Should a church be allowed to take away babies then sell them?

[ned]

While the 1,500 open cases vary, a common story has a woman being told her newborn has died shortly after birth. The baby is sold to another couple, and official papers are doctored so this couple appeared as the biological parents. At one infamous Madrid clinic, now closed, called San Ramón, it was reported in the Spanish media that staff kept a dead newborn in the freezer to prove to mothers that their babies had died.

Spanish police investigated a handful of cases in the early 1980s, but only within the last few years has the nationwide scope of the alleged trafficking started to take shape.

On Thursday, a Madrid judge is scheduled to question 80-year-old Sister María Gómez Valbuena on charges of illegal imprisonment (it is called illegal imprisonment instead of kidnapping because under Spanish law kidnapping involves a ransom). The case began when Marisa Torres filed accusations against the nun after meeting her daughter Pilar, now 29, for the first time last year. Torres had gone to Sister María at the Santa Cristina clinic in 1982 after seeing a magazine ad for expectant mothers who needed social assistance. Torres had separated from her husband, and the father of the baby was another man.

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.