Congolese-Belgian lawyer sentenced on appeal to 14 years in prison for fraudulent adoption trafficking

The Belgian-Congolese lawyer Julienne Mpemba has been sentenced on appeal to fourteen years in prison for trafficking abducted Congolese children for adoption. She must also pay substantial compensation to the biological parents, adoptive parents, and the children involved. It began to dawn on people that something was going wrong with adoptions from Congo in the autumn of 2015, when Belgian adoption candidates reported that their adopted children were stuck in Kinshasa. The Congolese authorities had caught wind of the goings-on at the Tumaini orphanage and blocked the adoptions. The orphanage turned out to be the cash cow of the Belgian-Congolese Julienne Mpemba (48). She worked as a lawyer for the French-speaking community and ran for the PS in the 2014 European elections.
From Namur, Mpemba had set up a trade in children, whom she offered for adoption in Belgium and the United States. Her accomplice “Rambo” abducted the children from the streets of Kinshasa, or they were recruited in remote regions under the guise of a holiday camp in Kinshasa. Still others were assigned to the orphanage by local authorities with the instruction to reunite them with their biological families within a certain period. In November 2015, the Congolese authorities decided to release eleven children from Tumaini for departure to Belgium after all. However, rumors of identity forgery, fraud, and kidnappings had been circulating since 2013. When Belgian embassy staff came to collect the children from the orphanage, they turned out to be missing. Mpemba refused to disclose their whereabouts and demanded at least 20,000 euros to release the children. Belgium filed a complaint against her for hostage-taking.

DNA testing
On November 7, Mpemba finally relented, and on November 10, eleven Congolese children arrived in French-speaking Belgium. The adoptive parents were unaware that their papers had been forged and that they had different names. Meanwhile, the biological parents in Congo were searching for them in vain. Mpemba's lawyer reported in the spring of 2016 that at least three children had been taken away from their biological parents and were not available for adoption. This was also confirmed by DNA testing. Complaints were subsequently filed with the Belgian judiciary by Congo. The judicial investigation revealed that Julienne Mpemba was the central figure in a child trafficking network aimed at financial gain. She had American adoptive parents pay thousands of dollars for children who were already in the Belgian adoption process. She also bribed a Congolese magistrate in the hope of covering up the case. The money paid by Belgian adoptive parents ended up primarily in her own pockets. The children stayed in the orphanage in deplorable conditions.

**Moral damages**
Now, the Court of Appeal in Liège has sentenced Mpemba to fourteen years in prison, with immediate arrest. This ruling is harsher than the verdict at first instance, in which Mpemba received a ten-year prison sentence. Mpemba was found guilty of the most serious offenses: she led a structured system of fraudulent adoptions from Congo. The children were abducted and held hostage, documents were systematically forged, the biological parents were deliberately misled, and the adoptive parents were financially and emotionally exploited. The court also determined that Mbempa clearly had a financial motive, and that the children and families were subordinate to this. Mpemba managed the orphanage from Belgium via money transfers, emails, and WhatsApp. In addition to the prison sentence, she is also stripped of her political and civil rights for ten years. She receives a fine of 8,000 euros and must pay damages of up to 100,000 euros to the biological parents and the adoptive parents. She must transfer money for the children to a blocked savings account. Mpemba often failed to appear in court and hid behind sick notes. Several government agencies that had joined the proceedings as civil parties are also receiving compensation. These include the Federal Migration Centre Myria, the French-speaking Community in Belgium, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. The Flemish agency Opgroeien is receiving moral damages of 1 euro because the reputation of international adoptions has suffered a severe blow due to Mpemba's actions.