Cristina Prisco, 43, was raised in the Bronx as an adopted only child and always knew where she came from, or so she believed.
“I didn’t think about where I was born and how my narrative began very often,” Prisco exclusively said to The Post.
It was long believed by Prisco and her adoptive parents that she had been born to a destitute lady in Chile. Cristina was given up to a Catholic orphanage by the birth mother since she couldn’t afford to raise the child alone.
In the spring of 1980, Benito Zagaglia, Prisco’s adoptive father, travelled to Chile under the rule of Augusto Pinochet. He did so using an Italian passport.
In May 1980, he took his infant home, keeping her tight for the entirety of the 11-hour journey from Chile to New York City, where her adoptive mother Ann Marie Zagaglia was waiting.
The tale of Tyler Graf was being told on “Good Morning America” in April when Prisco turned the TV on at random; she rarely watches the programme. It made her shiver.
Graf was adopted by a loving family who was informed that his birth mother gave him up for adoption as a result of financial problems, and they raised Graf in Minnesota. Graf later discovered that his mother had been denied access to his body after being told that he had passed away as a baby.
According to “Good Morning America,” he was abducted as a part of a sophisticated global trafficking network that includes medical experts, the Chilean government, and the Catholic Church.
According to Graf’s lawyer, Anthony Clarkson, between 8,000 and 12,000 kids were allegedly illegally or forcibly adopted in Chile under Pinochet’s rule in the 1970s and ’80s. Forced adoptions occurred before Pinochet gained office, but they dramatically escalated during his rule. Many of the women who had their kids stolen from them were impoverished indigenous women living in rural regions; the dictator saw the adoptions as a harsh means of eradicating poverty and regulating population growth.
Prisco called her adoptive mother shortly after watching the “GMA” episode.
