Santiago, Chile – Chris Flaherty remembers clearly the phone call in which he learned about his biological family. It was in October 2022, and he had just finished a day of teaching high school classes.
Tyler Graf, who founded the NGO Connecting Roots, told Flaherty he had three brothers from the town of Quemchi, on the island of Chiloe in southern Chile. Just 12 hours before Graf reached him over the phone, Flaherty’s birth mother — who had long believed her son to be dead — had passed away from complications related to COVID-19.
“I wasn’t really sad at that moment; I was more shocked,” Flaherty told Al Jazeera. “I never knew her, I never had a picture. But it was only when I announced the news to my wife and children that night that I broke down, just stating out loud that my mother died.”
Throughout her life, Flaherty’s biological mother thought her son had died shortly after being born. According to the family, doctors falsely confirmed the baby’s death, while he was covertly whisked away to be sold illegally for international adoption in the United States.
“Even now, I don’t know if I’m ready to really accept that, emotionally,” Flaherty said.
His story is not an isolated one. During Chile’s dictatorship, from 1973 to 1990, thousands of children are believed to have been stolen from their mothers and put up for overseas adoption.
Link from www.aljazeera.com