Adoption or kidnapping?

BRUSSELS The federal prosecutor confirms that it has asked ‘about fifteen’ parents whether an expert is allowed to take a DNA sample from their Congolese adoptive child. The registered letters have been sent. The court has strong indications that the children still have biological parents in their home country who unsuspectingly sent their child at ‘holiday camp’ in Kinshasa from the Congolese countryside. There they would have ended up in the orphanage Tumaini. Then they would have been put on a plane to Belgium and were here taken care of by parents who had unsuspectingly gone through a years-long adoption procedure.

The federal prosecutor’s office now wants a definitive answer about the adopted adoption procedures through the orphanage, which has since been closed. It concerns all adopted Congolese children since November 2013. Have all those children been kidnapped by means of a fraudulent system, led by the Belgian-Congolese Julienne Mpemba (41) from Namur? The dish has suspicions.

In 2017 all the harrowing stories of identity fraud came to light (5 May 2017) . In at least four cases, research shows that a Congolese child is currently in a Belgian adoptive family, while the real parents are still alive. Three girls – Samira, Zakiatu and Jaëlle – were given different names and other birth dates at the time, while their biological parents live in Gemena, 850 kilometers from Kinshasa. Jacques was also lured out of his birth house, after which a Belgian adoptive family was sought in vain. That family was never found. No one knows where the boy is now.

The Belgian research has been running for a year and a half. A rogatory committee went to Kinshasa last year, where they found a hastily closed orphanage. The people involved were found to be tipped. Investigators also interviewed the real parents, who still want nothing more than to have their children return one day.

Pivotal figure Julienne Mpemba, who had been in prison for weeks and officially suspected of trafficking in human beings with child victims, says in old interviews that she gave some fifty Congolese children ‘a new future in Belgium’. Money? ‘Certainly not.’ Her lawyer, Georges Balon-Perin, did not answer his phone yesterday.

‘Fixer’ released

Last weekend, Diemerci Kitambo was released in Kinshasa. He acted as a ‘fixer’ at the time, the man who, on behalf of the ‘Planète Junior’ organization, persuaded the parents to give their child a ‘holiday camp’. The man has always maintained his innocence and says he has acted in good faith. Everything now indicates that he himself was led astray by Mpemba and her entourage.

The children whose identity fraud has been proven are still in our country. They grow up in Belgian families until further notice. The adoptions can be undone, but a family judge can also decide that it is in everyone’s interest that the child stays here.

With the sending of registered mail, the court has now made a division between real adoption and suspected abduction. According to our information, certain parents have already responded positively to the demand for a DNA sample. Others would then again be reluctant to such a decrease.

“It is a terrible situation,” says Flemish parliament member Lorin Parys (N-VA), who has been following the case for years. “Those Belgian parents have been working for years to get their adoption completed. Then everything turns out to be like a house of cards. You are sitting with a legal truth, but above all a biological reality. How do you explain something to those children? To keep quiet about the pain that the real parents in the Congo must feel every day. ‘