| Description |
1 online resource (streaming video file) (26 min. 56 sec.) ; 161888581 bytes |
| Summary |
A big black question mark is creeping across Spain, shaking and shocking a growing number of mothers and fathers of still-born babies and prompting them to dramatically rethink the fate of their children. Did they really die or were they sold to other families in a macabre, callous and widespread black-market trade that's only recently been uncovered? And stepping into this murky saga is an apparent foreigner who was one of those stolen and sold and who's only now returning to his real birthplace in search of his natural mother and the truth.It began as a cruel and calculated program under Spain's dictator Franco. Babies were taken at birth from regime opponents and given to so-called respectable families who supported the general.But long after Spain's civil war ended and World War 2 faded it seems that this sinister program infected practice in hospitals and maternity clinics across the country.What started as a heartless and ruthless episode of political and social engineering metastasised into a money maker for opportunist doctors and maternity staff.'How could you imagine that somebody could do something like that?' Braulia Banderas Franco - MotherAs this scandal erupts and spreads, Foreign Correspondent investigates a number of harrowing cases involving mothers who claim they were duped and who are now desperately searching for their adult sons and daughters, another woman who is sure the dead sister in a commemorative tomb is no such person, a guilt-stricken father who bought a son and a man who grew up American utterly unaware of his heritage and who's arrived in Spain looking for answers and his birth mother.'The main roadblock is that there is no identifying information. It has just vanished. Everything has vanished. The hospital has vanished, the records have vanished, the birth records are falsified. Everything is just either falsified or it's gone, magically just disappeared.' Randy Ryder - stolen and sold at birthEurope Correspondent Philip Williams explores a landscape of broken hearts and bitterness punctuated for some with renewed hope that their children may have survived.'I am at the border of a miracle, I am by the doors of the mystery. It is like life is giving me a second opportunity. It was very unfair that they took my children and I know that it is very difficult to find them. Now I have a motive to continue living.' Vcen Bono - MotherPhilip takes us to one of many gatherings involving scores of parents swept up in the mystery, subjecting themselves to swabs for a DNA database and the hope that science may be able to bring them answers. The breadth and scale of the trade appears huge but it will be almost impossible to accurately define it.'One of the really frustrating parts of telling this story is the lack of documentary evidence. While there are nearly a thousand investigations already underway, no-one - doctors included - has been charged.' Philip Williams |
| Event |
Broadcast 2011-06-28 at 20:00:00 |
| Notes |
Classification: NC |
| Subject |
Franco, Francisco, 1892-1975.
|
|
Human smuggling.
|
|
Infants -- Crimes against.
|
|
Kidnapping victims.
|
|
Medical personnel -- Malpractice.
|
|
Spain.
|
| Form |
Streaming video
|
| Author |
Bono, Vicen, contributor
|
|
Franco, Braulia Banderas, reporter
|
|
Gorostiza, Amaya, contributor
|
|
Ryder, Randy, contributor
|
|
Williams, Philip, reporter
|
|
