Chile’s stolen children: not a dictatorship story

A team of investigative journalists from Italy, France and Chile carried out the first cross-border investigation to prove that thousands of children were adopted irregularly in Chile, from the 1970s to the present day, aided by a system involving religious groups, social workers, judges, private foundations and international adoption agencies. The dictatorship accelerated the mechanisms in place that supported this system, while more recent evidence shows that similar practices have continued until at least 2022.

The team followed the issue for six months and got access to thousands of classified judicial files that show how the trafficking was managed by a network of perpetrators. Thanks to dozens of interviews, including the Chilean investigative police and the Minister of Justice, they were able to reveal how their modus operandi has survived and continued to this day.

Among the more than 30 testimonies they have collected in the last six months, one is from a woman who arrived in Italy at the age of 16 and was held captive by her “adoptive parents”, who never officially adopted her. In other cases, there were men and women, who, as children, were sent to France, Italy, the United States, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and even Australia. There are desperate mothers trying to find their children vanished from the state-funded residences of «SENAME» (Chile’s official Childhood protection service). There is a nun who managed an institution where abuses were committed and who now lives peacefully in Rome and has worked in the Vatican in the past. There is a priest who set up an organisation which sent babies around the world since the 70's and continues to operate under another name, despite information the Chilean police has on him.

Photo: Elena Basso, Santiago del Chile, 2023: A demonstration of mothers whose children were stolen.