CHILE
Santiago Times
By Amelia Wade
Published On : Fri, May 23rd, 2014
Priest Gerardo Joannon at the center of the scandal has apologized for a network that stole children from unwed mothers during the 70s and 80s
Chile’s child protection agency is working with detectives to determine how many children were involved in a network within the Catholic church which put babies up for adoption in the 1970s and 1980s without their parents’ knowledge, telling the biological mothers that their child had died.
A website has also been set up to help alleged victims — in just over a month more than 1,150 potential victims have come forward, 700 of which are children looking for their parents.
The stolen children network was uncovered by the Centro de Investigación Periodística (Ciper) which published a series of articles last month. The stories said in some cases the mothers were persuaded that giving up their child was the best choice for them, but in others they were told the baby was stillborn or had died soon after childbirth. The cases took place during the dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet and it is not known how many children were stolen.
Most of the cases now being investigated date from the 1970s and 1980s, but some were reported in 2005.
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