A Dutch court on Wednesday ruled that a girl whose Belgian mother reportedly put her up for sale in an Internet auction should stay with the Dutch couple who adopted her. The case of little Donna, as the child is known, has become a major cross-border legal battle.
The biological father, Bart Philtjens, a Belgian whose own wife could not have children, had started the court action in a bid to get Donna, now aged three, returned to Belgium to live with the couple. But the court in the Dutch city of Utrecht even refused to give him automatic visiting rights, only access through a local child protection service.
The Belgian woman who gave birth to the child had originally agreed to hand over the child to Philtjens in exchange for 10,000 euros (15,300 dollars), but reneged on the deal, Dutch media has reported.
The reports said the woman instead put the baby up for sale by auction on the Internet. A Belgian court has already said the child should be sent back to Belgium. The Dutch court ruling, published on the Internet, said: "D. is a small child who needs protection in order to grow up properly.
"For D. the most important relationship of her life is the one she has with the people raising her, her adoptive parents. She has never known any other parents but them." The court nevertheless ordered that the adoptive parents be placed under surveillance by social services for a year.
"The pressure on the (adoptive) family is so great, certainly all the more so because of the media attention, that no family could manage it without help," said the ruling. Philtjens expressed surprise at the ruling in comments reported by the Belga news agency. He said he was discussing with his lawyer the possibility of an appeal. The ruling confirms two judgements in November 2005 and in October 2007, which said that the girl 'D' should stay with her adoptive family in the Netherlands.
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