‘Stolen babies’ case: Doctor found guilty of stealing newborn but escapes punishment because of time limit
A doctor has escaped punishment over stealing a newborn baby five decades ago because the statute of limitations had expired.
Former gynaecologist Eduardo Vela was found guilty in a court in Madrid of abducting Inés Madrigal in 1969, faking her birth by her adoptive parents and forging official documents.
However, he was cleared by the Madrid court because too much time had elapsed by the time Ms Madrigal made her complaint in 2012.
The 85-year-old former doctor was the first person to face trial over the so-called “stolen babies” scandal that took place during and after Spain’s fascist dictatorship of General Franco.
Monday’s verdict is Spain’s first in relation to the abduction of thousands of children during the country’s Civil War and the decades of Franco’s dictatorship that followed.
The right-wing regime waged a campaign to take away the children of poor families, prisoners or political enemies, sometimes stripping women of their newborns by lying and saying they had died during labour.
The children were then given to pro-Franco families or the church, who educated the children on the regime’s ideology and on Roman Catholicism.
Vela, who was the director of a Madrid clinic considered at the epicentre of the scandal, denied the accusations during this year’s trial.
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Ms Madrigal brought her case 25 years after she became an adult, but the statute of limitations is 10 years.
She was in court for the verdict by Vela was not present.
Ms Madrigal said she will appeal to the Supreme Court so Vela is punished for his crimes.
Prosecutors had called for him to face an 11-year prison sentence.
Ms Madrigal, who learned at 18 that she wasn’t living with her biological parents, argued that she couldn’t have lodged her complaint earlier because she only learned about the scheme in 2010, when her adopting mother, who died three years later, disclosed the details of what had happened at Vela’s clinic.
DNA tests confirmed the account, but Ms Madrigal’s biological parents were never found.
Ms Madrigal, now 49, said: “I’m happy because the judges are acknowledging that there was theft, that I was taken away from my mother, but I didn’t think they would stop short of convicting him.”
She added: “The judges should had been brave.”
In 2008, a investigating judge estimated that 30,000 children had been stolen from families deemed suspect by the Franco regime.
About 3,000 cases of alleged stolen children have been reported, but only a handful of investigations remain open.
