Chile prosecutes individuals alleged to have stolen babies

For the first time in Chile’s history, a judge announced he was prosecuting individuals alleged to have stolen babies in the country.

It’s a dark chapter in Chile’s history. During the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet from 1973 to 1990, thousands of babies were stolen from their biological mothers and sold into adoption, mainly to foreign couples from the United States and Europe. In Chile, they’re known as “The Children of Silence.” And now, for the first time in the country’s history, a Chilean judge announced he was prosecuting individuals alleged to have stolen babies in the country. Alejandro Aguilar Brevis, a Santiago Court of Appeals judge in charge of the investigation “determined that in the 1980s” there was a network of health officials, Catholic priests, attorneys, social workers and even a judge who detected and delivered stole babies from mainly impoverished mothers and sold them into adoption to foreign couples for as much as $50,000, according to a Monday press release by Chile’s judiciary. The investigation, which focuses on the city of San Fernando in central Chile, involves two babies who were stolen and handed over to foreign couples, according to the judiciary statement. According to the statement by Chile’s judiciary, the ring allegedly focused on “abducting or stealing infants for monetary gain” with the purpose of “taking them out of the country to different destinations in Europe and the US.”