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Pedro Armestre / AFP - Getty Images
Spanish nun Maria Gomez Valbuena (C) leaves a court in Madrid on Thursday.
An elderly Spanish nun appeared in court on Thursday to face charges of stealing babies, after claims by hundreds of women that their infants were taken from them at birth and given away in illegal adoptions.
Doctors, nurses and religious workers at several clinics and hospitals in Spain are alleged to have sold babies for adoption over decades, after telling new mothers that their infants had died.
At the hearing at Madrid's Superior Tribunal of Justice, Maria Gomez Valbuena, a Sisters of Charity nun now in her 80s who once worked in the Santa Cristina hospital in Madrid, became the first person accused in the widening scandal.
Clad in a dark habit, she was questioned by a judge but invoked her right not to testify.
The formal charges against her are of illegal detention and falsifying documents in a case dating from the early 1980s.
A crowd of mothers who say they were robbed of their babies shouted "shameless" at the grim-faced nun as she was escorted out of the court through a throng of journalists to a car.
An association of parents and families, Anadir, has presented more than 900 lawsuits alleging child-stealing. Most have been thrown out due to lack of evidence.
Many mothers say they were told by health or religious workers their babies had died at birth or shortly after, but were neither shown a body nor given a proper death certificate.
Anadir says the practice began in the 1940s when, in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War, the fascist government stole babies from political prisoners from the defeated Republican side.
In subsequent decades it became a money-making racket, the victims claim. Parents who wanted to adopt babies were often referred to clinics that were known for finding babies for desperate families.
Many of the mothers have said they believe their babies were taken due to a mistaken paternalism on the part of the doctors or religious workers who may have seen them as unfit mothers because they were young, poor or unmarried.
Andrea Comas / Reuters
Paloma Perez, who says she was a stolen baby, talks to reporters in front of a court in Madrid, Thursday.
One mother testified in court last week that Gomez Valbuena had told her she could be jailed for adultery. The nun threatened to take her baby away and give it to another family, and later said the baby had died.
The mother, Maria Luisa Torres, has been able to prove through DNA tests the baby she was told had died 30 years ago is alive after being adopted by another family.
"I only hope there will be justice after so much suffering," Torres said last week after testifying in court.
Many other mothers have found it impossible to track down babies they believe would now be adults, since the birth records, death certificates and adoption papers were falsified, according to Anadir and to the Madrid prosecutor.
Alleged victims say they need help from authorities in unearthing evidence of their claims from graveyards and public registries.
"The government will not fail in its duty. We share the pain of the victims and we will go as far as we can," said Justice Minister Alberto Ruiz-Gallardon after meeting representatives of associations representing people who say their babies were stolen.
The Ministry of Justice says it will gather the facts about all of the different claims to be able to investigate them more systematically, and will also handle the results of DNA tests.
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Leave a Comment:
OMG What a horrible thing to do, So sorry for the mothers
So the Catholic Church resorted to stealing to increase the flock? I could easily be wrong but I think the religious orientation of all the parties bears a look. Having been raised a Catholic, but renouncing it at 14, I have been subjected to their attitudes and methods and would not find it surprising at all. In deference to those Catholics who are in possession of their minds, I respect your right to think and accept your Christianity. The darker side of any organization is something society could do without.
You can't trust nuns! Of course you can't trust priests either... especially with your little boys.
So I think we can conclude that organized religion is something you should protect yourself from!
Anyone curious about how America might look when Romney and the GOP Ultras get all three branches of our governance in their grasp should read up on Franco's Spain.
You don't need to be a genocidal lunatic to be a fascist. It's a very clear ideology based on corporate capitalism, the militarization of society, and the destruction of human rights and individual liberties in the name of archaic and patriarchal notions of "family values" and "serving the greater good".
Obama has stood up for your rights how?
By standing up to conservatives and their elitist backers.
And people are worried about Sharia law?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7r2i6NrqNs&feature=g-vrec&context=G293f8b9RVAAAAAAAAAw
majimportax, I agree! I think America already looks a lot like a fascist state and has since the "Reagan Revolution" took hold. It's hard to argue the corporations aren't running the country...
Bubba - It's called "The lesser of two evils" and it's all we've had to vote for in the last three decades or so. By your logic once should keep voting the straight party ticket because the other candidate isn't perfect. Got some bad news for you, dude. None of them are even close to perfect. Vote with your brains, not just which side of the ballot their name shows up on.
And Obama has no elitist backers???
ucantmakeitup, great argument. In the schoolyard, it's called "I know you are, but what am I?" Glad to see such an intelligent discussion.
I wasn't going to comment, but What in the hell are ALL of you morons even commenting about??? This is about a nun who sold babies. It wasn't even in America. go rant your stupdity somewhere else.
This is the kind of horrific religious abuse that creates atheists. What incredible arrogance.
Making a religion out there being no god is as bad as claiming you know there is a God. They don't call it faith for nothing. You just can't know, but you should never dismiss the possibility, either way. You need to live in a way that will allow you to look God in the eye when you die, whether there is one or not.
Believers and non-believers have at least one thing in common: their opinions are faith-based.
Infinity and eternity may explain why we are here, but it doesn't, at least in my mind, lean toward a Divine presence. For me, the jury is still out. Doesn't really matter to me though. If I end up standing before God when I die, I have little to be ashamed of. And if I just cease to exist, I won't be around to know it. I will never stop looking though, it would be a tremendous comfort if I could find some reason to believe that the Divine does exist.
My atheism is not faith based - it's simply that religions make enormously improbable claims without any proof. My thinking is no more faith based then say, thinking that there is no invisible pink unicorn controlling our destinies. Neither are likely but if there was solid evidence for either of them, I and most atheists would be fine with it and accept it. Until then I'm going to say it's so unlikely that I don't "believe" it's true.
I have no issue with religious people, I just wanted to clear up this misunderstanding.
Regardless, this case is terrible and I hope those families torn apart can get some kind of justice and answers.
Atheism, by definition, is NOT based on faith. If you don't understand this you need to Google.... A LOT.
A religious person believes there is a God. An atheist believes there is no God. Since the existence of God can neither be proven or disproven, these beliefs are based on faith. I rest my case.
denver bill,
"An atheist believes there is no God" is a completely false description of atheists and I suggest you Google it if you are still confused. We simply have no reason to think there is a God since there is zero evidence of one. We also don't "believe" in Zeus, Pink Elephants, ghosts, pixies, fairies, the Easter Bunny or Santa. By your logic not believing in Santa would be a leap of faith. That's nonsense. Come on, stop making stuff up and at least have the common courtesy to have an honest discussion instead of distorting what we are.
The one thing I can agree with is the fact that the existence of God cannot be dis-proven... just as the existence of Santa cannot be dis-proven. Does that mean you believe in Santa? You can't dis-prove the existence of Zeus either... does that make it somehow real? In the real world you have prove something exists, not the other way around - it's a silly argument.
TheOverlord--not that I am advocating atheism as a religious belief, but if you think that there is no God and no ghosts and no fairies, remember that there is no evidence one way or the other. While I completely admit that an absence of proof does not necessarily mean the presence of a substantial chance that something is true--the point remains that one cannot completely disprove an absent thing, either. Thus, you can't be basing this on fact--but, you can be basing it on a faith in reason and a faith in your ability to understand the world and to trust your senses.
As long as we distinguish the term "faith" from "religion," it really isn't problematic that one would have faith in something--be it reason or senses or science or the power of good.
I don't believe that the world will end tomorrow--though I don't know this for a fact. I put my faith in reasoning and in knowing that there is no good reason why it should end tomorrow (not a reason that anyone has found, so far as I know). I could be wrong--but it isn't a religious belief that the world will continue, it's just a supposition based on the fact that tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow have crept on this petty pace from year to year for quite some time now :-)
Let's leave the religious element out of the equation, for the moment anyway. More insidious is the complicity of doctors, nurses, and (probably) members of Franco's Fascist regime who engaged in this despicable post-natal form of ethnic [read:political] cleansing. The parallels with Argentina's desaparecidos and Serbian rape camps are unmistakeable - only a slightly less inhumane eugenics than the Nazis practice, i.e., producing a more tractable and politically correct citizenry.
And the Spanish Church? No more complicit in this than in other aspects of their collaboration with the Franco regime. . .
MAJIMPORTAX - couldn't agree more.
You forgot the on!
How can you be a nun and a person of God and do something like this. I hope all of these people are brought to justice and the families fnd their children.
At least she didn't rape them like the priest do in America, then cover it up like the Pope does, no lets let the Nuns pay for their crimes.
How can a person of God do something like this? Easily. Once you have divine authority on your side, anything you do is justified.
And haven't we seen a lot of that lately!
Angie,
The answer to your question is, "You can't." Not all nuns are people of God, and not all people of God belong to an organized religion.
R'Amen. Voltaire said it best - those that can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.
Religious nuts who thought they were doing Gods work, even though the God they worship does not in any shape or form give instructions to take babies from the poor, unfit, or otherwise.
Another reason to leave religion where it belongs, in the book of fables.
@Angie1994 in KY -
This was done BECAUSE the nun was a "person of God". If someone thinks she is one of "God's chosen people", it makes it really easy for her to judge and condemn others she doesn't "approve of". This crap has been done by overzealous Christians for hundreds of years.
Back around the time our country was being founded, there were many cases like this in Europe. In one case, a child of Jewish parents was abducted by priests and raised in the church "properly". The parents tried to get their child back, but the civil authorities obeyed the church because the church had political power. There was no "separation of church and state", and that's one reason that our Founding Fathers made sure the church didn't have power over the civil government.
That child grew up to condemn his own parents for having the "wrong" faith. He had been totally brainwashed. Although Voltaire wrote essays against religious abductions, it made no difference in European legal issues. Voltaire's main focus was "freedom of religion" and one of his personal friends was a man named Benjamin Franklin. Voltaire's idea was incorporated into a new country's Constitution.
We need to cherish that freedom and prevent any faith from enacting civil laws in the USA.
Any Christian faith that engages in capitalism or politics should lose their tax exempt status. When Jesus disciples complained about giving all they were given to the needy, his answer was rather plain. Of course it should apply to all faths.
One of the most outrageous stories I've ever read/heard of. How long will it take the Vatican to comment or take action?
I get the impression you think any comment/action from the Vatican would be against what happened. I suspect it will be in favor of it.
The Vatican will do as it has done, and is doing, in the child rape scandal; it will go into defensive mode and demonize the victims. I say this as someone from Massachusetts who saw how the Diocese of Boston circumvented investigations from the outset and managed to get Bernand Law swept out of town and into a posh Vatican job upgrade.
This baby stealing "Woman of God" will probably be rewarded as well.
Yeah, but at what ultimate cost?
You have the wrong impression, Alverant. What I think the Vatican will do is say nothing at all, or give some non-answer comment when pressed. What they SHOULD do is condemn it harshly. But I think the Vatican is more of a political and banking institution than a religious one. That's why I don't expect any response by them to show any kind of moral expression. I want to see how they shrug it off.
There are terrible people with no conscience in every path of life. Christianity as a whole should not be condemned because of the horrific crimes committed by a relatively small group of people.
I am a Christian and I would never intentionally harm another person or steal a child from his/her mother. But according to a few posts, I am tossed into the same basket as these child stealing monsters simply because I believe in God...?
By a small group, Priest raping people, nuns stealing babies the Vatican covering it up, not allowing people to live their lives discriminating against women, no lets let Christianity die a charitable death. CatChick74 pull your head out of the litter box, you would not treat you loving kitties the way the church treats the people it supposedly has been charged by GOD to care for. They are there for love and charity not rape and theft.
CatChick -
Not all Christians should get lumped in with these people. But the reality is that right here, right now, in the USA, there is a concerted effort by overzealous Christians to legislate their morality. This must be opposed.
A government based on religion causes things like religious abductions to go unchecked. We certainly do not need that here.
"Christianity as a whole should not be condemned because of the horrific crimes committed by a relatively small group of people."
You mean like how muslims, Wiccans, Atheists, ect are often condemned by many christians for what a small group of people who might be muslims, Wiccans, Atheists, etc have done? Tell me this, where were christians and their god doing while this was happening? Why didn't they prevent it?
Christianity as a whole should be condemned it is the very thing that gives the power to the people to do this, it is the very thing that gives the power to feel they can ignor these things.
Problem is, the stuff that is considered sensational is all that gets in the news. What a horrible waste of time and resources television and the media are when people could be learning how to help each other and themselves instead.
This is just horrible, horrible. How did this progress from a political punishment in the Franco regime to an institutionalized practice of the Catholic Church?
The priests need a steady supply of young ones.
The churches agenda against woman's rights and birth control laid out for all to see. Not just in Spain but Globally.
kimb54.1:
Nobody is forcing ANY woman to be a practicing Catholic! If a woman (you) don't believe in the Dogma of Catholicism, find a different religion to associate with!
According to the Bible, God gave you a free will! The basic belief of the Catholic Church is that if you aren't a Baptized Catholic you WILL NOT go to heaven! I think THAT is a pretty "one-sided" slant on a, supposedly, all loving and all forgiving God!
According to that outlook, some 6 BILLION people won't be going to heaven just because they aren't Catholics!
I just wish I would be alive long enough to PROVE we aren't alone in the Universe! To PROVE "man" wasn't "made in the image and likeness of God"... To PROVE there were no Adam and Eve! And on and on...
When my daughter Sarah was born, I refused to allow her to be removed from my direct line of sight. At no time was she moved further than 10 feet away from me, and I made it clear to the medical personnel that if they tried to remove her from my presence there would be trouble. They complied with my instructions and there were no problems.
This disgusting S*** goes on way to often, and it's time to start putting these scum in a real hurt lock. if that old B*tch nun actually stole women's babies, then lock her worthless Satan serving ass up and throw away the key.
Well on the subject of nuns......
Catholic nun convicted for Rwandan genocide
Sentenced to 30 years for helping militias kill hundreds in 1994 massacre
Associated Press
November 10, 2006;
NAIROBI, Kenya -- A Catholic nun has been sentenced to 30 years in jail for helping militias kill hundreds of people hiding in a hospital during Rwanda's 1994 genocide, an official said Friday.
Theophister Mukakibibi was sentenced by a traditional gacaca court for helping Hutu militiamen to kill ethnic Tutsis seeking refuge from the slaughter in Butare hospital, where she worked.
She was responsible for selecting Tutsis and would throw them out of the hospital and the militia would then kill them," said Jean Baptiste Ndahumba, president of the local gacaca court in Butare town. "This nun was organizing people to be killed." She was jailed Thursday.
She would also hold regular meetings with Hutu extremist groups and denied food to Tutsis hiding in the hospital, he said by telephone. About 20 people testified against her, he added.
In the massacre, 100,000 people were killed in the southeastern prefecture of Butare.
snip
Clergy convicted for role in massacre
A U.N. tribunal based in neighboring Tanzania is trying those accused of masterminding the genocide in Rwanda. Three members of the clergy have appeared at the tribunal.
In 2001, two Rwandan Catholic nuns were convicted by a Belgian court for aiding and abetting the mass murders. A Roman Catholic priest is on trial before the Tanzania-based U.N. tribunal, accused of ordering the slaughter of 2,000 people who sought refuge in his church.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15653352/ns/world_news-africa/t/catholic-nun-convicted-rwandan-genocide/#.T4cRg9VOy6Q
Yep, those good ole Christians are on the warpath, just like here in the USA.
It's weird that when Breivik killed all those Norwegians, everybody was quick to claim he was an "Islamic terrorist". But once it came out that he was a Christian who killed to protest Norway's tolerance of Muslims, suddenly he went from "terrorist" to "lone crazed gunman". Nah, NOBODY called him a Christian terrorist.
Whether you bomb abortion clinics or murder doctors, it is an act of terrorism. But nobody wants to call it that.
Christianity should be eliminated.
Christianity should be eliminated
are you really that stupid?
Sticks and stones...
Amunaka- "Theophister Mukakibibi" ? She isn't European, is she Tutu ? Sounds like ethnic wars to me, and probably doesn't have anything to do with the Catholic church, right ?
What is going on with the Catholic church? Cover ups, stealing babies. People in 3rd world countries are ruled by that church. Told what to do, how to do it, etc. I never thought about other religions or condemned them, but this is awful. I do not understand any religion that does such things. They are bad....
More shenanigans from a diocese near you. What else has the Catholic church been doing since the Spanish Inquisition? We're just skimming the surface, I bet.
Catholic Church Screws Up Again, and again,and again,and again!
Crimes committed by a handful of Catholic nuns over 50 years and rapes committed again by a handful of Catholic pedophiles over many years and you get the defenders of Islam saying see see it's not just muslims. I'd point out all the Catholics who committed crimes in the last 50 years probably aren't .0001% of the current numbers on Muslims who are engaged in murder and violence against others around the world. If you read the headlines from Yemen. Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia, Khazahkstan, Thailand, east Timor, Phillipines etc. etc. etc. almost all the worlds bombings and acts of terror are done by Muslims. Dont equate individual crimes committed by disturbed individuals with a religion whose writings demand it.
Define "handful". Didn't think you could. Next!
Handful??? Really???? Try hundreds......
It's past time to put an end to organized religions, which are nothing more than a form of control over the masses. One has no need to belong to an organized religion to have faith.
tantum religio potuit suadere malorum
so potent religion in persuading to evil deeds
Ningún sentido de CARIDAD tenía esta monja y todos los descarados involucrados en este asunto .
SON HERMANAS DE LA SINVERGUENZA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Es BOCHORNOSO y REPUGNANTE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Los fuegos y llamas del Infierno aun no se han calentado bastante para recibirles !
No sense of CHARITY was deomonstrated by this nun and all the other scoundrels involved in this .
They should be called SISTERS OF SHAMELESSNESS and it is EMBRASSING and Repulsive !!!!
The fires and flames of Hell are not hot enough for them yet !
There is no such thing as the place called "hell",(although there are evil/demonic spirits) it was invented by the Roman-catholic church to instill guilt and fear into the followers who were required by law to attend church, it wasn't an option. The idea being that if you sinned and did not go to confession or pay the church, you would suffer in "hell" for all eternity. Paying the offering plate was not an option either, it was required by law. If you sinned, you could continue paying at church and go to confession to avoid going to "hell", but you had to continue paying the church.
Incense was burned so the wealthy, and church members could stand to benear the stinky lower class people. The larger the church, the more incense was burned, even a big incense ball hanging on a chain was used.
Look up(Google,Bing,etc..) the word "castrato", these were boys castrated to alter their voices for use in the Italian Catholic church, the family often submitted their sons in the hope of the boy having a career in music and helping to support the family, but most did not have a career, and ended up working in the church. Anyone see a pattern here ?
A lot of missing babies are used in satanic human sacrifice. Many people have claims about the vatican tunnels being used as the primary place for sacrifice, for secret societies. That would include higher levels of free mason rank, and secret orders subject to the Order of Orders. Missing children have been sacrificed to satan from the beginning of recorded history. Could the roman catholic church be involved in this activity? ABSOLUTLY, they controll the traffic.
Earl W- HOGWASH !!!
Freemasons had nothing to do with the evil inquisitions of the Catholic church !! it makes for good movies to portray the Freemasons as some kind of evil secret society, but the truth isn't as interesting, a men's club established apart from the church which is a charitable organization for good causes.
It is estimated that during the "holocaust" of WWII, the Nazi party killed between 80,000-200,000 Freemasons, who were considered political enemies (no free thinkers), and who wore an inverted red triangle.
( research the Vatican's involvement to the Nazi's and Nazi money, and more..no Freemasons either !! )
Is it possible that certain members of the Roman Catholic church were involved in satanic rituals ? From what we have learned of the evil cruelties connected to the catholic church, it might not be too much of a stretch.
Faith, God, the fifth element - First none of us can even comprehend what the true nature of God is. Our minds simply are not capable of understanding the creative mystery of the universe. Second, if one reads the Pentateuch, reads Hindu scriptures or the Buddhist Cannon, one thing is evident, our lives are about choices we make. Moreover, divine intervention is not about to stop us from making our choices.
Religion was not invented by the creator, it is a social construct that we have fine tuned to control the masses. The church is not about salvation, it is about power, greed, and control. yes there are some devout priests, preachers, rabbis, but I would say they are in the minority. The rest it’s about validating themselves. The church has sinned grievously we know that. But it is made up of humans and we have empowered those church leaders enabling them to pull the wool over our eyes for thousands of years. What a rude awakening we will have when we journey to the other side.
More corruption from the most corrupt organization in the world. The Catholic church was created to control the masses. That day is long gone as the church should be as well.
Religion 2012.
And that Bishop compared Obama to Hitler and Stalin. First the Pedophiles, now baby stealing. Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people dying or being maimed in the name of Christ through the Catholic Church - this is the Anti-Christ. They need to declare the Vatican on down as terrorists and get it over with. This group is far from Christian.