The authorities have uncovered a multimillion dollar international ring in which hundreds of poor Andean children were kidnapped or bought from their mothers and sold under forged birth certificates and adoption papers to childless couples from the United States and Europe.
A Bogota lawyer has been jailed on charges involving the smuggling abroad of 500 to 600 youngsters from Colombia and possibly 100 more from Peru. In neighboring Ecuador, officials have turned up more than a hundred questionable adoptions by Italian families.
The Colombian network is said to have included three juvenile court judges, six notaries, nurses in two maternity clinics, officials of the Government's family welfare agency, several secretaries and housewives and a Colombian consul in Spain. Among those charged in Peru is an official of the Government unit that handles international earthquake aid. The principal figure arrested so far in the Ecuadorian cases is the president of the national children's court.
Lies and Kidnappings
Some babies were obtained through nurses who told mothers that their offspring had been born dead and passed the infants along to the lawyer. Others were simply kidnapped or bought from impoverished peasant women. At times members of the organization were sent out to patrol the city's red-light district to find pregnant prostitutes and persuade them to sell their babies.