Chilean State sued for alleged systematic theft of babies during the dictatorship

Just over a year after discovering he had been stolen after birth, Chilean-American sailor Jimmy Thyden González sued the Chilean state on Monday for the alleged crime of child abduction that spanned “decades” and impacted thousands of families in the South American country.

Last year, at the age of 42, Thyden González learned of her origins, which date back to the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) during which thousands of Chilean women had their newborn babies stolen to be given up for illegal adoption.

According to data to which The Associated Press had access to, the Chilean judiciary estimates the number of forced or illegal adoptions at approximately 20,000, while civil society organizations such as Nos Buscamos estimate that more than 50,000 families are affected.

“First of all, we want to start by acknowledging it. That the government recognizes that this happened, that a mistake was made. And from there we can begin to think about what reparations should be,” said Thyden González, who adopted her biological mother’s surname last year, in an interview with AP in Santiago.

Forty-three years ago, hospital workers in the Chilean capital took María Angélica González’s son from her arms immediately after he was born. They later told her that he had died and that they had taken charge of his body.

But in reality the baby was given up for adoption to a family in the United States, a case framed in a dark web of illegal adoptions that, although not exclusive to that period, proliferated under the Pinochet military regime.

Although it is not the first time that Thyden González has filed a complaint with the Santiago Court of Appeals, it comes at a time that could mark a turning point in the investigations into these adoptions that occurred decades ago. This is because on Monday, Judge Guillermo de la Barra took charge of the judicial investigation into the abduction of minors.

Although there are other lawsuits in progress, lawyer Ciro Colombara, a criminal lawyer specializing in human rights cases involving the State and the lawyer leading the complaint, explained that the previous ones were criminal actions aimed at specific situations, while Thyden González’s complaint has a global strategy since it denounces a “systemic situation that lasted for decades.”

“Apart from individual responsibilities, we are interested in determining the responsibility of the State of Chile,” so “this will be a discussion in local courts, national courts, and eventually international human rights courts,” Colombara said.

The judicial investigation in Chile began in 2017 and, to date, more than 1,200 complaints of baby theft and illegal adoptions are being processed in the Santiago Court of Appeals, the majority in the United States and Sweden, sources from the Ministry of Justice told AP.

So far no one has been convicted.

Child trafficking in Chile coincided with many other human rights violations that took place during the 17-year dictatorship of Pinochet, who on September 11, 1973 led a coup to overthrow socialist president Salvador Allende. During the de facto regime at least 3,095 people were killed, according to government figures, and tens of thousands more were tortured or imprisoned for political reasons.

In 2017, then-judge Mario Carroza launched a judicial investigation into the theft and sale of babies, although there has been no progress since then. However, after the arrival of the leftist Gabriel Boric to power in 2022, the case gained momentum amid the president’s commitments to advance and intensify efforts to clarify the circumstances of these adoptions.

The issue marked the recent meeting between Boric and the Prime Minister of Sweden, Ulf Kristersson, who sealed a cooperation agreement to “make progress in sharing information and also begin joint work to address the issue of irregular adoptions” during a tour of Europe by the Chilean president.

The agreement, signed by the foreign ministers of both nations, recognizes for the first time state intervention in crimes, as the document establishes that “those who sign it recognize that irregular adoptions were committed, which had serious consequences on the lives and human rights of the victims and their families, especially on the right to identity.”

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