Forty-five years may have passed, but Chrisanthi Hronis can still feel the nurses’ vice-like grip around her arms, then the prick of the needle.
She had just given birth – to a girl, she was told – but never held the child in her arms. The last thing she remembers before everything went dark was watching the baby being whisked away by the midwife.
She was too weak to cry out even though every part of her body was screaming on the inside.
Hours later, Chrisanthi woke in the same hospital bed in Athens. A doctor came by and told her the baby had died at birth. She was not allowed see her.
No – that didn’t make sense: She had heard her baby crying, then saw her being taken away. In the frantic moments that followed, Chrisanthi, still too numb to move, began to piece together what might have happened.
She had arrived at the hospital in labour 24 hours earlier and straight away staff were asking her if she would consider giving up her child for adoption.
‘There is an American couple outside in the hallway who would give the baby a happy home in the United States,’ they said.
Chrisanthi, an unwed mother from a religious family, baulked at the idea. Her pregnancy in 1979 may have been a scandal on the small Greek island she called home, but she was nonetheless determined to raise the child.
Forty-five years ago, Chrisanthi Hronis (right) gave birth to a child at a hospital in Athens, Greece. She was sedated and told the infant had died, but later learned the baby had been adopted by an American couple without her consent. Chrisanthi later immigrated to Australia where she had two more children, including daughter Costadina Abboud (left)
And the baby’s father, Gregorios, while no longer her boyfriend, had said he would do the right thing and support them.
But her protests fell on deaf ears. She did not know it at the time, but the deal had already being done. She was never going home with her baby.
While she cannot be sure, Chrisanthi, who was 29 at the time, suspects the American couple was boarding a flight with her baby around the time she woke in hospital.
It’s possible the child has no idea she was adopted, even to this day.
Speaking to FEMAIL with the help of her second-born daughter, Costadina, translating every painful word, Chrisanthi reveals: ‘It’s been the heartache of my life.’
Chrisanthi’s baby, who would now be 45, is one of the ‘Lost Children of Greece’ – the term given to Greek children who were stolen from their mothers and adopted to other countries from the late 1940s onwards.
Costadina Abboud claims her mother was drugged and her baby stolen from a hospital in Athens in 1979
Weeks after her child was stolen from her, Chrisanthi was on an immigrant ship bound for Australia. Still raw from her trauma and with a new decade on the horizon, she wanted a new start and her father, who was disgusted she had become pregnant, was glad to see her gone.
Fresh off the boat, she soon met the man who would become her husband at the Parramatta Greek Orthodox church. She told him she had lost a baby weeks before sailing out to Australia, but he agreed to marry her anyway.
The couple went on to have two children together: daughter Costadina, who was born two years after her older sister’s abduction, followed by a son.
While Chrisanthi had her fears from the day it happened, it would be years before she learned definitively what had happened to her first child.
Her baby girl didn’t die at birth. Instead, Chrisanthi’s father, who ‘wanted nothing to do with the child’, organised a forced adoption.
Chrisanthi learned this shocking truth because her older sister, who had always been her father’s favourite, confessed to helping carry out the deed.
The family had bribed staff at the hospital to tell Chrisanthi her baby had died. Then the child had been given to the American couple waiting in the hallway and whisked off the United States to begin a new life.
The baby’s father, Gregorios, was devastated to learn the child had been stolen at birth
The truth broke Chrisanthi’s heart. Now aged 79, she wants closure, and so does her daughter.
‘Mum was the best mum. We just want to know if my sister had a good life and want her to know that mum didn’t want her to be adopted,’ her daughter Costadina told FEMAIL from her home in western Sydney, where she works as a baker.
Gregorios, the girl’s father, also went on to marry and have three children, who want to meet their long-lost sibling as well.
When she learned as an adult what had happened to her mother’s first child, Costadina made it her mission to uncover the truth.
She began by trying to track down the hospital staff. Most had died or were unreachable, but after joining forces with Gregorios, they tracked down a nurse who had been working at the ward that night.
They found her home address – but it was a dead end.
‘He knocked on the door and asked her questions but she just stood there and said nothing,’ she said.
‘My mum wants to know her daughter and wants her to know that she didn’t want to adopt her out,’ Costadina said. (Pictured: Chrisanthi in middle age)
Every lead since has been fruitless.
Even genealogy websites, where users submit DNA to discover relatives all over the world, haven’t been able to connect Costadina with her lost sister.
Now, having seemingly exhausted every path, she is hoping someone will recognise themselves in her own childhood photos, or that someone looking for answers over their adoption 45 years ago will read her story.
‘She was born on August 20, 1979,’ she said.
All the family has to go on is that the baby was girl – but Costadina reluctantly admits they can’t even be 100 per cent sure about this.
‘There were so many lies – they could have lied about that, too. And everyone involved has died now, so we will never get those answers.’
The practice of forced adoption was so commonplace in Greece in the twentieth century that there have been several TV shows about reuniting lost family members.
Dozens of Facebook groups exist reconnecting parents with their children and siblings with one another. So far, Costadina hasn’t found any leads on social media.
Georgios and Chrisanthi were not together when the baby was born and both went on to marry other people
Costadina went public with her search for her sibling several months ago.
She was inundated with people sharing similar stories of forced adoption, not just in Greece, but all across Europe.
One woman whose mother was taken at birth from Macedonia in 1976 commented: ‘I have thought about it so many times and have wanted to start a search just like this.
‘It’s unbelievable that this happened and there is definitely something happening in that region around this time.’
Another added: ‘My great uncle and his wife had the exact same story happened to to them In Greece, this was about 65 years ago.
‘This story and the one you shared are heartbreaking I can’t believe this was even possible.’
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