CNN
–
A dark chapter in Chilean history.
During the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990, thousands of babies were stolen from biological mothers and sold to adoption by foreign couples, mainly in the US and Europe. In Chile, they are known as “Children of Silence.”
And now, for the first time in the country’s history, a Chilean judge has announced that he is indicting an individual who claims he has stolen a baby that was stolen in the country.
“In the 1980s there was a network of judges who detected and stole babies from Catholic priests, lawyers, social workers, and even poor mothers, who mainly adopted them and sold them to adoption,” said Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, a judge at the Santiago Court of Appeals, who was responsible for the investigation.
According to a judicial statement, the investigation focused on the city of San Fernando in central Chile involves two babies who were stolen and handed over to a foreign couple.
According to a Chilean judicial statement, the ring is said to have focused on “adding or stealing babies for financial gain” with the aim of “emerging from the country to various destinations in Europe and the United States.”
The judge charged and issued arrest warrants against five people. He said “they should remain in pre-trial detention for crime associations, child abduction and intentional misconduct,” the release said.
The Chilean government has requested extradition to Israel against a former Chilean Family Court judge who is currently living there and allegedly involved, the release added.
CNN contacted the judiciary to determine whether the parties involved have legal representation and how they would respond to the claim, but so far there has been no response.
The judge held that the restriction law does not apply in this case because “these are crimes committed under military junta and must be punished in accordance with the American Treaty on Human Rights and the jurisdiction of the American Court of Human Rights.”
The investigation was released Monday, a day after Chilean President Gabriel Borik said the final report was issued by the task force, which he prepared to investigate a case of a baby stolen last year.
Following that recommendation, Borik said the Chilean government would “provide additional means of searching for origins and create a genetic fingerprint bank that will allow for the unification of many baby families that have been stolen for a long time and given to foreign families.”
Constanza DelRío, Founder and Director We are looking for ourselves (We’re looking for each other), the Santiago NGO, dedicated to reunifying the family of stolen babies, said she was cautiously optimistic because countries like Chile find the truth about stolen babies “are very slow and denying the victim.”
Del Rio was a victim of an illegal adoption and filed a lawsuit in 2017, demanding an investigation by the Chilean government. Authorities were appointed as special prosecutors, but the investigation was not anywhere, she said. According to Del Rio, another prosecutor filed a lawsuit last year solely to declare that he “didn’t establish that the crime was committed.”
President Borick said creating a task force proves his government is serious about the issue, speaks publicly about it, and recognizes the systematic theft of the baby at the time as fact.
There could be tens of thousands of cases. Theft of thousands of babies in Chile has been documented by non-governmental organizations for over a decade. Since 2014, CNN has reported on multiple cases in which stolen people have been stolen as the baby is reunited with a biological mother after DNA testing has proven to be indeed relevant.
River Constance We are looking for ourselves On its own, it built a database containing around 9,000 cases, which helped reunite over 600 parents with stolen children.
Ten years ago, Marcela Labraña (Sename, by its Spanish acronym), the then superintendent of the country’s Child Protection Agency, said her agency is investigating hundreds of cases but suspects there are thousands more.
“This is no longer a myth. We know this happened today, and it was true. It’s not the story that a few people were saying,” Labranya said.
