By Nicolás Cortés and Carolina Fernández
SANTIAGO, Nov 11 (Reuters) – Nearly 40 years after three of her children were forcibly taken from her in Chile, Teresita Padilla embraced two of them again on Wednesday, back in the country where they were born.
The reunion was the latest victory for activists who use DNA testing and meticulous document-hunting to uncover thousands of child thefts and irregular adoptions during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.
Authorities estimate as many as 20,000 children were forcibly taken from their parents by the military government that argued forced international adoptions would reduce child poverty.
Padilla’s sons Tim Rolnick, 41, and Travis Murdoch, 37, travelled from Maryland to Chile for the reunion. Murdoch’s twin brother was unable to travel due to severe injuries from a 2013 car accident.
A fourth and eldest son, Alberto, who had stayed with his mother in Chile, had led the search for his brothers but died before he could meet them.
Padilla, 66, wedged between Rolnick and Murdoch on a couch, recalled how she lost her children when she was young and vulnerable.
“First they took Tim,” she said, squeezing the hand of the tall man next to her on the couch. “He was just a tiny baby; they took him because I was completely on my own. And later, I had my twins — they took them, too,” she said.
Genealogical research and DNA testing made the reunion possible with the help of Santiago-based organization Nos Buscamos, part of a broader effort by activists and relatives to reconnect families separated by Chile’s adoption scandal, one of many human rights abuses during Pinochet’s dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.
For Rolnick, meeting his biological mother after decades apart felt like pulling back the curtain on the truth.
“It was just very surreal … it was just shock, in a good way,” he said.
Murdoch said Nos Buscamos helped the brothers process what had happened.
“They sort of explained it all … how this is all real and it’s not fake,” he said. “We were trafficked as babies.”
(Reporting by Nicolás Cortés y Carolina Fernández, Writing by Fabián Cambero and Natalia Siniawski, Editing by Daina Beth Solomon and Aurora Ellis)
