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The Case of Heidi Llemos

The older woman at the top is Heidi Llemos, and these are two of her grandchildren. She and her adult daughter and her son-in-law were all kidnapped by the military. She was tortured and eventually released. Her adult daughter and her son-in-law were eventually killed. But the daughter was two months pregnant when she was picked up, and a prisoner told Heidi that her daughter had been kept alive and had given birth in prison.

Heidi spent ten years looking for that grandchild of hers. She eventually found a child living with a woman who had been the military guard in charge of female prisoners at the prison and, it was quite plausible that this child was her daughter's. She demanded that the courts do DNA testing. Mitochondrial DNA sequences were obtained under court order, and were found to match perfectly between this girl and Heidi. She went to court and demanded the return of the granddaughter.

The military family made the argument, "How can you return this grandchild to a family she's never known?" claiming it wasn't in the child's best interests. The girl didn't even know Heidi Llemos. The grandmothers of the Placo de Mayo said that when the society knows that these people murdered her parents, how can you not release her, because when she becomes an adult she'll find out. Is it worse to move families now, or to find out when she's an adult that she's been raised all of her life by her parents' murderers? The supreme court of Argentina agreed.

Overall, about 51 living children have been identified, and most of these have been restored to their natural biological families. Many of the children are now reaching the age of majority, so are now able on their own to look for their natural families, when they know that something was amiss. Even as the grandparents are dying, they are leaving behind their DNA in the DNA databank so that the children, as they come to ask, will have it.




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