Pedro Armestre / AFP - Getty Images
By Kate Snow, Solly Granatstein and Cristina Boado
Rock Center
Sister Maria Gomez Valbuena, a Spanish nun, this week refused to testify in a Madrid court where she is facing charges related to her alleged role in a baby-trafficking network that operated in Spain over several decades in the latter part of the 20th century.
The charges against Valbuena of illegal detention and falsification of public records follow a recent Rock Center investigation of Spain’s “stolen babies” scandal which featured kidnapping allegations against Valbuena.
Valbuena, now in her 80s, is the first person to be charged amid allegations that networks, often consisting of doctors and clerics, stole babies from their mothers and sold them to other families in a practice that began in the 1940s and lasted until the early 1990s. More than a thousand cases have been filed with Spain’s attorney general.
During her court appearance on Thursday, crowds of mothers claiming their newborns were stolen reportedly chanted, “shameless” at the nun. Shortly after refusing to testify, the nun issued a statement denying the allegations. "Under no circumstance have I ever had any knowledge of the separation of a newborn from his or her biological mother under force and threats,” she stated. “It disgusts me to the depths of my being. I consider it inadmissible and unjustifiable."
Maria Luisa Torres, who testified last week and was featured in Rock Center’s report, claims that Valbuena stole her child from her shortly after she gave birth in 1982.
At the time, Torres was the mother of a two-year-old child and separated from her husband when she became pregnant by another man, something unacceptable in the conservative Spanish society of the time.
“My plan was to go ahead with the pregnancy and keep my baby,” Torres told Rock Center’s Kate Snow.
She claims that when she went to deliver her baby girl, she was anesthetized and slept through the whole delivery. When she woke, Torres says, she was told that her baby had died. Refusing to believe this news, Torres says she snuck out of her room and saw the newborn girl sleeping in the nursery. According to Torres, when she demanded her baby, Sister Maria Gomez threatened her.
“She said either you shut up, and don't ask any more questions, or I'll take both your children from you and you'll go to jail,” Torres said. “Blackmail.”
Through associates at the convent where Valbuena resides, the nun declined Rock Center’s repeated requests to take part in an interview in which she could address these allegations.
Torres said that after losing her baby, she felt helpless and like a piece of herself was missing. But this past year, three decades after the birth, Torres read about the campaign of families searching for lost children and began searching for her daughter. Unknown to Torres, the daughter who had been separated from her also had a strong feeling that she was a stolen child.
In 2011, Torres was reunited on a television show with her daughter, Pilar Alcalde.
“I jumped up and hugged her as though I'd known her my whole life. It was beautiful,” Alcalde told Rock Center.
Torres called it “a miracle.”
“I have feelings of happiness because I found her, but above all, feelings of rage and hatred,” she said.
Alcalde’s adoptive parents testified Friday.
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You should see that most of the cases occurred during the Franco era. Franco Spain was harsh on the women by limiting their rights and unmarried women with children were largely shunned by the society. Franco and his cronies would try to pry newborns from mothers with an undesirable political view or due to social status. They would give them to mothers who would raise them to be pro-regime. The victims couldn't report it to the police because they would be ignored or suffer from consequences from the regime. That's why they couldn't do much about it until now. Oh, the Catholic Church is one of the pillars of the regime, so that's how it ended up being in this mess.
And all the living saints are posting their "holy prayers" condemning the sinners. So much hatred for sinners by you, holy saints. May God have mercy on you, living saints, full of hatred.
Investigate the case. If the nun is guilty she should go to jail.
what about the church? nun is a women monk in christian society. Usually in life when a monk or a nun does something it is done in unity of the entire covent or monastary or nunnery because of devoted life to live in unity and daily prayers.
Once again the Catholic church at it's best.
The Pope blessing the Nazi's during WWII.
The pedophile priest scandal going on.
Now a half century old baby selling scheme.
No wonder they refer to "her" the Catholic church as a leading member of Babylon the Great the world empire of false religion mentioned in Revelation. Soon to be destroyed by God at Armageddon.
A nun refusing to testify while insisting the public simply accept her declaration of innocence does not instill a sense of innocence in me!
I just love how there is no mention that the Nun was "Catholic" or enough facts to pass any kind of judgment, and it immediately becomes an attack on Catholics, and all religion. The article doesn't give us any circumstances what so ever. Maybe the mother was a drug addict or prositute, and the babies would have been sold by the mother into the sex trade. We don't have any infomation what so ever, and certainly not our place to pass judgment. It is simply an article about an individual who is alleged to be involved in the misappropriation of babies. I'd love to read all your comments had she been a plumber or electrician. There are good and bad people in all facets of life, and those who operate within and outside the rules of law. If her involvement should be true, it is more or less a story about a person who just happened to be a nun. Your comments are best served by placing them in the Rant and Rave section of Craigslist.
Over the years, I have experienced in depth many denominations only to be confronted by jealous, vindictive and dishonest people who do nothing but cause misery to many of their parisheners. They usually sit in the front seats. My brother was one who was molested by a pedifile priest and has never recovered.
I now pray on a walk through the woods or at the top of hill where I find peace as I feel the breeze, see God's creatures and refresh my soul. The Eagles (Band) recorded a song called The Last Resort. I listen to it often. Here is part of it that sums everything up.
Some rich men came and raped the land,
Nobody caught 'em
Put up a bunch of ugly boxes, and Jesus,
people bought 'em
And they called it paradise
The place to be
They watched the hazy sun, sinking in the sea
You can leave it all behind
and sail to Lahaina
just like the missionaries did, so many years ago
They even brought a neon sign: "Jesus is coming"
Brought the white man's burden down
Brought the white man's reign
Who will provide the grand design?
What is yours and what is mine?
'Cause there is no more new frontier
We have got to make it here
We satisfy our endless needs and
justify our bloody deeds,
in the name of destiny and the name
of God
And you can see them there,
On Sunday morning
They stand up and sing about
what it's like up there
They call it paradise
I don't know why
You call someplace paradise,
kiss it goodbye
what do you expect of a county that instigated the Inquisition? the catholic church has always been self serving, thieving, self righteous. they have been corrupt from the beginning.
they are still stealing and robbing. priest that make millions of dollars a year. their health organizations that make billions of dollars a year.
there is no integrity. no honesty.
i know several catholics, some deeply religious and devoted. most, a joke and an embarrassment to the word christian.
what about the irish laundries? those are catholic as well. look that one up. what about their behavior and participation in ww1 and ww2? all the loot they stole, the criminals they helped escape before they could be caught and tried. tip of the ice berg. their treachery runs deep.
this bitter, dried up old nun will never face nor admit what she has done. the sanctimonious old bitch doesn't believe she did anything wrong. i am sure god speaks directly to her and so she would know better than anyone else what he wants done. she's special don't you know, she's a nun.
i despise the catholic church i always have. i hate organized religion as it always leads to corruption and greed.
i am a christian. on my own, between my god and i, i will live my life and answer only to him. i do not need a church/organization to live my life and to guide me along the way. the catholic church is a large part of the reason i feel this way.
the church needs to be brought before us all and to answer for all their horrific crimes, past and present. and then done away with entirely and all their ill gotten wealth given back to all they have stolen from thru the centuries.
There Is Nothing New About the Sale Of Babies. A girl came to our wedding in New York from Dublin in 1964 and she got a free flight on Aerlingus fromn Dublin by carrying a baby in New York. This girl was a friend of my ex wife. At that time women carrying babies in their arms did not have to have passports. They were probably from convents in Ireland.