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The Catholic Church is said to have sold around 30,000 children without the mothers' knowledge. Several women revealed it for the first time in the “Kinderen van de Kerk” podcast of the Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws. The events spanned a period from the end of World War II to the 1980s. According to the newspaper, pregnant and unmarried women were placed in Catholic institutions where they suffered humiliation and even sexual abuse. The children were then sold to adoptive families for large amounts of money – between 10,000 and 30,000 francs (around 250 to 750 euros at the time). In 2015, the Bishops' Conference apologized to the victims of forced adoptions in Catholic institutions of the Flemish Parliament.
The breakups The babies were taken away from their mothers immediately after birth: the women were given general anesthesia or wore a mask to prevent them from seeing their child. After birth, some of them were forced to sign a document renouncing their child or were told that the child was stillborn. In addition, some of them were sterilized.
The witness Documents that have not been preserved or are destroyed now make the process of reunification extremely difficult, says Debby Mattys (57), who was given up for adoption by nuns and has searched for her birth mother for more than 20 years. “My mother was 18 when she became pregnant unexpectedly,” she told Het Laaste Nieuws.
Public apology In 2015, the Bishops' Conference apologized to the victims of forced adoptions in Catholic institutions of the Flemish Parliament. In response to the recent testimonies, the bishops expressed their sympathy for the pain and trauma of the victims, notes the Brussels Times. The church is calling for an independent investigation into the conditions described by the women affected. During the operation, some women were sterilized