Diplomat in adoption row answers criticism

The Dutch diplomatic couple at the centre of a storm over the alleged dumping of their seven-year-old South Korean adopted daughter have made a statement which is published in today’s Telegraaf.


Illustrated by a photograph of the couple in evening dress, the paper says Raymond and Meta Poeteray were told to make a statement by the foreign affairs ministry.
In this statement, they tell the paper that they have not formally given up daughter Jade, as reported in the press, and continue to take full responsibility for the girl.
As soon as she joined the family as a baby, it was ‘very hard to make contact with her’, the consul writes. And in 2004, she was diagnosed as having an extreme fear of forming relationships.
Intensive family therapy failed to work and the rest of the family began to suffer, the consul says.
In 2006, specialists in Hong Kong said that it was in Jade’s best interests if she was removed from the family. ‘That was an extremely painful moment for us, but we did not have another choice,’ Poeteray writes.

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