Adopted child finds mother after 42 years – He was ‘stolen’ after birth and told she was dead

Jimmy Lippert Theiden lives in USA and he had to wait a full 42 years to hug his biological mother. “I love you very much”he told her while in her arms.

According to the Associated Press report, Maria Angelica Gonzalez from Chile gave birth to a boy in 1981. While holding the newborn in her arms, doctors took it from her hands to put it in an incubator, as it was born prematurely. The medical staff told her to leave the hospital, but when she returned to pick up the baby, they told her that it had died and that there was nothing to bury.

“How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of hugs?” he said.

The journey of reuniting the two began in April. Jimmy Lippert Thyden was inspired by the publication of stories of adopted children, who had been born in Chile and found their biological relatives, with the help of the NGO Nos Buscamos.

“My adoption papers state that they had no living relatives. I found out in the last few months that I have a mom and four brothers and a sister,” he said in an interview from Ashburn, Virginia, where he works as a criminal defense attorney.

Nos Buscamos has been working for two years with the MyHeritage platform, which provides free DNA testing kits to adoptees and people suspected of being victims of child trafficking in Chile.

Thyden’s DNA sample matched that of his first cousin, who also used the same platform, and was confirmed to be 100% Chilean. Thyden sent his cousin his adoption papers, which included his birth mother’s address as well as the name Maria Angelica Gonzalez.

Eventually, it turned out that this woman was his mother, while his cousin helped him get in touch.

Tens of thousands of babies were abducted in the 1970-80 period

The organization Nos Buscamos estimates that tens of thousands of children were removed from their families in the 1970s and 1980s under the government of Augusto Pinochet and were given up for adoption following searches on passports issued for children who left the country and never returned.

“The real story is that they were stolen from poor families, poor women who didn’t know how to protect themselves.”says the head of the organization, which has managed to reunite over 450 families.

One of them is Thaiden’s family, who traveled to Chile with his wife and two daughters to meet them.

The moment was very touching with Thaiden walking into his mother’s house where he was greeted with 42 balloons, which were popped, each marking a lost year, before the reunion.

Thyden remembers his mother’s first words: “Son, you have no idea how much I cried for you. How many nights I lay awake, praying to God to let me live long enough to find out what happened to you».

He calls himself lucky as he says things could be worse as “some people find out details about their origins that they wouldn’t want to know”.

The 42-year-old’s adoptive parents supported him in making this journey, to reunite with his lost relatives, but as they said were “unwitting victims” of an extensive network of illegal adoptions, “struggling” with the reality of the situation.