The French media have been fascinated for some time by England’s use of Forced Adoption, as a country very much in the minority in how they apply this controversial approach to vulnerable families. The latest documentary from France on this topic has been produced by France 5 and is called “England’s Stolen Children”. It airs tomorrow evening, 7.40pm UK time. 

The documentary makes several claims which portray Britain’s child protection sector as unethical, lawless and profiteering. Information about the documentary includes contentious language, which we’ve translated below:

“This documentary tells the story of the thousands of children unjustly removed from their families. It chronicles families’ terrifying experiences of children taken at birth, the promise of future removal whilst mothers are pregnant and the threat of removal directed at women who have not yet had children, solely on a suspicion of future harm to the child.

The setting for this documentary is not a lawless, tyrannical country where child rights do not exist – these tragedies are unfolding in a State which is bound by European legislation and is  one of France’s neighbours: The United Kingdom. 

The film reveals an unthinkable practice: every year, Great Britain sets quotas for the number of children it must remove from parents in order to facilitate adoptions. If these quotas are not met, the local authorities have to pay financial penalties and their budget is revised and ultimately decreased. 

Private sector companies, sometimes listed on the stock exchange, are often tasked with placing children with adoptive parents. Children are “advertised” by these agencies, their details completely exposed and publicly available, with descriptions which include ‘sellable’ qualities such as positive personality traits. 

Last year, 7,740 children were waiting to be adopted by couples who trawled the internet searching for their ideal child. Sometimes, these children are placed in well-to-do households. Most of the time, these children are sent to live in unstable family settings.  

Maltreatment in the context of Great Britain’s Forced Adoption practices does not need to be evidenced. A suspicion of future maltreatment raised by social services is all that’s needed for a child to be taken away from their parents forever. In Great Britain, child protection has become skewed by a broadbrush perspective which presumes that struggling families and single mothers can never provide stable homes or make good parents. 

This Human Rights scandal in the heart of Europe stays hidden inside Britain’s borders. The law prevents parents and journalists from telling these stories, with the threat of jail if they break their silence. They don’t even have the right to mention the name of the child that’s been stolen. 

In an attempt to save English families from this terrible tragedy, a former businessman and millionaire helps families unjustly threatened with the removal of their children to escape Britain, and resettle in other countries like France.

More than two million children are trapped inside social services across England and Wales, their parents locked inside an administrative machine gone mad. Created in 1989 during a liberal government overseen by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, which aimed to liberate the ‘working classes’, The Children Act gives child protection services the power to remove children from parents on a mere suspicion of maltreatment, present or future. “

A debate will also take place after the documentary is aired, and features Ian Josephs who runs the site Forced Adoption (and who we assume is the businessman mentioned in the description), Florence Bellone, an award winning journalist and Marie Claire Sparrow, a barrister based in London.

The documentary has been produced in French, but there may be English subtitles for non French speakers wanting to watch it.