But the dryness of the titles of the charges as well as the sentence do not reflect the complexity of this so-called “stolen children of the Congo” in which there can be neither winners nor losers as the human dimensions are so painful.
Julienne Mpemba was alone on the dock. She is therefore the only one convicted but, in its judgment, the court more than scratched the French Community, noting “his guilty leniency” et “his blindness” in the file.
“This is perhaps the saddest case I have known in my long career”: the future of stolen Congolese children remains in limbo
A contested orphanage
Julienne Mpemba created the Tumaini orphanage in Congo in 2008. From 2012, Tumaini collaborated with Approved Adoption Organizations (OAAs) in the French Community as well as with the adoption department of the French Community. Since 2013, Tumaini has been the subject of critical reports from the embassy or the representative of the French Community in Kinshasa. Living conditions are precarious, hygiene is poor and children receive little care.
In 2015, the FPS Foreign Affairs filed a complaint, which led to the opening of a judicial investigation under the supervision of the federal prosecutor’s office. For Belgian adopting couples, the world collapsed at the end of 2016. They were summoned to the federal prosecutor’s office. The judicial authorities tell them that the children they adopted are not in fact orphans. They were kidnapped in Congo before being placed in an orphanage in Kinshasa and sent to Belgium.
The investigation notably retraced the journey of three little girls from Gemena, a remote town 850 kilometers from Kinshasa. Their parents had entrusted them in 2015 to a local association, Planète Junior, which received an attractive offer. Four children have the opportunity to go to a three-week holiday camp in Kinshasa. They are accompanied by a member of Planète Junior.
The three girls and a boy arrive in Kinshasa at the end of April 2015. It is planned that the accompanying person will pick up the children at the end of the stay. When he wants to get them back, he can’t find them. He alerts a local peace and civic education NGO. Only the boy is found. In Gemena, the parents of the three little girls receive various explanations. They are told that a little girl must receive care, that there is no money for the return flight or that they are in Europe.
They arrived on November 9, 2015 in Belgium, where these three girls aged 3, 4 and 6 were entrusted to adoptive parents, with whom they still live. Two other alleged fraudulent adoption cases in Belgium are documented.
Children stolen in Congo and adopted in Belgium: who is responsible?
“Object children”
The investigation noted that Julienne Mpemba had notably substituted these three little girls for others, as evidenced by the fact that they did not correspond to the photos which had been presented to the adoptive parents. She could have acted in this way because these photographed children would have died during an epidemic of typhoid fever.
The court pointed out the French Community for “the culpable leniency without which the defendant would certainly not have been able to act as she did”.
For Julienne Mpemba, “children were only a commodity to be monetized at the highest price by exploitation” the distress of adoptive parents, noted the court. And to emphasize that “his venality reached its peak during the hostage-taking of the children”. The three girls, who were to reach Belgium, had thus been moved and hidden, just before their planned departure for Belgium, “in order to extract a sum of money for which Julienne Mpemba is incapable of producing the slightest justification”.
In this case, officials of the French Community as well as the chief of staff of the Minister of Youth Assistance at the time, Rachid Madrane (PS), were indicted. But they had obtained a dismissal of the case during the settlement of the procedure.
Thursday, in its judgment, the court points to the French Community for “the guilty leniency without which the accused would certainly not have been able to act as she did.. And to continue: “However, this blindness is difficult to understand. in no way obliterates the responsibility of the defendant.
Neither loser nor winner
Julienne Mpemba took her conviction very badly. When the police wanted to handcuff her following her immediate arrest, she defiantly attacked the president of the court, shouting: “You won’t break me” and criticizing a “corrupt justice”. She has already hinted that she will appeal.
However, the case is not closed before the courts. The family court will look into the children’s case. The adoptive parents want to keep them while the biological parents of the three girls, who are represented by Me Vincent Lurquin who saw them in Congo, “thank the Belgian families.” “They rely on God. But they want contact, to strengthen the bond with their children.” whom they never saw again.
And these parents, like adoptive parents, could also, based on the judgment that points “his guilty leniency” and his “blindly”, cite the French Community in civil proceedings.
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