The Western Foreigners Successfully Circumventing Adoption Laws in Uganda

I have chosen to not disclose the identities of my sources, in order to protect them from possible retaliation. All of the people that I spoke to are child rights advocates working in Uganda.

Uganda, 2016. The East African country has just passed an amendment to the Children’s Act that prevents foreigners arriving in Uganda from removing children from Uganda through a ‘legal guardianship’ order. Previous to this amendment, a ‘legal guardianship’ order was granted to the adoptive parents through district courts, after which the adoptive parents were able to get a visa for the child and fly out of the country. This process allowed adoptive parents to bypass the legal requirements to live in Uganda for three years fostering the child under the supervision of the local Probation and Social Welfare Officer.

A legal loophole led to hundreds of children being taken out of Uganda between 2010 and 2016, after which they were adopted in the adoptive parents’ own countries.

‘Legal guardianship’ orders were never a part of the legal framework for adoption, so this ‘loophole’ led to many children being taken out of Uganda and adopted in the adoptive parents’ own countries. Between 2010 and 2016, hundreds of children were taken out of Uganda through this process.

During this period, one of my contacts was asked to review active cases of children being adopted by couples from two European countries through the ‘legal guardianship’ process. He explains: “I identified fraud, corruption and unethical practices in every single one of the 40 cases I reviewed.” Some of the issues that he identified included:

Most of the children had one or two parents living and nothing had been done to attempt to reintegrate the child back to their parent(s) or with relatives;

Nothing had been done to find Ugandan families to foster or adopt the children, despite a growing number of Ugandan families waiting to foster children;

The birth mothers who gave their consent for their child to be adopted did not understand the English documents they had signed;

Many parents were coerced by lawyers, orphanages, adoption agency representatives or even the adoptive parents themselves to give up their child for adoption;

Many cases had missing documentation from the district government social workers and often the report was either faked or written by someone who wasn’t eligible to submit reports to court;

Many children were often in orphanages in different districts to where they had been living and were trafficked into orphanages for the sole purpose of being adopted;

He even found cases where the mother of the child was reported as deceased and yet with very little investigation and a few phone calls, he was able to identify mums that were very much alive.

According to my contact, this isn’t an exhaustive list and many other countries with active intercountry adoption programmes have seen similar issues. He tells me: “To identify concerns and outright fraud in 100% of the cases was startling for both of these European governments who — to their credit on the strength of these findings — closed their adoption programmes from Uganda.”

The biological families of Ugandan children removed under these circumstances remain unaware of how their children are doing.

The USA was very much aware of these issues and yet continued to issue visas so that children were removed to be adopted in the USA. “The US consulate department was often stuck in between a rock and a hard place. They knew that a court order had been granted in the most egregious circumstances and yet any pushback that they made, even sometimes denying a visa, was ultimately overruled and the child left the country with their soon-to-be adoptive parents.”

Families of children removed under these circumstances remain unaware of how their children are doing, if or when they will be back and my contact has met many who grieve the loss of their child. There have been cases of some children being returned to Uganda from the USA to be reunited with their families.

So when the law changes were passed in 2016, people working in child protection rejoiced that the system was being strengthened to avoid the level of corruption that they had seen between 2010 and 2016. The law passed, despite a great deal of pushback from the pro intercountry adoption lobby, both in Uganda and in the USA.

However, since 2016 a growing number of ‘loopholes’ are being used to circumvent the rules, according to another one of my contacts: “Judges cite ‘constructive fostering’ as a way that adoptive families can avoid living in Uganda for 12 months fostering the child, before being allowed to adopt the child and leave the country.” ‘Constructive fostering’ allows the adoptive family to take out a foster care order for the child whilst being out of Uganda and essentially outsourcing the 12 month foster care period to someone — or an institution — in Uganda, whom they pay to look after the child.

This person could be the lawyer, a friend, an orphanage worker or even a complete stranger. This is an illegal activity, as none of these people or institutions have a legal care order for the child — the foreigner, who is not even in-country and who is attempting to adopt the child, does. My contact explains why this raises many red flags: “From a child’s perspective, this is incredibly damaging. A child could move from their family to an orphanage, from an orphanage to a stranger and then from a stranger to the person who is ‘constructive fostering’ them.” Following the 12 month foster care period, the adoptive family travels to Uganda to gain an adoption order in court, which means they can then leave the country with the child.

All cases of intercountry adoption should, according to a High Court ruling, be firstly presented to the Alternative Care Panel — a robust panel at central government that reviews cases and makes recommendations. Additionally, the high court has ruled that ALL cases of intercountry adoption should only be heard at the family court in Makindye, Kampala, and not district circuit courts. My contact continues: “Both of these procedures are being ignored by adoptive families with the Alternative Care Panel being avoided and adoptive families — at the recommendations of their lawyers — are using courts outside of Kampala where they know they can gain a favourable judgement.”

He has reports, from the adoptive parents themselves, that they are paying bribes in excess of $20,000 to judges, Probation and Social Welfare Officers and others, to gain favourable court rulings.

One case that recently gained attention in particular highlights how vulnerable the systems are that are supposed to regulate and monitor adoptions.

In March 2021, a German national named Melanie Brechlin arrived in Uganda by announcing herself on Instagram, with paid advertisements, declaring that she is going to be in Uganda for 90 days to adopt a girl. Melanie and her husband, Marcel Brechlin, who are both German but reside in Ireland, had recently adopted a girl from Cameroon and wanted to now adopt from Uganda. All of this information can be found on their public Instagram profile.

The Ugandan girl that Melanie intends to adopt, in a now-deleted Instagram post. Names have been crossed out for privacy reasons.

The Instagram account has been attracting a lot of attention lately among people working in child protection, due to it being promoted through paid ads. The profile can be found here (the account’s former username was @a_big_adoption_journey, but Melanie recently changed it). The orphanage that Melanie is planning to adopt from is called Joy of Christ Church and Outreach.

“In her replies, Melanie is quite belligerent and believes that she is entitled to remove the girl from Uganda, without fulfilling the legal requirement of fostering for 12 months.”

Over the past few days, after deciding to dive into this case, I have come to find out that many people working in child protection in Uganda have reached out to Melanie via Instagram, to highlight that what she is doing is illegal and damaging. One child protection worker familiar with the case tells me that “in her replies, Melanie is quite belligerent and believes that she is entitled to remove the girl from Uganda, without fulfilling the legal requirement of fostering for 12 months.” According to someone else close to the case, the girl that Melanie is looking to adopt even has a loving mother.

On her Instagram profile, Melanie has indicated that she only intends to stay in Uganda for 90 days; she has also informed people that she intends to undertake most of the 12 month foster care period in Ireland. However, there is no legal provision for this in the Children’s Act. According to one of my contacts, perhaps when Melanie realises this (even though she has already been told several times), “she will successfully attempt to gain an adoption order from the court and apply for a German passport for the child”. He emphasises that this again would “highlight the fraud and corruption in the system, because she [Melanie] has not complied with Uganda law and the only way to obtain a favourable ruling would be to pay bribes”.

Melanie admitting to the fact that she is not planning on fostering in Uganda for a full year, saying she has “a plan”.

When challenged about these things, Melanie states she is “working with the authorities in Ireland”. From her Instagram posts, it becomes clear that Melanie and her lawyers do not intend to use the Alternative Care Panel or indeed the Family Division High Court, and instead attempt to take the case to the circuit court in Mukono. As can be seen on her Instagram profile, the law firm that Melanie is working with is called Natala & Co. Advocates, also located in Mukono.

“This could — again — start a new precedent of children being removed from Uganda through illicit means — papered over due to approved court orders obtained under more than dubious circumstances.”

One of the child protection workers close to the case: “If Melanie does indeed manage to remove a child from her mother and from Uganda, despite not complying with the law, then we — again — start a new precedent of children being removed from Uganda through illicit means — papered over due to approved court orders obtained under more than dubious circumstances. The Ugandan authorities need to act urgently and ensure that Melanie is not successful, and also to eradicate the practice of ‘constructive fostering’.”

Finally, several people working in child protection raised concerns about how Melanie, in one of her Instagram stories, drew parallels between the girl she is attempting to adopt and a monkey. This of course raises questions about whether a white woman making blatant racist statements is even fit to adopt a Black child from Uganda.

The Irish and German embassies have been informed and a complaint was also lodged at the National Child Helpline. For now, the case remains under investigation.

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