2023-12-24 11:19:33
Forced adoptions
Article reserved for subscribers
A podcast published in mid-December reveals that thousands of Belgian children were taken from their mothers and placed for adoption, with the complicity of the religious institution between 1945 and 1980. After years of silence, the word victims are freed.
On the phone, Debby Mattys’ voice suddenly vibrates with anger. “You imagine, it’s the Church. The Church which says that we must take care of our neighbor and which has nevertheless humiliated and mistreated our mothers for years,” she says. This fifty-year-old is one of the Belgian children who were taken from their mother and placed for adoption against payment between the 1950s and the 1980s. There are 30,000 of them, according to the Flemish media Het Laastse Nieuws, which published a mid-year investigation. December on the subject. With chilling testimonies: women who became pregnant outside of marriage and were placed with nuns by their family to hide their pregnancy tell how they were influenced or forced to abandon their babies. Some were forcibly sterilized or sexually abused.
Debby’s mother was cared for at Huis Elizabeth, an institution run by sisters near Antwerp, when she became pregnant in 1967, at age 18. “The conditions were appalling. The nuns humiliated her, told her that she was a disgrace to society, that she could not take care of a child. She had to give birth behind a sheet, so she wouldn’t see me being born. And then she took the tram alone to go home, without me. Her family never wanted to talk about it again,” says Debby. She heard this story in 2019 from her biological mother whom she was able to meet after years of
1703470499
#Belgium #scandal #involving #children #born #20th #century #shakes #Catholic #Church #Libération