Before his visit, Tyler Graf said that he was just an ordinary 38-year-old man with a wife and child.
“I was adopted by a very loving, caring family,” Graf said. “I think it was just knowing that my story started before I was adopted. So, it’s like remembering the first five minutes of the movie.”
After becoming a father, Graf tried to know about his birth family. Suddenly, he got a call he had never expected.
“When they sat me down and told me who I was, how do they know who I am and what the real backstory really is,” Graf said.
It was stolen from his birth mother, who was told that her son had died shortly after birth.
The practice of forced adoption became widespread in Chile during the reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet during the 1970s and 1980s. Thousands of children were taken and trafficked around the world through a complex network including hospitals, the Catholic Church and the Chilean government.
Constanza del Rio said judges, doctors, midwives and social assistants were all involved.
American families, such as Tyler, said they did not know that the child they had adopted had been stolen.
When Tyler’s birth mother, Hilda Quezada Godoy, realized in 1983 that the baby she tracked was actually alive, she couldn’t believe it.
“I wanted to scream,” said Godoy. “I questioned a lot of things. Wonder if she was loved, if she ate well, if she spent time chilling.”
Graf went to his birthplace Chile for the first time.
He along with the rest of his family met sisters he had never known.
For only a moment, Graf was transported to a life that could have been.
“Neither a luxurious house nor money is needed to be a good mother. it’s that easy. It is open arms and nothing more than support and love,” said Graf.
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