After 40 years apart, a Chilean mother reunites with two children stolen during dictatorship

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Teresita de Jesús Padilla has reunited with her two sons after they were taken from her in Chile four decades ago

Teresita de Jesús Padilla has reunited with her two sons after they were taken from her in Chile four decades ago

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Four decades after a brutal separation, Teresita de Jesús Padilla was able to embrace two of her children again, after they were taken from her native Chile by hospital workers in one of the thousands of illegal adoptions under the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.

“God gave me back my children, whom I thought I had lost forever,” Padilla said moments after meeting Tim Rolnick and Travis Murdoch, 41 and 37, respectively, during their reunion in Santiago, Chile's capital.

The brothers, along with Travis's twin, were taken from their biological mother while she was still in the hospital. Their case is part of one of Chile's darkest chapters when child-trafficking coincided with many other human rights violations during Pinochet's 17-year reign. During the dictatorship, at least 3,095 people were killed or forcibly disappeared, according to government figures, and tens of thousands more were tortured or jailed for political reasons.

Both of Padilla's children grew up in the United States. They knew they were adopted but were unaware of the shadowy history behind their origins.

“It felt almost like I've known Teresita my whole life. I just felt a connection,” Rolnick said after reuniting with his biological mother. “It’s definitely something I will remember for the rest of my life."

Rolnick discovered in 2020 that he had an entire family in Chile who never stopped thinking of him. He also learned he had two brothers living just a few hundred miles from his home in Maryland.

“It all started when I was trying to find out about my medical history” through a MyHeritage DNA test, he explained.

Soon after, distant cousins and social organizations dedicated to investigating and reuniting families who had been illegally separated began contacting him. “And then it was like opening up Pandora’s box."

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