While the scandal of sexual abuse of minors within the Church was rekindled in September by the broadcast of the program Les Oubliés de Dieu ("God's Forgotten") on Flemish public television and the creation of a new parliamentary commission of inquiry, the Belgian Catholic Church has now been rocked by a new affair. On Wednesday, December 13, the newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws revealed that at least 30,000 babies born to young unmarried women, sent by their parents to religious institutions to give birth, had been forcibly taken from their mothers and sold to adoptive parents. This practice is said to have been in place from the post-war period until the early 1980s.
Before giving birth, the young women were forced to work in the places where they were housed and were forbidden to communicate with the outside world. Some testified to humiliation and sexual violence at the hands of the nuns, and even to forced sterilization.
The affair caused an outcry that was made all the greater by a Flemish MP who took the floor in the House of Representatives on December 14 to tell her own story. Yngvild Ingels, a 43-year-old sociologist and member of the Flemish nationalist party N-VA, was given the name Emmanuelle-Claude at birth (probably named after the nun who attended the birth in a cloister) before being entrusted to a childless couple for 6,500 Belgian francs at the time – around €600 in today's purchasing power. "Your mother was very young and couldn't look after you," her adoptive parents told her when she was seven.
According to the MP, the couple knew nothing more about the case settled through Caritas Catholica and the institution near Dunkirk where her biological mother had given birth. Her adoptive parents were, in fact, expecting a boy, who they were told had died.
Today, Ingels still hopes to identify her biological parents, but all the records relating to these adoptions have disappeared. All she knows is that her civil status records state that she was "born in Dunkirk of unknown ascent on January 1, 1979." "Those who organized my adoption must have known who my biological parents were," she told Het Laatste Nieuws on Friday. As, no doubt, did the doctors, lawyers, and judges who, at the time, intervened to facilitate the transaction.
The MP's tearful testimony moved the assembly – which gave her a standing ovation and is now more than determined to shed light on this very dark chapter in the recent history of the Belgian Church. However, it is not certain that the electoral deadlines – a legislative election will be held in June 2024 – will allow a thorough investigation of this case. Unless it is included in the debates of the commission of inquiry into sexual abuse, which began its work in mid-November. An initial request has been made by the Justice minister, Paul Van Tigchelt, to the Church officials: canceling the salaries of four abusive priests who have been identified. Proceedings are underway against four others.
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