Families Devastated by Government Forced Adoption Scheme Deserve Justice

Target: Gabriel Boric, President-elect of Chile

Goal: Investigate allegedly widespread practice of coercive adoptions in Chile and compensate affected families.

The holidays are supposed to be a time for family. Yet as many as 20,000 families in Chile have spent years and decades separated from loved ones…at the government’s order. A few years ago, an investigation began into suspect adoptions that took place during the reign of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The ongoing investigation has yielded deeply disturbing findings. Hundreds of children were taken from their birth parents and put up for adoptions overseas. Investigators fear the cases could climb into the thousands.

Adoption coercion takes place when a mother is manipulated or forced into giving up her child. This practice deprives parents of their choices and of informed consent. The scale of this tactic in Chile reached horrific and unprecedented proportions. The brutal system, spanning over two decades, allegedly involved the cooperation of social workers, judges, and other officials. They supposedly claimed they were trying to diminish poverty in the country, but their actions forever destroyed families. In some cases, parents were even told their children had died at birth.  Reunions have only begun taking place decades later, but for too many this opportunity will never arise.

Calls for a broader investigation, a reparations committee, and criminal accountability have gone mostly unheeded. Sign the petition below to demand Chile’s current leaders do everything in their power to remedy this past mass injustice.

PETITION LETTER:

Dear President-elect Boric,

Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Chilean families have lost time with their children…time that can never be replaced. Many of the families spent years and decades in grief. Some parents died without ever knowing their lost children had been stolen by their own government.

Every day, more harrowing stories of coercive adoptions and their devastating impact emerge. And every day that this government does not answer calls for reparations and accountability is another day lost for countless families. Rectify in some small measure the greatest injustice in this nation’s history.

Help reunite fractured families, rev up a truth and reparations commission, and bring justice to Chileans betrayed and harmed irrevocably by their trusted leaders and fellow citizens.

Sincerely,

[Your Name Here]

Photo Credit: Josh Willink