Stolen Children Seek Parents in Spain UPDATED

This article alleges that politicians, mafia and the Catholic Church were involved at different points for different reasons in this trafficking.

“An estimated 300,000 Spaniards are believed to have been stolen from their mothers. They were handed over to couples who adopted them – usually against payment – between the 1940s and 1990s.”

An organization called National Association of People Affected by Irregular Adoptions (Anadir) has been set up to help these adults trace their families and fight for justice.

“Stolen children” seek their parents in Spain
[Monsters and Critics 2/1/11 by Sinikka Tarvanian]

Update: The BBC is releasing a documentary about this on Tuesday October 18, 2011

“The children were trafficked by a secret network of doctors, nurses, priests and nuns in a widespread practice that began during General Franco’s dictatorship and continued until the early Nineties.

Hundreds of families who had babies taken from Spanish hospitals are now battling for an official government investigation into the scandal.

Several mothers say they were told their first-born children had died during or soon after they gave birth

“But the women, often young and unmarried, were told they could not see the body of the infant or attend their burial.

In reality, the babies were sold to childless couples whose devout beliefs and financial security meant that they were seen as more appropriate parents.

“Official documents were forged so the adoptive parents’ names were on the infants’ birth certificates.

In many cases it is believed they were unaware that the child they received had been stolen, as they were usually told the birth mother had given them up.

Journalist Katya Adler, who has investigated the scandal, says: ‘The situation is incredibly sad for thousands of people. “

‘There are men and women across Spain whose lives have been turned upside-down by discovering the people they thought were their parents actually bought them for cash. There are also many mothers who have maintained for years that their babies did not die – and were labelled “hysterical” – but are now discovering that their child has probably been alive and brought up by somebody else all this time.

“Experts believe the cases may account for up to 15 per cent of the total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989.

It began as a system for taking children away from families deemed politically dangerous to the regime of General Franco, which began in 1939. The system continued after the dictator’s death in 1975 as the Catholic church continued to retain a powerful influence on public life, particularly in social services.

It was not until 1987 that the Spanish government, instead of hospitals, began to regulate adoptions.

The scandal came to light after two men, Antonio Barroso and Juan Luis Moreno, discovered they had been stolen as babies. “

“When the pair made their case public, it prompted mothers all over the country to come forward with their own experiences of being told their babies had died, but never believing it. One such woman was Manoli Pagador, who has begun searching for her son.

A BBC documentary, This World: Spain’s Stolen Babies, follows her efforts to discover if he is Randy Ryder, a stolen baby who was brought up in Texas and is now aged 40.

In some cases, babies’ graves have been exhumed, revealing bones that belong to adults or animals. Some of the graves contained nothing at all.

The BBC documentary features an interview with an 89-year-old woman named Ines Perez, who admitted that a priest encouraged her to fake a pregnancy so she could be given a baby girl due to be born at Madrid’s San Ramon clinic in 1969. ‘The priest gave me padding to wear on my stomach,’ she says.

It is claimed that the San Ramon clinic was one of the major centres for the practice.

Many mothers who gave birth there claim that when they asked to see their child after being told it had died, they were shown a baby’s corpse that appeared to be freezing cold.

The BBC programme shows photographs taken in the Eighties of a dead baby kept in a freezer, allegedly to show grieving mothers.”

“Despite hundreds of families of babies who disappeared in Spanish hospitals calling on the government to open an investigation into the scandal, no nationally co-ordinated probe has taken place.

As a result of amnesty laws passed after Franco’s death, crimes that took place during his regime are usually not examined. Instead, regional prosecutors across the country are investigating each story on a case-by-case basis, with 900 currently under review.

But Ms Adler says: ‘There is very little political will to get to the bottom of the situation.’

There are believed to be thousands more cases that will never come to light because the stolen children fear their adoptive parents will be seen as criminals.

Many of the families of stolen babies have taken DNA tests in the hope of eventually being matched with their children. Some matches have already been made but, without a nationally co-ordinated database, reuniting lost relatives will be a very difficult process. ”

300,000 babies stolen from their parents – and sold for adoption: Haunting BBC documentary exposes 50-year scandal of baby trafficking by the Catholic church in Spain
[Daily Mail  10/16/11 by Polly Dunbar]

Update 2: “When Ana Cano was breastfeeding her three-day-old baby at a Madrid clinic 48 years ago, ‘a nurse came and took him away.’

Fifteen minutes later, Ana was told the baby had died. ‘I asked to see a doctor and made such a fuss that they threatened to call the police,’ Ana, now in her 80s, told the daily newspaper El Pais. But ‘they never allowed us to see the body.’

Cano gave birth during the 1939-75 rule of Spain’s dictator Francisco Franco, when babies are believed to have been systematically stolen and given up for adoption to wealthy families supportive of the general’s right-wing national-Catholic ideology.

Theft and trafficking with babies then continued for financial motives for about two decades after the dictatorship, according to associations representing people now desperately looking for their lost children, parents or siblings.

As many as 300,000 children may have been stolen from their mothers, victims’ representatives estimate.

Prosecutors and courts are investigating nearly 1,500 such cases around the country, but many of the victims feel the inquiries are not making much progress.

‘There is no political will to look into this,’ Flor Diaz, president of the association SOS Stolen Babies, told dpa.

‘We feel powerless,’ she said. ‘Many mothers will die without meeting their lost children. Many families are losing hope.’

Babies were initially taken from ‘red’ parents who had fought against Franco during the 1936-39 civil war, according to the evidence that has emerged.

The racket later targeted women from poor backgrounds, some of them single mothers, who were unable to defend themselves against doctors, hospital nuns and other respected figures running illegal adoption networks.

‘The adoptive parents often did not know that the children were stolen,’ Diaz says. ‘They were just told that if they paid, they would not have to wait so long to get a child.’ A baby could cost about the same as a flat, according to Diaz.

Mothers were told their newborn had died, and that the body had already been buried, or that it was not in a good enough condition for them to see. Some parents were shown bodies of other babies.

The adoptive parents registered the children as their own. The racket involved doctors, nuns, priests, midwives, nurses, officials, cemetery workers and intermediaries.

The thefts started coming to light after judge Baltasar Garzon in 2008 tried to investigate Franco’s human rights abuses. Garzon was forced to drop his inquiry, but non-political cases of illegal adoptions also began to emerge.

Cano’s son’s death certificate claimed he died before birth. ‘If that had been so, how is it possible I held him in my arms for three days,’ asks the woman, a resident of Getafe near Madrid, whose family has requested that prosecutors investigate the case.

Pressure from victims and the media prompted Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero’s Socialist government to appoint a prosecutor to coordinate such investigations.

The government also created a DNA database, but Diaz says many victims cannot access it.

‘The DNA base can only be used with the authorization of a judge confirming there is evidence of a crime,’ she explained. ‘And many people do not want to raise criminal charges, which would also concern their adoptive parents.’

So far, judicial investigations have led to more than 70 legally authorized DNA tests and to 14 exhumations of babies’ bodies for such tests, according to figures quoted by El Pais. Only six families have been reunited. More than 300 inquiries have meanwhile been shelved.

Investigators face great difficulties in probing alleged crimes that took place decades ago. Documents are missing, witnesses have died, and time for prosecuting the crimes may have expired under the statute of limitations.

Diaz, however, suspects that powerful people are blocking inquiries, at least in some regions. ‘Victims are carrying out investigations themselves,’ she says.

Some parents looking for their children have hired detectives or launched searches on the internet. Victims’ associations have also created their own DNA database.

‘I don’t want to distance my son’ from his adoptive parents, one investigating father, Luis Vega, said. ‘But I do need him to know that his father did not abandon him’ at birth.

Spain is about to get a new conservative government following the November 20 elections, but Diaz does not expect that to change much for the stolen children. ‘We may have to take this all the way to the European courts in Strasbourg,’ she vowed.”

Thousands of parents seek their stolen children in Spain
[Monsters and Critics 12/10/11 by Sinikka Tarvainen]

Update 3: “Spanish campaign group ANADIR and its supporters are maintaining their struggle for truth in Spain’s stolen babies scandal…

The adoption scandal reportedly occurred in Spain over a period of five decades, beginning around the time of the conclusion of the Spanish Civil War… The scandal which emerged to an international audience last year, alleges human trafficking of babies for adoption on an enormous scale.

Private investigations suggest up to 300,000 babies may have been taken with the aid of hospital staff and nuns, partly due to ideologically driven social agendas as well as plain profiteering…

Campaigners have revealed how in some cases mothers were told their babies had died.

On January 27, ANADIR and its supporters will assemble in Madrid to draw attention to a concentration of cases involving the alleged theft and illegal adoption of newborns.

The NGO wants greater transparency leading to justice for the victims and their parents and is calling on the authorities to comply with its requests for an improved and thorough investigation process.

The NGO ANADIR is shipping in supporters from around the country and is predicting a large turn-out for the protest. Campaigners will deliver signatures to the Attorney General’s Office and demand new avenues of research. There will be a demonstration in Madrid Calle Fortuny to protest the alleged lack of support from the authorities.

Revelations suggest widespread human trafficking did occur.

Antonio Barroso who heads up ANADIR discovered at the age of 38 his parents had taken him from a nun for the equivalent of just over £1,000…

A groundswell of cases emerged revealing babies were effectively stolen from their mothers and sold on for adoption. The plight of the stolen babies subsequently featured in a BBC television documentary, Spain’s Stolen Babies, televised last year.

The behaviour is thought to have started in the 1930s.

ANADIR – National Association for people Affected by Irregular Adoptions – which has more than 1,800 members, now facilitates DNA cross-checking to help reunite biological families.

Despite holding the names of alleged perpetrators of the irregular adoptions and in contact with families affected, the NGO says the campaign is not being treated with enough seriousness by the authorities.

However, the human rights group is determined to reveal the whole truth and draw attention to the scandal to a much wider audience…”

SPAIN: Adoption scandal
[Xperedon 1/1/12 by Alan Cole]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

This is the tip of the iceberg for trafficking children in this era. Children were moved across many borders including into the US.

The Church needs to own up to what they have done and assist in searching. The government database needs to be opened for these victims. They should not have to bring criminal charges against their adoptive parents for access!

Update 4: “On his deathbed five years ago in Barcelona, Juan Moreno told his son Juan Luis the family secret: we bought you from a priest in 1969. Moreno Sr. paid 150,000 pesetas, more than what he paid for their apartment seven years earlier. DNA tests have revealed that Juan Luis’s birth certificate, which names his adoptive parents as his birth parents, is false. And Antonio Barroso, Juan Luis’s best friend, was also bought from the same priest, according to Juan Luis. The two families would take summer vacations together to Zaragoza, around 300 kilometers west of Barcelona, but the men now believe the trips’ true purpose was to pay the installments on the two boys to the clergyman, Juan Luis says.

Torres told a judge last week that after giving birth, Sister María intimidated her into giving up the child. The nun, Torres said, threatened to denounce her to authorities for being an adulteress, saying they would likely take away her 2-year-old daughter. When Pilar and her adoptive father began to investigate her roots, they spoke to Sister María. She told them Pilar’s mother was a prostitute and to forget about her, Pilar said. Sister María hasn’t responded to the charges.

“The nuns and priests justified what they did by saying that the child was better off with the adoptive family, but they still took the money,” says one adoptee.

Catholic nuns have long been involved with adoption services, Keystone / Corbis

Courts are now looking into baby-trafficking cases in Valencia, the Basque Country, Madrid, Catalonia, Andalusia, and the Canary Islands.

Spain’s Baby-Snatching Scandal Focuses on Nun’s Alleged Role
[The Daily Beast 4/11/12]