Belgium: Flemish Church dogged by forced adoptions scandal

In Belgium, new testimonies from victims have revived the scandal of forced adoptions and once again smeared the Catholic Church in Flanders. According to a podcast broadcast this week by the Flemish media HLN, nearly 30,000 children were taken from their mothers by clerics between the 1950s and 1980s and sometimes even sold to their adoptive families.

St. Catherine's Church in Brussels (illustrative image). AP - Francisco Seco

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With our correspondent in Brussels, Laure Broulard

The testimonies are heartbreaking. First of all, those of mothers, who became pregnant out of wedlock, were placed by their families in religious institutions to hide their pregnancy. After childbirth, most often under general anesthesia and sometimes in France under X, the Church took their children away from them, then sold them for the equivalent of 250 to 750 euros, to Belgian adoptive families.

The investigation also reveals sexual violence and forced sterilization of young women. We also hear from adopted children who describe their struggle to find their origins when most of the cases have disappeared.

The case had already emerged in 2015, prompting the church to apologize, but no major independent investigation has been launched so far. This week, Yngvild Ingels, a federal MP, herself born under X in northern France and then transferred to a Flemish family for a hundred euros, called on the government to act. "What was presented as charity was in fact human trafficking," she told the House, her voice choked with emotion.

The bishops' spokesman, Tommy Scholtès, said the church does not accept the term "children bought." "Families waiting for adoption thanked the nuns when they received the child (...), they contributed financially to the functioning of the religious communities," he told AFP.

The scandal has resurfaced just a few months after another documentary shook Flanders by unveiling testimonies of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church.

Read alsoBelgium: a documentary on sexual abuse in the Church shakes up the political world

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• Belgium
• Children's rights