Nuances to the report of the Joustra Committee

The report of the Joustra Committee on abuses in intercountry adoption in the past is a valuable document and does justice to victims of the abuses. I would like to add nuance to the report from my scientific expertise.

First of all, I would like to say that I am very happy with the work of the Joustra Committee on abuses in adoptions in the past. It is a good thing that our government is now taking responsibility by apologizing to victims and is committed to rectifying abuses as well as possible.

As a scientist specialized in adoption and foster care, including 10 years as coordinator of the Leiden University-based ADOC - Knowledge Center for Adoption and Foster Care, I also have critical comments.

Children's rights

First of all, the scientific literature on which the Committee relies appears to be very one-sided and important articles that provide a broader picture of the phenomenon of adoption have not been included. It almost seems that those who focus on abuses surrounding adoption at some point become trapped in one side of a reality and lose sight of other perspectives such as child protection.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child also states that children have the right to safety, care, development opportunities and a family. Neglect was already visible in children's homes, but in recent decades it has been discovered that children's home care is so harmful to children that the UN guidelines for alternative care stipulate that home care should be banned worldwide. Children are entitled to care in a family.

Research

In 2016, we at ADOC and Leiden University conducted a questionnaire survey among 1,155 intercountry adoptees about their satisfaction with their lives and their emotions surrounding distance and adoption. We asked whether they had searched for information in their country of origin and whether it was correct. Because we linked this to the year of adoption, we saw a significant decrease in inaccuracy in documents over time, certainly after 1992. We also found less dissatisfaction with distance and adoption among more recently adoptees. The committee has not included this time aspect.

Adoptions after 1998

The Joustra Committee looked explicitly at the period up to 1998, but also looked at abuses after 1998 and concluded that abuses in adoption cannot be ruled out. Mind you, I completely agree that abuses cannot and should not be done, but I do advocate for policy choices to look at the whole picture and also to do justice to all parties by not putting all the abuses together. I would like to contribute to this based on my scientific knowledge.

What surprises me is that the report does not describe the current, changed adoption practice. Partly as a result of the Hague Adoption Convention, most children are now cared for in their own country. The vast majority of internationally adopted children have "Special Needs". It is also sometimes difficult to find adoptive parents in the Netherlands. Procedures to rule out malpractice are so intensive that I am often concerned about the additional damage children will suffer from the extended period of time they spend in homes. Furthermore, current practice strives for open adoptions, whereby contact with the birth family is maintained as much as possible. I therefore think the moratorium on current adoptions is too short-sighted.

Nuances and appearance

I would like to see an addition to the report with the following elements:

With the abuses:

Provide a more complete cultural and anthropological framework of the situation children find themselves in prior to adoption and reasons for renunciation. Also use leading scientific literature for this

Make a distinction between abuses that have a criminal background or a cultural background. In India, for example, distance mothers gave false names because unmarried motherhood made them hopeless and could even endanger them. Also make a distinction between abuses in distance and abuses in adoption

Quantify the abuses found over time and make a connection with the measures taken

Distinguish between abuses by self-perpetrators and demonstrably fraudulent adoption organizations and other issues.

Make a selection of adoption procedures where there is no chance of abuse.

The committee is afraid that abuses cannot be ruled out, but I see opportunities in, for example, the use of DNA databases. International adoption DNA databases with guaranteed privacy, which seeking adoptees and birth parents can use and which can also prevent false surrender procedures during ongoing adoption procedures. The announced expertise center could play a role here. And let that expertise center have a scientific department, so that nuances and knowledge are more accessible.

Attached photo is a token of London home children who left their distance mothers to be able to recognize their renamed children when they picked them up again. By mistake all tokens were added together and the children could no longer be traced (Foundling Mueum London).

.