Reunited with her sons after 40 years

After four decades of painful separation, Teresita de Jesus Padilla was able to embrace two of her sons once again, after hospital workers in her native Chile had taken them from her in one of the thousands of illegal adoptions that occurred during the rule of the late dictator General Augusto Pinochet.

Padilla said, moments after reuniting with Tim Rolnick, 41, and Travis Murdoch, 37, during a family reunion in the Chilean capital, Santiago, in a statement reported by The Associated Press today: “God has returned my sons to me, whom I thought I had lost forever.”

The brothers, along with Travis’s twin, were taken from their biological mother while she was still in the hospital. Their case falls within one of the darkest periods in Chile’s history, as child trafficking coincided with numerous other human rights violations during Pinochet’s 17-year rule.

According to government figures, at least 3,095 people were killed or forcibly disappeared during the dictatorship, while tens of thousands were tortured or imprisoned for political reasons.

Two of Padilla’s sons were raised in the United States. They knew they were adopted, but they were unaware of the murky history surrounding the circumstances of their birth and their origins.