Random Things About The Catholic Church Stole 300,000 Babies And Sold Them To Highest Bidder (11 items)

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  (#1) The Accused Didn't Face Charges Until 2018

  Even though victims Juan Luis Moreno and Antonio Barroso brought the issue to light in 2011, it wasn't until August 2018 that alleged perpetrators faced charges. Inés Madrigal, born in 1969 at San Ramon clinic in Madrid, claims a doctor kidnapped her and gave her away without her biological mother's permission. On August 14, 2018, her accused kidnapper, obstetrician Eduardo Vela, stood trial and denied the allegations, telling a three-judge panel that he "never gave a girl to anybody." In 2012, Madrigal's adoptive mother (who passed in 2016) told CNN Vela gave her the baby.

  The judges charged Vela with the illegal detention of a minor and forging a public document. Prosecutors are pushing for an 11-year jail sentence. Vela still denies "stealing" Madrigal and is pursuing a full acquittal.

   Over 2,000 people filed stolen children suits with prosecutors.
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  (#2) It All Began In Post-War Spain

  Following the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) General Francisco Franco became the head of the rebel Nationalist government and commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Under his rule Spain became a hermit nation similar to that of modern day North Korea. Anyone who fought against the Nationalists during the war or who held opposing viewpoints were punished - this includes anyone who wanted to have a child. These people were known as "undesirables" and Franco believed that anyone with an opposing viewpoint or who lived beneath a specific wage line wasn't fit to raise a child. The task of taking babies away from single mothers and families who didn't fit into Franco's idea of ideal citizens was given to a network of Catholic priests and nuns who did their jobs efficiently and without asking any questions.
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  (#3) The Church Stole The Babies Shortly After They Were Born

  Rather than snatch babies from cribs at night, the Catholic Church went straight to the source when they decided to kidnap children. Directly after childbirth many babies were whisked away under the guise of routine testing and later their mothers were told that the baby had died. One mother who experienced this first hand explained to the BBC that she fell for this trick because she had been raised to believe that the church was infallible and that they would have no reason to lie to her. "I couldn't accuse them of lying. This was Franco's Spain. A dictatorship. Even now we Spaniards tend not to question authority."

  Many of the mothers who asked to see their child after hearing that it had passed away claim that they were shown the corpse of a child who had been frozen, or that was freezing cold.
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  (#4) The Babies Were Sold To Well-To-Do Families

  After the newborns were stolen from their mothers most of them were immediately sold to couples who held beliefs more inline with Franco's totalitarian and Catholic regime. These families didn't just have the "right" set of core beliefs - they were also wealthy. Or at the very least they had enough money to buy a child in post World War II Spain. It's likely that the adoptive parents weren't aware that they were buying a child that had been stolen from its mother hours before, and many of the parents actually had their names placed on the child's birth certificate. Allegedly the families were either led to believe that the infant's mother had died in child birth or that the parents had given them up.
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  (#5) This Wasn't A Small Time Operation

  It may seem like it would be tough to carry out a country-wide, state-sanctioned, web of church backed kidnapping; but that's where you're wrong. These kidnappings started directly after the end of the Spanish Civil War in 1939, continued through World War II, and didn't end until the early '90s. Spain may be a relatively small country but it must have been noticeable to someone that children were disappearing at an alarming rate. Maybe people who brought up the numbers were squashed by the local government, or it's possible that the Franco's regime simply didn't care if they were called out on their horrible crimes. Whatever the case many people believe that this web of Catholic kidnapping accounted for 15% of the total adoptions that took place in Spain between 1960 and 1989.
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  (#6) The Catholic Church Was Selling Babies For A Long Time

  When the regulated system for child theft was put into place in 1939 it likely wasn't designed to have an end game. Franco's regime either felt like they were doing the right thing, or they were just being malicious. Either way, when an oligarchy comes into power they don't have a back up plan. When Franco died in 1975 the church didn't rethink their position of rampant child theft, and they didn't rework the system that had caused so much pain. Instead, they dug in deeper into the social services system of Spain in an attempt to keep a stranglehold on the Spanish people.

  It wasn't until the late '80s that the scandal was blown open when Juan Luis Moreno discovered that he was one Spain's stolen babies. According to Moreno, the man who he knew as his father confessed on his deathbed that Moreno had been purchased from a priest in Northern Spain for 200,000 pesetas.
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  (#7) Priests Were Helping People Fake Pregnancies

  When you think of the Catholic church stealing children and selling them to the highest bidder, you might imagine a nun running down a hallway with a baby, freshly ripped from its mother, and handing it off to the highest bidder. Well, that definitely happened a few times, but in many cases the church prepped parents for their child and helped them fake a pregnancy to keep friends and family from asking questions. 

   

  Speaking to the BBC, an 89-year-old woman named Ines Perez admitted that a priest helped her work out a fake pregnancy before she received a baby girl in 1969. She said, "The priest gave me padding to wear on my stomach."
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  (#8) How To Sneak A Baby Out Of A Maternity Ward

  Even though the Catholic church was working in tandem with Spain's government it still shouldn't have been so easy to steal a bunch of babies. Many priests and nuns who carried out the thefts went through a ridiculous series of steps to ensure that they weren't caught. Priests and nuns would first falsify a birth certificate stating that the child had been born to the family who was paying for the baby, and then they would usually concoct a lie about why they were handing off such a small child before pushing the family out of the hospital - thus decreasing the risk of anyone being caught. One woman who received a baby from the Catholic church claims that she was told her adopted child was born premature, but that in reality it had probably just been born moments before. She claims that the doctor told her to put the baby in her car "between two hot water bottles."
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  (#9) The Payment Plan

  In many cases even when a family could afford to buy a child they couldn't pay for it all up front so a payment plan was established. When Juan Luis Moreno's father confessed on his deathbed that Moreno had been purchased from a priest he realized that his annual family trips to Zaragoza weren't vacations - they were a contractual obligation. Moreno told the BBC that his adoptive father knew exactly what he was doing and that the church didn't even try to hide its scam. "My dad was given a choice: boy or girl. They put it bluntly: This was a market for babies." Moreno said that his adoptive father claims that the going price for a child at the time was twice the price of their family home.
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  (#10) No One Is Going To Get In Trouble For This

  Despite believing that what they were doing was for the greater good of the Spanish people, General Franco and his regime knew it was wrong. After Franco's death a series of amnesty laws were passed so that any crimes that took place while he was in power would never be examined in a court of law. Some prosecutors have decided to look into the thefts on a case-by-case basis, but that's easier said than done. While there are some cases to go through, many children who were kidnapped and sold to families have decided not to come forward for fear their adoptive parents are seen as criminals. One person, a nun named Sister Maria Gomez, was brought to court for kidnapping but she refused to speak in court.
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  (#11) It's Almost Impossible To Prosecute This Insane Crime

  Aside from the lack of political will to prosecute for the crime, it is incredibly hard to prove in court the illegality of the case. A prosecutor in Madrid pointed out a few of the biggest issues with trying to prove wrongdoing in a case of systemic kidnapping. First, you can't pursue a criminal case over a false birth certificate because the crime has passed the statute of limitations. And as far as the Spanish criminal justice system goes a false birth certificate doesn't legally prove that a baby has been kidnapped. As it stands the Spanish Catholic church's history of child kidnapping will go unpunished. The only thing that can be done is to remain vigilant against those in power.

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