Minister Dekker: international adoption immediately suspended after damning report

The adoption of children from abroad will be suspended immediately. Minister Sander Dekker (Legal Protection) announced this on Monday, in response to a damning report on international adoption in the Netherlands. This also raises the question of whether foreign adoption should be continued in the future.

New applications for adoption from abroad will not be processed for the time being. Parents who have already received permission to bring a child to the Netherlands are allowed to complete the procedure after an additional test.

According to Dekker, the Dutch government has failed to act for years by looking away from abuses during adoptions and not intervening. "It is painful to find that the government has not done what could be expected of it," he said.

According to the minister, for a long time the idea prevailed that parents with adoption were doing 'good'. He called this a well-intentioned but also a somewhat naive sentiment. 'It does offer an explanation for the actions of the government, but no justification.' Dekker apologized on behalf of the government.

Serious wrongs

Structural and serious abuses occurred during Dutch adoptions for years, the Committee on Intercountry Adoption Research led by Tjibbe Joustra said Monday. The committee investigated Dutch adoptions between 1967 and 1998 from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. The patterns they saw in the different countries showed striking similarities, the researchers said.

During the adoption proceedings, corruption and documents were falsified to make it impossible or more difficult to trace a child's origin and identity. Children were also given up forcibly or against payment. There was also baby farming (women who have children on order for others) or even 'outright child robbery'. During adoptions, poverty, taboos or other circumstances, such as wars and disasters, were abused. Some mothers gave up their children under false pretenses.

The government has known about these abuses since the late 1960s, but did not intervene. Even if there was reason to do so, the committee said. Both the government and the mediators let the adoptive parents' interests prevail. Because of the deep entrenchment of the idea that adoptive parents made a good contribution to the world, abuses were accepted or even considered normal, the report said. According to Joustra, the abuses still occur to this day: "There were also adoption abuses before 1967, after 1998 and in other countries."

New system

This raises the question of whether foreign adoption should be continued in the future. According to the committee, the current system can no longer be maintained. It is also virtually impossible to set up a new system in which abuses can be ruled out. The committee says it has 'serious doubts' about this.

According to Joustra, adoption is susceptible to fraud because 'poor people in this system are confronted with substantial amounts'. 'The financial incentives have not been removed and the demand for children continues to exist.' He advocated that the lessons learned should also be taken to heart in new forms of family formation, such as surrogacy.

Dekker: 'The system is and will remain vulnerable, which is why we have to reconsider adoptions from abroad. Ultimately, the new cabinet will have to take a final position. '

The ministry decided to investigate after it became known that Dutch officials may have been involved in illegal adoptions from Brazil in the 1970s and 1980s. In a number of cases, government representatives were indeed involved in adoption abuses, the committee said. "They were in violation of the rules to allow or speed up adoption." Still, according to them, no indications have been found of bribery or corruption of Dutch officials.

Joustra: 'We have seen several cases where the documents were not taken too closely. Sometimes people said: we will arrange those documents at Schiphol. But we have not considered whether these are punishable acts. '

Much of the documentation has since been destroyed, but the committee was able to discover that mediators were aware of the abuses and that a few were also involved directly or through local personnel. "They engaged in self-enrichment, bypassing regulations, modifying data, or using fraudulent lawyers and other intermediaries with a known dubious reputation," the report said. 'The committee has not been able to determine whether this only concerns individuals or whether there were networks.

Lawsuit

In September, Dilani Butink (28) filed a case about the abuses in her adoption from Sri Lanka in 1992. Butink's adoptive parents were actually in Sri Lanka at the time to pick up another child, but that turned out not to be available. A few days later an intermediary suddenly came up with baby Dilani.

Because the data in Butink's adoption papers do not seem to be correct, she has never been able to find out exactly where she comes from and who her biological parents in Sri Lanka are. The court in The Hague ruled that she was too late with her complaints.

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