SPAIN
National Post (Canada)
By Cristina Fuentes-Cantillana
MADRID — 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.
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