A Northern Virginia man who was stolen at birth from his biological mother in Chile is going to be reunited with her soon.
Sean Ours and his sister were adopted by a family in the United States and grew up here. Their adoptive family was told their mom gave them up for adoption because she couldn’t afford to raise them.
But last year, the story they’d been told their whole lives began to unravel. After hearing about fraudulent adoptions, their adoptive mom started working with a group called Connecting Roots, a nonprofit that has been linking children illegally taken from Chilean moms. Ours and his sister learned their biological mom was told her son and daughter died during childbirth.
“It was very shocking realizing that we might have been sold, so to speak, against her will,” Ours said.
Through Connecting Roots and the group MyHeritage, they were able to get the documentation and DNA testing to identify their mom in Santiago.
“Forty years later, 39 years later, Oh, by the way, you do have kids. They’re grown up and they have kids of their own,” Ours said.
He and his sister had a Zoom call with their biological mom in November with the help of an interpreter.
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“It was great seeing her face, hearing her voice,” Ours said. “It became very emotional for all of us.”
The founder of Connecting Roots says tens of thousands of children were sold for adoption from Chile between the 1960s and 1990s. It’s unknown how many ended up in the U.S.
The group and its partners have helped dozens of families reunite over the past few years.
“I believe that you have to start somewhere, and it has picked steam,” Connecting Roots President and CEO Tyler Graf said. “We have been helping more and more adoptees. We’re averaging one to two reunions a month.”
Ours and his sister will join several others and meet their moms in Chile later this month.
“Definitely looking forward to it,” Ours said.
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