Shanthy became a victim of illegal adoption: 'I felt it immediately: she was my mother'

In February 2021, the investigative report of the Joustra Committee exposed the abuses surrounding intercountry adoption. An immediate adoption stop was the result. Shanthy (30) is a victim of illegal adoption. “Who says my life in Bangladesh would have been less happy? Less wealthy, I'm sure, but I would have grown up in my country, with my family.”

This interview was previously published in Flair 27-2021.

Shanthy (30) is team leader in mental health care and single. She found out that someone was hired to play her biological mother at the time.

Adopted

“'Here's your biological mother,' I was told when I was seven years old during a visit to Sri Lanka. I looked at the woman who wanted to grab me and immediately felt that it wasn't right. She was not my mother, I felt that so very strongly. I later told my adoptive parents. They didn't know what to do with it. The man who had helped with my adoption at the time had actually told her that this woman was my biological mother. Why would he lie about that?”

Illegal adoption

“In the years that followed, we went to Sri Lanka every other year and we also paid a visit to my 'mother'. That old gut feeling kept coming back. It was very difficult for me as a teenager. Why did I feel this way? I even went to therapy. The counselors indicated that the lack of attachment with my biological mother as a baby caused that feeling. I had to accept that she was my mother. I tried to convince myself of that too. I wrote her cards and sent packages. She wrote sweet messages back. That intuitive feeling remained, but I tried with all my might to suppress it.

Until I sat in front of the TV in 2017 when an episode came on Zembla about abuses in adoption. That's where I first heard the term 'acting mothers', women who are hired to pretend to be the biological mother to make sure people don't look any further. Because then they could find out that their adoption was illegal and that the mother had not wanted to give them up at all. All those feelings I had as a child surfaced again. Had this happened to me too? It could explain everything.”

primal feeling

“I am someone who wants to take action quickly, so I immediately booked a ticket to Sri Lanka. There I started a search with the help of an interpreter. In my hospital records, I found a name and a region where my birth mother was supposed to come from. That's where I went. After searching and asking around, I got an e-mail address. I remember how the interpreter and I drove there in a van and I felt a kind of primal feeling on the way. We were on to her, I was sure.

The interpreter got out at the address and started asking around. He soon returned to the van. "Shanthy, I think I found your mother." I got out and saw her standing there: a little woman with the same chin, the same features… And I immediately felt it: she was my mother. She grabbed me, started sniffing me as if she wanted to inhale my scent. I never wanted to let her go. "My prodigal daughter," she kept saying. "I have my lost daughter back."

Through the interpreter she told me that she had never wanted me to be adopted. I was taken from her overnight as a baby. She was a poor illiterate and therefore could not start a search. She had always thought of me and wondered where I would be. She was happy to see that I was doing so well, but of course also sad about all the years that had been taken from her as a mother.”

Faced

“I also looked up my 'acting mother' and confronted the facts. She eventually admitted that everything was indeed made up, she was hired to play my mother by the man who arranged my adoption. She was terribly ashamed. It may sound crazy, but I don't feel any resentment towards her. She is just as much a victim of that adoption world as I am.

I'm glad the government has spoken out about illegal adoptions. Since the abuses came to light, the life of the adoption triangle has been turned upside down: that of the biological parents, the adoptees and the adoptive parents. Hopefully there will be a transparent system, so that something like this can never happen again.”

”