2024-02-25 04:30:00
Sara Melgarejo was 25 years old when she gave birth to her first child in a hospital in Santiago, Chile. That October 15, 1983, the woman, with limited resources, was alone in the delivery room because her partner was working. A nurse took the baby away from her before the new mother might pick it up or even hear her cry. She then informed him that he had been stillborn. Sara regretted what had happened with resignation. A year or so later, on November 19, 1984, Melgarejo gave birth once more. This time, to a girl. The health personnel immediately removed the creature from the enclosure. The tragic news was repeated: the baby had not survived.
While Sara mourned her losses, on the other side of America, in a town in Virginia (United States), Rose Hiebart and her husband, Steve Ours, received the call they had been waiting for. Due to health issues they might not have children, so they decided to adopt. They took a six-week course at the American adoption agency in Washington, where they met a couple who had adopted a little boy with dark skin and brown eyes of Chilean origin. They wanted to do the same. The agency put them in contact with a Chilean social worker. She told them regarding a poor woman who gave her two-week-old son up for adoption. That woman was Sara Melgarejo.
The adoption papers took a couple of months and, following paying $20,000, the American couple traveled to Chile for a week to look for the new member of the family. They called him Sean. A year later, the agency contacted Hiebart once more to inform him that Sara and her partner had become parents once more and were giving the girl up for adoption. They happily accepted. Sean would have a little sister, Emily. The liaison was once more the social worker and the procedure cost $16,000. Both babies were registered in the Chilean Civil Registry Service and the adoption was processed by the Fourth Court of Minor Letters of Santiago.
It took 40 years for Sara to meet once more in person last Sunday at the Santiago airport with her children, who had become loving English-speaking adults. The efforts of Sean and Emily’s adoptive mother to find the biological one were crucial to uncovering the lie. Malgarejo is one of the victims who had their babies stolen during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990), although investigations reveal that the practice goes beyond the historical context and does not refer only to that time.
The first complaints came to light in 2014 following a report by the Chilean digital media CIPER. The then magistrate Mario Carroza began a judicial investigation into irregular adoptions, most of them from abroad, between 1970 and 1999. He accumulated hundreds of cases. “We might reach a figure of 20,000 children. What we have to see is whether they left irregularly or not,” said Carroza, current minister of the Supreme Court. The investigations are now being led by the Minister of the Court of Appeals of Santiago, Jaime Balmaceda, who has explained that Chilean legislation was very permissive to adopt a child from abroad and its regulation coincides with the end of the dictatorship.
Emily Reid and Sean Ours hold the hands of their mother, Sara Malgarejo.FERNANDA REQUENA
The National Institute of Human Rights (INDH) published its 2023 report this week where it mentions the case of “child abduction and illegal adoptions” by Minister Balmaceda on an extraordinary visit. Until April 2023, it registers 1,000 judicialized cases: 757 are being processed and 243 have concluded, according to the information provided to the INDH by the Office for the Coordination of Human Rights Cases of the Supreme Court. To date there are no convictions.
In search of the biological mother
Sean and Emily’s adoptive parents always spoke openly to them regarding their origins. It made sense to them that their biological mother would have wanted them to have a better life in the United States than under the Chilean military dictatorship. As teenagers, however, they wanted to know more. They went to the Washington adoption agency and its officials tried to dissuade them from searching. They did give them the option of writing a letter to Sara telling her what her life had been like until then, but they were just young people and the task became complicated. Finally, they decided to move on with their lives. “The agency got angry with me because they didn’t want the children to look for their parents. They told me I shouldn’t encourage them,” Hiebart, her adoptive mother, says by phone from North Carolina, where she currently lives with her second husband.
The boys gave up, but Hiebart did not. In 2002 he hired a private detective in Santiago to find Sara Melgarejo, the name that appeared on the adoption certificate. The effort, however, was unsuccessful.
For many years, the American read with apprehension the articles that talked regarding irregular adoptions in Chile. Years ago, one of the journalistic pieces detailed Carroza’s investigation and mentioned social worker Telma Uribe, the same person who had managed her adoptions, according to her story. The text also indicated that the Human Rights Brigade of the Investigative Police (PDI) had seized documents in Uribe’s house that included the Washington adoption agency. “That was what really opened my eyes. The children might have been stolen,” says Hielbart, 71, retired. That concern, which she only shared with her ex-husband and her current husband, kept her digging in the press for years. Until she found the Connecting Roots Foundation.
Last July, Hielbert called Tyler Graf, who founded Connecting Roots following learning that he was taken from his Chilean parents and irregularly adopted out to his American family. Since then, firefighter Graf has also dedicated himself to helping other victims like him. Hielbert told him his story and he responded: “When you are ready, tell me.” The woman wrote an email to Sean and Emily with all the information collected so far, accompanied by links to the press articles. “If they wanted to do the search, they might find his biological mother alive. Or not. You decide.”
They decided to search.
Sara and Sean in the eastern sector of Santiago, on February 19. FERNANDA REQUENA
Two months later, in September, Barbara Vergara, from Connecting Roots, found Malgarejo’s sister through social networks, whom she asked to notify Sara that she had important information regarding something that happened in 1983 and 1984, to give her a clue. where he was going and rule out a possible scam. Sara called him back. In a Zoom, Vergara introduced herself and revealed the true fate of her children. Sara was convinced they were dead. “She opened my eyes in disbelief, but with her heart and soul wanting it to be true,” Vergara recalls. The process, of course, included DNA tests on those involved, which showed that they had the same blood.
A new reality
Sara and her two children saw each other for the first time in 40 years via a video call at the end of last year. Juan Luis Inzunza, from Connecting Roots, also participated in the meeting to translate from Spanish to English and vice versa. But the approach would not only be virtual. Last Sunday, Sara was able to hug them and kiss them. Sean and Emily traveled to Santiago to meet her and stay with her for a week, in a reunion managed by the foundation. “I had blocked everything. What happened at that time hurts me a lot. I mightn’t believe when they told me they were alive. Plus, she looks so much like me. “He too,” says an emotional Sara in a hotel in the capital this Monday. Indeed, Emily, who has the Chilean flag tattooed on her arm, is a reflection of her mother.
Sara broke up on bad terms with the father of her two children as a result of the alleged losses. They don’t keep in touch nor does she want me to meet them. “They are my children,” she says with determination. After those dark years, she paired up with her current partner, with whom she has three children and two grandchildren who live outside of Santiago. Since she was a young girl, Sara has cared for children in private homes. When the little ones grow up and form her own family, she is hired in her new homes. “They have been my therapy. My little ones,” says the woman as shy as she is sweet. Upon learning the truth, she describes that she felt anger, helplessness and pain because she caused “very great harm.” But now, looking at her little adults, everything is joy.
The joy of the reunion is shared by Sean and Emily, who constantly caresses her mother’s hand. “The Zoom we had reinforced that all of this felt real. It was not just a fantasy, we are seeing Sara,” says Sean, father of two teenagers who also appeared on the video call to meet his biological grandmother. Emily confesses that she was deeply upset when she found out what happened: “They told her a lie when she signed her papers thinking they were our death certificate. It’s frustrating that they denied us having it all these years. Before everything was anger, but now I feel totally happy that we can start this relationship.”
Sean and Emily are warm and open. They want to obtain Chilean nationality and return as many times as they can to make up for lost time. Next visit, with extended family. They know they have a place to go. Sara has been preparing her house in San Bernardo, in the southern area of Santiago, for a month to receive them. She bought a bed, mattresses and blankets so that everyone would have their own room. She also has land in Temuco, 690 kilometers south of the capital, where she wants to build a house with her partner. She is excited and thinks that she can receive them there in the future. “She sometimes tells me things in Spanish,” Sara whispers at a moment when her children turn away from her. And she adds: “she tells Me: I love you, mommy.”
Emily Reid and Sean Ours.FERNANDA REQUENA
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