adoption Scandal how this colossal and lucrative market has been able to flourish and why it still exists today. From children stolen from their mothers during the Pinochet dictatorship to false orphans from Africa or Asia , international adoption is at the centre of an unprecedented scandal .
Korean children in Sweden
The children adopted by Western families in recent decades are now between 30 and 40 years old . Interested in finding their identity and, thanks to social networks, many of them were shocked to learn that a large majority had been illegally separated from their biological parents.
Historians and demographers estimate that more than a million children have been adopted over the past six decades . South Korea, Vietnam, Colombia, Chile and Ethiopia are just some of the hundred countries that have given their children up for adoption to Western parents over the years.
Those who are looking for his true identity do not know all his details and demand to know them. © Dilani Buting
Until the 1980s, 50% of all children adopted worldwide came from South Korea . To meet this demand, adoption agencies were created in the countries of origin and the host countries, creating a competitive market that offered lucrative profits . “Hundreds of children arrived from South Korea to Sweden almost every year,” says Lundberg.
Patrik Lundberg talks to Boon Young Han about the investigation into illegal adoptions. © Tangerine Productions
This was the case of Swedish journalist Patrik Lundberg , of Korean origin, adopted in Sweden when he was ten months old. Obsessed with meeting his biological parents, he travelled to his country of birth. The adoption agency reopened his file and days later he found his family. However, the supposed parents were, in fact, his uncles . “I began to wonder if this was normal and decided to investigate the system behind it,” explains Patrik.
“I started to wonder if this was normal and decided to investigate the system behind it.“
Together with other colleagues from the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter , such as Boon Young Han, also adopted in Korea by a Danish family, they analysed more than 400 adoption files from Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the United States. “People are waiting for us to find a case that has not been falsified, in which there are no fraudulent or missing documents, false signatures or missing consent forms,” says the journalist.
“They declared us 'orphans' so that we could be taken out of the country, they falsified everything“
"They declared us 'orphans' so that we could be taken out of the country, they falsified everything," says Boon. "And then we see inappropriate practices because in these systems there are all kinds of unscrupulous intermediaries who are going to exploit the vein," says Yves Dénechère, a historian at the University of Angers.
The Netherlands suspends international adoptions of children due to irregularities
South Korean adoption agencies were in the spotlight . The investigation involved hundreds of interviews with adoptees and managed to reach the biological parents. “We discovered a very strange pattern: they were always poor women , i.e. mothers who had their babies stolen through a kind of network with intermediaries,” warns Lundberg.
His investigative articles on illegal adoptions, published in 2018 and 2021, had a huge impact. The scandal broke out because behind these adoptions there was a whole market for children .
Reports 5 continents5 Continents Reports - Illegal adoptions in South Korea
A child given up for adoption to foreign parents earned five times more money than a child adopted in Korea. According to the Institute for Policy Studies in the United States, Korean adoption agencies have earned more than $3 billion since the 1950s.
An adopted child holds up a sign that reads: Have you seen my mother? © Dilani Buting
Pinochet's children
In the 1980s, in Chile, under the dictatorship of General Pinochet, the policy of mass adoptions became a form of control over the poor population. These disadvantaged families and single mothers saw how the regime forced them to give up their children or stole them to other more suitable families, as Chilean associations of adoptees denounce.
“State institutions were involved in this,” says Ana María Olivares , from the association Hijos y Madres del Silencio , which has been bringing together families of victims of trafficking for several years to try to alleviate the irreparable damage caused by the dictatorship. They have already succeeded in reuniting more than 300 families , separated by forced adoptions, thanks to genetic DNA testing . Today, the Chilean police estimate that at least 20,000 children were taken from their parents without their consent.
Ohanna was taken from her biological mother with whom she appears in the photograph. © Tangerine Productions
This is what happened to Johanna . One day, while sorting through her papers, she found her adoption file. Following clues on the Internet and on the Network of International Adoptees in France , of which she is a member, she discovered that her Chilean mother was alive and that she had been looking for her for 35 years .
“Every day I find new cases and they all have the same thing in common: we are talking about human trafficking.“
The adoption fraud was hatched at the highest levels of the Pinochet regime. “Every day I find new cases and they all have one thing in common: we are talking about human trafficking ,” says Johanna. 17,000 people like her are currently looking for their biological families, helped by the Chilean association Hijos y Madres del Silencio.
Despite everything that is known today about international adoptions, 40,000 children are still adopted every year and the worst thing is that, to Denéchère's question, "Do illegal practices still exist in international adoption?", the most disturbing thing is her answer: "Yes."
Justice and reparation
With the scandal of international adoptions on the table, adoptees are uniting to clarify the truth of their lives and hope for reparation. They demand that the adopting and fostering states assume their responsibilities against all the irregularities committed. “Let these forced adoptions be pronounced as crimes against humanity ,” requests the founder of Hijos y Madres del Silencio, Marisol Rodríguez .
In Chile, the association Mothers and Children of Silence helps the biological families of illegally adopted children. © Migrar Photo
In their search, these people want justice . “Those responsible for these crimes must be brought to justice ,” says Olivier de Frouville, president of the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances . Chile is currently the only country where the courts have opened a criminal investigation that allows adoptees and their biological families to file complaints.