This is what happened: The adopted children from Chile

ASSIGNMENT REVIEW · Rumors of stolen children. An investigation into crimes against humanity. The story of the stolen adopted children from Chile spans several decades and affects hundreds of divided families. Assignment review is now publishing a new series about what happened when the children were taken to Sweden.

The rumor

There have long been suspicions and rumors that children were stolen from Chile in the 1970s and 80s. In the early 2000s, Chilean journalism student Ana Maria Olivares decides to investigate the rumor and travels around the country to meet mothers who testify that their children disappeared during the dictatorship. In 2003, she publishes her essay in which she describes a network of people who in various ways have taken children from their mothers and then taken the children out of Chile - and that it is not about individual cases, but a pattern.

• New revelations

In 2018, SVT will, together with Chilean journalists, present new revelations about how adopted children in the 1970s and 80s may have been taken without the consent of mothers. Networks of adoptees are created and several Chilean parents get in touch with children whom they say have long believed to be dead or missing. Demands for a Swedish, state investigation are beginning to be made.

• The scope

In Chile, the cases of the stolen children are being investigated as crimes against humanity. The criminal investigation concerns a total of thousands of cases internationally, where over 600 cases concern adoptions to Sweden. In the spring of 2021, after Dagens Nyheter also examined adoptions to Sweden, Minister of Social Affairs Lena Hallengren announced that the government is opening up for a Swedish review.

• Responsibility of the Adoption Center

After the new revelations in 2018 , the Adoption Center replied that there was nothing to indicate that the accusations were true. As for Assignment review, it is also said now that "nothing has come to light that indicates that there has been criminal activity". They also write that they are awaiting the Chilean investigation.

• New series on adoptions

In a new series to be published tomorrow, Friday, Assignment Review addresses the Chilean adoptions. The series examines what happened on the spot in Chile, what has been done since the alarms about stolen children came - and what role a Swedish woman played in carrying out the adoptions. We also get to follow the biological brothers David and Gabriel Henningson who were adopted from Chile to Sweden in 1976. For over 40 years they lived in the belief that their biological mother could not take care of them. After the revelations in 2018, they began to search for the truth about their own adoption - and got a completely different picture of what happened before they came to Sweden. Watch "The Stolen Children" tomorrow on SVT Play .

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