Around the world, intercountry adoptees have been steadily breaking the silence and finding legal avenues to challenge the injustices committed against them. These legal actions span continents and decades, revealing systemic failures in how intercountry adoptions were facilitated, documented, and inadequately monitored.
What began as isolated individual struggles has grown into a powerful global movement calling for truth, accountability, and reparation. These cases expose patterns of illegal and unethical practices – ranging from child trafficking, falsified documents and identity erasure, to forced family separation, sexual abuse, and state negligence.
Each legal action documented below, starting from the most recent to the earliest, represents more than an individual fight for justice: together, we form a collective narrative that refuses to accept gratitude as a substitute for rights. This growing body of litigation underscores why intercountry adoptees urgently need legal recognition, protection, and meaningful reparative mechanisms.
Note: this is not an exhaustive record of all legal actions taken globally by intercountry adoptees. It reflects cases I have become aware of through my work and connections within ICAV, shared by adoptees, adoptive and birth parents whom I work alongside.
Legal cases
September 2025 Uma Feed adopted from South Korea to Norway filed legal action against the Norwegian state, alleging violations to her right to family and trafficking through intercountry adoption, and is seeking compensation.
August 2025 Kim Yooree adopted from South Korea to France filed a compensation claim against the South Korean government for negligence in her intercountry adoption.
July 2025 several Spoorloos participants, mostly adoptees from Colombia, reached a private settlement with TV broadcaster, KRO-NCRV, after filing claims for emotional harm caused by incorrect family matches. The broadcaster issued public apologies, cancelled the program, and additional claims are ongoing. Attached is the website with their investigation report and unofficial English translation.
July 2025 Jenny Rogneby adopted from Ethopia to Sweden filed a police report against Swedish actors, including the country’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson in his former role as chair of one of the world’s largest adoption agencies, Adoptionscentrum – for crimes revealed in the Swedish government’s own adoption inquiry, presented in June 2025. Police did not initiate a criminal investigation, stating no crime had been committed. Their decision is being appealed.
May 2025 Mirjam Hunze, President of Chilean Adoptees Foundation, filed a criminal complaint with the Special Investigating Judge of the Court of Appeal in Santiago de Chile, concerning mismatched adoption records and child trafficking. The complaint has been declared admissible.
April 2025 Justin Versleijen, Secretary of the Chilean Adoptees Foundation, filed an official criminal complaint regarding his false death registration and child trafficking from Chile to the Netherlands. The complaint has been declared admissible.
March 2025 Jonah Bevin adopted from Ethiopia to the USA filed legal action against his adoptive father (former Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin and wife Glenna), alleging years of physical abuse, neglect and abandonment, including being sent and left at an abusive youth facility Atlantis Leadership Academy in Jamaica. A court issued a protective order barring Matt Bevin from all contact and his adoptive mother from certain actions, the case is still active.
November 2024 Sidse Koch Jørgensen, Sofie Randel, Nikolaj, Eva Tind and Gitte Mose all adopted from South Korea to Denmark, and three other Danish adoptees, sent a claim to the Danish state (Ministry of Justice) for violation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to respect for private and family life) and demanding compensation.
July 2024 Jimmy Thyden Gonzalez adopted from Chile to the USA filed a criminal complaint against the Chilean state for child abduction. He has also established a legal support website to assist other Chilean adoptees affected by illegal adoptions.
July 2024 Sam van den Haak and seven other Sri Lankan adoptees adopted to the Netherlands between 1983 and 1990 through the Flash Foundation, filed a collective lawsuit against the Dutch State, citing the 2021 Joustra Committee report which found the State knew of structural abuses but failed to act. The court ruled the State was not liable despite documented irregularities. The adoptees have appealed, and the case remains ongoing.
January 2024 Fabian Ricklin adopted from India to Switzerland lost his Calcutta High court petition against the adoption agency for failing to preserve his records and allow him to search for his origins.
September 2023 a Bangladeshi adoptee sent to the Netherlands filed a lawsuit against the adoption agencies and the Dutch state for their roles in her unlawful adoption. Claims against the two adoption agencies were time barred, and her claim against the State was unsuccessful.
April 2023 Lynelle Long adopted from Vietnam to Australia won her criminal sexual abuse case against adoptive father, who pled guilty and was placed on the sex offender registry for 8 years. In December 2022, she successfully discharged her adoption through the County Court of Victoria and in November 2022, she received personal apologies and compensation from the Lutheran Church and the Australian Department of Home Affairs for their roles in her abuse. Her case was recognised under the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
December 2022, Danish Korean Rights Group (DKRG) led by Peter Regel Møller and Boonyoung Han successfully submitted 330 cases to the Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission to investigate human rights violations in intercountry adoptions. SKAN also submitted 21 cases, AUSKRG 16 cases, and 21 individuals submitted their own cases. The initial findings were announced and published on 26 March 2025 with findings for 56 cases, the other 311 were suspended until the next TRC proceeds. The President provided an apology in early October and the work of this commission remains ongoing.
2022 Carlos Andrés Queupán Huenchumil adopted from Chile to Sweden filed an appeal in Swedish court to restore his original birth name following an illegal adoption.
July 2022 Eva Brussaard adopted from South Korea to the Netherlands initiated legal action to obtain legal paternity recognition of her South Korean father.
2021 adoptive parents Veronique and Jean-Noël Piaser in France, along with Sri Lankan adoptee Champika Macherel filed a complaint in France alleging fraud, concealment, and criminal association to illegal adoptions in 1985 from Sri Lanka. The complaint was closed in 2024.
June 2020 Marie Marre and eight other French Malian adoptees filed a complaint against their adoption agency for fraud, concealment, and breach of trust relating to their illegal adoptions.
June 2020 Kara Bos adopted from South Korea to the USA won a landmark ruling in South Korean courts recognising her paternity through DNA evidence to her birth father.
May 2020 Dilani Butink adopted from Sri Lanka to the Netherlands in 1992 sued the Dutch state and an adoption agency over her unlawful adoption. In 2022 the court ruled that unlawful conduct had occurred, both relying too heavily on Sri Lankan authorities despite known structural abuses and rejected the statute of limitations and she won her case. Damages are being determined with the next hearing in Dec 2025.
2020 Alex Chisholm Guibault adopted from Guatemala to Canada filed a lawsuit in the United States against the orphanage owners responsible for the violence and abuse he experienced whilst in their care in the Guatemalan orphanage. Mediation resulted in a private settlement.
2020 Netra Sommer adopted from India to Denmark successfully overturned her adoption after a decade long battle seeking her adoptive parents consent.
2019 Adam Crapser adopted from South Korea to the USA sued the South Korean government adoption agency Holt Children’s Services for gross negligence in his case, which resulted in deportation from the USA back to South Korea decades later. He reached a legal settlement with Holt in 2023 but the government was not found liable.
May 2019 Mariela Coline Fanon adopted from Guatemala to Belgium filed legal action against both the Guatemalan and Belgium states for their roles in her illegal adoption. On 24 Oct 2025, together with 13 other Guatemalan adoptees, the procedural court Belgium has ruled and is referring the President of the Association Hacer Puente to the Criminal Court for crimes and offences – kidnapping 14 children, forgery and use of forged documents and criminal conspiracy.
2019 Gustavo Amilcar Tobar Fajardo birth father in Guatemala won a landmark case (in English) against the Guatemalan state for violating his parental rights via the illegal adoption in 1998 of his two sons, removed from their mother’s home and adopted to the USA without his consent. Damages were awarded in 2019 and an official state apology followed in July 2024.
2018 Patrick Noordoven went to the Hague Court of Appeal on the grounds that illegally adopted persons have a right to all information about their adoption. In 2018 he won against his adoptive parents and they were ordered to pay damages for years of withholding crucial information about his illegal adoption. In 2021 at the District Court of the Hague, it was determined the State acted unlawfully by failing to ensure he could discover his origins and must pay damages. This was the first Dutch ruling ordering the State to pay damages to an illegal adopted person. In 2024, the Court of Appeal of the Hague reverses the previous decision, stating the State did not act unlawfully. Primary responsibility lay with the adoptive parents and directly involved private actors, no State damages awarded.
2018 Bev Wiltshire-Reweti Māori adopted in New Zealand filed a claim (Wai 2850) with the Waitangi Tribunal on behalf of herself and all Māori children who were removed from their whānau, hapū and iwi under the Adoption Act 1955 and other state-care laws. The claim alleges that the British Crown breached Articles 1 and 2 of Te Tiriti o Waitangi by failing to protect Māori tino rangatiratanga, enforcing removals without Māori consent, and using state power to impose control over Māori children. As of now, the case remains ongoing in the Wai 2700 Mana Wāhine Kaupapa Inquiry. *Note: the URL link on Bev’s name has incorrect details, it should state “Wiltshire-Reweti was adopted at 3-months-old”, not years.
2016 Tigist Anteneh (Amy Steen) adopted from Ethiopia to Denmark successfully had her adoption revoked in Ethiopia. Her story was documented in the Al Jazeera film (2019), Girl in Return.
2013 Betty Lub (now Demoze) adopted from Ethiopia to the Netherlands successfully had her adoption revoked in Ethiopia after enduring an abusive adoptive family.
In conclusion
Each legal case above is not just about an individual’s pursuit of justice, it is evidence of systemic failures in how states, agencies, and international frameworks have treated intercountry adoptees. For decades, adoptees have been forced to fight for truth and protections that should have been guaranteed from the beginning.
The growing body of legal action shows why intercountry adoptees must be recognised as rights holders, not as passive subjects of charity or rescue. The Intercountry Adoptee Rights Charter which I created articulates these fundamental protections:
- The Right to Truth and Transparency – to access unaltered records and hold institutions and entities accountable
- The Right to Identity – to reclaim our original names, origins, language, and culture should we wish
- The Right to Legal Protections – to secure citizenships in both countries, revoke and discharge our adoptions, and seek justice for abuses
- The Right to Emotional and Mental Health Support – to heal from the trauma and losses that adoption often conceals
These cases should not remain exceptions fought through courts – they must be the foundation for systemic reform. Governments, international bodies, and adoption agencies must act to embed adoptee rights in law and practice, ensuring the harms of the past are neither ignored nor repeated.
This is not just about justice for those who have taken action. It’s about preventing the next generation from needing to. Until intercountry adoption can be fundamentally restructured to guarantee adoptee rights, protections, accountability and reparation, it should not continue in its current form. Only when these safeguards are embedded in law and practice can intercountry adoption truly claim to act in the best interests of the child.
Resources
Understanding illegal intercountry adoptions (a global compilation of investigations completed by adoptive and birth countries on illegal adoptions and human rights abuses in intercountry adoptions)