A Texas woman adopted from Greece in 1958 has spent years unraveling a story built on lies, and what she found led her t...

A Texas woman adopted from Greece in 1958 has spent years unraveling a story built on lies, and what she found led her to the United Nations. Linda Carol Trotter was born Eftychia Noula in a small village in Nafpaktia, western Greece. At eight months old, she was placed through the Municipal Nursery of Athens with a couple in San Antonio, Texas, who had spent twelve years trying to have a child. The adoptive parents were told her biological mother had died in childbirth and that she had been born prematurely. Neither was true. In June 2017, Linda, then 59, tracked down her biological mother Chariklia, who was 80 and very much alive. Chariklia had been 19, unmarried, and pregnant when her great-grandfather threw her out of the house. A brother secretly brought her bread at night. She eventually gave birth to Eftychia in a shed behind a relative's home, and a godmother later took the baby to Athens, telling Chariklia the child would stay in an institution temporarily until she could support herself. Chariklia never got her daughter back. Linda has since alleged that her adoption file contained inaccurate or falsified documents. In September 2023, she brought those allegations before the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances in Geneva, calling her adoption illegal and describing coercion of her biological mother and deliberate false information given to her adoptive parents. Her case sits within a broader pattern. Professor Gonda Van Steen, who has researched postwar Greek adoptions extensively, estimates roughly 4,000 Greek children were adopted abroad between 1950 and 1975, primarily to the United States. How many of those involved irregularities remains unknown, since many were processed through courts with the appearance of legal compliance. Linda founded the Eftychia Project to document cases like hers and push for accountability. She says she was a loved and cherished child, and she holds nothing against her adoptive parents. But she is clear that behind the words "adoption" and "orphan" can lie very different, and very painful, realities. #GreekAdoptions #EftychiaProject #Greece