The Mons council chamber has ordered the trial of 82-year-old Michèle B., former president of the Belgian non-profit Hacer Puente, accused of child abductions linked to illegal adoptions from Guatemala in the 1980s.
Between 1985 and 1992, Hacer Puente arranged the adoption of about 150 Guatemalan children by Belgian families. Prosecutors say that in at least 13 of those cases, the biological parents never voluntarily gave up their children.
The case began in 2011, when a Brussels woman adopted in 1984 discovered that her biological mother in Guatemala had never consented to the adoption, her child had been kidnapped and sold. The story, covered by Belgian media, prompted other adoptees to come forward, suspecting their own adoptions had been fraudulent.
Several, including Coline Fanon and Sophie Villers, had already uncovered irregularities in their cases and shared their experiences in the 2019 VRT series Bargoens.
The Tournai prosecutor's office launched an investigation in 2014, focusing on Hacer Puente and its ties to Ofelia Rosal de Gamas, sister-in-law of Guatemala's former dictator Óscar Humberto Mejía Víctores (1983–1986). Rosal de Gamas has been accused in Guatemala of arranging illegal adoptions during that period.
The investigation was transferred to Belgium’s federal prosecutor in 2019 and has now been completed. The trial date has not yet been set.
