Noëmi (26) was linked to the wrong biological father: "Everyone says DNA doesn't lie, until it does"

What if after years of searching you finally find your biological parent(s), but afterwards you are told that it is not the case after all. It happened to participants of the Dutch TV program "Spoorloos". Noëmi Plateau also testifies that such a search is difficult and emotional in "Late". "All my life I felt a kind of mourning and loss. Something I've lost, but don't know."

There was a lot of commotion in the Netherlands when it became known there that the popular program “Spoorloos”, which has been looking for lost relatives for more than thirty years, has linked at least two people to the wrong biological family. That's what investigative journalist Kees van der Spek of a competing channel told on Monday evening at the table at Eva Jinek. The program makers of "Spoorloos" paid a Colombian intermediary for research work and that's where things went wrong.

A painful story that the Flemish Noëmi Plateau can also speak about. When she was one and a half years old, Noemi was adopted from China. Last year, together with her adoptive sister Anéline, she went in search of her biological parents in the program “We are family” by Lidewij Nuitten. A quest that started with hope.

"I wanted to find my biological parents for a long time", Noëmi begins her story in "Late". Ultimately, that search starts at the age of 25 with sending her DNA to all kinds of DNA databases. Six months later, there was suddenly a result.

"We found your birth father. The DNA was a complete match with you," she heard via an online conversation with someone in China. "As big as the shock is for you, it is for him too," continues the woman on the other side of the world. A message that hit the adopted Noemi with great intensity.

It was the first moment that I really felt like I was coming from somewhere

Noemi Plateau

"For me that meant a lot. It was the first moment that I really felt that I came from somewhere. I was a year and a half when I came here. So I don't remember anything about it. But I felt all my life for a long time that there was a kind of mourning and loss around something, something I have lost, but don't know. At that moment I felt that I could finally give that part of myself - around adoption and where I come from - a place. "

The biological father was also informed of the match, but he did not believe that Noemi was his daughter. "He immediately requested a second DNA test and did not want contact until there was certainty." That test was therefore carried out.

With the words "there is no certainty that it is your father", Noemi gets the results of the second test. "A very difficult moment," she testifies. "Meanwhile, I still don't know. One party says it could still be an uncle, another says it's not related at all. It's still incredibly confusing. Everyone always says DNA doesn't lie, until you get to a point where it turns out to be." Noemi decided to write the man a letter. But she doesn't know if it ever arrived.

I'm still having a hard time with it

Noemi Plateau

She thinks what happened to "Spoorloos" in the Netherlands is terrible for those people. "Such a search is very tough and very emotional in itself. I still have a hard time with it myself because I have to give it a place. But I also think it's good that it comes to light that a lot of scams is in that search world. It's not yet to the point that you can trust it completely. Everything such seekers do is very far from where you live. All you do is give money and hope that they do good things with it. to do."

But that didn't happen in her case. Still, Noëmi hopes to find her biological parents. "I think with the program we have done everything we can do from Belgium. We are in all the DNA databases so I hope that one day a match will come out that is right and that I can rely on. waiting to be able to travel to China to continue searching there."