DNA tests help Chiles stolen babies reunite with families – Rest of World

Viv Haggren was returning from a fishing trip near her hometown in Stockholm when she heard a radio report on illegally adopted children from Chile. As she listened, a hunch that she had harbored for decades grew impossible to ignore. Suddenly, I thought, it was time, she told Rest of World.

Haggren knew she was adopted from Chile her Swedish adoptive parents had told her as a child. But that had been in 1973, the year that Augusto Pinochet staged a coup in Chile. Her parents believed that the vague paperwork was due to the political instability in the country at the time. The only information the Swedish adoption agency provided was that she was abandoned at a hospital, and that her birth mother had called her Luisa.

After some research, Haggren came across Nos Buscamos, a small Santiago-based NGO that specializes in connecting illegally adopted Chilean babies and their biological families. According to the organization, since it was founded in 2014, it has reunited 400 families unpicking five decades of half-truths and cover-ups by adoption agencies and former government officials that made it so difficult for adoptees like Haggren to trace their ancestry.

Decades after they were adopted, new and more easily accessible technologies are opening up the possibility for these adoptees to finally find their families, in searches spanning continents and traversing languages. At the center of this search by Chiles kidnapped adoptees is not a genetic-testing giant, like 23andMe, but rather Nos Buscamos. The organization leverages custom-built database software, social networks, and artificial intelligence to complement what DNA testing alone often cannot achieve: the reunification of long-lost families.

[Nos Buscamos] works a bit like Tinder: Theres the adopted children, and theres the family, founder Constanza del Ro told Rest of World, clasping her hands together to illustrate the reunion. Two groups searching for one another.

The nature of how these Chilean children were abducted and given up for adoption is what makes Nos Buscamos mission so unique. Over the course of the 1970s and 80s, tens of thousands of Chileans were irregularly or illegally adopted through infant-trafficking schemes, which Pinochet facilitated in an effort to slash poverty rates by sending babies from poor families abroad. Subsequent investigations into this practice revealed nationwide trafficking networks that included lawyers, social workers, midwives, doctors, and middlemen who scouted vulnerable pregnant women, often from Indigenous communities. A Chilean judge investigating these adoptions estimated that the number of illegal or irregular cases could be as high as 20,000; Nos Buscamos believes the total might actually be closer to 50,000.

A few years ago, the Chilean government launched an initiative to take DNA swabs from families trying to track their children, but promptly scrapped it when Covid-19 hit. Nos Buscamos and another outfit called Hijos y Madres del Silencio are the only organizations in Chile actively conducting searches to find matches.

Instead of broadly tracing peoples overall genealogy, as a genetic-testing company would, Nos Buscamos starts by looking for and compiling official data, such as birthdays or hospital records. This can significantly narrow the search to smaller groups sometimes communities and families. Nos Buscamos then works with MyHeritage, a genetic-testing company, to test targeted individuals in these groups who might be biologically related to an adoptee.

Step one the compiling of official data before any DNA work is conducted currently involves over 7,000 entries, del Ro said. Even if the information available is often sparse, she said most people know certain details: where they were born, a hospital name, a birth name, a contact for an adoption agency. Due to the illicit nature of these adoptions, comprehensive data is rare, but every bit helps.

This information is then broken down into variables, and any coincidences between the two groups generate an email notification from Nos Buscamos platform. I first began with a notebook, thinking wed have no more than 50 cases, said del Ro. But as more cases came, it became evident we needed to build customized software. She said its a fairly straightforward program, but one that is optimized for the unique needs of the organization.

For instance, when 42-year-old American Scott Lieberman read a People magazine article about illegal adoptions in Chile last year, he began wondering about his own story. He knew he was adopted from Chile, but was not aware of the circumstances. He registered with Nos Buscamos in 2022, which started an investigation to find leads and eventually tracked down a potential relative. The organization then supplied her with a MyHeritage DNA test kit. Lieberman also sent in a DNA sample. They received their results in a few weeks: They were half-siblings.

Even if Lieberman had taken a DNA test on his own, without Nos Buscamos, it is highly unlikely that his half-sister would have, and hed have remained in the dark about his past.

Our dream is that all people who have been victims of child trafficking should have free access to DNA tests.

Nos Buscamos survives off donations, and can only afford the around 100 DNA tests gifted by MyHeritage every year. This means it needs to be very certain it is targeting the right people. Adoptees living abroad must do their own DNA testing. Del Ro said Nos Buscamos helps out some families in Chile, particularly in rural areas where the mother doesnt have the internet, doesnt know how to use the internet, doesnt speak English, doesnt have a phone, doesnt know what a DNA test is.

Nos Buscamos is now looking into using AI to help automate and organize the existing process, said del Ro. For instance, the team needs to verify that each case qualifies as an irregular or illegal adoption, and is not simply an attempt to track down an estranged family member. The small team of volunteers must therefore still manually review all cases.

Del Ro prefers to work with MyHeritage even though Chiles state-run legal medical service SML currently has a small genetic-testing program. But SML can only handle direct DNA comparisons finding genetic links between two selected samples at a time, rather than identifying an extended family tree. As a private, international company, MyHeritages DNA database is also far larger than SMLs archives.

Our dream is that all people who have been victims of child trafficking should have free access to DNA tests from MyHeritage, del Ro said.

Bioethicists have cautioned against relying so heavily on private genetic-testing companies, since many have previously shared customers genetic data with third parties. When you upload data to these companies, theres fairly broad things they can do with it, said Anna Lewis, a research associate who focuses on genomics at the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University.

She highlighted that DNA collected from Indigenous groups, such as the Mapuche, must be treated with care. The way genetic research has interacted with Indigenous communities has a bad track record, Lewis said, referencing the case of Arizonas Havasupai tribe, whose blood samples were tested for genetic links without the volunteers consent. They sued the universitys governing board, leading to a settlement of the charges that included the infliction of emotional distress and civil rights violations.

Ultimately, in the context of Chilean adoptees trying to find their families through genealogy websites, Lewis believed the pros probably outweigh cons, but proceed with care.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, Haggren just celebrated her 50th birthday. She enjoyed a week of fishing at a picturesque coastal spot in the south of the country. Shes waiting on the DNA results for a potential genetic match carried out by Nos Buscamos in Chile. Haggren has considered that her biological family may not want to meet her, and may not even be searching. I just want them to know that I have had a great life, she said. Above all, Haggren just wants to find out the truth. I need to know what really happened.

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DNA tests help Chiles stolen babies reunite with families - Rest of World