While exact number of cases is unknown, human rights groups believe at least 20,000 babies were taken between the 1960s and 1990s.
Between the 1960s and 1990s in Chile, human rights groups believe that upwards of 20,000 babies were taken from mostly low-income mothers and adopted out to unsuspecting parents in foreign countries.
The practice amounted to an elaborate human-trafficking operation that involved a network of midwives, doctors, social workers, nuns, priests and judges, many of whom got rich off the scheme while fulfilling a key goal of Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s regime to make Chile an economic success.
The practice came to light in 2014, when an investigative news agency called CIPER wrote about some cases involving a priest and a doctor. That’s also when the stolen babies, now adults, started learning that they weren’t voluntarily given up like they always believed.
Since 2014, nonprofits say they’ve helped reunite at least 650 people who were taken from their Chilean mothers and adopted to families in the U.S., Canada, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Peru and Australia.