Illegal adoptee receives compensation: government 'could and should have done more'

For the first time, the Dutch government has been ordered to pay compensation to an illegally adopted person. The court in The Hague ruled on Wednesday that the government 'could and should have done' more for Patrick Noordoven, who came over from Brazil in 1980 as a baby.

The damages awarded are a direct result of the damning report published by the Joustra Commission in February on child adoptions from abroad . Noordoven filed the lawsuit last year because he was unable to know his origin due to the negligence of the Dutch government. Initially, the government invoked limitation, but after the report dropped that defense. That decision paved the way for lawsuits like this one.

Noordoven started in 2001 with a search for his biological parents . He soon discovered that there had never been an official adoption procedure in his case. Through the Public Administration Act (WOB request) he found out that the government had investigated illegal adoption in Brazil in the years after his arrival in the Netherlands. Although the government therefore knew that the adoptions of Noordoven and 41 other children were wrong, they did not see to it that the children could later trace their origin.

Because it is established in Noordoven's case that the Dutch government was aware of the abuses, the court awarded him compensation on Wednesday. This could not be established in other intercountry adoption cases. For example, a Bangladeshi woman was told today by the same court that she is not entitled to anything. The amount of Noordoven's compensation will be determined later.

Right to identity

'What is very nice about this verdict is that the court emphasizes the value of the right to identity and knowledge of ancestry,' says Noordoven's lawyer Lisa-Marie Komp. 'She makes it clear that you should not take that lightly. The state should have made an effort to gather as much information as possible for Noordoven.'

Remarkably enough, Noordoven itself was at the basis of the establishment of the Joustra Committee. His WOB request was the reason in 2018 that Minister Sander Dekker for Legal Protection had an independent committee headed by Tjibbe Joustra investigate the Dutch adoptions between 1967 and 1998 from Bangladesh, Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

In its final report, the Joustra Committee recommended that international adoption be completely curtailed, which Minister Dekker did immediately. According to the committee, the Dutch government had created a 'demand-driven adoption market' 'in which large sums of money are involved'. The system "acts like a 'money laundering' operation for children," the report said.

The fact that the Dutch government no longer invokes prescription is good news, says lawyer Mark de Hek, who in another case represents twelve people who were born in Sri Lanka and who came to the Netherlands in the 1980s. 'It also ensures that matters are dealt with in substance at all. Until now, adoptees were told: you may have a good story, but it was too long ago.'

Noordoven also previously held his adoptive parents liable for the damage suffered by him. At the end of 2017, he was awarded a compensation of 13 thousand euros for this.

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