The consequences for thousands of girls and women who had to give up their baby between 1956 and 1984 are unimaginably large and continue to this day. Fathers and adoptive families also experienced adverse consequences. The De Winter Committee concludes this after three years of research into the domestic distance and adoption.
After a first exploration in 2017, a more extensive follow-up investigation went wrong in 2021 due to gross privacy violations, after which the De Winter committee had to start all over again from 2022. That job is now complete. The result: an extensive, historical research report on what happened, how that came and what it meant for people.
From that report Damage by shamethat on Thursday offered to outgoing State Secretary for Legal Protection Teun Struycken (NSC), it appears that about thirteen to fourteen thousand women were one or more children alone. With all children, fathers and adoptive families there is tens of thousands of those involved.
The pressure that was exerted was “virtually inescapable,” the report said. It came from families who were afraid of shame, care providers who strengthened this pressure and psychiatrists who labeled unmarried pregnant as a disorder. The introduction of the Adoption Act in 1956 created ‘a perfect storm’ of circumstances, according to committee chairman Micha de Winter, emeritus professor of pedagogy.
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You have been working on this research for three years: what is the most important conclusion?
“How unimaginably large the consequences have been. In all decisions concerning distance and adoption, the unmarried pregnant women, causatives and children had little or no voice. There was great damage caused by the decisions that were taken about them. It was actually always started in the families, unmarried pregnancy was experienced as a huge shame when I had no choice except the committee said in the committee in the committee. I would keep the baby. “
How extensive was this research?
“There are more than a thousand pages of documentation behind the final report. We have spoken with more than three hundred people: distance mothers, destroyed children, adoptive parents, distance faders. We have examined three hundred files of the Child Protection Board and the Fiom, to which 144 institutions had been affiliated with it.” ”
To prevent shame, the ‘problem’ had to be banned: daughters were locked up, sent away or rejected
You talk about a ‘perfect storm’. What did he look like?
„Om de schande te voorkomen moest het ‘probleem’ worden uitgebannen: dochters werden opgesloten, weggestuurd of verstoten. De maatschappelijke druk werd versterkt door psychiaters die religieuze moraal ombogen tot psychische ziekte. Zij zeiden: die meisjes zijn niet zondig, maar psychisch labiel en ongeschikt voor het moederschap. Ik ben zelf vader van een dochter en kan me heel moeilijk verplaatsen in een vader die tegen zijn zwangere dochter zegt: als jij dat kind niet afstaat, wil ik je Never see that happened on a large scale, and those girls were simply uprooted, the social pressure was that great. “
You even heard about a psychologist who claimed that girls who resisted were unsuitable for motherhood.
“A psychologist in the De Bend, a home for unmarried mothers, said: Girls who are very much resisted, are exactly those who are the most unspoken of motherhood, because those are girls who choose that child from their own lack of mother love. And girls who go along with the distance procedure are actually the most motherly types.”
Many stakeholders hoped that this report would provide more clarity about who were responsible for these distance procedures. However, the committee wants to prevent the designation of culprits and victims. Why?
“We have done historical research, and that leads to the designation of a number of parties who have been responsible with each other. That is something other than legal debt. There were patterns, but there is not one main guy in this story. The responsibility has been spread over several people and authorities: parents, family, local community, general practitioners, spiritual workers, Psychiatry again.”
But you found ‘distance declarations’ in one fifth of the files: documents without legal value used to put women under pressure.
“True. Keeping. Unlike adoption, not anchored in the law. But institutions still had women draw a statement. Those documents had no legal value, but many women believed. For some women, the only means of power they thought they still thought was.”
In an earlier lawsuit, from distance mother Trudy Scheele-Gertsen and Bureau Clara Wichmann against the State, the lawyers argued that institutions such as the Child Protection Board (RvdK) had the legal task of protecting unmarried mothers. How do you look at that?
“I think that these types of institutions had a huge blind spot. The Adoption Act that was introduced in 1956 and made definitive separation between mother and child as a legal possible, was set as a child protection law, not as protection for the mothers. The councils were so focused on what they defined in the background that the importance of the child’s importance” On young women, but apparently did not conceive that protection task.
Doesn’t that make the councils jointly responsible?
“You might wonder: who has had no responsibility there? It was not our task to do legal investigation into guilt, but to show how a whole system failed.”
“There were patterns, but one main culprit cannot be identified. The responsibility was spread over several people and authorities”
The judge in the case of Scheele-Gertsen ruled, among other things, that the RvdK could be influenced by the spirit of the times at the time. You reject that time argument.
“There was not one spirit of the times, there were different time spirits. Even then there were people, professionals and laymen, who were waiting for distance. For example, because it was thought that you could not break the biological bond between mother and child. There were socialists who thought it was ridiculous that a distinction was made between married and underweared.”
The committee makes sixteen recommendations, including admission to the Canon of the Netherlands and a ‘parent letter’ that women can add to their file. Through such a letter, mothers can add their own story to the files that were laid over them: why they had to give up, what really happened. It gives them the voice that she was taken away.
What makes you not included public apologies in the recommendations?
“Apologies can be very empty and free of obligation. They only get value if they really act. We want parties who have played a role to look critically at their own history, to pull consequences out of organizations, but also to the government. The interests and needs of those involved are also very different and sometimes even a mother could do it. needs. “
What do you hope for your report?
“The injustice is splashing of every page of the report. There has been digestive across the interests and feelings of people. It is now extensively documented and no longer denies anyone. I hope that the persons involved helps to let go of feelings of shame and guilt. Because the lesson is actually very simple: we must be reluctant to impose our ideas on the word.”
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