SANTIAGO — Jimmy Lippert Thydena lawyer United Statesannounced on Monday that it has initiated legal action against the Chilean State for a case of alleged illegal adoption that took place more than four decades ago.
Thyden, born at the Hospital del Salvador in Santiago, said he only discovered his true story last year, when non-governmental organizations in Chile and the United States helped him confirm through DNA tests that he had family ties in Chile.
“I was taken from my mother at birth, under false pretenses that she had died prematurely,” Thyden said at a news conference in the Chilean capital. “I was illegally taken out of the country and given up for adoption in the United States, an act that deeply affected my identity and my connection to my biological family.”
Thyden’s case is one of many thousands of illegal adoptions documented between 1950 and 1990 in Chile, a phenomenon in which local officials, doctors and private groups facilitated the separation of children from their biological mothers, often under deception and social pressure.
Thyden, who traveled to Chile last year to join his biological mother and siblings in Valdivia, described the experience as “bittersweet.” “I can’t get back the lost years, but I hope this legal process will help others affected to reconstruct their family and cultural histories,” he said emotionally.
The lawyer also announced the creation of the website www.adopcionilegal.cl, aimed at bringing together other individuals affected by illegal adoptions in Chile, in the hope of putting pressure on the Chilean government to recognize and resolve these cases in a fair and transparent manner.
“The Chilean State has a responsibility to confront its past and support those who were unjustly separated from their families,” Thyden concluded.
Source: With information from AFP
