Illegal Adoptions : Chile's stolen children

They lived in children's homes or were taken away from their mothers immediately after birth: 20,000 Chilean children were adopted to Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly illegally. For the victims, the consequences are traumatic, to this day.

"My adoptive mother and father told me that my biological mother allegedly left me in the hospital and fled to Argentina," reports Ruth Corinna Stein. "Then I was taken to various foster families, put in the children's home in La Unión, from where I was adopted."

The place where Ruth Corinna Stein lives seems like a paradox to her story: Homberg (Efze) in North Hesse is pure idyll. A gentle, hilly landscape envelops the well-preserved medieval town, in which half-timbered houses are lined up.

The 36-year-old can be called by her middle name Corinna. Long, dark hair frames her friendly face. She was adopted from southern Chile when she was three years old. She learned that from her adoptive father when she was six, she recalls. "We were sitting in his office or in her office, in any case we were sitting in one of those rooms, and then he suddenly said to me: Listen, we're not your real parents, there's your biological mother, who is you didn't want to, and that's all I know. I thought so, they were white, I was always completely brown, and people always questioned who your mum and dad are. And then someone once brought a stupid saying about you don't belong here."

Brought to Germany at the age of seven

Her boyfriend, who is about the same age, is sitting next to Corinna at the kitchen table. Gonzalo Ruppert is also adopted – from Bolivia. The interview takes place in his apartment. A huge Bolivian flag hangs on the wall. The two agree that their common destiny brought them together.

Like Corinna, Gonzalo knows very little about the early years of his life. Except that like she was in the children's home in the Bolivian capital La Paz, he came to Germany at the age of seven, "and they made me two years younger and that's how I was able to get out of Bolivia".

Presumably, the children's home in La Paz was only allowed to place children abroad until they were five years old. So they made Gonzalo two years younger. He points to his scarred, small hands. "When I came to Germany, I came to the clinic because my hands and feet were so trapped." Then he was operated on. Here you can still see the scars on the hands and feet. "I was put in shoes that were too small."

"I don't even know my real name"

The doctor in Germany was able to determine from Gonzalo's bones that he was two years older than stated in his documents. That means he would have to be 38 instead of 36 today. His Bolivian name Gonzalo Lenares was probably given to him in the children's home.

From his documents there is not the slightest indication of his origin. "I don't even know my real name," says Gonzalo.

Corinna had more clues about her origins in her papers and followed them up. At least her mother's name is on the birth certificate. But something fundamental is also missing in her documents: the release of her mother for adoption.

Before Corinna was old enough to search for her roots herself, she endured a terrible childhood with her adoptive parents. "Ms. Stein is an alcoholic and was in three rehab clinics when I was living there," she says. Her father was diagnosed with cancer when she was seven years old and died very quickly. "After that it just went downhill. She drank, I got hit, I got locked up and treated like a dog.”

She found her family via "Please get in touch!"

At the age of ten or eleven, Corinna went to a children's home in Frankfurt am Main, and two years later to a foster family. She also felt out of place there, she says: "Because I've had to go through so much. Her biological children were there too. I missed warmth and closeness.”

In contrast to her adoptive family, the foster family supported Corinna in finding her birth parents. First traces ran in the sand. In 2018, Corinna started a new attempt and applied to the SAT1 show "Please get in touch!". Presenter Julia Leischik is looking for missing or lost relatives in front of the camera.

In 2019, Corinna flew to Chile with the film team, which actually took her to her birth family. "You see all the compatriots and think: This is where you belong." She felt at home right away, says Corinna. "The country is totally overwhelming, even the smallest ant was overwhelming for me."

Emotional chaos when meeting with family

From Santiago, they drove four to five hours by bus south to Empedrado, a community near the town of Talca. Corinna remembers the village character of the place, sandy streets and stray dogs.

The extended family met there at her mother's house: her brother, half-sister and half-brother, her mother and other relatives. "It was all a mess. I didn't even know what to feel. I was overwhelmed. I could have cried, I could have laughed. At first I was as rigid as a pillar of salt, then hugs, crying, pure emotional chaos.”

Corinna communicated with her reunited family with hands and feet, because she doesn't speak Spanish yet. Her stay in Chile lasted three days.

Incorrect and incomplete papers

Gonzalo breathes heavily as Corinna tells her story. With his false and incomplete papers, even a Sat1 research team does not know where to start looking for his birth family in Bolivia. "I was in Bolivia with a friend in 2010 and was also in my former children's home Fatima La Paz. Just to see how it is there and whether anything has changed in the last 20 years," says Gonzalo. "The dining room is still standing, and the one tree that was there is still standing. The rest is all gone. There's something new there now."

The people who cared for him there as a child had died or could no longer be found. Gonzalo wants to continue his quest, but doesn't know how.

Corinna is still in touch with her siblings and would like to travel to Chile again soon, and then for several weeks. Because they continue to torment the open questions that they could not clarify during their first short stay: "Why was I adopted? Why were my siblings allowed to stay in Chile? Why am I here in Germany? That's my main question, because I don't really understand how that could have happened, how I got here in the first place. She is my mother and should have signed all of this, also agreed that I should come here. Apparently she wasn't."

The birth mothers were lied to

Camila Schwarz was adopted from Chile to Switzerland. The 35-year-old now lives in Neuenegg near Bern. She moves her wheelchair nimbly. "I was born with spina bifida," says Camila. "This is especially the case if the mother didn't take enough folic acid during pregnancy, and that's pretty much always the case with malnutrition."

Many children in Chile struggle with spina bifida. Depending on which lumbar vertebra you have, some people can walk with a walker, while others are paralyzed from the neck down. "They can't do anything but talk. I'm so in the middle. I'm actually very lucky, I have to say."

Camila smiles optimistically. She proudly shows the large tattoos on her arms. "Music was my first love" is written on one upper arm. This John Miles song gives her strength to push through, she says. The other upper arm shows a small and a large hummingbird close together. The bird species is widespread in Chile. They represent mother and daughter, explains Camila.

Like Corinna, Camila was able to locate her family in Chile. Since then, she knows for sure that her birth mother definitely didn't want to put her up for adoption. "They told her I died after I was born. They lied to her,” says Camila, “and she said she always felt that I was alive, that I was still here, because she never got my body back.”

Camila was born near Valdivia, about 850 kilometers south of the capital Santiago, in Santa Eliza Hospital. "This hospital is not very popular because of corruption and poor care et cetera."

Camila was then adopted in Switzerland when she was four years old. What happened to her in the early years of her life or where she was is like a big black hole for her. “I first came to Basel to live with a family. When they said it wasn't possible, I was fighting with their son, I went to a foster family in Kloten in Zurich. They then placed me with the Schwarz family.”

When she came to her adoptive parents in Herrliberg on Lake Zurich at the age of four and a half, Camila could not yet speak German: "But I didn't want to speak Spanish anymore either. Because I was told that if I didn't learn German, I would have to go back to a home in Chile. But I couldn't speak German yet, so I didn't talk."

Bullied as the only foreigner in the village

Neuenegg is a small town with block-like buildings. Camila likes to stroll in her wheelchair along the green path along the Sense that borders the community to the south. Forested mountains rise on the horizon of the river rippling over stones and rocks.

As if withdrawn, Camila talks about her life with her adoptive parents. They actually tried very hard. “My mother did a lot of handicrafts. But for me it was very superficial. I somehow never got to tell them I love you. I was bullied at school because I was the only foreigner in the village at the time.”

Her adoptive parents had promised to travel to Chile with her if she passed her apprenticeship as a commercial clerk. “I moved to Bern right after my apprenticeship. I got married when I was 21.” The parents pay for the wedding. "I still thought: Why? I can actually pay for it myself. Then I asked when are we going to Chile. And then they said: You, we paid for your wedding, there is no more trip to Chile. I could never forgive them for that.”

Camila found her family through Facebook

The bond with the man Camila married did not last long. That was the last straw. "I got dumped again. I've been abandoned all my life. Nobody wanted me. Then I also went to psychiatry.”

Back in her barrier-free new apartment, Camila opens the balcony door. Spicy, fresh rainy air blows in. Camila tells how she overcame her crisis and found new courage to search for her biological family in Chile. "A colleague who travels a lot in South America spoke Spanish relatively well." Camila told her that the youth welfare office was of little help to her. “But in South America everyone has Facebook. Then I gave her some information, which she translated into Spanish. Her colleague in Chile then posted it all over Facebook pages in Chile, including sales pages.”

There is no trace of the biological father

After a short time one of her sisters actually got in touch. They spoke on the phone via video, and in 2018 Camila flew to Chile for the first time. In San José de Mariquina in the south of the country she met her huge family of origin. “They were really very sweet and organized a party for me and took me on trips. In the end, everyone came to the airport.”

As with Corinna, there is no trace of Camila's biological father. The family no longer has contact with him. A year later, Camila flew back to Chile. While her relationship with her biological mother remains somewhat distant, she is in almost daily contact with her half-brother Francisco, she says with a smile. "He just knows everything about me and is also interested in me." It's similar with her biological brother. “I write most with my brothers. You would do anything for me.”

Between two worlds

Camila tells of her conscious decision to enjoy the rest of her life. Her paralysis steadily increases. “The doctors said it can progress very quickly. Someday I'll be bedridden. But that's why I still enjoy the time with my siblings while I can."

On the other hand, Camila is grateful that she lives in Switzerland with her disability. Chile is not a country for wheelchair users. "I couldn't drive a car. I had no proper education. I wouldn't have a normal job. I wouldn't have social security. I wouldn't have my own apartment. I would vegetate in a home. It's great in Switzerland, but it's also nice in Chile, my soul stayed there."

Camila doesn't really feel at home anywhere, but somehow torn between the two worlds. “My adoptive family loves me differently than my own family. When I was in Chile I cried with joy. They really love me a lot.” In Switzerland it is something different. "They like me, but I'm not their own. I don't really hear anything from my cousins ??here in Switzerland either, but I do hear them regularly from Chile. It was nice to feel really loved for the first time.”

Camila would have loved to travel to Chile again long ago. But the corona pandemic is currently thwarting her plans. She only has sporadic contact with her adoptive parents.

"My adoptive mother was blown away that the adoption didn't go smoothly," says Camila. "Sometimes I have the feeling that my adoptive mother thinks I'm blaming her for not doing it right. But she was the third family. It's the least she can do about it. If so, that would have been the first two.”

Camila still doesn't know who is responsible for stealing her from the hospital as a baby and putting her up for adoption. While searching for her birth family, Camila has also reached out to Chilean Adoptees Worldwide (CAW). The organization was founded in 2018 with the aim of helping Chilean adoptees in Europe to find their birth families.

The three founding members of CAW are themselves adoptees from Chile: Alejandro Quezada was adopted in the Netherlands, Jessica Pinchera in Belgium and María Angélica Stodart in Sweden. The three meet about once a month in Alejandro's study south of Amsterdam to share their findings.

“Only one percent of cases ended legally”

María Angélica points to the long list of Chilean adoptees who are looking for their parents. Without naming names, because data protection has top priority. Nearly 500 people have contacted the organization so far. But she assumes that around 20,000 Chilean children were adopted abroad between the mid-1970s and mid-1990s. “Only one percent of the cases we work on have expired legally, or it is an adoption that was consummated in Chile. We have now found two or three cases where the adoptive parents were even involved in the illegal process. But most adoptive parents had no idea.”

Like Camila, Alejandro now knows for sure that he was stolen from his mother's hospital in Paillaco, southern Chile. To gain this certainty, the now 42-year-old learned Spanish fluently and flew to Chile several times.

In 2014 he moved there for five years. "I wanted to research everything to do with my adoption and who was involved," he says. "I was really willing to turn the country upside down to find out who was responsible for my case."

Children were taken away from poor families

He found that a Dutch nun, now back in the Netherlands, was involved in stealing many babies from their mothers and placing them for adoption abroad.

Alejandro is still unclear about her motives. The social worker who also helped with his robbery made good money, his investigation revealed. “The whole public system was involved: hospitals, notaries, lawyers, judges. The public system, which is designed to protect people, stole children and sent them abroad.”

The Chilean press became aware of Alejandro's case. In 2016, the first shocking report appeared on Tele 13, a Chilean television channel. Alejandro's biological mother also appears in the report, saying: “It is very painful for me to tell this story. I am a mother of five children but one has been pronounced dead, my first child.”

Many babies were pronounced dead

In rural areas in southern Chile in particular, numerous babies have been declared dead, Alejandro cites a study by a Chilean historian. It is striking that the children were often taken away from poor families, including Mapuche families, the indigenous population of Chile. Probably because these families didn't have the means to fight back when in doubt.

In Chile, CAW's partner organization, "Nos Buscamos" - in English "We are looking for each other" - is looking for biological families of adoptees. The 20 volunteers from "Nos Buscamos" have made contact with politicians and the judiciary in order to push ahead with the investigation of the illegal adoptions.

Torture, murder, disappearances were on the agenda of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship between 1973 and 1990. Illegal or irregular adoptions abroad also existed before and after the dictatorship, but they peaked during this period.

Today, due to stricter laws, adopting a Chilean child abroad is no longer so easy. But the processing of illegal foreign adoptions is still in its infancy. None of those involved in the kidnapping are in jail.

And the receiving countries? In terms of population, Maria Holz suspects that the Netherlands, Sweden and Belgium are the countries in Europe that have adopted the most children from abroad. She worked for a long time at the children's charity "terre des hommes" in Osnabrück in the adoption agency. Today she is retired.

Between 1967 and 1997, almost 3,000 children were placed through the state-approved aid organization. The first children came from Vietnam back then. But most adoptions didn't happen through official channels, says Holz. "There's Chile, Colombia, Peru. Not every private adoption is illegal. Many also ran regularly. But basically you could no longer understand whether the papers were forged. Which German judge can tell whether the Chilean birth certificate is correct or not?”

A register of international adoptions has only existed since 2001

Figures on foreign adoptions are also difficult to determine retrospectively because many adoption centers have only been keeping a register since 2001. Maria Holz worked for a long time in the follow-up support of the adoptees, organized meetings and trips to the countries of origin.

"In the early days of international adoption, nobody was prepared for these children to start looking for their roots," she says. "It has always been assumed that the children are now out of misery, they will get love, they will get a family. They get exactly what a child needs, so it's good."

At the end of October 2021, CAW invited to the first international zoom conference. Politicians from Sweden, Denmark and Belgium also took part. "It's a huge scandal that happened, and for me this is a violation of human rights," Danish local politician Christina Birkemose said at the conference. “We need to bring the issue of these adoptions to the European Parliament. We must take responsibility for finding the identity of Chilean adoptees, for those who want it. Because we let happen what happened. I am absolutely pro-adoption. But only if it expires legally. If there are any irregularities, I don’t see that as adoption, it’s human trafficking and I am against human trafficking.”

Private adoptions have been banned since 2021

When asked by the Family Ministry whether Germany was somehow addressing the issue at European level, a spokeswoman wrote:

“The issue of international adoptions is currently not dealt with at European level. In any case, there are no bodies in which the governments of the European states are involved in which such questions are currently on the agenda. Naturally, there is also an exchange on questions of practice under the Hague Adoption Convention. However, this does not happen at government level and does not involve German politicians.”

After all, so-called private adoptions have been banned in Germany since April 1, 2021. The Netherlands has completely stopped international adoptions. Of course, human traffickers cannot be stopped by laws either. A tightening of the law is one thing, the question of responsibility and aftercare is another.

For Alejandro Quezada, as well as for the other members of CAW, Jessica and María Angélica, tracing their origins was existential. In the meantime, Alejandro no longer wanted to live, he says in retrospect. “We see from the people we help that 75 to 80 percent are mentally damaged in some way. There is no adequate support for them. Such a thing does not exist.”

Are your parents still alive or not?

In the case of Corinna and Gonzalo, in addition to being uprooted and unanswered questions about their identity, there are also experiences of violence in their adoptive families. You need professional help.

Violence runs like a red thread through Corinna's life. The fathers of her first two children were violent. The third comes from a rape. "I was often sad and then I hurt myself because I couldn't handle it," she says. It helped her that she had her daughter: "For me that was my baby, there is someone who needs me, who loves me, who loves without ifs and buts. That's the greatest thing that could have happened to me."

The fact that Gonzalo has no idea who his parents were is hard for him to bear: "I can't let it go. If I know they are alive: okay. Or if they're not alive, then I can put an end to that too. Then the topic is gone. But as long as it isn't, it gnaws at me."

Gonzalo has to end the interview at some point because he starts shaking so much. For the future, Corinna would primarily like to be mentally healthy again: "And secondly, to have more contact with my family so that we can see each other more often, so that my children can get to know my family and my culture."