Belgian But Born Anonymously in France

What on earth is it about the baby-selling racket that so appeals to Catholic institutions?  The subject is in the news again, (watch this clip on France 24) this time in Belgium and it concerns us because the people of those institutions blithely committed their sins of greed by using France's law permitting anonymous births, Accouchement sous X, the great stumbling block in French genealogical research.

This is not the first time that foreigners have come to France to take advantage of laws that protect the anonymity of parents (to the detriment of the child). We have written here about desperate and pregnant women, forced to give birth unwillingly, coming to France from Britain to have their child secretly.

In the Belgian story, however, desperate and pregnant women, surely one of the most vulnerable of groups, were hauled across the border by officials of their church, to give birth anonymously. (We do not know the laws of Belgium concerning this but it would seem that there is nothing comparable, hence the travel.) Corrupt local officials on both sides of the border then broke immigration laws with false documents that enabled the church officials to take the newborn children who were then, legally, French children under the care of the French state, back across the border to be sold to Belgian couples for adoption. This took place during the peak years of the Catholic baby-selling rackets in the 1950s and 1960s. Those children are now in their sixties and seventies and feel some urgency in their life-long efforts to know who their biological parents are (or were, as is increasingly the case).

A small number of those sold babies, now elderly adults, have been able to find their parentage through DNA testing. However, because of France's laws against the "recreational" use of DNA testing, which we have explained in this post, even though they may take the test in Belgium, there is not a very large database of French DNA against which to compare their own.

For those who must seek through documentation alone, the Belgian government recently set up an agency, AFSTAMMINGS, (to get its English pages, click on the tiny flag in the lower left of the screen to get a menu of flag-associated languages) to help with the research. As the report indicates, this may be somewhat half-hearted and the agency under-funded; the waiting list for one's request to be addressed is about a year. For more help, there is an association of Belgian children, born in France "Sous X", then sold and adopted in Belgium, called Binnenlands Geadopteerd.  (For English, you are on your own with whatever translation service you prefer.) 

For a rather superficial article, brief and in English, about Belgian society's current views on adoption, read here.

If you are researching such a trafficked person, we wish you the best of luck.

©2024 Anne Morddel

French Genealogy