In six months, the Flemish Center for Adoption (VCA) received more than 160 reports from adopted children or parents who believe there are irregularities in their file. “They will all be contacted to review their questions,” says the office of Minister of Welfare Hilde Crevits (CD&V). The reports come after it came to light at the end of last year that several adopted children from Ethiopia had not been voluntarily given up by their parents.
In the case of a 10-year-old Colombian boy who came to our country at the end of 2022, the adoptive mother, a woman from Limburg, goes one step further. Together with her lawyer Abderrahim Lahlali, she filed a complaint against unknown persons with the investigating judge in Turnhout this week. That’s what Het Laatste Nieuws writes. Such a criminal complaint is a first for Belgium.
Finding out the truth
The ball started rolling, says Lahlali, “when my client received documents from Colombia last summer. She had it translated and her jaw dropped: her son turned out to have a half-sister over there, although during preparatory conversations it had always been emphatically denied that there were any brothers or sisters. The boy had already given signals in that direction, but everyone thought it was just a fantasy. Now suddenly all the pieces of the puzzle fit together.”
The Limburg woman went to the Growing Up Agency, which investigated the case and confirmed that there is a half-sister in Colombia. “My world collapsed,” says the woman in Het Laatste Nieuws. “The last thing I ever wanted to do was split up a brother and sister. I feel lied to.”
Since then, says Lahlali, “my client has doubts about the entire file. We now also know that the biological mother had doubts about giving up her child. She wanted to withdraw, but finally agreed. What happened in between? There are many questions and uncertainties that my client wants answered. For herself, but perhaps even more so for her son. She sees it as her duty to find out the truth so that when the boy gets older and starts asking questions, she can look him in the eye and tell the truth about his past.”
In the cold
The adoption of the 10-year-old boy went through Het Klein Mirakel, one of the three adoption agencies in Flanders. At the end of last year, the service was discredited when adoptive families testified in De Standaard that they had experienced emotional pressure to adopt children with an unspecified ‘disability’.
Lawyer Lahlali says he regrets that “a criminal complaint and judicial investigation are needed – which will emotionally demand a lot from my client – to discover the truth.” He refers to an earlier complaint to the Growing Up Agency of the Flemish government. “It was then confirmed that there is a half-sister in Colombia and that errors may have been made in the file. Subsequently, no follow-up was given.”
“There has been no form of restorative mediation, no attempt to assist this woman,” Lahlali said. “The government should do more in cases like this, people feel like they are being left out in the cold.”
The Growing Up Agency said in a response that it had “very thoroughly investigated” the complaint. “We have collected a lot of information and have invited the person concerned for an interview to share that information with her,” says spokesperson Nele Wouters. “She never responded to that.” According to Lahlali, the proposed conversation only concerned “facts that my client already knew, but there was no attempt to assist her emotionally.”
Care and guidance
Minister Crevits (CD&V) believes that “the bottom stone must be removed”. Her cabinet announces that it will “set up a process of care and guidance” for all people who have recently had questions about their adoption file. “That’s really important. The thought that an adoption may not have gone correctly in the past has a huge impact.”
It is currently not possible to start adoption procedures in Flanders: there is an adoption freeze. The government introduced this after the appointment of the Klein Mirakel as a central adoption service was challenged by the two other services, Ray of Hope and Fiac, and the appointment was subsequently canceled. Since then, we have been waiting for a new adoption decree.
