French people of Malian origin file a complaint against an adoption organization

Nine French people born in Mali are filing a complaint against the Rayon de Soleil association for fraud and breach of trust. They accuse the adoption agency of having "circumvented the law" and lied to their families, biological and adoptive.

This Monday, June 8, nine French people of Malian origin filed a complaint with the Paris court for fraud, concealment and breach of trust , against the association Rayon de soleil for foreign children (RSEE) and their correspondent in Mali, Danielle Boudault, reveals Le Monde .

Falsified identity papers

What alarmed the nine plaintiffs, aged around 30, were first of all the inconsistencies around their identity papers. Pauline, interviewed by France 3 , shows that her date of birth on her different adoption papers differs.

For her part, Marie M., aged 32, realizes by consulting the archives in Mali concerning her adoption, that her civil status information corresponds to that of a man, aged the same age as her. "His adoptive mother was asked to choose his date of birth, there is 'blanco' on official documents " adds La Croix about his adoption.

The association, "very famous in the Catholic community" enjoyed the full "trust" of his parents, now in shock at the face of these revelations.

Indeed, if Sylvie Cyprien assures daily that the association "did not knowingly separate siblings or lie to families", four of the complainants discovered the existence of biological brothers and sisters , who were adopted at the same time. by other French families. Worse still, Le Monde reveals: "In one file, the consent to the adoption of the biological parents is absent. In another, it is assumed that the child has been rejuvenated by the French organization to promote his adoption."

A total of 324 children were adopted via the Rayon de soleil association in Mali between 1989 and 2001. Because the facts are long-standing, they could be prescribed : "There is a legal vacuum on the issue. We must evolve the law and have the illegal adoption practices that may have existed at the time recognized", estimated with La Croix Maître Saidi-Cottier, one of the two lawyers for the plaintiffs.

Legal scheme

According to her, the adoption agency resorted to a "legal stratagem": by " circumventing the law " via the Malian Kinship Code, which the French justice proscribed in 1996, Rayon de Soleil had the Malian parents, often illiterate according to daily life, full adoption consents.

They weren't told that they would never see their children again

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"We offered them to send their children to France to study and have access to things to which they would not have access in Mali. But we did not tell them that they would never see their children again", affirms Me Noémie Saidi- Cottier at France 3 . To the media, Pauline confides: "The feeling I have is of having been torn from my biological parents, because today I am certain that my dad did not want to abandon me."

The association denies

Faced with these accusations, the president of the association declared: "Rayon de Soleil refutes any participation in any capacity whatsoever in human trafficking, and makes available to justice all the documents and relating to such adoptions".

But for their part, the nine plaintiffs hope to open an investigation against the adoption organization and highlight the "shortcomings" of the Mission for International Adoption (MAI), a body of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in charge of monitor international adoption agencies.

As Le Monde reminds us , this is not the first time that the actions of Rayon de Soleil have been pointed out, already in the 2000s, the press "in the Central African Republic and Peru" would have denounced these "circumvented" adoptions. However, to date, the organization still benefits from the approval of the Quai d'Orsay and is still authorized for adoption in five countries.

Seven plaintiffs have reconnected with their biological families in Mali according to La Croix . " They all claim to have been duped ."