Sweden at the center of illegal adoptions with Chilean children
(Google Translation)
Children adopted from Chile may have been taken without the mothers consent. See how it's been here. Photo: Chilevision / Wikimedia Commons
Sweden at the center of illegal adoptions with Chilean children
Many of the children adopted from Chile to Sweden during the 70's and 80's may have been taken from their mothers without their consent. It shows a review that Chilean journalists have done in cooperation with SVT. A former head of the Chilean child welfare authority SENAME claims that an unknown number of children were exposed to trafficking in human beings.
It was during the years 1971 to 1992, thus largely during the Pinochet dictatorship, as more than 2,000 children were adopted from Chile to Swedish couples. Over the years, these adoptions have been questioned and there have been previously information that many of them were not entitled to many mothers to take care of the children by means of various persuasive campaigns - and sometimes in kidnapping-like forms.
In recent months, the Chilevision TV channel has reviewed a variety of adoption documents and interviewed mothers who, according to the documents, voluntarily have left their newborn children for adoption.
It turns out that in many of the cases the adoptions have not at all gone as stated in the official documents. SVT has been in contact with 25 now grown people, adopted from Chile. Several of them have let SVT and Chilean journalists look at their adoption documents.
The procedure - part of a pattern
In 16 of the cases we looked at, there are data indicating that the adoption has not been entirely correct. Either through contradictory information in the documents or by testimony and information from the relatives in Chile.
In five cases, there are information from mothers or close relatives who claim that their children were taken from them completely against their will.
In all cases, it is the Swedish Association Adoptionscentrum - Sweden's largest provider of adoptive children - who has conveyed the adoptions.
According to the Chilean journalists SVT, the investigated cases are typical and part of a pattern.
"There were people working for the Adoption Center who organized a large number of illegal adoptions. Many involved have enriched themselves and money that adoptive parents have thought to be overheads have fallen right into the pockets of a number of actors, "said Alejandro Vega, journalist at Chilevision.
He builds his accusations on interviews with relatives, but also with various government officials who were active during this period. He has also reviewed documents with colleagues and found that signatures have been falsified, that information about parents has been changed or omitted and that stories about why children have been adopted have been found.
Searched mothers in poor areas
Marta Garcia was head of the Chilean Child Care Agency SENAME in the late 80's. She told Chilevision that the Adoption Center staff had "close links" to special courts granting leave permits to adopted children.
"You worked with lawyers, social workers and doctors. Everyone got their part of the cake.
Marta Garcia, former head of the Chilean child welfare agency SENAME.
She describes people associated with the Adoption Center as part of a network where social workers actively sought out children that could be appropriate to be removed.
"They sought pregnant or new-born mothers in marginalized poor areas and offered them the things they needed, or money for schooling for other children, or sometimes cash directly to leave their children," Marta Garcia claims.
The Chilean journalists have also found other examples of methods, for example, a mother had voluntarily left her child to social authorities believing that she would live in a orphanage for a limited period of time. When the mother had applied for her child, it had been adopted for a Swedish family.
But she never got an answer to where the child had taken the road.
According to Marta Garcia at the child welfare authority, there is a crimes of trafficking in human beings that is being resurrected.
- Yes, no doubt. It was a trade of children, she says.
.