READ ALSO. Scandal around Dutch TV program ‘Spoorloos’: at least three’recovered’ biological families are incorrect
For more than 30 years, the Dutch public broadcaster has broadcast Spoorloos,good for more than 600 episodes and a Gouden Televiziering, one of the mostimportant TV prizes in the Netherlands. The makers look for lost relatives ofthe participants – often people who were once adopted and now looking fortheir biological parents, or children of single mothers who want to know whotheir father was. Often the program makers also succeed in finding familymembers, which leads to emotional television.
But now it turns out that the fixer that works for the program in Colombia wasnot always reliable. That came the RTL5 program Scammers tackled on the track.
The man is said to have been involved in at least 16 investigations. They areall now being re-examined. A ‘mismatch’ has already been discovered in atleast four cases, the news site Nu.nl knows. Mistakes with major consequences.For example, a man paid for his brother’s studies in Colombia for years, whileit was not his brother or stepbrother at all. And a woman with a heavy hearthad to realize that the woman she thought was her biological mother, had noconnection with her.
According to KRO-NCRV, that without a trace broadcasts, it only concerns onemismatch, says spokesman Matthijs de Bruijn.
Colombian fixer
But also in at least another case the reunification seems to have gone wrong,Isabel’s story shows that the makers of without a trace published on theirwebsite. That story dates from before the fuss about the fixer in Colombia andcame to light this summer, says De Bruijn. He said it was published a fewweeks ago.
Isabel (a fictitious name) was adopted in 2006 by without a trace broughttogether with her biological mother. But now, sixteen years later, her dreamhas burst like a bubble. The woman she thought was her mother all those yearsturns out to be a complete stranger.
Isabel was overjoyed when the team of without a trace found her biologicalmother in Colombia in 2006. After that first meeting, she traveled to Colombiatwice more, staying there for a longer period of time and getting to know hermother better.
“Isabel and her brother were of toddler and preschool age when they wereadopted to the Netherlands from a children’s home in Colombia. Unfortunately,the adoption was not a success story and Isabel has always dreamed of Colombiaand hoped to see her biological mother again. In 2005 she wrote without atrace at. With only little data, the search initially came to a dead end,” saythe program makers.
Emotional Reunion
But Isabel did not give up and later came up with the name of an employee ofthe children’s home where she stayed in her first years of life. “This ladywas found and be a local employee of without a trace on to the mother. Thiswoman, Maria, did indeed say that she gave up a son and a daughter underdifficult circumstances. She indicated that Isabel and the older brother areher children and wanted to see her daughter again. The emotional reunionfollowed in 2006 and aired that fall.”
Although the contact in the following years was often very difficult due tocultural differences and the language barrier, Isabel met her mother severaltimes and cherished the contact with her.
Yet Maria began to have doubts, she admitted. Because their stories or whatthey remembered from the past didn’t seem to match completely. “Denna wastaken from both this year. The result turned out to be negative, so there isno mother-daughter match.”
Since 2019, DNA research has been carried out in every file, say the makers ofwithout a trace.