A Parisian investigating judge has been investigating since mid-April the complaint of seven French people denouncing their adoption in Mali, organized according to them fraudulently by an authorized association, learned Friday, May 26, Agence France-presse (AFP) from a close source. folder. This complaint with civil action, after a first simple complaint filed by the Paris public prosecutor's office, targets the association Le Rayon de soleil de l'enfant etranger (RSEE), and a former local official, Danielle Boudault, for facts, revealed by Le Monde, which would have occurred between 1989 and 1996, which concern children born in Mali between 1984 and 1993.
The plaintiffs accuse the association and its former manager of having "duped the Malian biological parents (…) and the French adoptive parents". After long procedural disputes, a Parisian magistrate estimated on April 17 that part of the charges were time-barred, but she agreed to investigate the offense of concealment of fraud.
"There is no element to determine whether this offense is prescribed, insofar as the RSEE association is still active and it has not been established that the association has ceased to hold the funds paid by the French adoptive parents or that these funds have been reused for the benefit of third parties in good faith, "said the judge, according to an order of which AFP was aware. The plaintiffs, adopted children, "suffered prejudice by seeing their parentage upset and having been uprooted from their countries of origin", noted the judge.
" Let it go "
"The opening of this information is a relief for the victims: after years of errors, French justice finally seems to take the measure of the human and social consequences of the carelessness of international adoption", declared to the AFP the plaintiffs' lawyers, My Noémie Saidi-Cottier and Joseph Breham.
According to them, the system put in place by RSEE allowed full adoption in France, but which was only temporary on the Malian side, in accordance with a provision provided for in the law of this country under the name of “protection-adoption”. The biological parents therefore thought that these adoptions would only last for the time of their children's studies and that they would return to Mali afterwards. In other cases, the child was directly presented as abandoned to the Malian courts, which pronounced their full adoption, then confirmed by the French courts.
Suspicions around this association, another of its local branches and former collaborators of Danielle Boudault had already been relayed by the Malian media in 1993. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently withdrew its accreditation from RSEE "because of his past activities". The association confirmed on its website that it "will cease its international adoption activities on December 27, 2023" and that it is contesting this decision.
