"Why I need to know the truth about my adoption in Mali"

Marie, born Kadiatou, was adopted in Mali in 1989 when she was only 19 months old. She grew up in France in a loving family, yet ignorant of her story and that of her biological parents.

Marie was 30 when her first daughter was born. The young mother feels ready to reconstruct the film of her life, hoping one day to be able to tell her daughter what she calls 'her great story'.

By consulting the file kept by her adoptive parents, she notices inconsistencies in aspects of her marital status that she took for granted. She then begins to ask herself questions about the conditions surrounding her adoption.

How old was she really? What is his date of birth ? Was she really born of an unknown father? What is his true birthplace? Under what circumstances was she entrusted to an adoptive family thousands of kilometers from Mali, her country of birth?

This quest for truth will lead Marie to take legal action against the Rayon de soleil association for foreign children (RSEE) and one of their correspondents. Eight other Malian adoptees also members of the Collective of French adoptees from Mali created by Marie participated in the legal action. The adoption organization specifies on its site "Between 1991 and 2001, we welcomed about 300 children for adoption" from Mali.

Today, Marie has two children, two daughters, and defines herself as "100% French and 100% of Malian origin".

At 34, she continues to move heaven and earth to find the missing pieces of her story and campaigns against illegal adoptions with several collectives including Voices Against Illegal Adoption (VAIA).

VAIA is a coalition of activist organizations for the recognition of illegal adoptions around the world and for the right to access to origins, which is currently leading a civil society campaign at the United Nations.

Marie-Kadiatou told me her story, a story of adoption, filiation and truth.

* This story is an edited and condensed version of my conversations with Marie.

"Through my story, I would like to tell the story of the adoptees of Mali. Even if each story has its own uniqueness. It is important that the adoptees of Mali speak with their own voice. We are the ones who are at the center of these adoptions, especially since we do not talk enough about adoptees from the African continent.

My parents had told me that at 18 I could go to the association's headquarters in Paris and that there would be a file in which I would find information.

Right after the birth of my daughter, I said to myself that it was time and I thought:

'I have to be able to tell her my story, she has to know the big story and I will go all the way'.

There is the story of my brothers and sisters and my parents in France, but there is also the great story. This is the story of my birth mother, my biological family and my origins.

I knew he would be asked questions that I hadn't been able to answer and that made me uncomfortable when I was younger like 'Where are you from?'.

In college and high school, I was a little fed up with being constantly sent back to my origins because I didn't know my story.

And subconsciously, I had to say to myself 'why would I like a country that abandons its children? Why have any interest in a country which saw me born and which did not know how to keep me?'. It was France that welcomed me and therefore the desire to be the most French of French people was there.

But I needed to tell her her story, her African origins so that she understood where she really came from.

It was up to me to do this work without imposing the burden of the past on it. I didn't want her to suffer something for which she was not responsible.

We had a box at home containing objects, clothes and a photo album from the time I arrived, including photos of me as a baby in Mali. I realized that this would be the first time I would meet someone who looked like me, someone who might have the same traits as me. For me it was extraordinary because when I looked at myself in the mirror, I didn't look like anyone.

When my daughter was born, all that started to bother me more and more. I said to myself :

'I have to go see this file'.

When we are in filiation, we realize that we ourselves have a filiation.

Holding my three-month-old baby in my arms, I told myself that I would be unable to part with it. I wondered what happened when I was 18 months old myself. I needed to understand all of this.

What had happened in the life of my mother from birth that she gave me up for adoption? Did she have to?

Find out why I was adopted

This is what triggered this desire to know why I had been adopted.

So I asked my parents to send me the documents they had kept.

I saw that there were inconsistencies, elements like the first name of the father erased with 'blanco' when I thought I was born of an unknown father, I discovered a family name that I did not know, places and different dates of birth on some papers. I started asking myself questions and telling myself that there were too many disturbing elements.

So I went to see the association. Unfortunately, the answers they gave me did not bring me any satisfaction.

I quickly knew that the only way to get the truth was to go to Mali. It is this thirst for truth that pushed me to go in search of people who could know my "biological" mother and who could tell me what happened. I was lucky to have "adoptive" parents who always supported me in my efforts and who encouraged me to know this truth.

Go to Mali, the only way to have the truth

I was 31 when I first landed in Bamako before going to Ségou. I went there mainly to find out more and understand what had happened and to discover my country of origin, and if fate allowed me, to meet my birth mother, but I must say that I fell in love from the country.

I will always remember asking myself when leaving the airport:

"Why didn't I come before?"

I felt a sense of familiarity, a sense of deja vu. The red earth. The smells. Colors. I spent time with people, I walked the streets.

I keep an extraordinary memory of it even if there were a lot of emotions and information to process, particularly concerning the period when I was adopted.

I found people who had seen me when I was a baby, who had known my mother and who said to me:

'What do you look like to him'.

When I went to the Ségou town hall, I discovered that in fact my birth certificate was a fake. I already knew that my date of birth was not quite correct because my "adoptive" mother had always told me:

"The association did not know your exact date of birth. We were asked to choose a date from a range of a few months."

After my research, I think I was more like two years old when I was adopted, not 18 or 19 months. But I did not think that my birth certificate provided by the organization authorized for adoption (OAA) and which had allowed the procedures with the French authorities for my adoption in France was a false document.

Recognition of the facts

I came back to Europe with the conviction that things had happened that weren't quite normal. With 8 other adoptees from Mali who all have roughly the same story, we decided to file a complaint.

We asked for an acknowledgment of the facts and to obtain all information related to our birth parents. Personally, I need to understand why I have a false birth certificate and to understand what comes of it, that is to say, to have been adopted when my birth certificate is false. I would also like justice to formalize what it means to transform a protection adoption into a full adoption when the protection adoption is not the equivalent in France. Adoptive parents are also victims because their adoption process was in good faith. The consequences for their families have sometimes been very serious. However, I would like to point out that not all adoptions in Mali are illegal adoptions.

For some people it is vital to find one's origins. When you can't find it, it creates frustration, sometimes despair, some have committed suicide or ended up in a psychiatric hospital. Others ended up in drugs. This lack of identity has destroyed them. They didn't know who they were or where they belonged and failed to make sense of their story.

For me, adoption must remain the ultimate child protection measure when no other reliable solution can be found for the child. The system must make it possible to offer a family to a child who does not have one. And not the reverse.

In an ideal world, there would be no adoption because each child could grow up with his family, benefiting from his fundamental rights.

Mentalities are struggling to evolve and adoption can no longer be reduced to being considered only as "a chance" for the adopted persons. We often hear the term "uphill battle" when it comes to adopters. It's just a one-sided view of adoption. We must not forget that adoption is a triad (biological parents-adoptive parents-adopted person). Each of the parties has had and will have its share of trials.

Adoptees must know their origins and know where they come from. For me, it is vital and it is a fundamental right.

Since I made my trip back to the origins in Mali in January 2020, I feel 100% French and 100% of Malian origin.

I went to discover my origins but finally I discovered myself through this journey which lasted 34 years and which will continue.

Marie face camera

PHOTO CREDIT,MARRIED

The fact of growing up without having the keys to one's history, of being inhabited by this quest for identity, without knowing one's origins, one's ethnic group, of living a daily life where we are always asked questions without having answers, of living sometimes negative experiences (racism, uprooting for some), all this is not easy.

I have seen in West Africa the importance of family and a sense of belonging. African society seems less individualistic but also has these weaknesses…

It's cliché to say but it's true: You have to know where you come from to know who you are".

Two lawsuits

On June 9, 2020, the nine adoptees who have very similar stories file a first complaint for 'fraud, concealment of fraud and breach of trust'.

According to their lawyer, Maître Joseph Breham, the NGO would have made certain adoptive families believe "that there was only one child when in fact there were siblings, that the parents were deceased and full of different elements to convince parents to accept " .

The collection of consent to bring the children to France is another central element of the affair between Mali and France.

There are two types of adoptions in Mali. "It was a protection adoption which was pronounced, which is a specific type of adoption in Mali and Rayons de Soleil de l'Enfance made believe that it was a full adoption - therefore a total adoption which can be authorized in Mali. but in very specific cases", explains to BBC Africa Maitre Breham, lawyer specializing in the defense of human rights.

In addition, the site of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs stipulates that only " children under the age of five, abandoned without known filiation " are adoptable within the framework of an adoption-filiation and that a " adoption-protection is not assimilated in French law to an adoption but to a simple measure of guardianship or delegation of parental authority .

The adoption organization denied these accusations and refuted by press release " any participation in any capacity whatsoever in human trafficking, and makes available to justice all the documents and documents relating to these adoptions. ".

The case, which was revealed following a year-long collective investigation by a duo of journalists from the French media Le Monde and TV5 Monde, was dismissed 15 days later, on June 24, 2020.

But the case is not over. On December 16, 2020, a new complaint with civil action was filed by the 9 adoptees of Mali. According to their lawyer, this type of complaint would force the investigating judge and the prosecution to take action. " It's a quasi-obligation , " he said by telephone.

For there to be a judgment, the investigating judge will have to consider that the facts are sufficiently characterized to require a trial. " There will be investigations but that does not mean that there will necessarily be a judgment ," he concluded.

A full adoption: when there is a break in filiation – there is no longer any filiation with the parents of origin and the adoptive parents become, in a way, the real parents.

A protective adoption: equivalent to a delegation of parental authority – the child is temporarily entrusted to other parents

Palabre is a series of intimate portraits capturing a life journey. Every month, we give the floor to those who we don't hear much and yet have so much to teach us. Outstanding personalities by the way they lead their lives and combine their origins.

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