AdoptRisk: Tracing Illegal Adoptions in France

Building on a previous study on illegal practices in international adoption, the Temos research unit has been coordinating a research programme since 1 October 2025 to expand knowledge on abuses in the adoption of foreign children, as well as those affecting minors born on French soil. Supported by the French National Research Agency (ANR), the project explores the period from 1923, when the first French law authorising the adoption of minors was passed, to 2005, the peak of international adoption. Details from historian Yves Denéchère, coordinator of AdoptRisk.

What are AdoptRisk's objectives?

Yves Denéchère: We are going to study the adoption of minors in France, bearing in mind the risks of illegal practices. At the international level, we have already addressed this issue for the period 1960-2005 in our "Historical study on illegal practices in international adoption in France", published in 2023. However, there are absolutely no studies on France, on abuses on French soil, even though there are testimonies attesting to problematic situations at least until the 1980s.

For example?

Yves Denéchère: Mothers gave birth more or less in secret, anonymously or ‘under X’ as they say in France, in private clinics. And then they were told that the baby had died. When in fact the baby was alive and well and was going to be given to a couple who did not have children.

People who were adopted discovered that their biological mothers had never consented to the adoption. And yet they were adopted.

We can also cite the case of Belgian women, taken in by Catholic associations, who came to France to give birth in secret, as this was not possible in Belgium. Once born, the children crossed the border again to be adopted by Belgian families. This raises the question of the child's status. It is clear that we are in a grey area here.

How can we document acts that, by their very nature, were meant to be discreet?

Yves Denéchère: That is indeed one of the difficulties of the project: finding archives on practices that are on the fringes of legality. A great deal of archival work is required to identify sources, find out how to access them, obtain archives and compare them with testimonies, to map these practices and understand the mechanisms at work.

Do we have any idea of the scale of the phenomenon?

Yves Denéchère: No, and it will be very difficult to get a figure. In our 2023 report, written with Fabio Macedo, we set out to describe illegal practices in the adoption of foreign children, and we showed that they had existed, that they were recurrent and that they had persisted. Today, we would like to go a step further by trying to quantify the risk of abuses, establishing a probability based on the date of adoption and the country of origin. For example, if the child was born in Guatemala in the 1990s, we will be able to determine the likelihood that the process was marred by problematic or even illegal practices.