Sweden is particularly concerned by the scandal of babies stolen from their biological parents and sent to Chile, at the time when the dictator Augusto Pinochet, at the head of the country, used theinternational adoption as a weapon to soften the country’s image. LSweden was then the country where adoption was the most practiced in the world if we consider its number of inhabitants. Two thousand two hundred babies came from Chile. They are now adults, and for a few years, thanks to social networks, they have been able to find their biological parents.
A few days ago, for the first time, Chilean officials were in Stockholm to meet these adopted children. Hanna came to Sweden in 1994. For her, the first days of her life were those told by the official documents transmitted to her adoptive parents. “I felt sad for my mother because it was written that she could not take care of meexplains Hanna. And there were also horrible stories about my dad being a bad person.” After finding her biological mother on Facebook, she learns the truth.
“I drove off with the social worker. My mother looked for me everywhere. She came back to the Sisters’ hospital, to the church, and everyone rejected her.
“This social worker is known to have stolen many children“, concludes Hanna. These are not isolated cases. In these cases, the same names of social workers, lawyers and judges are repeated over the years. For these adoptees, finding their biological parents remains a an arduous task because the identity that appears on the official papers is often false or truncated, and these parents have often had to give in to pressure and blackmail like those Hanna described to us. “It was announced that the baby was dead, she says, or that he was suffering from a serious illness and that he had to be treated abroad.
The Swedish position is very ambiguous. The government launched a commission of inquiry at the end of 2021, but refuses to question the Swedish association Adoption centrum, which would have helped to maintain this corrupt network in Chile. Victims’ associations demand that at least all adoptees from Chile be contacted and informed of the existence of these investigations.