In Chile, children have been illegally adopted to the West. Kristeligt Dagblad has found the first to arrive in Denmark. Today, they are convinced that there were illegalities associated with their adoptions. The struggle to find the truth is not about revenge, but about becoming whole people By Mathias Sonne Mencke In the sky over Copenhagen on a cold December day in 1978, a plane made ready for landing. On board, five Chilean children were still too young to fasten their seat belts and to understand the turn their lives had taken. That they had left their country of birth and culture to become Danish citizens instead. At that time, they also did not know that they might be victims of illegal adoption. That some of their biological mothers would later in life insist that they had been stolen, just as thousands of Chilean children mysteriously disappeared from their families in the latter half of the 20th century. In the arrival hall of the airport, expectant Danish couples were waiting, who had long wanted a child, but for whom for one reason or another it had not succeeded. Through the adoption agency AC Børnehjælp, they were the first in Denmark to officially adopt from Chile in South America. A country that at this time was primarily known - and infamous - for dictator Augusto Pinochet's brutal treatment of political opponents. The country's political situation has probably not filled the arrival hall very much. For the couples, years of waiting time were reduced to minutes. Soon they could call themselves parents. Soon they were to meet the child they had read descriptions and seen pictures of, and whom they had been told in various terms had been abandoned by their biological families. At least that was the story Ole and Grete Kaalund knew. Manuel Francisco Humeres Salinas was the name of their future son. A four-year-old boy with dark hair and brown eyes who, according to the adoption agency, was born out of wedlock in the fall of 1974, after which he was abandoned by unnamed parents. He was perfect. And in a medical examination dated two years before arriving in Denmark, a doctor was mentioned in addition to the health professional considerations that their future adopted son appeared both "loving", "affectionate", "dark, but quite light" and not least as a child who "Falls easily to".
In 1978, Manuel Tom Kaalund and four other Chilean adopted children landed in Denmark. Today, several of them are convinced that there have been illegalities in connection with their adoption. For the same reason, Manuel Tom Kaalund has decided to find his biological mother so she can be sure he is alive.In 1978, Manuel Tom Kaalund and four other Chilean adopted children landed in Denmark. Today, several of them are convinced that there have been illegalities in connection with their adoption. For the same reason, Manuel Tom Kaalund has decided to find his biological mother so she can be sure he is alive. Photo: Johanne Teglgård
The boy was named Manuel Tom Kaalund. He grew up in a villa in Lyngby in North Zealand, and one day, when he was old enough, he asked his adoptive parents why his original family did not want to know about him. They told what they knew and the adopted son was silent. Being left on a bench in a park by unknown parents does not leave much room for in-depth questions. The problem is just that parts of the story are probably lies. A review of Manuel Tom Kaalund's adoption case reveals several documents that seem contradictory and misleading. And he is far from the only adoptee from Chile who is putting together a puzzle where the pieces do not fit. Two others who were on board the plane in 1978 are Luis Vad-Nielsen, who ended up with a family in Strøby Egede near Køge, and Claudia Alejandra Svane, who came to live in Brønderslev in Vendsyssel. Today, both are convinced that their adoptions were due to a deception. The suspicions are due in particular to the fact that their biological families have told them that they were stolen, but also documents concerning the mediation of adopted children between Denmark and Chile under the Pinochet regime, which Kristeligt Dagblad has been given access to, show, This is the story of missing Chilean children who may have ended up in Denmark. It is the story of a dictatorship state from which children disappeared, of a Danish system that received adopted children without questioning the documentation. And then there is the story of adopted children who have grown up and are looking for answers. “All my life I have thought that my biological mother gave up on me. And for that reason, I did not want to search for her. Now I can not help it. The thought that I might have been stolen against her will I cannot bear. I myself have children and think about what trauma she must have. I want to find her so she can see I'm alive. Both for my own sake and hers, ”says Manuel Tom Kaalund. The suspicion of fraud in the Danish adoption cases from Chile has been nurtured by a Chilean commission of inquiry that has unequivocally determined that children from the 1950s until the late 1990s disappeared as part of illegal adoptions to the West. In all, the Chilean authorities estimate that at least 8,000 children disappeared under suspicious conditions during Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. NGOs estimate that number is much higher. The adoptions, according to the commission, involve the entire Chilean system: from judges and lawyers to social workers, health professionals, orphanages and the Catholic Church, and in the wake of the cover-up, the Chilean government has launched an investigation for prosecution. Self-justice has attracted attention in most of the western world, and in February the Swedish Minister of Social Affairs, Lena Hallengren, stated in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, that the country's government wants a bullet hole of the overall Swedish adoption practice over four decades. And in Denmark, in the autumn, the National Board of Appeal most unusually called on all adopted children from Chile with suspected illegalities regarding their adoption to make contact. One of the adoption cases that the National Board of Appeal is reviewing at the time of writing is Manuel Tom Kaalunds. We will return to that. First a trip to Chile, where for years the suspicion of missing children was known. In newspaper articles you could read about mothers who claimed that their children had been stolen, just as viewers in the Chilean counterpart to the DR program "Traceless" could often observe how adopted children's stories about the reasons behind their adoptions did not match the biological family interpretations. However, the testimonies did not resonate with the population. The biological mothers often came from poor backgrounds, and the allegations of fraud and child abduction lack credibility. It was therefore not until 2014, when the Chilean media Ciper was able to document that a group of children allegedly declared stillborn under the Pinochet regime had in fact been adopted to the West without the permission of their parents. The births and subsequent adoptions were led by a Catholic priest who, in conjunction with several doctors, removed babies from mothers at birth and then told them that their infants were stillborn. This often happened to women from more affluent, conservative families, where births out of wedlock were considered shameful. And in his defense, the priest maintained that he was only doing what the fathers of the daughters had asked him to do. The revelations started an avalanche. Associations such as Nos Buscamos (we are looking for each other) and Hijos y Madres del Silencio (Children and Mothers of Silence) arose and mobilized hundreds of mothers with the common denominator that they had all lost a child under mysterious circumstances. The frustrations of the population grew, and the Chilean parliament took the consequence and set up the aforementioned commission, which, based on thousands of testimonies from mothers, relatives, lawyers and social workers, stated that families have been systematically deprived of children for adoption. The Commission identified four common methods used by doctors and social workers, among others, to provide for children. Common to them was that the mothers in question were in more or less defenseless positions. The first method was for the social authorities to readily declare parents unfit and forcibly remove their children, after which the children disappeared or were declared dead. The second method was that, for example, the authorities or the church "enticed" or "blackmailed" the poor to sign papers they did not understand the meaning of. Third method was sheer kidnapping of children. And lastly, many mothers experienced that their children were lied to dead after births or hospitalizations.
In her spare time, Claudia Alejandra Svane has helped other adoptees find their biological origins. It is hard mentally to shake up the past, she says, and mentions that she knows several who over the years have struggled with, for example, mental problems or abuse.In her spare time, Claudia Alejandra Svane has helped other adoptees find their biological origins. It is hard mentally to shake up the past, she says, and mentions that she knows several who over the years have struggled with, for example, mental problems or abuse. Photo: Johanne Teglgård
One of those who was lied to dead was two-year-old Claudia Alijandra Gallardo Vergara. She was later given the name Claudia Alejandra Svane, when she came to Denmark and moved in with her adoptive parents in Brønderslev in 1978. She describes growing up in North Jutland as “someone you can not put a finger on. It was safe and full of love. ” "Still," she says, "have I always felt a rootlessness and from an early age asked myself self-blaming questions, such as is it my own fault that my biological parents did not want me?". Eventually, Claudia Alejandra Svane acknowledged that she had to have certainty if she was to be able to move on with her life. She reviewed her adoption case and found that she was apparently born out of wedlock and that her biological mother had handed her over to the state orphanage Casa Nacional del Niño in Chile's capital, Santiago. A place with which the then adoption agency AC Børnehjælp had established a collaboration in 1978, and which up to and including 1981 approved 76 away adoptions to Denmark. However, the fruitful collaboration came to an abrupt end. Access to documents in the dissemination of Chilean children to Denmark shows that AC Børnehjælp and Casa Nacional del Niño immediately suspended the collaboration in 1982 "on the basis of suspicion of illegal behavior". Apparently, it was the Chilean authorities themselves who suspended the dissemination, as Chilean media, according to a document from the Danish embassy in Santiago, described illegal "child traffic". AC Børnehjælp's Christmas card for potential adopters the same year did not mention the suspension of the Chilean adoption agency and the suspicion of irregularities. It was not until the following year that it was established that the communication had been "reopened", but "certainly not without problems, and that only a small number of children are still coming". Of the total of 111 Chilean adopted children who have come to Denmark over time, Manuel Tom Kaalund, Claudia Alejandra Svane, Luis Vad-Nielsen and 73 other children arrived from Chile before the placement from the orphanage was suspended. It was the then Directorate of Civil Justice, which supervised the Danish adoption agency in the 1970s and 1980s. However, there is nothing to indicate that the Danish adoptive families were informed of the suspicion, or that the official team "reacted" to the suspicion. The National Board of Appeal writes this in an email response to the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Interior, as Kristeligt Dagblad has seen. AC Børnehjælp is today merged with DanAdopt under the name DIA - Danish International Adoption. Here, on the basis of the new information, the adoption agency from Chile has been reviewed and "no information or articles have been found that illegal activities have taken place at Casa Nacional del Niño". In a statement sent to the National Board of Appeal, however, the DIA writes that in the "cases from Casa National del Niño it is not primarily stated whether consent has been given or not" from the biological parents. Founder and director of the organization Chilean Adoptees Worldwide Alejandro Quezada calls Casa Nacional del Niño one of the most "powerful" children's institutions at any given time. He himself was adopted to the Netherlands in 1979, after he, according to his biological family, was lied to dead for a health check shortly after birth. About the state orphanage Casa Nacional del Niño, he says that "I have not yet come across an adoption from there, where there have been no elements of deception beyond the dissemination". Both Manuel Tom Kaalund, Claudia Alejandra Svane and Luis Vad-Nielsen lived at Casa Nacional del Niño before coming to Denmark. At the same time, their adoptive parents were represented by the same lawyer in Chile: Maria Luisa Avendaño. A well-known name in the Scandinavian adoption agency from Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2019, she thus appeared in a comprehensive reconstruction, where the investigative Chilean media Ciper documented, among other things, how Chilean lawyers coordinated with day care workers and social workers to collect infants from orphanages, hospitals and poor homes, after which they ended up in Sweden. Of course , Claudia Alejandra Svane did not know all this when she started looking for her biological family a little over 20 years ago. She trusted that the information in her adoption papers was truthful and that she had truly been given up. If one is to believe Claudia Alejandra Svane's biological mother, Viviana Vergara, however, that information is a lie from end to end. She never gave up her daughter for adoption. On the other hand, throughout her life she has believed that her daughter died when she was two years old. The alleged fraud happened one day, Viviana Vergara took her daughter to the emergency room to treat a wound that had become inflamed. The mother's cousin took her to the hospital and confirms the story. The daughter was hospitalized, and the next day Claudia Alejandra Svane's mother and aunt came to pick her up. They collapsed when a doctor told them the daughter was dead. The mother shouted and screamed and demanded to see the body, but the doctor refused. The daughter's body was to be used for research. For the following time, Viviana Vergara came daily to have the body of her daughter handed over, but each time she went home empty-handed. Eventually, she realized that her two-year-old daughter was dead. "Imagine that I show up after she thought I had been dead for so many years. It was like blowing up a bomb in her life. She actually had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized, ”says Claudia Alejandra Svane, who is now 45 years old. The two underwent DNA tests that confirmed the relationship, and Claudia Alejandra Svane managed to be reunited with her biological mother and little brother via video service Skype, before the mother died shortly after. Today she helps other Danes who were adopted from Chile to find their origin. A clarification work that she believes the Danish state should be involved in. "Even though I know my story, I think that we as a country need to find out what's head and tail in all this, so that we can reach a reasonable agreement on our storytelling. For many, the suspicion of being stolen is traumatic, and here it is important to remember that it is not only us adoptive children, but also our adoptive families and the biological families who have been led behind the light, ”she says. That the demand for children for adoption in Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s exceeded the supply can be read in the letters the adopters on the country's waiting lists received. In 1978, for example, the office manager at AC Børnehjælp wrote that “unfortunately we must realistically realize that there is a growing disparity between the number of applicants who want to adopt a child from abroad and the number of children available for adoption ( ...). On the other hand, we are under constant pressure from our contacts abroad to also be able to place slightly older children in the age group 3-6 years and possibly 7 years. ”