Pinochet dictator: Sara reunites with her children stolen 40 years ago in Chile

Sara Melgarejo was 25 when she gave birth to her first child in a hospital in Santiago, Chile. On October 15, 1983, the woman, with limited resources, was alone in the delivery room as her partner labored. A nurse took her baby away before the new mother could pick him up or hear him cry. He then informs her that he is dead. Sara regretted what happened with the resignation. A year or so later, on November 19, 1984, Melgarejo gave birth again. This time, for a girl. Health personnel immediately removed the animal from the enclosure. The tragic news repeated: the child did not survive.

While Sara mourns her loss, on the other side of America, in a town in Virginia (United States), Rose Hibbert and her husband, Steve Ours, get the call they’ve been waiting for. They could not have children due to health issues, so they decided to adopt. They took a six-week course at an American adoption agency in Washington, where they met a couple who had adopted a dark-skinned, brown-eyed little boy from Chile. They wanted to do the same. The agency put him in touch with a social worker in Chile. She told them about a poor woman who gave her two-week-old son up for adoption. That woman was Sara Melgarejo.

The adoption papers took a few months and, after paying $20,000, the American couple went to Chile for a week to find a new family member. They called him Sean. A year later, the agency contacted Hibbert again and informed her that Sara and her partner had become parents again and were giving the baby girl up for adoption. They gladly accepted. Sean will have a younger sister, Emily. The contact was again a social worker and the procedure cost $16,000. Both children were registered with Chile’s Civil Registry Service and the adoption was processed by Santiago’s Fourth Court of Minor Letters.

It took 40 years for Sara to meet face-to-face with her children, who have grown into loving English-speaking adults, at the Santiago airport last Sunday. Sean and Emily’s efforts to find the biological mother of the adoptive mother were crucial to uncovering the lie. Malgarejo is one of the victims who had their children stolen during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). However research shows that the practice transcends the historical context and does not refer only to that time.

The first complaints came to light in 2014 after a report by Chilean digital media CIPER. Then-magistrate Mario Carroza launched a judicial inquiry into irregular adoptions between 1970 and 1999, most of which were from abroad. He collected hundreds of cases. “We can reach the figure of 20,000 children. We have to see if they have left irregularly or not,” said Carroza, the current Supreme Court minister. The investigation is now being conducted by the Minister of the Court of Appeals in Santiago, Jaime Balmaceda, who explained that the Chilean law was very permissive for the adoption of a child from abroad and that its regulation coincided with the end of the dictatorship.

The National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) published its 2023 report this week where it mentions a case of “child abduction and illegal adoption” by Minister Balmaceda on an extraordinary visit. As of April 2023, it registers 1,000 judicial cases: 757 are being processed and 243 have been completed, according to information provided to INDH by the Supreme Court’s Office for Coordination of Human Rights Cases. No convictions to date.

In search of a biological mother

Sean and Emily’s adoptive parents have always been open with them about their origins. He realized that his biological mother would have wanted him to have a better life in the United States under the Chilean military dictatorship. However, as teenagers they wanted to know more. They went to a Washington adoption agency and its officials tried to stop them from searching. They gave him the option of writing a letter to Sara telling her how his life had been up until then, but he was only young and the task became complicated. Finally, they decided to move on with their lives. “The agency got mad at me because they didn’t want the kids to find their parents. They told me I shouldn’t encourage them,” says Hibbert, the adoptive mother, by phone from North Carolina, where she currently lives with her second husband.

The boys gave up, but Hibbert refused. In 2002 he hired a private detective in Santiago to find Sara Melgarejo, the name appearing on the adoption certificate. However, the attempt was unsuccessful.

For many years, Americans read with apprehension articles talking about irregular adoptions in Chile. Years ago, a piece of journalism detailed Carroza’s investigation and mentioned social worker Telma Uribe, the same person who allegedly managed his adoption. The text also indicates that the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police (PDI) has seized documents from Uribe’s home that include a Washington adoption agency. “That really opened my eyes. Children can be stolen,” says Hilbert, 71, a retiree. That concern, which she shared only with her ex-husband and her current husband, kept her digging in the press for years. Until he found the Connecting Roots Foundation.

Last July, Hilbert called Tyler Graf, who founded Connecting Roots, after learning he had been taken from his Chilean parents and irregularly adopted into his American family. Since then, firefighter Graff has also dedicated himself to helping other victims like him. Hilbert told him his story and he replied: “When you are ready, tell me.” The woman wrote an email to Sean and Emily with all the information she had gathered so far, including links to newspaper articles. “If they want to search, they can find her biological mother alive. Or not. You decide.”

They decided to search.

Two months later, in September, Barbara Vergara, from Connecting Roots, met Malgarejo’s sister through a social network, whom she asked to notify Sara that she had important information about what happened in 1983 and 1984, to give her a clue. Go and rule out a possible scam. Sara called him back. inside Zoom Vergara introduced herself and revealed the true fate of her children. Sara was sure they were dead. “She opened her eyes in disbelief, but with all her heart and soul she wanted it to be true,” Vergara recalls. The process, of course, involves DNA tests of the people involved, showing that they had the same blood.

A new reality

Sara and her two children saw each other through a video call for the first time in 40 years late last year. Juan Luis Inzunza of Connecting Routes also participated in the meeting to translate from Spanish to English and vice versa. But the approach won’t just be virtual. Last Sunday, Sara hugged and kissed them. Sean and Emily went to Santiago to meet her and stay with her for a week at a reunion run by the foundation. “I had blocked everything. What happened at that time hurts me a lot. I couldn’t believe it when they told me they were alive. Also, she looks just like me. “That too,” says an emotional Sara at a hotel in the capital this Monday. Indeed, Emily, who has a Chilean flag tattooed on her arm, is a reflection of her mother.

Sara broke up with the father of her two children over a bad relationship Production of alleged damages. They don’t keep in touch and they don’t want me to meet them. “They are my children,” he says with determination. After those dark years, she teamed up with her current partner, with whom she has three children and two grandchildren who live outside Santiago. Sara has cared for children in private homes since she was young. When the young children grow up and form families of their own, they keep them in their new homes. “They are my therapy. My little ones,” says the woman, as shy as she is sweet. After learning the truth, he describes feeling anger, helplessness, and pain because it caused him “so much damage.” But now, looking at their little adults, all is joy.

The joy of the reunion is shared by Sean and Emily, who constantly hold her mother’s hand. “ZOm That we reinforced that it all felt real. It wasn’t just a fantasy, we were seeing Sara,” says Sean, father of two teenagers who also appeared on the video call to meet their biological grandmother. Emily admits she was very upset when she found out what had happened: “They lied to her when she signed the papers saying it was our death certificate. It’s disappointing that they denied us having it all these years. At first it was all anger, but now I am completely happy that we can start this relationship.

Sean and Emily are warm and open. They want to return as often as possible to obtain Chilean nationality and make up for lost time. Next visit, with extended family. They know they have a place to go. Sara has been preparing her home in San Bernardo, a suburb south of Santiago, for a month to receive them. He bought a bed, pillows and blankets so that everyone would have their own room. He also owns land in Temuco, 690 kilometers south of the capital, where he wants to build a house with his partner. Excited, she already thinks about receiving them there in the future. “He sometimes says things to me in Spanish,” Sara voices the moment her children walk away. And he adds: “He tells me: I love you, mom.”

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