Former chair of Belgian non-profit organization to face trial for child abductions in Guatemala

The 82-year-old former chairwoman of the Belgian non-profit organization "Hacer Puente" will be tried for thirteen child abductions in Guatemala in the 1980s. The Mons court ruled this.

Published: 6 hours ago

The non-profit organization "Hacer Puente" arranged the adoption of over 150 children from the Latin American country by Belgian couples between 1985 and 1992, but in at least some of those cases the biological parents would never have voluntarily given up their children.

Baby brokers

The first steps in the case were taken in 2009 when Brussels resident Dolores Preat, who had been adopted by a Belgian family in 1984 at the age of five, began searching for her biological mother. Her adoption papers listed the name Rosario Colop, but when she visited her in 2011 in Zunil, a village in southwestern Guatemala, she discovered she no longer lived there. Her sister did live there, but she claimed Colop had never had a daughter. She did tell the story of a girl who had been kidnapped in 1984. The girl's mother still lived in the village and turned out to be Preat's biological mother.

After a judicial investigation in Guatemala, Colop, then 56, was eventually sentenced to 15 years in prison in 2014 for acting as a so-called "jaladora" or "baby broker," someone who, on behalf of others, often a lawyer, searches for babies to be given up for adoption, with or without the knowledge and consent of the biological parents.

Bloody civil war

In Guatemala, ravaged by a bloody civil war between 1960 and 1996 that claimed the lives of some 200,000 citizens, primarily of the indigenous Mayan population, some 40,000 babies were adopted internationally between the late 1960s and 2008, prompting a lawyer specializing in such adoptions to remark in 2016: "Some countries exported bananas; we exported babies." From 1977 to 2008, Guatemala was the only country in the world where the adoption process was fully privatized, although the first stories of abuse and child abductions emerged as early as the mid-1980s.

Belgian research

Preat's story resonated in the Belgian press, prompting other people adopted from Guatemala to take legal action, suspecting something had gone wrong in their case as well. Others, such as Jean-Sébastien Hertsens Zune, Coline Fanon, and Sophie Villers, had already investigated and discovered that their adoptions had been anything but kosher.

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In the case of Coline Fanon, born Mariela Sindy Rodriguez in 1986, her biological mother took her to the hospital shortly after birth because she had a high fever. Two days later, the mother was told that her baby had died, while in fact the child had been transferred to another hospital, after which the girl was adopted by a Belgian couple. In January 2019, Coline Fanon and Sophie Villers, who had since founded the organization "Racines Perdues," testified about their fraudulent adoptions on the series "Bargoens" on Eén.

Meanwhile, the Tournai public prosecutor's office had opened an investigation into the various adoptions, as almost all of them had been organized by the non-profit organization "Hacer Puente," founded in 1985 by a couple. This couple had themselves adopted a child from Guatemala in 1977, and between 1985 and 1992, they allegedly organized around 150 adoptions from Guatemala by Belgian couples. They often collaborated with the now-deceased Ofelia Rosal de Gamas, sister-in-law of Oscar Humberto Mejía Victores, dictator of Guatemala from 1983 to 1986, and a woman accused of being a "jaladora" in her own country in both 1982 and 1987.

In early 2019, the federal prosecutor's office took over the Tournai investigation and transferred it to the human trafficking unit of the Brussels federal judicial police. That investigation concluded a few months ago, and the federal prosecutor's office brought the case before the presiding judge, requesting that the now 82-year-old former presiding judge be referred to the criminal court for thirteen counts of child abduction, thirteen counts of forgery and use of false documents, and criminal association.

There is a process coming

Her defense argued that the facts were time-barred and that the criminal proceedings were inadmissible because the reasonable time limit had been exceeded. Throughout the investigation and before the presiding judge, she maintained that she had not committed any crime. However, according to the presiding judge, there was no question of statute of limitations or exceeding the reasonable time limit, and there were indeed indications that crimes had been committed. She will now have to stand trial before the criminal court in Tournai.

In May 2019, another person had also come under fire in the investigation: Bernard Sintobin, who had just been appointed interim director of Unicef ​​Belgium. The news of this appointment provoked a fierce reaction on the then Twitter, now X, from 'Bargoens' creator Eric Goens, who pointed out that Sintobin, who with his wife had adopted three children from Guatemala between 1983 and 1985, had worked for the non-profit organisation Hacer Puente between 1985 and 1990.

Sintobin was forced to resign as interim director of UNICEF Belgium due to the uproar, but he denied any wrongdoing. Through his lawyer, he referred to "false accusations and innuendo" and filed a complaint for slander and defamation. Six years later, it appears he will not be prosecuted. The federal prosecutor's office had requested that he be acquitted, and the presiding judge granted that request.