A Texas man who was adopted from Chile as a child learned only last year that he had been kidnapped from a mother who wanted him — and now, 38 years later, he has reunited with his biological family.
Tyler Graf, 38, got the shock of his life on May 22, 2021, when he was contacted by a Chilean nonprofit that informed him that he had been stolen from his family in Temuco, Chile and given up for adoption illegally.
A DNA test soon confirmed that he had, in fact, been a victim of a kidnapping scheme in the ’80s that is estimated to have affected up to 8,000 to 12,000 children and families.
Now Graf — a Houston firefighter with a child of his own — has flown back to Chile for an emotional reunion with his mother and three sisters he never knew he had.
Tyler Graf, 38, recently reunited with his birth mother – whom he had been stolen from at birth in Chile in the ’80s
After confirming their relationship with a DNA test last year, his mother flew to see him in Texas – and now he has traveled to Chile for the first time to visit her
Graf had a happy childhood in Minnesota – and had no idea that when he was two weeks old, he was kidnapped and his mother was told that he had died
Graf had a happy childhood in Minnesota, and told Good Morning America that he was adopted ‘by a very loving, caring family.’
He knew a few details about his adoption from his adoption papers, which said his birth mother was named Hilda del Carmen Quezada. She had been 26 when he was born, and the papers said that she gave him up because she couldn’t afford to care for him.
‘I never thought that any excuse would be good enough,’ he told the New York Times in December. ‘I carried that animosity, that chip on my shoulder, my whole life.’
But he was still curious about his origins, and a few years ago, he met someone who offered to help.
During a firefighter training exercise, he met a man whose mother, Marisol Rodríguez, ran a Chilean nonprofit Hijos y Madres del Silencio, which is working to reconnect families separated by forced adoptions.
These kidnappings and forced adoptions were shockingly common under the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who actively encouraged them to reduce poverty in the country.
His adoptive family had no idea he was taken illegally, and the practice was shockingly common in Chile, which was under a dictatorship, at the time
A few years ago, Graf began looking into his roots and got connected to a nonprofit that figured out the truth
When his mother learned he was alive, ‘Every muscle in my body tightened up and squeezed the tears in my eyes. I felt like I had been hit by a bat and was seeing stars’
‘I feel like I’ve been in some way cheated,’ Graf said. ‘I mean you are playing with people’s lives for money. You are not destroying one life, you’re destroying multiple families’
When Rodríguez got ahold of Graf’s adoption papers, she saw telltale signs that suggested he was a victim to one of these schemes.
Soon, they’d confirmed the truth: Graf’s mother had never wanted to give him up for adoption. He was born three months premature and she named him Sergio, but was told that he had passed away.
‘Two weeks after the birth, they told me he had died,’ Quezada, now 65, said. ‘I asked for the body and they refused, saying it was too small.’
Looking back, Graf told KPRC: ‘I can’t imagine what my birth mother went through when she lost me and grieved my death.’
Quezada told the Times that she mourned for her son every year on his birthday, never forgetting the loss.
Then, last May, she received a call from Hijos y Madres del Silencio, which told her that they believed her son was alive.
‘I couldn’t digest the information,’ she told the Times. ‘I couldn’t grasp what was happening. Every muscle in my body tightened up and squeezed the tears in my eyes. I felt like I had been hit by a bat and was seeing stars.’
Quezada mourned for her son every year on his birthday, never forgetting the loss
Graf admitted he always carried a chip on his shoulder about his adoption
A firefighter in Houston, he is now married with a child of his own
‘I wanted to scream. I questioned a lot of things. The thought of if he was loved, if he ate well, if he spent time gold,’ she told GMA.
Graf, too, got the news on May 22, 2021, and they were later able to confirm their relationship through DNA tests.
Graf’s adoptive parents never knew that he had been stolen.
‘I feel like I’ve been in some way cheated,’ he said. ‘I mean you are playing with people’s lives for money. You are not destroying one life, you’re destroying multiple families.’
Graf also learned he had three sisters, and began to get to know his family on Zoom.
A few weeks later, Quezada — who’d never been on an airplane before — flew to Houston to meet her son.
‘It was the closest hug,’ he said. ‘They just left us alone in each other’s arms and we hugged and she kissed me and we just stood there crying.’
‘It was the closest hug,’ Graf said of his first meeting with his mother. ‘They just left us alone in each other’s arms and we hugged and she kissed me and we just stood there crying’
He also learned he has three sisters, whom he is getting to know. He fished with them on a recent trip to Chile
‘We’re making up for 38 years of lost time,’ he said. ‘Time we can’t get back’
He has founded an organization that aims to help other victims find their roots by supplying dree MyHeritage DNA kits
Graf recently got to fly back to Chile as well, returning to his birth place for the first time and reuniting with his birth mother once again.
The emotional moment was captured by GMA’s cameras, which also filmed as he met his three sisters for the first time.
But the transition has been bittersweet, and Graf admits to feeling many different emotions.
‘Now, I’m in between families. I do not want to hurt my adoptive parents’ feelings or my birth mother’s feelings, so it is kind of a fine balance right now. I’m trying to figure where I fit in the middle of all this,’ he said.
‘We’re making up for 38 years of lost time,’ he said. ‘Time we can’t get back.’
He has also founded an organization that aims to help other victims find their roots by supplying dree MyHeritage DNA kits.
Chile’s stolen children: How thousands of babies were taken from their mothers and trafficked to the US, the UK, and other Western nations for adoption’ during the Pinochet dictatorship
Investigations have found that thousands of children were stolen from their parents and adopted by foreign couples during Chile’s military dictatorship years.
Some 20,000 Chilean children were adopted to Western nations such as the US, the UK and Sweden in the 1970s and 80s — and now the government believes a majority were illegally removed from their biological families.
General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 following a military takeover, actively encouraged oversees adoptions in the ’70s and ’80s as a way to cut down on poverty
The first cases of these forced adoptions came to light in 2014, sparking an investigations that found the problem to be horrificaly widespread.
Countless people with power were involved, including judges, lawyers, social workers, health professionals, translators, and adoption brokers.
Forged documents were commonplace, and bribery is suspected.
General Augusto Pinochet, who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990 following a military takeover, actively encouraged oversees adoptions in the ’70s and ’80s as a way to cut down on poverty.
For the majority of the Pinochet dictatorship, until 1988, so-called ‘strong’ adoptions could only be carried out after a child had been living with their adoptive parents for two years.
This rule was bypassed by awarding the foreign parents-to-be temporary custody through a representative for the adoption agency.
Many of the Chilean children adopted internationally during the late 1970s and early 1980s came from around the city of Temuco
The temporary custodian could then legally take the child out of the country, after which the child would be adopted in a foreign country.
However, as far as the Chilean authorities are concerned, many of these children, who are now adults in the late 30s or early 40s, still live in Chile on the addresses of social workers or adoption agency representatives awarded ‘temporary custody’ through the courts.
Since the government began investigating, more than 550 adoptees have been able to reconnect with their birth families — but many more victims are suspected, with about 650 irregular adoptions currently being investigated.
In October of 2018, Justice Minister Hernán Larraín told parliament the news that children may have been illegally adopted from had made him ‘feel a great shame for my country.’
‘The criminal investigation cannot currently state that all cases where children have been sent abroad for adoption are illegal, but a very large part are,’ the Santiago Court of Appeals said in a statement, adding that they fear it would be at least 8,000 suspicious cases.
‘No similar crime has ever been investigated in Chile, neither by the courts of by police. The kind of crime which are closest to this are investigations linked to crimes against human rights in a political violence context.’
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