Thousands of newborns were taken from their original mothers and sold for adoption, mostly to foreign families from the US and Europe, under General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, which lasted from 1973 to 1990. They are referred to as “The Children of Silence” in Chile. And today, for the first time in Chile’s history, a judge declared he was bringing charges against those who are accused of stealing infants from the nation.
According to a press release issued by Chile’s judiciary on Monday, Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, a judge in charge of the investigation at the Santiago Court of Appeals, “determined that in the 1980s” there was a network of health officials, Catholic priests, lawyers, social workers, and even a judge who identified and delivered stolen babies from primarily poor mothers and sold them into adoption to foreign couples for as much as $50,000. According to the judicial statement, the inquiry centres on the city of San Fernando in central Chile and concerns two stolen newborns who were given to foreign couples.
The network reportedly concentrated on “abducting or stealing infants for monetary gain” in order to “take them out of the country to different destinations in Europe and the US,” according to the statement released by Chile’s judiciary.
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