19/03/2021 Manuel, Claudia og Luis ankom som de første chilenske adoptivbørn i 1978.

tivbørn i 1978. I dag frygter de, at de var stjålet | Kristeligt Dagblad

Manuel, Claudia and Luis arrived as the first

Chilean adopted children in 1978. Today, they
fear they were stolen

In Chile, children have been illegally adopted to the

West. Kristeligt Dagblad has found the first to arrive in
Denmark. Today, they are convinced that there were
illegalities associated with their adoptions. The struggle
to find the truth is not about revenge, but about
becoming whole people

By Mathias Sonne Mencke

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19/03/2021 Manuel, Claudia og Luis ankom som de første chilenske adoptivbørn i 1978. I dag frygter de, at de var stjålet | Kristeligt Dagblad

In the sky over Copenhagen on a cold December day in 1978, a plane made ready for
landing. On board, five Chilean children were still too young to fasten their seatbelts
themselves and to understand what turn their lives had taken. That they had left their
country of birth and culture to become Danish citizens instead. At that time, they also did
not know that they might be victims of illegal adoption. That some of their biological
mothers would later in life insist that they had been stolen, just as thousands of Chilean
children mysteriously disappeared from their families in the latter half of the 20th century.

In the airport's arrival hall, expectant Danish couples were waiting, who had long wanted
a child, but for whom for one reason or another it had not succeeded. Through the
adoption agency AC Børnehjælp, they were the first in Denmark to officially adopt from
Chile in South America. A country that at this time was primarily known - and infamous -
for dictator Augusto Pinochet's brutal treatment of political opponents. The country's
political situation has probably not filled the arrival hall very much. For the couples, years
of waiting time were reduced to minutes. Soon they could call themselves parents. Soon
they were to meet the child they had read descriptions and seen pictures of, and whom
they had been told in various terms had been abandoned by their biological families.

At least that was the story Ole and Grete Kaalund knew. Manuel Francisco Humeres
Salinas was the name of their future son. A four-year-old boy with dark hair and brown
eyes who, according to the adoption agency, was born out of wedlock in the fall of 1974,
after which he was abandoned by unnamed parents. He was perfect. And in a medical
examination dated two years before arriving in Denmark, a doctor was mentioned in
addition to the health professional considerations that their future adopted son appeared
both "loving", "affectionate", "dark, but quite light" and not least as a child who "Falls
easily to".

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In 1978, Manuel Tom Kaalund and four other Chilean adopted children landed in Denmark. Today, several of them are convinced that
there have been illegalities in connection with their adoption. For the same reason, Manuel Tom Kaalund has decided to find his
biological mother so she can be sure he is alive.
Photo: Johanne Teglgård

The boy was named Manuel Tom Kaalund. He grew up in a villa in Lyngby in North
Zealand, and one day, when he was old enough, he asked his adoptive parents why his
original family did not want to know about him. They told what they knew and the
adopted son was silent. Being left on a bench in a park by unknown parents does not leave
much room for in-depth questions.

The problem is just that parts of the story are probably lies. A review of Manuel Tom
Kaalund's adoption case reveals several documents that seem contradictory and
misleading. And he is far from the only adoptee from Chile who is putting together a
puzzle where the pieces do not fit. Two others who were on board the plane in 1978 are
Luis Vad-Nielsen, who ended up with a family in Strøby Egede near Køge, and Claudia
Alejandra Svane, who came to live in Brønderslev in Vendsyssel. Today, both are
convinced that their adoptions were due to a deception. The suspicions are due in
particular to the fact that their biological families have told them that they were stolen, but
also documents concerning the mediation of adopted children between Denmark and
Chile under the Pinochet regime, which Kristeligt Dagblad has been given access to, show,

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This is the story of missing Chilean children who may have ended up in Denmark. It is the
story of a dictatorship state from which children disappeared, of a Danish system that
received adopted children without questioning the documentation. And then there is the
story of adopted children who have grown up and are looking for answers.

“All my life I have thought that my biological mother gave up on me. And for that reason, I
did not want to search for her. Now I can not help it. The thought that I might have been
stolen against her will I cannot bear. I myself have children and think about what trauma
she must have. I want to find her so she can see I'm alive. Both for my own sake and hers,
”says Manuel Tom Kaalund.

The suspicion of fraud in the Danish adoption cases from Chile has been nurtured by a
Chilean commission of inquiry that has unequivocally determined that children from the
1950s until the late 1990s disappeared as part of illegal adoptions to the West. In all, the
Chilean authorities estimate that at least 8,000 children disappeared under suspicious
conditions during Augusto Pinochet's military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990. NGOs
estimate that number is much higher. The adoptions, according to the commission, involve
the entire Chilean system: from judges and lawyers to social workers, health professionals,
orphanages and the Catholic Church, and in the wake of the cover-up, the Chilean
government has launched an investigation for prosecution. Self-justice has attracted
attention in most of the western world, and in February the Swedish Minister of Social
Affairs, Lena Hallengren, stated in the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter, that the country's
government wants a bullet hole of the overall Swedish adoption practice over four
decades. And in Denmark, in the autumn, the National Board of Appeal most unusually
called on all adopted children from Chile with suspicions of illegalities regarding their
adoption to make contact. One of the adoption cases that the National Board of Appeal is
reviewing at the time of writing is Manuel Tom Kaalunds. We will return to that.

First a trip to Chile, where for years the suspicion of missing children was known. In
newspaper articles you could read about mothers who claimed that their children had
been stolen, just as viewers in the Chilean counterpart to the DR program "Traceless"
could often observe how adopted children's stories about the reasons behind their
adoptions did not match the biological family interpretations. However, the testimonies
did not resonate with the population. The biological mothers often came from poor
backgrounds, and the allegations of fraud and child abduction lacked credibility.

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It was therefore not until 2014, when the Chilean media Ciper was able to document that a
group of children allegedly declared stillborn under the Pinochet regime had in fact been
adopted to the West without the permission of their parents. The births and subsequent
adoptions were led by a Catholic priest who, in conjunction with several doctors, removed
babies from mothers at birth and then told them that their infants were stillborn. This
often happened to women from more affluent, conservative families, where out-of-wedlock
births were considered shameful. And in his defense, the priest maintained that he was
only doing what the daughters' fathers had asked him to do.

The revelations started an avalanche. Associations such as Nos Buscamos (we are looking
for each other) and Hijos y Madres del Silencio (Children and Mothers of Silence) arose
and mobilized hundreds of mothers with the common denominator that they had all lost a
child under mysterious circumstances. The frustrations of the population grew, and the
Chilean parliament took the consequence and set up the aforementioned commission,
which, based on thousands of testimonies from mothers, relatives, lawyers and social
workers, stated that families have been systematically deprived of children for adoption.

The Commission set out four common methods used by doctors and social workers,
among others, to provide for children. Common to them was that the mothers in question
were in more or less defenseless positions. The first method was for the social authorities
to readily declare parents unfit and forcibly remove their children, after which the children
disappeared or were declared dead. The second method was that, for example, the
authorities or the church "lured" or "blackmailed" the poor into signing papers they did
not understand the meaning of. Third method was sheer kidnapping of children. And
lastly, many mothers experienced that their children were lied to dead after births or
hospitalizations.

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In her spare time, Claudia Alejandra Svane has helped other adoptees find their biological origins. It is hard mentally to shake up the
past, she says, and mentions that she knows several who over the years have struggled with, for example, mental problems or abuse.
Photo: Johanne Teglgård

One of those who was lied to dead was two-year-old Claudia Alijandra Gallardo Vergara.
She was later given the name Claudia Alejandra Svane when she came to Denmark and
moved in with her adoptive parents in Brønderslev in 1978. She describes growing up in
North Jutland as “someone you can not put a finger on. It was safe and full of love. ”

"Still," she says, "have I always felt a rootlessness and from an early age asked myself self-
blaming questions, such as is it my own fault that my biological parents did not want
me?".
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Eventually, Claudia Alejandra Svane acknowledged that she had to have certainty if she
was to be able to move on with her life. She reviewed her adoption case and found that she
was apparently born out of wedlock and that her biological mother had handed her over to
the state orphanage Casa Nacional del Niño in Chile's capital, Santiago.

A place with which the then adoption agency AC Børnehjælp had established a
collaboration in 1978, and which up to and including 1981 approved 76 away adoptions to
Denmark. However, the fruitful collaboration came to an abrupt end. Access to documents
in the dissemination of Chilean children to Denmark shows that AC Børnehjælp and Casa
Nacional del Niño immediately suspended the collaboration in 1982 "on the basis of
suspicion of illegal behavior".

Apparently, it was the Chilean authorities themselves who suspended the dissemination,
as Chilean media, according to a document from the Danish embassy in Santiago,
described illegal "child traffic". AC Børnehjælp's Christmas card for potential adopters the
same year did not mention the suspension of the Chilean adoption agency and the
suspicion of irregularities. It was not until the following year that it was established that
the communication had been "reopened", but "certainly not without problems, and that
only a small number of children are still coming". Of the total of 111 Chilean adopted
children who have come to Denmark over time, Manuel Tom Kaalund, Claudia Alejandra
Svane, Luis Vad-Nielsen and 73 other children arrived from Chile before the placement
from the orphanage was suspended.

It was the then Directorate of Civil Justice, which supervised the Danish adoption agency
in the 1970s and 1980s. However, there is nothing to indicate that the Danish adoptive
families were informed of the suspicion, or that the official team "reacted" to the
suspicion. The National Board of Appeal writes this in an email response to the Ministry of
Social Affairs and the Interior, as Kristeligt Dagblad has seen.

AC Børnehjælp has today merged with DanAdopt under the name DIA - Danish
International Adoption. On the basis of the new information, the adoption agency from
Chile has been reviewed and "no information or articles have been found that allegations
of illegal activities have taken place at Casa Nacional del Niño". In a statement sent to the
National Board of Appeal, however, the DIA writes that in the "cases from Casa National
del Niño it is not primarily stated whether consent has been given or not" from the
biological parents.

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Founder and director of the organization Chilean Adoptees Worldwide Alejandro Quezada
calls Casa Nacional del Niño one of the most "powerful" children's institutions at any
given time. He himself was adopted to the Netherlands in 1979, after he, according to his
biological family, was lied to dead for a health check shortly after birth. About the state
orphanage Casa Nacional del Niño, he says that "I have not yet come across an adoption
from there, where there have been no elements of deception beyond the dissemination".

Both Manuel Tom Kaalund, Claudia Alejandra Svane and Luis Vad-Nielsen lived at Casa
Nacional del Niño before coming to Denmark. At the same time, their adoptive parents
were represented by the same lawyer in Chile: Maria Luisa Avendaño. A well-known name
in the Scandinavian adoption agency from Chile in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2019, she thus
appeared in a comprehensive reconstruction, where the investigative Chilean media Ciper
documented, among other things, how Chilean lawyers coordinated with day care workers
and social workers to collect infants from orphanages, hospitals and poor homes, after
which they ended up in Sweden.

Of course , Claudia Alejandra Svane did not know all this when she started looking for
her biological family a little over 20 years ago. She trusted that the information in her
adoption papers was truthful and that she had truly been given up. If one is to believe
Claudia Alejandra Svane's biological mother, Viviana Vergara, however, that information
is a lie from end to end. She never gave up her daughter for adoption. On the other hand,
throughout her life she has believed that her daughter died when she was two years old.

The alleged fraud happened one day, Viviana Vergara took her daughter to the emergency
room to treat a wound that had become inflamed. The mother's cousin took her to the
hospital and confirms the story. The daughter was hospitalized, and the next day Claudia
Alejandra Svane's mother and aunt came to pick her up. They collapsed when a doctor
told them the daughter was dead. The mother shouted and screamed and demanded to see
the body, but the doctor refused. The daughter's body was to be used for research. For the
following time, Viviana Vergara came daily to have the body handed over by her daughter,
but each time she went home empty-handed. Eventually, she realized that her two-year-
old daughter was dead.

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"Imagine that I show up after she thought I had been dead for so many years. It was like
blowing up a bomb in her life. She actually had a nervous breakdown and was
hospitalized, ”says Claudia Alejandra Svane, who is now 45 years old. The two underwent
DNA tests that confirmed the relationship, and Claudia Alejandra Svane managed to be
reunited with her biological mother and little brother via video service Skype, before the
mother died shortly after. Today she helps other Danes who were adopted from Chile to
find their origin. A clarification work that she believes the Danish state should be involved
in.

"Even though I know my story, I think that we as a country need to find out what's head
and tail in all this, so that we can reach a reasonable agreement on our storytelling. For
many, the suspicion of being stolen is traumatic, and here it is important to remember that
it is not only us adoptive children, but also our adoptive families and the biological
families who have been led behind the light, ”she says.

That the demand for children for adoption in Denmark in the 1970s and 1980s
exceeded the supply can be read in the letters the adopters on the country's waiting lists
received. In 1978, for example, the office manager of AC Børnehjælp wrote that
“unfortunately we must realistically realize that there is a growing disparity between the
number of applicants who want to adopt a child from abroad and the number of children
available for adoption ( ...). On the other hand, we are under constant pressure from our
contacts abroad to also be able to place slightly older children in the age group 3-6 years
and possibly 7 years. ”

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Luis Vad-Nielsen was adopted from Chile to Denmark in 1978. For him, the art of painting has been a way of processing his emotions. As
a young man he was angry at his biological origin, and when his friends asked about it, he just replied that his "mother was a simple
whore".
Photo: Johanne Teglgård

Whether the wording in the letter contributed to Georg Vad-Nielsen and Lilli Sørensen
from Strøby Egede in East Zealand saying yes to adopting five-year-old Luis Vad-Nielsen is
unknown. It is certain that age meant that the now 47-year-old Luis Vad-Nielsen had
memories of violence and loneliness from the orphanage Casa Nacional del Niño in his
suitcase when he landed in Denmark in 1978.

Today he is an artist and stands in the childhood home, where he shows a picture he has
painted. The painting shows a mountain with the contour of a woman's body. The sky is
fiery red. And from the mountainside, drops of water run down into a lake. On two islands,
trees grow with branching roots that run between the islands.

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“I painted it in 1999. I think it's about creating connection in my origins. To acknowledge

that I am Danish, even though the blood that runs in my veins is Chilean. That I am proud
of both, ”he says.

When Luis Vad-Nielsen came of age , his world began to tumble. He had had a safe and
loving upbringing, but at the same time felt a constant fear of losing. As a child, he wished
he could be in the adoptive parents' car if they were to drive wrong. He left boyfriends he
loved for fear of being abandoned himself, and he felt a smoldering anger against his
biological mother, who according to the adoption papers had "abandoned" him, and
whom he referred to his friends as a "whore".

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According to his adoption papers, Luis Vad-Nielsen was born on September 4, 1973 and was then named Luis Mamerto Olguin Cubillos.
He is divorced today and has a son.
Photo: Johanne Teglgård

He soothed his mind with alcohol, which turned into cannabis, which turned into ecstasy
and smoking heroin. Fortunately, Luis Vad-Nielsen came for treatment, and it was as part
of the therapeutic treatment that he and the adoptive parents were recommended to find
the son's biological origin. The mission was successful in 1999, and as was the case with
Claudia Alejandra Svane, his biological family also believed he had been stolen.

Luis Vad-Nielsen's biological mother explained that he had indeed been at the orphanage
with his brother Tomas, but that it should have been temporary and that she had never
given consent to an adoption. But Luis Vad-Nielsen had simply disappeared one day when
she showed up, and according to her mother, she spent the next 20 years looking for him
throughout Chile. Luis Vad-Nielsen's adoption papers show that his mother abandoned
him when he was born out of wedlock. One reason the mother pure rejects. Nowhere in the
adoption papers is it mentioned that he lived in the orphanage with his biological big
brother.

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Luis Vad-Nielsen and his adoptive parents were shocked by the mother's interpretation,
and after returning home they went to the press to bring to light that their adoptive son
had apparently been robbed from his mother. The articles "Adoptive child stolen - parents
thought he was dead" and "A stolen child found" in Dagbladet Køge shortly after the
Chilean embassy in Copenhagen contacted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to get
information about the adoption cases from Chile to Denmark until 1980. In particular, they
wrote, they were interested in information about the 12 children who arrived in 1978 and in
1979. The Danish authorities then refused to provide the information, as the Chilean
children were Danish citizens, so the request according to Kristeligt Dagblad's information
did not lead to anything.

The suspicion of illegal adoptions from Chile is far from unique. Over the years, the media
has documented deception in dissemination from virtually the entire world. The same has
been the case in other European countries, and in February this year a Dutch commission
of inquiry concluded that illegalities in the so-called transnational adoption agency to the
country have taken place. The report prompted the Dutch government to suspend all
transnational adoption immediately and the Dutch Minister of Justice to issue an official
apology to all adopted children, adoptive parents and biological parents. In the childhood
home in Strøby Egede, Luis Vad-Nielsen says that he does not need any apology. What
adoptive children and their adoptive parents need today is clarity and possibly
psychological help.

"In my eyes, an apology makes us neither whole nor half. Instead, I hope that Denmark
will help adopted children find themselves. This is not about revenge. It is about identity
and that we have been involuntarily and wrongfully stolen. ”

8000 suspicious cases

A commission of inquiry in Chile has concluded that Chilean children have
disappeared from the 1950s to the late 1990s, and state prosecutors are building a
comprehensive case for the prosecution of people involved in the illegal adoption of
children.

The Board of Appeal in Chile estimates that there are at least 8000 suspicious cases
of children who have disappeared. NGOs estimate the figure to be significantly
higher.

The majority of Chile's total 20,000 adoptions took place during Augusto Pinochet's
military dictatorship from 1973 to 1990.

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According to his adoption papers, Manuel Tom Kaalund was born on November 13, 1974 and was then named Manuel Francisco Humeres
Salinas. Today he has two children from a previous relationship and two bonus children with his current girlfriend.

Photo: Johanne Teglgård

Opposite Luis Vad-Nielsen and Claudia Alejandra SvaneManuel Tom Kaalund has not
yet found his biological origin. He is sitting on a bench in Ringsted and looking out over
Susåen. It has been snowing, just like the December day he arrived in Denmark in 1978. It
has taken him most of his life to reach a realization that he needs to know who he is and
where he comes from . Like his two fellow passengers on the plane in 1978, he has
throughout his life experienced a feeling of inadequacy and fear of losing. Manuel Tom
Kaalund laughs and tells the story of that time in the childhood home in Lyngby, where he
tied a toast sandwich with cheese stuck like bait on a string to catch his father when his
adoptive parents moved apart and divorced. Like Luis Vad-Nielsen, he feels convinced that
his rootlessness was a contributing factor to that he started taking drugs and ended up
homeless. It is only within the last few years that he has begun to open up to the anger he
has felt as a young man. In the adoption papers, the parents were promised an
"affectionate" and "cheerful" boy who had "easy to adapt".

"In many ways, they got the opposite," says Manuel Tom Kaalund. He shows a picture of
himself as a newly adopted four-year-old boy in Denmark. The eyes are deep and brown.

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For a period in his early adult life, Manuel Tom Kaalund lived as a homeless drug addict. He spent the night at this playground in the
residential area Urbanplanen on Amager. It was when he became a father for the first time that he stopped his abuse.

Photo: Johanne Teglgård

Who do you see?

“Hm… I see a boy trying to make his parents happy. But in the eyes I also see something
else. I actually see an unhappy boy just trying to follow the flow ... trying to please his
parents and the outside world because he's scared, ”he says.

Throughout his life, Manuel Tom Kaalund has been told that he was found on a bench in a
park left behind by unknown parents. The official adoption papers state that Manuel Tom
Kaalund "was born out of wedlock to unnamed parents and that he was admitted to the
Casa Nacional del Niño as an abandoned child".

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19/03/2021 Manuel, Claudia og Luis ankom som de første chilenske adoptivbørn i 1978. I dag frygter de, at de var stjålet | Kristeligt Dagblad

For the same reason, the parents' names have been omitted from the birth certificates that
appear in Manuel Tom Kaalund's case. Birth certificates, which in a strange way were first
stamped in the autumn of 1978, shortly before Manuel Tom Kaalund was adopted to
Denmark, and thus not in 1974, where he was allegedly born. The mystery is not lessened
by the fact that a Chilean doctor sent a health record of Manuel Tom Kaalund to the
adoption agency AC Børnehjælp six months before the adoption. In it, the doctor describes
the birth, which obviously had taken place four years earlier, and two years before the boy
had officially arrived at the Casa Nacional del Niño left by unnamed parents.

In the medical records, the doctor noted, among other things, that the mother did not
experience "any diseases during her pregnancy", and that the birth itself "proceeded
without complications". Even the mother's identity appears in the medical record, despite
the fact that the identity in the other case files is stated to be unknown. In the pile of files
from Manuel Tom Kaalund's case, it is of course not known which documents show the
truth and which may have been fabricated. The only thing Manuel Tom Kaalund can state
is that "it all smells good enough".

"There is so much I want an answer to: What happened then in Chile? Was I really
abandoned by my mother, or was it cheating? So the Danish adoption agencies through
fingers with the communication? ”, He asks.

https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikler/adoptivboernene?fbclid=IwAR1wDd8ZaNqA91GQuzGET3ETnLwW6KHenTfdhWe1dlDGztlWASGUzbk7Ro0 17/20
19/03/2021 Manuel, Claudia og Luis ankom som de første chilenske adoptivbørn i 1978. I dag frygter de, at de var stjålet | Kristeligt Dagblad

Four-year-old Manuel Tom Kaalund in his room in the adoptive family's villa in Lyngby in North Zealand. The adoption papers stated
that he is a "cheerful" boy who "has an easy time falling for". In the following years, he ended up moving school several times as he was
maladapted. Later, he lived for a period as a drug addict and homeless.

Photo: Private photo

It is well over 42 years ago that he, Claudia Alejandra Svane and Luis Vad-Nielsen sat in
the plane on their way to Copenhagen. Today, they are all in their late 40s and convinced
that their adoptions to Denmark were associated with illegalities. Manuel Tom Kaalund
hopes that the Danish government will follow Sweden's example and set up a commission
so that it can get to the bottom of the many scandal cases that have been about adoptions
from abroad over time.

In the meantime, he will continue his search for his origin. Last year, he found a woman
who judged by name could be his aunt. He contacted her but received no response. "Now
I'm going for the next track," says Manuel Tom Kaalund indomitably.

“For me, a big part of life has been about finding acceptance in life. I have thought that my
origin did not concern me because I was abandoned. I'm not like that anymore. Children
have been stolen, and my biological mother also deserves reassurance that her son is alive.
”
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19/03/2021 Manuel, Claudia og Luis ankom som de første chilenske adoptivbørn i 1978. I dag frygter de, at de var stjålet | Kristeligt Dagblad

But what if your mother does not want you in life?

"Then I actually get happy. Because then it means that she managed to get on with her life.
I do not think all mothers have been able to do that. ”

Here's how we did it:

The article is based on documents from Manuel Tom Kaalund, Claudia Alejandra
Svane and Luis Vad-Nielsen's adoption cases.

In addition, the newspaper gained access to the adoption mediation between

Denmark and Chile under the Pinochet regime from 1973 to 1990 and in documents
concerning adoption sent from the Chilean embassy in Denmark and the Danish
embassy in Chile. Finally, the newspaper has been given access to documents in the
communication between the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Interior and the
National Board of Appeal in the wake of the suspicion of illegal Chilean adoptions
that arose last year.

A statement from Danish International Adoption states that one child arrived in
Denmark from Chile in 1976, despite the fact that the collaboration with the
orphanage Casa Nacional del Niño did not begin until 1978. In all other documents
the newspaper has had insight into, it appears , that the first children from Chile
arrived in 1978. At no point is a case of a child adopted in 1976 mentioned. For the
same reason, Kristeligt Dagblad has chosen to write that the first Chilean children
arrived in 1978.

New series: The missing Chilean children

Based on the Danish authorities' suspicion of illegal conditions in adoptions from

Chile, Kristeligt Dagblad puts a new series of transnational adoptions under scrutiny.
Because the adoptions are a thing of the past, or should Danish couples still be able
to adopt children from less prosperous countries?

Adoption under scrutiny in Europe

https://www.kristeligt-dagblad.dk/artikler/adoptivboernene?fbclid=IwAR1wDd8ZaNqA91GQuzGET3ETnLwW6KHenTfdhWe1dlDGztlWASGUzbk7Ro0 19/20
19/03/2021 Manuel, Claudia og Luis ankom som de første chilenske adoptivbørn i 1978. I dag frygter de, at de var stjålet | Kristeligt Dagblad

In February 2021, the Dutch Minister of Justice officially apologized to all adopted
children, parents and biological parents, after a commission of inquiry concluded
that illegal transnational adoptions have taken place from all over the world. The
country suspended at the same time the adoption agency.

In Denmark, the National Board of Appeal is in the process of uncovering a number of

adoption cases from Chile due to suspicion of illegalities.

In Sweden, Minister of Social Affairs Lena Hallengren is working to set up a working

group to examine the country's transnational adoption agency from the 1960s to the
1990s.

PUBLISHED THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021

Mathias Sonne Mencke

ustomer service

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