Open Letter
Dear Sander Dekker, Minister of Legal Protection
It is our understanding you are misinformed about the Post Adoption Service in Denmark.
Two official units claim to offer Post-Adoption Services:
- Ankestyrelsen offers group sessions for adoptees from age 12-14 and individual therapy for adult Adoptees. With very few certified therapists and a requirement for private payment for the individual therapy, this service is not accessible to Adoptees with lesser financial means and extremely hard to book for adoptees living outside of the Capital area.
- Danish International Adoption/DIA, who only offer access to some papers, cannot offer direct advice regarding homeward travel/search. Furthermore, they have not yet been successful in establishing any reunification between Adoptees and original families. Adoptees experience that DIA extracts methods and contacts from adoptees in order to brand themselves as PAS experts without genuine commitment and effort on their part.
None of the offers include transnational adoptees’ own knowledge of search processes or their life experience as adoptees.
None of the offers give adoptees free access to their own papers, nor do they assist with retrieving any original paperwork from adoption agencies abroad.
None of the offers seem genuinely interested in helping adoptees locate their original families and thereby their original histories, instead of the ones imposed onto them by these very same agencies.
Transnational Adoptees in Denmark are still dependent on support and knowledge from our own organisations; organisations such as Korea Klubben, Against Childtrafficing/ACT and Adoptionspolitisk Forum/APF (Forum For Adoptionpolitics).
Transnational Adoptees in Denmark are continuously silenced when it comes to knowledge about fraud, kidnapping and illegal partners, actions and structures in the adoption industry.
Transnational Adoptees in Denmark still see how public money goes to the same organisations that support corrupt systems and partners without any real will to implement change.
Minister Dekker — the wrongdoing that has been inflicted on us cannot be made right by the same interest partners who originally benefited from a corrupt system and whose interest is now to maintain relevance by claiming they can help us from the harm initiated by them.
We ask that you do not allow yourself to be swayed by the type of lobbyism that is interested in maintaining adoption processes with minimal change. It is time for a real shift, so that people like us can hopefully one day say that we belonged to a limited group of adoptees who experienced having their identity stolen, yet were also afforded their fundamental human rights.
Best regards
Yong Sun Gullach
Chairperson of Adoptionspolitisk Forum
