Fwd: 936 kinderen naar hier gehaald en níemand weet of dat correct verliep (Fwd: 936 children were brought here and no one knows whether it went correctly)
ALTHOUGH THE GOVERNMENT HAD SUFFICIENT SIGNALS ABOUT FRAUD IN ADOPTIONS FROM ETHIOPIA
·
- Jeroen Bossaert
· April 29, 2019
· 5:00 AM
Flemish adoption agencies in Ethiopia collaborated with local shelters without any oversight by a competent authority. "It's therefore very difficult to provide 100% certainty."
THE NEWSPAPER Last weekend, a 17-year-old girl testified in this newspaper about fraud in her adoption from Ethiopia. Her case turned out to be fabricated from start to finish. Inquiries revealed that the Flemish government has no idea whether the other 935 adoptions were conducted correctly. "We cannot give a 100% guarantee." Moreover, according to our information, serious warnings were ignored in 2011. "The government has no excuse for the fraud that is now emerging."
Her mother had disappeared and her father had died. That was clearly stated in black and white in Thereza's adoption file. That file was the reason the Ethiopian girl was eligible for adoption in Flanders in 2009. Thereza was seven years old at the time and found a new home in Denderleeuw, but her adoptive parents soon discovered they had been lied to. "My biological mother hadn't disappeared at all, and my father was still alive," Thereza testified in this newspaper last weekend. "My date of birth also turned out to be fabricated."
She's 17 today and questions the way her adoption went. "I'm happy in Flanders, but I'm also angry when I see how nonchalantly my case and my biological parents were handled. We're not products you can do whatever you want with, you know."
Rattles on all sides
Thereza's story is likely not unique. If only because Ethiopia has been the most popular adoption country for the past 20 years. Two Flemish adoption agencies together brought 936 children here. All with the approval of the Flemish government. However, today, that same government cannot guarantee that all adoptions were based on accurate information. "It's very difficult to provide 100% certainty," says adoption officer Ariane Van Den Berghe. "In Ethiopia, there was no competent authority to oversee everything. The Flemish adoption agencies worked with local contact persons and shelters, who were monitored by local authorities."
According to our information, that system was flawed. And the adoption agencies and the government have known this for years. In January 2011, a report on Dutch television caused quite a stir. An Ethiopian girl testified about the fraud committed in her case. The Dutch investigative journalists also spoke with the NGO Against Child Trafficking and revealed that they had conducted a random check on a Dutch adoption agency in 2009. What did they find? Fraud or serious errors were found in 75% of the agency's Ethiopian cases. The report also caused a stir in Flanders. So much so that the Flemish government decided to contact the NGO.
On Monday, January 10, 2011, Flemish adoption officer Dorine Chamon sent an email to Roelie Post, the person responsible for Against Child Trafficking. She wrote: "Hi Roelie, I saw the report on Ethiopia. I'm very interested in the results of your research. Could you provide them to us and/or provide us with some clarification?" A reply came quickly, and the two met in Brussels. "I told the adoption officer I couldn't give her the research because it belonged to our original client," Roelie Post explains today. "But I did have a long conversation with her about Ethiopia. I explained very explicitly what was happening there and how great the risk of fraud was."
Exorcisms
As far as we could verify, nothing was done with that information in 2011. Dorine Chamon only confirmed the meeting with Roelie Post. "I can't comment any further. That's up to the new adoption officer." Chamon was succeeded in 2012 by Ariane Van Den Berghe. She, too, could not confirm whether any action was taken in 2011. Everything points to Roelie Post's testimony simply being ignored. And our newspaper came across even more information that should have raised alarm bells with our authorities.
Around the same time as the controversial Dutch report on Ethiopia, disturbing reports surfaced in the United States and Australia about neglect and child trafficking through a network of Ethiopian orphanages. These included the Gelgela group homes, a group with which the Flemish adoption agency Ray of Hope also collaborated closely at the time. Thereza lived in a Gelgela group home between 2007 and 2009 before coming to Denderleeuw. "Priests would sometimes come there to perform exorcisms," she says. "There was also a drunken guard who would sometimes beat children, and white Americans would come there to pick children."
Documents released by the US embassy in 2012 show that serious questions were already being raised about the Gelgela orphanages as early as March 2010. An investigative report stated that the general conditions in which the children were kept were extremely poor. Even more importantly, the American investigators reported serious deficiencies in the children's files. "The information contained is often misleading," it states. In 2010, the US government only needed a single visit to determine that something was amiss with the Gelgela orphanages. In Flanders, no one noticed anything. And this for years. Ultimately, it was the Ethiopian government itself that, under pressure from the US, permanently closed the Gelgela orphanages in 2012. By that point, the adoption agency Ray of Hope had already brought 72 children to Flanders through these orphanages.
The question arises as to the accuracy of the files for these 72 children. But the files of the other children who came through Ray of Hope are also questionable. In total, this involves 626 Ethiopian children. They all came through one and the same contact person: Bruk Beyene Ayano. The Ethiopian arranged all the adoptions from 1997 to 2017. In at least one file, that of Thereza, it now appears that he made serious errors. But files also surfaced in 2015 where adoptive parents had questions. The Flemish government thoroughly investigated these at the time and found shortcomings in two cases. However, Ray of Hope is confident that their contact person was trustworthy. "We never received any signals that he (Bruk, ed.) wasn't working properly. Ray of Hope tries to work closely with the Belgian embassy in all countries. We've always had excellent contact with the embassy in Ethiopia, and they weren't negative about him either," says coordinator Erika Van Beek. She emphasizes that staff regularly traveled to Ethiopia to verify the situation. "In Ethiopia, for example, we always advocated for accurate reporting of the children's estimated ages. After all, there's no official birth registration there. However, our prospective adoptive parents always knew this beforehand. I won't deny that there were signals, but we never found hard evidence that the situation in Ethiopia was completely wrong."
Weak arguments
Flemish adoption official Ariane Van Den Berghe also says there was never enough formal evidence to stop adoptions from Ethiopia during that period. "Just because reports appear in the media doesn't mean you have sufficient proof. You also have to be able to substantiate those claims to have a strong enough legal position to close an adoption channel." For Roelie Post of Against Child Trafficking, these are weak arguments. "The government has no excuse for the fraud that's now emerging. They were already well aware of the risks in 2011, and there was ample evidence abroad that the system in Ethiopia wasn't functioning properly. They should have stopped adoptions from that country back then, but they didn't dare. Closing an adoption channel causes a lot of commotion, because you have hundreds of prospective adoptive parents on waiting lists who get angry. For politicians, those people are more important than the children in, say, Ethiopia, so they prefer to let things happen."
This theory is also confirmed by a Flemish government employee who has had years of insight into how adoptions are conducted. "There's tremendous political pressure to keep an adoption channel open," says our whistleblower, who prefers to remain anonymous for fear of political retaliation. "The reasoning is: 'You only close it if you're 200% certain there's fraud involved. Otherwise, you don't.' Civil servants have no choice; politicians decide. And there, they primarily focus on the waiting lists. It's more important that they're not too long. How the adoptions are arranged in the country of origin is less important."
Political pressure
According to our source, the pressure is coming from almost all parties. "They all have adoption experts who work for prospective adoptive parents and adoption agencies." Adoption officer Ariane Van Den Berghe emphasizes that much has changed in the past few years. "Numerous measures have been taken to provide even more guarantees for a smooth process. For example, we currently only work with countries where there's a central authority that oversees everything."
For the 936 Ethiopian children brought to Flanders between 1997 and 2017, this is scant consolation. Some of them may never be entirely certain whether fraud was committed in their records. "Anyone with questions can always contact us," concludes Van Den Berghe.