Police have found the names of the mothers of two naturalized Finnish women born in Taiwan, but still know little about them and are asking for the public’s help.
They are trying to help Sabina and Belinda Soderlund find their birth parents, but the task has proven challenging because the two are believed to have been among more than 100 babies sent overseas in the 1980s by a child trafficking ring that used forged documents to arrange adoptions.
The ring, headed by Chu Li-ching (褚麗卿) and her husband, arranged for the adoption of more than 100 babies by unsuspecting families in the US, Australia, Sweden and Finland.
Photo: CNA
However, a recent case may give the Soderlunds some hope.
Using documents and DNA tests, police were able to identify the biological mother of another Taiwan-born naturalized Finn named Conny Wilk who suffered a similar fate to the Soderlunds and also asked Taiwanese police for help.
Police have also tried to help the Soderlunds and after sifting through a large amount of information, they found the Chinese names of the two girls’ mothers — Chan Hsiu-chin (詹秀琴) and Lin Mei-yun (林美雲) — in legal documents.
Photo: CNA
The problem is that more than 1,000 people in Taiwan have identical three-character names, and police have little else to go on in tracking the biological mothers other than the strong likelihood that they lived in the Greater Taipei area in the 1980s.
The police issued an appeal for the two women to get in touch with them.
“If [the two women] still think about the two sisters and don’t want to leave behind any regrets in their lives,” they can take the initiative to contact the police, the authorities said.
Police asked Chan and Lin, or anybody who may have knowledge of the two women, to call (02) 2341-5841 or (02) 2964-0337.
Sabina Soderlund came to Taiwan in 2006 hoping to find her birth parents, but left empty-handed.
It turned out that the names and addresses listed on the papers she had were forged, and the so-called birth parents identified in her documents had been falsified.
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