Nun in Catholic Spanish Baby Trafficking Case Dies

Times LIVE
January 24, 2013

http://www.timeslive.co.za/world/2013/01/24/nun-in-catholic-spanish-baby-trafficking-case-dies


Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena in April last year was the first person to go before a judge over the "stolen babies" scandal.

General Francisco Franco's regime allowed children to be taken from their parents on moral or ideological grounds, and the practice allegedly continued for profit for years after his death in 1975.

Asked about press reports that she had died on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul convent said: "Yes indeed, but we do not have more information."

Sister Maria had been scheduled to appear in court for questioning for a second time last week but the hearing was postponed indefinitely because of her poor health.

She was to be questioned over accusations that she took away twins born to a single mother in 1981 and sold them to another family.

In April 2012 Sister Maria was also questioned by a judge investigating her role in the kidnapping of a newborn girl from a Madrid hospital three decades ago.

Campaign groups for suspected victims of the practice such as SOS Bebes Robados and Anadir say hundreds of thousands of newborns were stolen under Franco.

They say some 1,500 court cases have been filed with prosecutors but that judges have shelved many cases on the grounds that they occurred too long ago.

Under a 1940 decree, the state was allowed to take children into custody if their "moral education" was at risk.

The decree allowed the Franco dictatorship to take the children of jailed left-wing opponents from their mothers and have them placed with Roman Catholic religious orders or adopted by ideologically approved families to purge Spain of feared Marxist influence.

Some of the same doctors, nurses and officials who carried out the Franco-era policy are accused of continuing the practice illegally after Spain's return to democracy as a business that provided babies for cash to women unable to give birth.