I've known about the following story for three or four years. At least I knew there were accusations in Spain from a trickle of families and children that some Catholic hospitals and orphanages in Spain may have been engaging in child theft for a for profit adoption scam. It was not a few isolated cases. Now there is this story from the Toronto Sun. (thanks p2p) It's been edited for length:
Searching for Spain’s stolen babies
Mary Vallis - Toronto Sun - 11/08/2011ZARAGOZA, SPAIN—In November 1974, Luisa Fernanda Marin Valenzuela stood in a doorway at a medical clinic. A male nurse held one arm and a nun held the other. About 36 hours earlier, she had given birth to a baby boy. Far across the room, she could see a tiny baby’s naked body on a table. They told her it was her dead son.
She wanted to get closer, to hold him, to cover his cold skin, perhaps even whisper his chosen name, Antonio. But the nun and nurse refused to let Luisa, who was wracked with grief, move closer to the child. Instead, they led her away.
“She’s going to faint, she’s going to faint,” she remembers them saying as they pulled her back. “Take her home.”
It was the first and only time Luisa saw the baby they said was her son. Thirty-seven years later, she is convinced it wasn’t him. She, like hundreds of other mothers across Spain, believes her child was stolen.
What began as a trickle of revelation about General Francisco Franco’s ideological cleansing by taking children from their parents is now a fully engaged scandal in a country wracked by debt, unemployment and civil unrest. As many as 300,000 babies, Spaniards have been told, were wrested from their mothers between 1960 and 1989 by a network of doctors, midwives, priests and nuns who then sold them to infertile couples for huge sums.
The scandal emerged four years ago, when a dying father revealed to his son, Juan Luis Moreno, that he and a childhood friend, Antonio Barroso, had, in fact, been bought from a priest and a nun for about 200,000 pesetas each in 1969, money that could have bought a small flat. Pesetas were the Spanish currency until 2002.
Nobody knows for sure how many children — and parents — are living false lives. Nearly 1,000 lawsuits have been filed in courts ill-prepared to handle them. And with the scandal has come a stream of shocking details — tiny corpses kept in freezers as decoys to show grieving parents; nuns with million-dollar real estate holdings and caskets exhumed after decades found empty.
Plunged into uncertainty, questioning mothers and children are paying hundreds of euros for their own DNA testing; the results are ripping their families apart.
So far, six stolen children have been reunited with their biological families, providing many with hope that their long lost children are alive. It is only now that many have even considered the prospect that they may have been told something other than the truth, including Luisa.
She is 70 now, a mother of nine and grandmother of seven. Remembering those moments long ago, she wipes tears from her eyes again and again.
“You can overcome death. It takes a long time, it’s very painful, but you can overcome it,” she says. “But the uncertainty of not really knowing . . . that really is shattering.”
The stories of the many grieving mothers bear striking similarities. Many were anesthetized during labour. When they awoke, they were told their babies had died. Many never held their babies, or even saw them.
Stolen babies have a long history in Spain. During the reign of General Francisco Franco (1936-1975) tens of thousands of children were stolen, beginning in the 1930s. Children were taken from left-leaning parents and placed with more politically suitable families to protect their “moral education.” Others were taken from single mothers and given to “proper” Catholic homes.
“In Spain, the precedent was really set during the civil war,” said Antonio Lafarga Sábado, Luisa’s husband. “But the weird thing is, it just carried on. It didn’t stop.”
As Spain became a democracy, those with access to newborns appear to have carried on the tradition because the trade was so lucrative. (Some tradition, sighhh.).....
.......The scope is staggering. Barroso (Founder of National Association for Victims of Irregular Adoption) feels he is single-handedly leading the charge for justice. He is tired; dark circles hang beneath his eyes as he explains his frustration.
“It’s shameful that Spain, which likes to presume to be a law-abiding society, one that wants to give the impression of being a democratic, modern society, should have had this going on,” Barroso said. “You basically have to laugh so as not to break out crying.”
When Barroso learned he had been bought, his mother was ill. He surreptitiously swabbed her cheek for DNA tests that proved she was not his biological parent. She eventually confessed that a nun she had befriended did her a favour.
He and Moreno followed the trail to another nun, now 85, and in hospital. The men have visited her several times — hoping she will reveal the names of their real mothers. But she has revealed nothing.
“She remained absolutely unmoved,” Moreno says. “She said her conscience was at peace. She helped mothers in a disgraceful situation. She had nothing but peaceful thoughts.”
Barroso and Moreno have learned that she owns seven properties, estimating her worth at one million euros (nearly $1.4 million Canadian). One of the properties was inherited and another was donated, but the remaining five appear to be outright purchases.
“How is it possible that a nun with espoused vows of chastity, poverty and obedience should be worth so much money? How has she accrued so much property?” Moreno asks.
The nun has not been charged with any crime. The Roman Catholic Church has not commented........
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There are some stories that leave one speechless, wondering how in the world could this sort of thing happen? Four years ago this story involved Mr. Barrasso and his brother, and I kind of passed it off thinking they represented an isolated case from the Fascist Franco era. I guessed wrong. This 'adoption' thing looks like it was systemic and hugely profitable for the middle men and women and the organizations for which they worked--which meant a lot of Catholic hospitals and adoption agencies.
The rationale, other than the money, is most likely found in the words from the 85 year old nun:
“She remained absolutely unmoved,” Moreno says. “She said her conscience was at peace. She helped mothers in a disgraceful situation. She had nothing but peaceful thoughts.”
Except, all those mothers weren't in a 'disgraceful' situation, unless one considers any pregnancy 'disgraceful' when there are wealthy infertile parents with the 'correct' politics and morals readily available. For one family, a bundle of joy who will live their lives built on a parental lie, and for another family, a deceptive and ruthless form of infanticide. And this is pro life? No, this is fundamentally twisted. It's a systemic culture of death based on class and ideology.
We live in fascinating times when all the dark and dirty secrets of our 'cherished' institutions, long held hidden, are now being exposed by the bright light of truth. In the glare of this light, the options for denial and rationalization are limited. So, no I am not surprised the Catholic Church in Spain has remained silent. It would be pretty hard to wax eloquently on the absolute sanctity of life when your past actions clearly state life is more sanctified by wealth, or to demand Catholics defend the sanctity of marriage when those same past actions seem to say some marriages contain more sanctity than others.
I fail to see how secularism could generate a form of moral relativism any worse than Fascist Catholicism has managed. It seems the Spanish people themselves are thinking similar thoughts--just like in Ireland, where this same kind of bizarro thinking also held sway in the Magdalene Laundries. The only difference is the Irish Church somehow failed to see the lucrative potential involved in 'disgraceful pregnancies'. Or maybe they did and we just don't know about that aspect yet.
On a more hopeful note, check out this article from Jayden Cameron's blog, Gay Mystic. Things are beginning to move in Austria.
