‘Hi, Mom. I love you’: US man kidnapped as child in Pinochet’s Chile reunited with family
A man who was kidnapped as a newborn in Chile four decades ago and raised in the US by a family who had no idea says he is grappling with a range of emotions after getting to meet his biological mother for the first time.
“Nothing compares – it was a clash of feelings for me,” 42-year-old Jimmy Lippert Thyden told the Guardian after USA Today this week documented his emotional reunion with his birth mom, María Angélica González. “It was a clash of feelings for me – happiness over all of them, [but] I was hurt by the time lost.
“It was incredibly painful to think someone would hurt her in such a deep way.”
As he and USA Today tell it, after González gave birth to Thyden, a nurse claimed the baby arrived prematurely and needed to be put in an incubator. The nurse soon shared a heartbreaking update with the new mom: her baby had died.
But that wasn’t true, both Thyden and González have since learned. Actually, a family from Arlington, Virginia, had adopted Thyden without realizing he had been deceptively taken away from his mother.
Thyden was raised as one of three siblings in a loving, two-parent household. Thyden knew he was born in Chile as he grew up to serve with the US marines for 19 years and established himself as a criminal defense attorney. But he and his adopted family believed he had no living relatives left in the South American nation which was ruled by dictator Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime from 1973 to 1990.
“For 40 years, that was my story,” Thyden wrote on his Facebook page.
Yet that all began to change in April, when he read a USA Today news article about a California man who had learned he was stolen from his mother in Chile and then illicitly adopted out to a US couple.
The outlet reported that human rights groups believe more than 20,000 babies were snatched away from mostly low-income mothers in Chile and then put up to be adopted by people in foreign countries who paid what they believed were legitimate fees – yet who had been lied to about the babies’ circumstances. Midwives, doctors, social workers, nuns, priests and judges all had roles in the plot, which was financially lucrative for its participants as well as Pinochet’s government.
Reporters for the Chilean investigative news agency Ciper exposed the practice in 2014, according to USA Today. Nine years later, Thyden was stunned by the realization that he could have been one of those victimized by what essentially was a human trafficking operation.
Over the next several weeks, Thyden made contact with an organization named Nos Buscamos, which means “we look for each other” in Spanish. The group’s volunteers use DNA tests donated by the genealogy platform MyHeritage to reunite families who were separated by Pinochet.
The results of the at-home DNA kit along with the efforts from Nos Buscamos volunteers then uncovered the truth for Thyden.
He indeed had family remaining in Chile, including his biological mother, González, who lives in Valdivia. He also had four biological brothers and a sister.
Events since have been a blur. Most notably, on 17 August, after traveling to Chile, Thyden walked up to González’s front door and embraced her as they both wept.
The son greeted his mom with: “Hola, Mamá… Te amomucho.” Hi, Mom. I love you so much.
According to USA Today, González described meeting Thyden as “a miracle from God”. She added: “When I learned that he was alive, I couldn’t believe it.”
Thyden remained in Valdivia on Wednesday when he spoke to the Guardian. His relatives there sang him feliz cumpleaños–happy birthday – as he popped 42 balloons representing each year they had been apart.
He said he has walked his mother’s neighborhood and seen the market he would have shopped at as well as the streets he would have traversed had things gone differently.
He was grateful that his adopted family gave him “every opportunity” to thrive in the US. “They … spared me nothing,” said Thyden, who lives in Ashburn,
Virginia, with his wife and two daughters. “I had a loving home, opportunities, strong values and a great education.”
But absorbing the sights and sounds of Valdivia drove home “what was lost”, he said.
“To know [González] is to know she is a loving and caring person,” Thyden remarked. “It becomes very real.
“We feel as though we have fit in all along – like a missing puzzle piece now found but meant to fit all along.”
As Thyden comes to terms with the last several months, he plans to count on a support network of 40 adoptees with stories that are similar to his. He was among six people who discovered their pasts because of a USA Today’s reporting in April, according to the outlet.
Thyden told USA Today he would like to see the Chilean government pay for counseling for the babies trafficked under Pinochet’s regime.
He added that he would also like to see the government prosecute any people who knowingly had a hand in the illegal adoptions and are still living. And he urged Chile to do everything possible to identify and reunite separated families, including by covering travel costs.
“We will tell these stories,” Thyden said, “until all the children are found or all the families are reunited.”
When I learned that he was alive, I couldn’t believe it
María Angélica González