Adoptees' stories

Alessia spend a year pouring over the documents to help connect the dots of how Lisa ended up being adopted by one of the founding fathers of the CIA, while he was stationed in Paris. 

Working with Swiss journalist, Otto Hostettler, and filmmaker Leslie Knott, a trip to Basel and Zurich is organised to visit the café’s Aurora (Lisa’s mom) worked at while she was pregnant, the hospital she gave birth and the archives that fastidiously recorded the day gave birth to Lisa, provided crucial information that lead Alessia and Lisa to a foster family that took care of Lisa for the first five months of her life. Meeting Erica, the daughter of the foster family, takes the story into a deeper more sinister dimension of not just Lisa’s adoption, but thousands of others. Erica shows us a piece of paper that lists every baby that her family took in. Lisa was listed as Baby Number 12. But there are many children on the list and the babies were sent as far as away as Saudi Arabia. 

There is one common thread to all these babies – the woman who adopted them out – Alice Honegger.

Radio Podcast:
La Bambina Numero 12, Rai Radio 3, 12/10/2024 and 13/10/2024

Publications:
«Hübsches Baby» zu vergeben, Beobachter, 13/09/2024

Our investigation deepens as we reveal the truth behind Alice Honegger’s questionable adoption practices, and we meet more children she illegally sent abroad, coercing vulnerable mothers into giving up their children. We met Christiane from Vancouver, Canada. Alice Honegger adopted her to
European parents living in Peru who abused Christiane for years, and moving the family from Peru to Florida to Montreal to Vancouver. Christiane managed to escape the family at 15, but she didn’t discover she was adopted until she was 48 years old. Our investigation is helping to reveal if her birth father is still living and the real identity of her adoptive parents.

We met Armin, who has been sent by Alice Honegger to an American family in Saudi Arabia. His mother was a Hungarian refugee who sought safety in Switzerland. He’s only just reconnected with his family in Switzerland, and we met him after the family reached out after an article that Otto Hostettler published last year.

We continue to follow his plight for answers.