Spain's Stolen-Babies Scandal: Empty Graves and a Silent Nun

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Time

Spain's Stolen-Babies Scandal: Empty Graves and a Silent Nun
By Lisa Abend / Madrid
Friday, Apr. 13, 2012

The elderly woman who left Madrid's courthouse on Thursday morning looked stooped and ghostly, but neither her obvious frailty nor the plain blue habit she wore kept the small crowd of onlookers from screaming at her. "Shameless!" one woman shouted. "How could you cause so much suffering?"

Thursday was supposed to be the day that began to bring resolution to those who believe themselves victims of decades of baby robbing in Spain. The nun called to testify, Sor María Gómez Valbuena, is the first person indicted for her alleged involvement in a scheme which supposedly saw thousands of newborns taken from their mothers and sold to adoptive parents. But once in front of the judge, Gómez exercised her right to remain silent. And later that day at a meeting with representatives of victims' associations, Spanish government officials admitted that, although they would dedicate administrative resources to attempting to reunite mothers and children, the chances for bringing to justice those who had separated the families were slim.

Some 1,500 accusations of baby stealing, dating from the late 1950s until mid-1980s, have been filed in Spain in the past year or two. Most follow the same chilling narrative: a single mother or a married woman who already had several children gave birth to an apparently healthy child, but was soon told — often by a nun who worked as a nurse — that the baby had died. Although the adoptive parents frequently paid significant amounts of money for their child, ideology more than greed appears to have been behind the thefts. "These are nuns and priests who strongly believed that the child would be better off with a more traditional or more 'moral,' family," explains journalist Natalia Junquera, who has led the newspaper El País's investigation of the thefts. "They honestly thought they were doing the right thing."

Since the cases first began garnering attention more than a year ago, DNA testing has reunited six mothers with children they believed dead. Dozens of parents have found that the coffins in which they believed their newborns to be buried are in fact empty, or that civil registries do not contain death certificates for children they thought had died at birth. And yet until Sor María, no one had actually been charged with a crime. The courts have closed many of the cases for lack of evidence.


Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2112003,00.html#ixzz1rztujlld

[Bryn]

1. No wonder they're against contraception

Gotta to keep on making babies for profits.

[intaglio]

2. the problem is not the "soldiers"

that is the nuns and doctors who carried out the acts for they could well have believed they were doing "right". The real criminals are the senior prelates who raked in the payments and did nothing to stop this appalling trade.

[harmonicon]

3. Oh, I think they're both the problem.

I would hope that anyone who knowingly had a hand in this would be exposed and charged. People can want others to do bad things, but you have to find those willing to do the deed for those plans to really mean anything.

[many a good man]

4. The problem was the Fascists

These disappearances were sanctioned by Franco and fascists friends in the Church as a strategy to rid Spain of the reds.


From the NYT three years ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/europe/01franco.html?_r=1

Franco’s top military psychologist, Antonio Vallejo Nágera, claimed that Spain could be saved from Marxism by isolating children from Republican parents. A 1940 decree allowed the state to take children into custody if their “moral formation” was at risk.

“Their logic was that the solution lay in separating children from their mothers,” Mr. Vinyes said.

Catholic schools and the welfare system known as Social Aid became a machine for political reorientation. Social Aid children led a life of fascist doctrine, harsh discipline and Catholic ritual, Ms. Cenarro said.

According to Mr. Vinyes, nearly 31,000 children were registered as being in state custody at some point between 1945 and 1954, a majority of them from Republican families. For many, it was because their parents were imprisoned or executed; for some, it was because their families — partly as a result of Franco’s disastrous policy of autarky — could not support them.

[intaglio]

6. It was not just the Spanish Republicans that were affected

According to the article, if your family was too large or if you were, shock!, a single mother the child was also available for removal.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. The accusations are this went on until the mid 80s

Well after Franco.

[jwirr]

13. It should be noted here that their Republican does not mean the same thing as our rethug. One is

a political party and the Spanish one meant people who want their country to be a republic (democratic nation). This act on the so called conservative Catholic church is pure social Darwinism and borders on eugenics. Add the sexual abuse of children by the priests and you have a church that has no business calling itself "right to life".

I think their is a Bible verse that says you are supposed to take the sty out of your own eye before you try to correct the one in someone elses eye.

[canuckledragger]

5. "They honestly thought they were doing the right thing."

..is complete bullshit, IMO

this might be a little inflammatory but the way I see it:

They saw, passed judgement & also saw a way to make a little money on the side 'for god'

[intaglio]

8. The problem with religion is that people believe it

... and Catholic preaching had long been that the "immoral" or "indigent" did deserve babies. Think of the Magdalene Laundries in Ireland.

[PassingFair]

10. "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

I'm sure they had no qualms about what they were doing.

My sister-in-law saw the same type of thing happen here,
where blue-eyed blond babies are whisked through the
foster system and placed with well heeled but barren religious
nuts on the western side of the state.

[jwirr]

14. I couldn't help but think to Newt when I read this.

[BlueIris]

9. Ugly.

Really ugly.

[SemperEadem]

11. "thou shalt not steal" is the guidepost for doing the right thing

"thou shalt not bear false witness" is another guidepost for doing the right thing.

Taking what/who is not yours is called stealing. It's "kidnapping".

Telling a mother who has given birth to a perfectly healthy infant that her child is dead is called lying. Doing it while all the time having a judgmental plan in your head to give the baby to someone they deem is "more deserving" is conspiracy.

What lie did they tell the mothers who demanded to see their dead infant?

The pain that they brought 4 sets of families (the biological mother and/or father's families and now the adoptive mother/father's families) is despicable, conspiratorial and premeditated.

How anyone who should have the most intimate, direct knowledge of what their church teaches could actually sit up and say "they honestly thought they were doing the right thing" tells me that the rot in that religion is so pervasive that there is no hope left for it.

"After the delivery she told me my daughter had died," Torres told the press. "Then she said that the baby had been given to another family. And she threatened me that if I didn't go along with it, she would tell the authorities that I was an adultress, and they would take away my other child as well."

Just plain despicable.

[lunatica]

12. Ah yes! The do gooder Church again

Upholding those Christian values they dedicate their lives to. Spreading Jesus' love around and saving souls.

[babydollhead]

15. how many of these "sold" babies grew up to be molested by priests? n/t