The Child Protection Board has not acted unlawfully towards a group of ‘remote mothers’ in the last century. That is what the court in The Hague ruled in a case that women’s rights organization Clara Wichmann and 75-year-old mother-in-law Trudy Scheele had brought against the Dutch state.
The women they represent had to give up their newborn child between 1956 and 1984, often against their will. This concerns approximately 13,000 to 14,000 women who often became pregnant without being married.
Not well informed
Scheele herself became pregnant in the sixties, while she was not married. She was sent by her family to the Catholic Paul Foundation in Oosterbeek, where she gave birth to a son in 1968. After she gave birth, she had to give her son up for adoption, although she didn’t want to.
According to Scheele, Child Protection at the time actively contributed to young mothers relinquishing their babies. They would also not have been properly informed about their rights and the practical possibilities of raising their child independently. By holding the state liable for this, Scheele hoped recognition of the suffering that has been done to her.
Environmental pressure
However, the court ruled that it was not the task of Child Protection to advise the mothers. According to the judge, the compulsion that many remote mothers experienced was mainly due to pressure from the environment, such as from their parents or the GP. According to the court, social and religious relationships were different at that time.
As a result, the women were “incapable of really making their own decisions in freedom”. Due to the great social pressure, according to the court, it cannot be argued that Child Protection has acted unlawfully. Moreover, the case has now expired.
Individual cases
This does not alter the fact that Child Protection may have acted unlawfully in individual cases, the court says. But now, fifty years later, it is no longer possible to determine whether legally culpable mistakes were made.
In this video, Scheele tells how it was only fifty years later that she was able to read how her baby had fared:
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