Guardian News and Media
Santiago
The Catholic church in Chile is under investigation over allegations that priests played a central part in a network which stole newborn babies from single mothers.
Police investigators are now probing dozens of cases in which unmarried women who became pregnant were pressured by priests to give their child up for adoption.
Those who refused were anaesthetised during childbirth and, upon awakening, told that the newborn had died.
The healthy babies were hidden from their biological mother and given away in order to be raised by married couples in “traditional” Catholic families.
Church leaders now admit they have known about the scheme for at least 10 years.
Unlike Spain and Argentina where babies were stolen from leftwing political activists, the motivation in Chile was to shield the reputations of well-off families from the social stigma of an unmarried mother.
Most of the cases now being investigated took place in the 1970s and 1980s but there are reports of cases as late as 2005.
Chile’s child protection agency - Sername - has now opened an investigation and is working with detectives to determine how many children are involved.
Documents from the Sername investigation describe how parents were “tricked into believing that their baby had died at birth” and allege that “various newborn babies, from single women who were pregnant, were given away under irregular circumstances during the 1970s and 1980s to other families.”
Matias Troncoso, 33, a well-known Chilean photographer, is one of these cases. Troncoso always knew he was adopted but when he began asking questions about his biological mother, the answers did not add up.
His birth was not registered until he was six years old, and the clinic where he was born refused to release his records.
The doctor who delivered him was elderly and his memory starting to fail, but enough details leaked out that Troncoso began to suspect a plot.
Last month Troncoso’s suspicions were confirmed when Chilean investigative news site Ciper reported the allegations.
In a series of online articles, the collective’s reporters tracked down and documented an underground network of wealthy families, gynaecologists, social workers, lawyers and at the heart of the scheme Gerardo Joannon, a gregarious and popular Catholic priest.
Troncoso, who ended up as the single son of a loving, upper-class family had nothing but praise for his adoptive parents and said they never hid the fact that he was adopted. But he was extremely critical of the role played by the church. “They had funerals with empty caskets,” he said.
Father Joannon has admitted working with a group of 10 doctors who helped co-ordinate the underground - and likely illegal - adoptions.
“In those moments, a young single woman who had a baby was looked at very badly. I wouldn’t say it scrubbed out their life, but it was something close to that,” said Joannon when confronted with the facts by Ciper reporters in March. “Nobody wanted to marry them.”
Joannon insists that his role in the scheme was limited. He told Ciper: “The only thing I did was put (the pregnant young women) in contact with a doctor who made the effort to find families that were desiring to have a child.”
Interviewed by a Chilean TV crew, Joannon declared, “I am not going to help (the investigation) with anything, I have nothing left to say.”
Church officials then announced that Joannon has been ordered to refrain from speaking further about the cases, which investigators now believe involves six Santiago-area hospitals.
Father Joannon insists that he only participated in underground adoptions in which the biological mother agreed to “donate” the baby to a second family. But at least one mother has said Joannon pressured her to give up her child, and alleges that when she refused, he participated in the disappearance of her newborn daughter. A second mother described Joannon stalking the maternity ward, pressuring her to hand over her newborn. Several other priests are alleged to have been involved in the scheme, but have not been named.