AP: A Chilean Mother Reunites With Two Sons Taken From Her as Babies 41 Years Ago

On Wednesday, November 11, in an office in Santiago, a 66 year old woman named Teresita de Jesús Padilla held two of her sons for the first time since they were babies. The Associated Press reported that Tim Rolnick, 41, and Travis Murdoch, 37, were taken from her by hospital workers in Chile decades ago and sent to the United States for adoption.

Moments after the reunion, Padilla told the AP that she had her children back, children she thought she had lost forever. I have read a lot of hard stories this year. This is one of the few that made me stop and read it twice.

What Happened to Her Children

According to the AP, the boys were taken while Padilla was still in the hospital after giving birth. Rolnick was taken first. About four years later, the same thing happened to her twins, Travis and Chris, who were adopted together by an American couple.

Padilla told the AP that the women who took her children did it "under threats, through sheer terror," and that she suffered because of it her entire life. Her father died when she was four, and her family had struggled with poverty ever since. She went to the hospital hoping it would be a refuge. It became the place where she lost them.

The brothers grew up in the United States knowing they were adopted. What they did not know, the AP reported, was the history behind how they got there.

How the Search Began

It started with a simple question about health. Rolnick told the AP he took a MyHeritage DNA test in 2020 because he wanted to learn his medical history. Soon distant cousins and groups that work to reunite separated families began reaching out to him. "And then it was like opening up Pandora's box," he said.

He learned he had a whole family in Chile that had never stopped thinking about him. He also learned that two of his brothers were living just a few hundred miles from his home in Maryland. "I always wanted a brother, so I got three!" he told the AP.

Murdoch remembered being nervous before meeting his older brother for the first time and wondering if he would even show up. "Then we met and he looked just like me," he said. The two clicked quickly and are close today.

Reuters, which also covered the reunion, reported that the oldest brother, Alberto, was the only child who stayed with his mother in Chile and was the one who started searching for his siblings. He died after finding them. Chris was badly injured in a car accident in 2013 and could not make the trip to Santiago.

A Much Larger Story

This reunion is one family's ending, but it sits inside a much bigger history. The AP reported that Chilean judicial reports point to roughly 20,000 cases of forced or criminal adoptions during the 17 years of Gen. Augusto Pinochet's military rule. Nos Buscamos, the organization that hosted the reunion, estimates that more than 50,000 Chilean families have been affected.

The group's director, Constanza del Río, told the AP that the most vulnerable women, especially those from the poorest regions, were the main targets of a network of social workers, doctors, judges and lawyers who arranged for children to leave the country. "We still haven't been able to identify the actual number of children who were taken out of Chile," she said.

Government figures cited by the AP say at least 3,095 people were killed or forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship, and tens of thousands more were tortured or jailed for political reasons.

Why This One Stays With Me

Child trafficking and missing children are causes I care about deeply. Most of the time, the stories I follow do not have an ending like this one. Families wait for years, sometimes for the rest of their lives, without an answer.

What strikes me here is how long this mother carried the loss without ever giving up the hope of seeing her children again. It also strikes me that the door finally opened because a man wanted to know his medical history. Sometimes the smallest step is the one that changes everything.

"There's no reason to look into the past too far and from here we can work toward the future," Murdoch told the AP. After 41 years, that is a generous thing to say, and it tells you something about the kind of family they want to build now.

If You Are Searching

If you were adopted from abroad and have questions about where you came from, DNA testing and organizations that specialize in family searches can be a starting point. If you have any reason to believe a child was taken unlawfully, report it to law enforcement. Stories like this one remind us that the truth can surface, even after four decades.