Under the Pinochet dictatorship, coercive adoptions became widespread.
Tyler Graf formed an organization to help other adoptees find their birth families. He is one of thousands of people who were part of coercive adoptions carried out during the Pinochet regime.In 1983, Hilda Quezada Godoy gave birth to a baby three months premature in her native Chile. She was told her newborn son died in the maternity ward.
“They were selling kids,” said Constanza del Rio, from the Chilean nonprofit Nos Buscamos. “The moms or the families were lied to by them. They didn't know that the kids were alive. So they're not looking for them.” “I have so many emotions. It's living a life out of my comfort zone right now, going to a foreign country I've never been to before. I don't speak the language fluently,” said Graf. “I have that fear of sitting right in front of my birth mom and not being able to communicate or express my feelings. It's scary.”Graf has spent the past 38 years living in the United States. He has a wife, Brittany, a child, Wyatt, and works for the City of Houston Fire Department.
While few involved have spoken publicly about coercive adoptions, ABC News interviewed a woman, who asked not to use her face or name, who said she was an assistant in the maternity ward of a Chilean hospital. She says she witnessed firsthand as midwives lied to mothers.“The mother would ask to see their baby even if they were dead, but they would tell them no because they already had brought it to the oven to cremate them,” said the woman, in Spanish.
In 2018, Boris Barrera, a member of the Chilean congress, launched an inquiry into the coercive adoptions. His investigation called for a Truth and Reparations Committee and a DNA database -- but no one has been charged with a crime.
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