Mirjam (49) found her biological family after a long search: 'My identity was taken away from me twice'

Mirjam (49) found her biological family in Chile after a long search. But thirteen years later, a DNA test shows that she is linked to the wrong family. “It turned out that nothing was known about me, there was really nowhere to find a line to the family to which the nun had linked me.”

“When I got the results from MyHeritage a year and a half ago on Good Friday, I was transfixed. Surely it couldn't be true that the siblings I'd found after a long search wouldn't be biologically related?

After a night of lying awake, I called MyHeritage. "Can you check again if this is correct?" I asked them. The lady on the line was very sorry, but had to disappoint me. "There's really no match," she said. "These people you did the DNA test with aren't biological relatives." I got into bed and pulled the covers over my head. I could only cry, from the bottom of my soul.

Twice my identity had been taken from me. The first time when I was illegally adopted from Chile. The second time by a Dutch nun I had engaged to find my biological family.”

Huge shock

“I knew from an early age that I was adopted from Chile. We just never talked about it at home. But when my adoptive father died when I was thirteen, I had a strong feeling of wanting to know who my biological family was. I have sent a letter to the Dutch woman who had taken care of me as a baby in the children's home in Chile and had arranged for me to come to the Netherlands at the time.

My adoptive mother still wrote to her regularly. But the answer was not what I had hoped. "Do you want me to go to jail?" she wrote. 'You should stop asking questions and be thankful for the life you've been given in the Netherlands.'

Her answer was a huge shock. My adoptive mother offered no support in this. She thought I should leave it at that. As a teenager, I didn't know how to continue the search on my own. The only door I had was now closed.”

Quest in Chile

“When I was twenty I met my partner and I had a son. The feeling of wanting to know where I came from became even stronger. When I looked at my child, my heart ached even more for the love my mother had let me miss. Was she still alive? Did she miss me? Was it a conscious choice to give me up? My son was also a kind of mirror for the first months of my life. I was about six months old when I was adopted. All his early milestones like sitting down or laughing for the first time made me think of myself at that age. I had been to Chile then.

I made attempt after attempt to find out more about my adoption and came into contact with the Spoorloos program. But they couldn't help me, my file simply didn't offer enough leads.”

Thousands of euros

“I heard through International Social Services about two Dutch sisters who started looking for people with a difficult adoption file on a private basis. One of the sisters was a nun and ran a children's home in Chile. I was at my wits end and contacted them. They have been searching for three years.

I reimbursed the costs, which eventually amounted to thousands of euros. It was difficult, they kept saying, but in old Chilean archives they had found lines that they followed. And then suddenly I got the message: the nun had found my family! My heart was racing when I heard that. Would I finally know who I was, where I came from?

Maryam Hassouni (37) broken by film and TV industry

'The first time I thought it was an incident'

The nun told me that my birth mother had recently died of a heart attack, my father was from the Pinochet regime. My mother worked for him in town and had cheated on him. She advised against looking for him, because he was not pure coffee. But in the country lived two brothers and a sister of mine, whom my mother had with another man.

"Are you willing to go to Chile for a meeting?" she asked me. She didn't have to ask me twice. She would come along to interpret. She had to be paid for and an extra donation to her children's home was apparently part of it. But she had found my family, I thought it was worth every penny.”

Mirjam's whole story can be found in Flair 44-2022. Do you want to order it? Then you can here .

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