Home  

Zelf adopteren

Zelf adopteren

Het bestuur van stichting TLC krijgt veel vragen over adoptie in het algemeen, zelfdoen in adoptie(deelbemiddeling) en specifiek adoptie vanuit TLC.

Adoptie algemeen Zuid-Afrika heeft een aantal jaren geleden de Haagse Conferentie (Haags kinderbeschermingsverdrag) ondertekend. Hierdoor is het niet meer mogelijk rechtstreeks een kindje te adopteren vanuit TLC. Dit gaat nu via de zgn. Centrale Autoriteit.

Deelbemiddeling

Voor informatie over zelfdoen in adoptie verwijzen wij u graag door naar de website van de Belangen vereniging Zelfdoen in Adoptie (BZA) waar een uitgebreide pagina met uitleg over adoptie is gemaakt.

Statistics Bangladesh - Netherlands

Tabel 2B Aantal geplaatste adoptiekinderen, Azië/Nabije/Midden-Oosten, 1971-1980
’71 ’72 ’73 ’74 ’75 ’76 ’77 ’78 ’79 ’80 Totaal
Bangladesh 1 69 88 124 141 32 34 489
 

born 12/21/1961 baby girl switzerland

born 12/21/1961 baby girl switzerland

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ][ 1960's Adoption Search Board ] [ FAQ ]

Posted by Christiane Weideli on March 28, 2008 at 15:09:11:

In Reply to: Searching for birth parents posted by Christiane Weideli on March 28, 2008 at 15:03:52:

: I am searching for my birth parents. I was given up for adoption in Switzerland, I was in a home run by an Alice Honegger, My adoptive father was swiss Jean-Pierre Weideli, my adoptive mom was Belgian, Vicky Meeus Weideli. I was then taken to Lima Peru. I now reside in Canada. The birth date I have is 12/21/1961

Sele Enat Adress Contact details

Sele Enat

Akahi Kality, Kebele 12/13

House no. 411

Tel: 011 442 4978

St. Patrick's Guild was involved in the secret export of 572 children to the US

St. Patrick's Guild/Temple Hill

St. Patrick's Guild was founded in 1910 by Mary Cruice who originally wanted to provide a Catholic alternative to Protestant run fostering services in Dublin.  Later however the Guild linked up with the Sisters of Charity and became an adoption society at the command of Archbishop McQuaid.  

St. Patrick's Guild did not run a mother and baby home, rather, babies were sent to St. Patrick's Infant Hospital, Temple Hill before being adopted.   Mothers were not present at Temple Hill and St. Patrick's Guild have been very uncooperative in providing information about what conditions were like in the hospital, though we have a scanned copy of the feeding/vaccination records kept which was donated by an adopted person.  There were also babies in Temple Hill that were adopted through agencies other than St. Patrick's Guild.

St. Patrick's Guild was involved in the secret export of 572 children to the US for adoption from the 1940's to the 1970's, which was more than any other adoption agency.

Temple Hill closed in the 1980's and though St. Patrick's Guild no longer arranges adoptions, it is still operational for search queries. 

Righting Child Custody Wrongs: The Children of the “Disappeared” in Argentina

Righting Child Custody Wrongs:
The Children of the “Disappeared” in Argentina


 

Laura Oren[*]

I. Introduction

II. Background: “The Nightmare Years” in Argentina

III. Searching for the Children of the Disappeared: The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

IV. Proving Blood Ties: Paula Logares and Laura Scaccheri

V. Extra-Judicial Versus Judicial Recovery: The Gatica Children

VI. Worse than Slavery?: The Best Interest of Kidnapped Children

VII. Ximena Vicario: The Last Restitution?

VIII. Developing International Norms To Right Wrongs

IX. Impunity Under Attack: Recent Developments in Proving a Systematic Plan

X. Conclusion: Lessons from Argentina? The Best Interest of the Individual Child Is Political; The Procedural Is Political

 

A. The Best Interest of the Individual Child Is Political

 

B. The Procedural Is Political

 

I. Introduction

Martha Fineman has said that family law decisions are “inescapably political.”[1] Nowhere is this better and more literally illustrated than in Argentina, where, in the aftermath of the dictatorship from 1976 to 1983, courts considered the fate of the kidnapped children of the disappeared. The politics of the “Dirty War” conducted by the juntas included disappearing perceived opponents of the military regime and systematically kidnapping their young children, often selling or giving them for adoption to military and police families. When the biological families of these children finally located them, sometimes years later, the relatives attempted to reclaim them. Courts then faced the troubling question of what to do: whether to return the children to the families of origin from which they were stolen, or to leave them with the “parents” who were raising them illegally. In order to understand this dilemma and the disputed solutions proposed “in the best interest of the child,” it is necessary to consider the entire context of what happened in Argentina during the nightmare years of the dictatorship.

Between 1976 and 1983, Argentine military and police forces disappeared as many as 30,000[2] of their own people, whom they perceived as “subver-


*** Top of Page 124 ***

sive” to national security. These victims were kidnapped, tortured, and killed; their fate was hidden from their families and the world by burying their bodies in mass graves or throwing them into the sea.[3] Many of these disappeared had young children when they were abducted or were pregnant women who gave birth to infants while held in captivity.[4] It is estimated that as many as 450[5] children of the desaparecidos, or disappeared, were given or sold to childless military or police families, or otherwise wrongfully adopted by families whose knowledge of their origins ranged from innocence to willful ignorance to guilt. An organization called Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo)organized a large part of the efforts of the biological families of the children of the disappeared to locate and reclaim those children. The Abuelas played an integral role in the politics of resistance that helped bring down the military regime in 1983.[6] Today, some of the now grown children are politically active themselves.[7] Moreover, when General Jorge Videla, de facto head of the military government from 1976 to 1979 and alleged orchestrator of the systematic kidnapping, was arrested in June 1998, the fate of the children of the disappearederupted again into Ar-


*** Top of Page 125 ***

gentine politics.[8] Other arrests have followed, leaving leading figures of the dictatorship either under house arrest or in prison.[9]

Just as in United States law,[10] Argentine courts subscribe to a “best interest of the child” standard in making custody decisions. While never easy, the application of that yardstick is particularly troublesome when the original placement of a child is faulty or illegal, and years may have elapsed before a court finally orders a remedy. The claims of justice in the individual case or the interest in deterring bad behavior in general may militate in favor of the court ordering a change in custody. Any change in the status quo designed to right the original wrong, however, has potentially serious consequences for a child removed from the psychological family which raised her in order to be returned to the biological family from which she was stolen. At first blush, this might seem like a question of “justice” versus the “best interest of the child.” In these cases, however, both parties to the dispute claimed to be concerned with the “best interest of the child.” An overly simplistic view of “politics” versus “best interests” does not take into account the nuanced cooperative solutions arrived at between families who were legally entitled to recover children and innocent adoptive families.

Moreover, the very definition of “the best interest of the child” is inevitably a “political” question itself. The Abuelas and the biological families, on the one hand, and the pseudo-adoptive, “psychological,” or “raising” families, on the other, had very different ideas about the content of that standard. They disagreed about questions such as: Which is more important for children—stability at all costs or truthful knowledge about their origins? The answers, moreover, may depend on a variety of circumstances, ranging from the age of the child at the time of kidnapping and recovery to the seriousness of the “lies” that were told. Competing social values were at stake in the controversy over the children of the disappeared. In that sense, too, these family law matters were indeed inescapably political.

The context of family law disputes shapes substance and procedure. As the Argentinean case represents an extreme of the righting child custody wrongs dilemma, the political context is even more important. Part II of this Article, “Background: ‘The Nightmare Years’ in Argentina,” begins by


*** Top of Page 126 ***

explaining some of that context and examining the background of the nightmare years in Argentina. Part III, “Searching for the Children of the Disappeared: The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo,” takes a closer look at the grandmothers’ organization, the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, which has been so instrumental in shaping the search for the missing children of thedisappeared. The next Part, “Proving Blood Ties: Paula Logares and Laura Scaccheri,” examines the scientific advances and legal changes with respect to the probative value of blood and other genetic testing used to establish the true identity of located children. As the cases proceeded, the Abuelas shaped their own theory and practice of the “best interest” of the kidnapped children. Part V of the Article, “Extra-Judicial Versus Judicial Recovery,” examines two modes of restoration, extrajudicial and judicial, in a family that lost both of its children and recovered them both, but in strikingly different ways. The next Part, “Worse than Slavery?: The Best Interest of Kidnapped Children,” examines this development, through consideration of a dramatic case involving the recovery of a child born in captivity in one of the detention centers maintained by the regime. After the passage of time and after one more well-known restitution, however, it became increasingly difficult to recover any of the remaining children. This is the subject of the next Part of the Article, “Ximena Vicario: The Last Restitution?” After this case, the Abuelas increasingly turned to international law, which they had helped shape, in order to right the wrongful retention of the kidnapped children. This is addressed in the next Part, “Developing International Norms to Right Wrongs.” Part VIII, “Impunity under Attack: Recent Developments in Proving a Systemic Plan,” provides an update on the political background in light of recent events. Finally, the Article concludes with the lessons learned from Argentina: the competing interpretations of the “best interest of the child” and the procedural doctrines used to decide the custody cases reflect the social and political context in Argentina.

II. Background: “The Nightmare Years”[11] in Argentina

Argentina’s nightmare years began when former President Juan Perón, subject of a cult-like following from both right-wing and left-wing supporters, was recalled from his exile in Spain in June of 1973. As he landed in the airport, a struggle between factions broke out in the massive crowds gathered to greet him, and two hundred young people met their death.[12]Shortly, it became clear that Perón sided with the right, giving tacit support to right-wing paramilitary operations that kidnapped leftists. On their part, some left-wing terrorist groups engaged in assassinations and were assassi-


*** Top of Page 127 ***

nated in turn, beginning an undeclared civil war in the streets of Argentina.[13] After his death in 1974, Perón was succeeded by his wife, Isabel. When she proved herself unable to control the incipient civil war or runaway inflation, the military (as they had so many times before) took control of the Argentine government. After the military junta, led by General Jorge Videla as de facto President, took over on March 24, 1976, however, the era that followed was unprecedented in its political repression and human rights violations.[14]

The newly installed military dictatorship adopted a statute called “The Argentine Process of National Reorganization” or the Proceso de Reorganización Nacional (Proceso), which abolished constitutional government and sought a comprehensive transformation of Argentine society. It gave itself the power to govern, replaced the Supreme Court and over 400 judges with its own appointees, and took over the universities.[15] The new regime initiated a brutal campaign of repression, justified by the United States’ doctrine of “National Security” and by the alleged necessity to fight a “dirty war” against terrorism. But the “dirty war” soon extended far beyond any conceivable terrorist targets to anyone suspected of “subversive” thought—journalists, young peronistas, trades unionists, nuns, and anyone else who happened to get in the way.[16]

The operations were carried out in secrecy and added new words to the lexicon of international human rights violations.[17] Under the direction of the military and the police, students, workers, and professionals, who were considered too leftist or subversive by the regime, were disappeared. They were abducted by anonymous men in plain clothes driving unmarked Ford Falcons. The victims were often never to be heard from again. Many thousands were disappeared in this fashion.[18] The secrecy permitted the regime to carry on daily life with surface normality, while operating hundreds of concentration camps or detention centers where many of the abducted were tortured and finally killed. The junta continued to deny reports of the disappearances publicly and to the international community. The security forces went to great lengths to conceal the fate of the disappeared and to demoralize and silence the population by the secret terror.[19] It was later remarked that


*** Top of Page 128 ***

the “intention [of the regime] was to make all the Argentineans disappear as persons and as citizens. That is to say, they meant to disappear our national identity.”[20]

There was another facet of the “dirty war”—kidnapping of the young children of the disappeared, and often putting them in the hands of families of the very military or police forces implicated in the torture and death of their parents. Later, an official report issued by the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP) condemned:

[t]he repressors who took the disappeared children from their homes, or who seized mothers on the point of giving birth . . . . [They] were making decisions about people’s lives in the same cold-blooded way that booty is distributed in war. Deprived of their identity and taken away from their parents, the disappeared children constitute, and will continue to constitute, a deep blemish on our society.[21]

The term botin de guerra, or war booty, came to represent the wrongs inflicted on the kidnapped children.[22] Some children were taken by the abductors with their parents or left behind in the sweeps and ended up in orphanages or with neighbors or strangers.[23] Sometimes the families were clearly guilty of complicity, and sometimes they were only guilty of taking in a child without searching for her remaining blood relatives and preserving her identity. Some babies were actually born in captivity, in places like the notorious Navy Mechanics’ School detention center (ESMA) or the Campo de Mayo Military Hospital, before their mothers were disappeared forever. Witnesses told CONADEP that at the Navy Mechanics School there was a list of childless married couples in the Navy who were seeking a child born in captivity to raise. Whether born in captivity or not, the children of the disappearedmight be falsely registered as born to the families who took them to raise, or might be adopted based on falsified documents. In some cases, however, the raising families were friends or neighbors who actually preserved the identities of the children.[24]

After 1977, human rights groups protesting the disappearances and the related kidnappings of the children of the disappeared played a critical role in


*** Top of Page 129 ***

civilian opposition to state terror.[25] Among these were the courageous Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Madres or Mothers). The Madres created a domestic political movement and an international human rights institution out of their demands for the return of their missing children disappeared by the anonymous forces of the regime. They first began meeting in public at the Plaza de Mayo in front of the Casa Rosa on April 30, 1977 in order to demand information. They continued this tactic for years, forging a political movement in the process that ultimately sought the return of democracy to Argentina.[26] In the same year, another organization arose called the Abuelas de Plazo de Mayo (the Abuelas or Grandmothers), an offshoot of the Madres. The Abuelas received denunciations,[27] documented files, and initiated searches for the children kidnapped during the abductions or born in the secret detention camps, whom they believed had been appropriated as “war booty” by minions of the regime.[28] In 1980, the Abuelas had their first success finding stolen children when they located seven-year-old Tatiana Britos and her sister Laura, who had been adopted by a military family.[29]

In 1981, the Abuelas took their stories to the international arena, presenting seventy-seven carefully documented cases of missing children, either born in captivity or kidnapped along with their parents.[30] The Abuelas also sought assistance from the international scientific community. In the absence of their disappeared parents, the children’s identity could only be established by genetic tests for the biological links between the children and their grandparents or other, more remote family members. The Abuelas enlisted the American Association for the Advancement of Science and geneticist, Dr. Mary-Claire King, in their cause. Dr. King’s work broke new ground in establishing genetic links between children and kin other than their parents.[31]


*** Top of Page 130 ***

By 1980 and 1981, the activities of human rights groups, including the Madres and the Abuelas, and their growing ability to reach international audiences were serious problems for the military regime. Economic crisis on top of that further eroded support for the government. Already before the military’s disastrous decision to undertake a war with Britain over theMalvinas/Falkland Islands, there were mass strikes and multiparty calls for a return to constitutional government. The humiliating defeat in that war may have merely accelerated the military’s loss of power.[32] But even on the way out, the juntas tried to ensure impunity for their abuses. After its efforts at self-justification were resoundingly rejected by mass human rights demonstrations, the military issued an amnesty that purported to include actions by both sides during the “dirty war.”[33] The military also systematically destroyed documents and archives pertaining to the “dirty war.”[34]

The military did not succeed in its quest for impunity at this time. Raúl Alfonsín, the candidate of the Radical Civic Union party, won the democratic elections in October, in large part on the strength of his human rights stance. The military’s self-amnesty was voided and the new government appointed a Commission on the Disappeared with full powers to investigate and report, although not to prosecute, the late abuses. CONADEP, which was headed by the respected writer Ernesto Sábato, took testimony from thousands of witnesses, visited the secret detention centers, and produced a frightening picture of the disappearances in a report called Nunca Más (“Never Again!”).[35] This report was widely publicized, however, the trials that followed were highly controversial.[36] In the end, government-sponsored trials of nine military commanders resulted in the December 9, 1985 conviction of five of them. Jorge Videla and Emilio Massera, the commanders of the Army and Navy, received life sentences, while three others received shorter sentences, and four were acquitted. The government lost control of the prosecutions when thousands of cases were filed against these and other officers by individuals, human rights organizations, and others.[37]


*** Top of Page 131 ***

Just as the trials of the former military leaders were starting in 1984, a film called Official Story opened in Argentina. The acclaimed film, which later won an Academy Award, further focused international attention on the children of the disappeared. The film is a fictionalized account of a child of disappeared parents who was “adopted” by a father who was complicit in the abuses of the regime, and a mother who only slowly came to realize the tainted origins of her apparently happy family life.[38]

In real life, the first disputed custody court case in which genetic evidence was critical came to conclusion in 1984.[39] The Abuelas subsequently pressured Alfonsín’s government into establishing a National Genetic Data Bank to store and preserve blood samples that could be used to identify the origins of children even after the deaths of their grandparents.[40] In 1988, the Abuelas extracted a further concession—the government named a four-person commission to determine the whereabouts of the children.[41] Continued frustration with the slow and politicized process of restoring children led to renewed international pressure in 1993. President Menem met with the Abuelas and agreed to set up the National Commission for Identity Rights “with broad powers of subpoena and investigation.”[42]

Even after the return of democratic government in 1983, however, the military remained a powerful force in Argentine political life. In the face of continued military unrest and three outright uprisings,[43] the government equivocated about enforcing accountability. Two laws, the Punto Final of December 1986 and the Law of Obediencia Debida (Law of Due Obedience) of 1987, granted significant amnesty to those responsible.[44] The net result was an end to future charges, recognition of a defense for junior officers who could claim they were “just following orders,” and, in 1989 and 1990, pardons from the next President for those already serving time for human rights violations, including Videla and Massera.[45]

This impunity, however, came with a significant exception. Article 5 of Law 23.492, the Punto Final, provided that the legislation would have no


*** Top of Page 132 ***

effect on criminal cases involving alteration in civil status or kidnapping and concealment of children. Article 2 of Law 23.521 (Due Obedience) exempted certain crimes from the “just following orders” presumption, otherwise afforded junior officers. This included rape, kidnapping and concealment of children, and substitution or misrepresentation of the children’s identity.[46] However, little could be done at this time to pursue those responsible for these kinds of crimes; the military apparently destroyed archives containing evidence about the children’s kidnapping, making it extremely difficult to put together a case against the commanders for an organized plan.[47]

III. Searching for the Children of the Disappeared:
The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo

The organization of the Abuelas and the tactics the Abuelas originally employed in an effort to obtain information about their family members grew out of the horrific events that occurred during “the nightmare years” and the difficulty these women had in obtaining information under such circumstances. The Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP) reported later that the typical sequence of events during the “dirty war” was “abduction–disappearance–torture.”[48] In this fashion thousands of


*** Top of Page 133 ***

mostly young people were disappeared. The Commission found it striking that women were included on a large scale, representing over thirty percent of the disappeared. Three percent of the total was pregnant women.[49]

When a family that was to be chupada (slang for sucked up or swallowed) had young children, certain methods were followed. The children might be left with neighbors until a relative came for them or sent to children’s institutions that either held them until they were turned over to relatives or adopted by strangers. The children themselves might be abducted and adopted by a member of the armed services. They might be taken directly to a relative’s house, maybe even in the same vehicle used to abduct their parents, or left abandoned wherever the kidnapping of their parents occurred. Finally, some children were taken to secret detention centers where they witnessed the torture of their parents, or were tortured themselves in front of their parents.[50] Many babies were born in these detention centers, often joining other children of the disappeared in disappearing themselves.[51]

The relatives of these young children found obtaining information from the authorities about the children’s whereabouts very difficult and risky. For example, Señora Maria Isabel Ch. De Mariani, who became the president of the Abuelas, knew that her granddaughter Clara Anahi Mariani was taken up at the same time that her daughter-in-law was killed in La Plata in November of 1976. The grandmother waited fruitlessly outside the army headquarters for the three-month-old to be handed over to her, waited at home every night, and even was bold enough to enter a police detention center. Although an inspector told her that the child was alive, he said he would deny ever having said so. Following a suggestion to carry on her search (búsqueda) at the Minors’ Court, Mariani was directed to another grandmother with a disappeared grandchild, Alicia de la Cuandra. Hearing about the early meetings of Madres, their first marches in the Plaza de Mayo, and their collective habeas corpus petitions for 158 of the disappeared, the two grandmothers decided to go to the federal capital in October of 1977.[52] There the Madres themselves were experiencing repression[53] and were trying to appeal to international opinion through the visit of the United States’ Secretary of State, Cyrus Vance. The incipient Abuelas organization decided to present their case through a letter to the Pope. They also visited all the civil courts in the capital and Minors’ Courts in the province of Buenos Aires and wrote to courts throughout the rest of the country. In April of 1978, a motion was filed in the Supreme Court of Argentina (Corte Suprema de la Nación) to reclaim one of the children of the disappeared.[54] The Supreme Court, however,


*** Top of Page 134 ***

ruled that under the separation of powers of the Argentine system of government, it was without power to decide such a case.[55]

The failure of judges and functionarig information on their missing grandchildren. The Abuelas persuaded the OAS to open a case and traveled to Europe to carry their story to a wider public. Information began to accumulate about clandestine detention camps, kidnappings, and births in captivity in the infamous Navy School of Mechanics and Hospital of the Campo de Mayo.[56] Amazingly, all this activity continued in the middle of the terror, with disappearances intense between 1976 and 1979 and peaking by 1980 and 1981.[57]

In August of 1979, some children were located in Chile by a Brazilian rights organization,[58] and in March of 1980, the Abuelas had their first success: they located two sisters, Tatiana Ruarte Britos and Laura Malena Jotar Britos.[59] In October 1977 in the province of Buenos Aires, two girls named Tatiana and Laura had disappeared with their mother and with Laura’s father. Tatiana’s father had been disappeared the previous year.


*** Top of Page 135 ***

In this case, the raising parents were “innocent” in that they were not involved with the military regime. Inés Sfilgoy and her husband Carlos were a childless couple trying to adopt a newborn baby in the Juvenile Court in San Martín (Juzgado de Menores de San Martín). In this same court, after a police officer reported finding the two children, (a three-year-old in good health and a sickly four-month-old baby), a judge had committed them to the keeping of separate children’s institutions. When Inés saw the sickly infant in the arms of a court employee, she asked if she could have that child instead of the healthy newborn whose papers she had already received. Inés said she felt that something was wrong and then saw the older girl behind some furniture. Upon learning that the two girls were sisters, the couple asked to take them both, but the court said the older one was meant for another family. Several days later, however, an employee of the court called to offer her to them as well. The adoptive parents apparently grew suspicious about the circumstances and decided not to go back to that court anymore.[60]

Little by little, the adoptive parents learned pieces of the children’s story. Tatiana knew her own name and also that the baby (from whom she had been separated for six months) was called Laura. Tatiana had some emotional problems; she did not want to talk about her past, and she seemed afraid of going out. Eventually, the Sfilgoys became suspicious enough to see the judge to ask if these children were from people who had been detained or who no longer existed. Inés recounted later that they were uncomfortable using the word “disappeared” in front of the judge and did not believe that their children’s case was related to all of the horrible things that were going on at the time. When the court seemed to deny any connection, they were put at ease.

After time passed and the court determined that they adequately cared for the children, Inés and Carlos Sfiligoy were granted permanent custody. But in 1980 they received notification from the court that informed them that the grandmothers of the children were claiming them, with the help of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. The Sfilgoys were required to present the children to the court for these grandmothers to see.[61]

Then vice-president of the Abuelas, Estela de Carlotto, recalled how one of the missing children’s grandmothers, María Laura de Jotar, had come to them for help. From information on the baby’s birth certificate, they located neighbors of the disappeared family who told them what happened. That led them to the local court of San Martín where the Abuelas left copies of the birth certificate, pictures, and a request to search for the missing children. The judge took a personal interest in the case, assigning a social worker to help, and apparently became convinced that she had located the right children. By this time Tatiana was eight years old and Laura was three. Before going into the court for the face-to-face meeting with the grandmothers,


*** Top of Page 136 ***

Inés and Carlos consulted a psychologist, who advised them to say something to the older girl about trying to recognize the woman she would see, but Tatiana hung back and did not admit to recognizing her grandmother. Inés commented later that she thought Tatiana did not want to recognize her grandmother because she was afraid of the changes this might bring, but that eventually she was happy to know her family.[62]

The adoptive parents made a direct plea to the court and to the grandmothers; Carlos proposed that they be able to keep the children, but to include the grandparents in their lives, as a kind of emergency situation until the children’s biological parents appeared. This was agreed. The initial visitations, however, evoked trepidation on the part of the Sfiligoys, who feared that the children might even be snatched from them. Eventually, they came to cooperate with the children’s blood relatives. Inés explained that it was reassuring to Tatiana to learn that her mother had not abandoned her, but that they were separated for other reasons. The child was relieved when Inés promised to look for the answers together. In the end, the Sfiligoys persuaded the grandmothers that they were better equipped to raise the sisters. They never obtained what is called an adopción plena, or full adoption.[63] Instead, they were confirmed in an adopción simple.[64] The ability to reconstruct their identity was a positive change for the children. Inés told a story about the younger girl, at age four, joining in a patriotic celebration in school by telling the story of her parents being taken away by uniformed men. While the other children said her parents must have been bad to have been taken in this fashion, she insisted this was not so.

Although the adoptive parents shielded their children as much as they could from media attention and publicity, in the end, they all became an integral part of the Abuelas organization. They felt that even without blood ties, they were a family, united by the ties of love. At the same time, they responded to the message of the Abuelas, which was about the children’s reality. It was only natural for them to be involved. Although they recognized that they were in a different position and might not be accepted by families


*** Top of Page 137 ***

seeking to recover their missing children, they came to the conclusion that they had a lot in common with them and that there was not a single correct model for resolution of these tragic cases.[65]

In some ways, the story of the Britos children was uncomplicated. Once they were located, there seems to have been little doubt or dispute about their identity. The blood family of the girls did not have the resources to raise the girls and did not seek to take full responsibility for the children. The Sfilgoys were “innocent” of the terrible crimes of the regime and had never lied to the girls about being adopted. In line with the ideology of the Abuelas and the wishes of the biological familiy, Inés and Carlos recognized how important it was for the sisters psychologically to know the truth about their origins. They were willing to enfold the blood relatives into a larger family, and the blood relatives were willing to let them do this. The parents and children ultimately became an active part of the Abuelas’ organization. This is not to say that the course of this resolution ran smoothly; the families negotiated over a period of years, with confusion and fear on all sides. The location of the Britos children, however, constituted the first success attained by the Abuelas.

IV. Proving Blood Ties: Paula Logares and Laura Scaccheri

The recoveries of two other children located by the Abuelas, Paula Logares and Laura Scaccheri, were not so simple. In each case, the parents who were raising the children denied the identity of the child and refused to reach any accommodation with the biological family. As a result, the establishment of identity in court through blood tests and other genetic proofs became a central issue for each case. Little legal precedent existed for reclaiming the children or punishing their kidnappers,[66] and there was no accepted scientific test for establishing the affiliation between grandchildren and grandparents in the absence of the disappeared parents. Although issues such as the nullification of fraudulent adoptions were civil matters to be heard in civil courts,[67] many of the disputes over blood testing and the critical decisions on custody were heard in the first instance in federal criminal courts, which exercised a kind of auxiliary jurisdiction over minors alleged to be victims.[68]


*** Top of Page 138 ***

In 1984, the same year that CONADEP was taking testimony and proclaiming Nunca Más (“Never Again!”),[69] blood tests were decisive for the first time in a case involving a child ofdisappeared parents, Paula Logares. The Abuelas recruited an American geneticist to develop an “index of grandpaternity” and also gained the support of the Ford Foundation to establish a genetic data bank at the Durand Hospital in Buenos Aires, where testing could take place and data could be stored for the eventuality of locating more children. In 1987, the Supreme Court of Argentina definitively declared the probative value of blood testing in the Laura Scaccheri case. In the same year, the Argentine National Congress passed a law which gave the Durand data bank official standing, while also dictating the legal effect of blood tests in cases involving the children of the disappeared.

The resolution of the question of the legal effect of blood tests, however, did not provide the entire answer to these difficult cases. Although one instance involved raising parents whom the Abuelas considered to be “repressors” and the other did not, both Paula and Laura became the subject of custody disputes in which courts had to determine not only identity, but the placement of a somewhat older child after her true identity was confirmed. This made some judges feel like they were being asked to make King Solomon’s decision and posed questions about the “best interest of the child” in the strongest possible terms.

Paula Eva Logares was twenty-three months old when she was abducted in Uruguay on May 18, 1978, along with her parents who were in exile for their activities in the peronist youth movement. Her parents were never seen again.[70] Paula’s grandmother Elsa Pavon had searched fruitlessly for the child on her own in Uruguay and in Argentina until she was asked by the Abuelas to work with them.[71] During the dictatorship years the child was spotted briefly in 1980. She was in the hands of Ruben Lavallén, a police officer, and his common law wife Raquel Leiro.[72] Paula’s grandparents received photos of the girl sent by suspicious neighbors who overheard the Lavallens arguing one night. The adoptive mother was heard to say: “You killed the parents of this little girl and then you bring her to my house and expect me to care for her.”[73] But the child soon vanished from sight. Three


*** Top of Page 139 ***

years later, when her grandparents located her again, the girl was seven years old and registered in kindergarten as the biological child of the Lavallén couple. She had a false birthdate and looked younger than her years.[74]

Little by little, the grandmothers built a case for the child’s true identity. They appealed for political intervention in the middle of 1983 without any success, but on December 13, 1983, three days after the investiture of the democratic government of Raúl Alfonsín, grandmother Elsa, the Abuelas and their lawyers went to court. However, it was a full year before she was restored to her biological family. One difficulty was that x-rays seemed to indicate the frame of a six-year-old, as claimed by the Lavallén couple, and not the now seven-year-old, who had been kidnapped years before.[75] The Lavallens took the position that they did not have to offer evidence because they had nothing to prove. The “parents” refused to take a blood test.[76] Judge Fegoli was reluctant to act, but due to the unceasing pressure of the Abuelas and its expert teams, he ultimately ordered blood tests of the child.[77] The genetic test, which was the inaugural effort of the team that had been trained in the new techniques at the Durand Hospital, established that the child inscribed as Paula Luisa Lavallén was in fact born as Paula Eva Logares.[78]

Before the Logares case, the legal precedents about blood tests were at best uncertain.[79] The legal recognition of the probative value of genetic testing developed side by side with the scientific advancements growing out of the Durand Hospital project. Even before the fall of the dictatorship, the Abuelas recognized the need for international aid in establishing scientific proof of the missing children’s identities.[80] Afterwards, members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science sent a forensic team


*** Top of Page 140 ***

to help identify the bodies of the disappeared found in mass graves.[81] In June 1984, another team of experts led by Dr. Mary-Claire King of Berkeley flew to Argentina to help with the identification of the children of the disappeared.[82] Dr. King (who was a geneticist from the School of Public Health at Berkeley) and the team of experts met with the Abuelas and with Argentine medical professionals to demonstrate a technique that “uses laboratory analysis of genetic markers in human blood to calculate an index of grandpaternity.”[83] This method compares the probability that a child shares genes with a specified set of grandparents because of a familial relationship with the probability that the genes are similar only by chance. The approach “can prove a child’s identity with a probability exceeding 95 percent.”[84]

Genetic testing for “inclusion” is procedurally simpler than testing for “exclusion.” Testing for inclusion, as in Dr. King’s index of grandpaternity, only requires blood samples from the children and from those who are claiming to be their biological grandparents. Testing for exclusion, however, requires a blood sample from the raising parents to determine whether or not they could be related to the child they claimed as their own. Often faced with criminal charges, the parents in possession generally would not agree to be tested themselves.[85] In the years following the introduction of the “index of grandpaternity,” the Abuelas found that Argentine judges often were unfamiliar with the testing methodology and refused to afford it the importance it deserved. In one instance, court forensic experts confused basic concepts of “inclusion” versus “exclusion,” as a result artificially lowering the percentage figure for the index of grandpaternity.[86]

The American Ford Foundation became involved with the Abuelas’ genetic identification project. On March 27, 1984, Ford Foundation representatives met with the then-president and vice-president of the Abuelas. The


*** Top of Page 141 ***

Ford Foundation field representative reported that the Abuelas had documented 142 cases of disappeared children and had already located twenty-five of them.[87] The Ford Foundation gave an initial grant to the Abuelas in 1985 to enable the organization to develop a systematic data bank containing the genetic records of all living family members of kidnapped children[88] and renewed the grant several times until finally closing it in 1990.[89]

There are two interesting features of this Ford Foundation involvement. First, although there were a number of other human rights organizations that courageously fought the dictatorship and were struggling to reestablish democracy in Argentina, the Ford Foundation seemed to prefer the Abuelas. Foundation officials viewed the Abuelas as less politicized and more practical and realistic than other groups.[90] A Ford Foundation field representative noted a significant distinction between the Abuelas and other human rights organizations such as theMadres group from which they sprang: “The Abuelas seem far less politicized and more concerned with finding children than seeking retribution.”[91] This was particularly important in an otherwise discouraging climate in which the “democratic” regimes that followed the juntas seemed bent on pardoning them for their crimes of state terror without ever coming to terms with what happened during the nightmare years.[92] There was more than a little realpolitik in this assessment. While the increasing legal impunity blocked human rights’ efforts generally, the exemp-


*** Top of Page 142 ***

tions in the pardon laws permitted the grandmothers to continue unabated in their pursuit of the missing children.[93]

Second, in addition to serving its general political goals, the Ford Foundation also showed concern about the impact on individual children of being returned to biological families they may never have known. Foundation officials required and received reassurances from the Abuelas that the psychological and emotional interests of the children were being taken into account in their work.[94] The Abuelas supplied this reassurance by assembling a mental health team to provide transitional services and also by displaying flexibility in the resolutions that they demanded. Given the right set of circumstances and adoptive parents who were relatively free of guilt, the Abuelas were willing to accept arrangements that left the child with the adoptive family, while restoring her name and identity and the opportunity to interact with her biological family.[95] The Ford Foundation was convinced that in other circumstances, the children would experience less psychological trauma by being separated from their “adoptive” parents than they would from later learning that those people were directly or indirectly involved in the murder of their biological parents.[96]

In Paula’s case the Abuelas considered the Lavalléns to be repressors and, therefore, sought her immediate return. However, the lower level federal criminal court left the Lavalléns at liberty and the child with them temporarily.[97] Paula’s grandmother Elsa appealed the lower court’s refusal to grant her custody while the criminal case proceeded. She questioned the safety of the girl under the present circumstances, asking whether there was anyone who could grow up healthy without knowing her real history.[98] The defense raised two arguments in opposition. The Lavelléns first challenged the ve-


*** Top of Page 143 ***

racity of the genetic tests and continued to insist that Paula was their child. They also made an argument based on the best interest of the child (al interés de la niña (favur minoris)). They cited many cases in which courts granted permanent custody (“guarda definitiva”) of a child to someone who took care of her after her parents abandoned her. They called these guardians “padres de crianza,” or raising parents.[99] According to the lawyers, these cases emphasized the interests of the child rather than the criminal conduct of their protectors.[100] In these decisions, there was an effort to protect the children from disturbance, trauma, or custody changes solely in the interests of third persons, even if these third persons were the blood parents. The Levalléns’ lawyers thus argued that the child should remain with the persons who raised her.

Despite the defense’s arguments, on December 13, 1984, (a full year after the Abuelas first filed), in the first legal decision to restore one of the children of the disappeared,[101] the appellate court decided to return Paula to her biological family.[102] There are three aspects of Paula’s case that are worthy of note, two of which have been discussed already. First, theAbuelas in effect had the burden of proof in order to persuade a court to order compulsory blood tests of the children alleged to have been kidnapped.[103] They had to meet a kind of probable cause standard that the child in question was not the child of its apparent parents but instead was most likely a child of disappeared parents and also related to the grandparents who filed the complaint. To a certain extent, the social predicate for this probable cause was created by the revelations about the nightmare years through the work of human rights groups such as the Abuelas and of CONADEP’s 1984 report, Nunca Más. The Abuelas established the predicate for going into court on an individual case through the meticulous accumulation of pictures and reports gathered from informants and from their own observations.[104] Once the judge was persuaded to order the tests, however, the second issue was the question of their legal effect. Paula’s case was the first in which genetic analysis was a significant element of proof of the child’s identity. However, it was legislation and another child’s case that finally established the legal effect of those tests.[105] The third and last question in Paula’s case was that of the remedy.


*** Top of Page 144 ***

One of the appellate judges who made the decision to return Paula to her grandmother later gave an interview explaining the debate that went on in the court and the rationale behind the court’s decision.[106] He explained that the court was convinced from the beginning that the best interest of the child (“favur minoris”) had to be foremost. But that did not imply acceptance of the arguments of the defense. The court consulted with psychologists who warned them that concealing the truth from Paula would precipitate a serious crisis when she reached puberty. Thus, their beginning principle was that it was in Paula’s best interest to learn the truth.

That still left the judges facing three alternatives. First, they could allow Paula to remain with the Lavelléns, who had not been convicted of anything yet, but insist that the girl be told of her origins. The judges discarded this alternative because they felt it would give the girl double messages and generate too many contradictions for her. A majority of the court seemed to like a second alternative, which was to place Paula with a substitute family until there was a definite verdict on the charges against the Lavalléns. This was attractive in part because they worried about the grandmother’s reaction— how balanced she could be in communicating to the girl in view of the dramatic events and losses she had suffered. But the appeals court discarded this seemingly neutral alternative because they feared it would force Paula to experience two uprootings. They doubted, moreover, that a truly neutral family could even be found. Judge D’Allessio himself believed that placing Paula with a substitute family would have been just like King Solomon’s decision to cut the baby in half.[107] Instead, they opted for a third alternative, which was to restore Paula to her legitimate family. Judge D’Alessio concluded that time would show the wisdom of this decision.

Even with the Abuelas’ medical team on hand to help with the transition, the restitution was difficult at first. Interviewed nine years later at age seventeen, Paula remembered trying to run away from her grandmother around a big table in the courthouse on the day that the court ruled on her custody.[108] At the time, the girl accused her grandmother Elsa of lying to her, insisting “Rubén is my father; Raquel is my mother.”[109] But the then eight-year-old was also fascinated by the photographs of herself as a baby with her missing parents that Elsa had brought to show her.[110] Elsa Pavon, an Abuela and


*** Top of Page 145 ***

Paula’s maternal grandmother, subsequently reported that the child “cried for two or three hours after the court ruling” forcibly returning her to her family of origin. But Pavon said that the child “never cried again over those people. When Paula refers to them now, it is as Rubén and Raquel, not as ‘mama’ and ‘papa’ as at first. She is a very happy, talkative, studious, and energetic child. She is an absolutely normal 11-year old.”[111]

In an interview Judge D’Alessio noted that Paula was sent home with her grandmother on a Thursday and the judges visited her the following Monday, finding her remarkably well integrated with her family, although reluctant to be touched by any adult.[112] Fifteen days later the psychologist reported that she had finally relaxed. A full year later, the court decided that it would be a good idea to arrange a meeting between Paula and the Lavalléns. Their reasoning was that she needed time to assimilate her true identity, but that there were still missing pieces if the years she spent being raised by the Lavalléns were simply ignored. The court took this course apparently even in the face of contrary advice by psychologists and opposition from the Abuelas. Paula, however, was not interested in talking to the Lavalléns.

Paula became incorporated into a family quite different than the one she had left behind; instead of the six years she spent with the Lavallens in a wealthy neighborhood, attending private Catholic school and imbibing conservative values, she was reintegrated into a lower middle-class Jewish family of left-leaning sympathies. Although not that talkative when she was interviewed in 1994 at age seventeen, Paula was emphatic that she never wanted to go back to her pseudo-adoptive parents.[113] The struggle to regain Paula’s identity continued even after her restitution to her grandparental home; although the court recognized that her identity papers were forgeries in the 1984 proceeding, it refused to issue new ones.[114] For the next four years she remained Paula Lavallén until the family finally obtained new identity documents.[115]

Paula’s case against the “repressor” Lavallén family was the first instance where the new genetic tests established a child’s identity in court. The case of Laura Ernestina Scaccheri was theonly instance in which the issue of the legal effect of blood tests reached the Argentine Supreme Court.[116] It estab-


 

Laura’s parents were kidnapped in July 1977, and their three-month old baby was left behind.[118] The Cacaces, neighbors of the family, took the baby in and raised her for eight years until the Abuelas located her in 1985.[119] The Cacaces were not minions of the dictatorship like the Lavalléns, but their hands were not entirely clean either; instead of attempting to adopt the infant, they registered her as their own. Laura’s paternal aunt brought a denunciation in a federal criminal court. The court verified the child’s identity with a blood test and, without hearing from the parties or considering the wishes of the girl, awarded immediate custody to the aunt on March 13, 1986 with no visitation rights to the Cacaces. The Cacaces, however, appealed, and the next level ruled that there was no jurisdiction in the federal criminal court to decide custody of this child.[120] Rather, the aunt must go to civil court, and the girl was to be returned to the Cacaces.[121]

Federal courts in Argentina have exclusive jurisdiction over crimes that include a federal issue.[122] Like many other disappeared children, Laura’s case involved charges not only of kidnapping, but of falsification of public documents, a typical federal crime creating jurisdiction.[123]


*** Top of Page 147 ***

Once the federal court takes on the case, however, it also may incur obligations that seem quite foreign to those who are familiar with the procedures for child welfare under United States’ law. Law 10.903 specifies under which circumstances a court must act in lieu of parents to exercise its patronato, i.e., to secure the well-being of a minor.[124] Where a federal crime is involved, this provision of the “Ordinary Law” is the source of the federal criminal court’s power to make a custody disposition.[125] Under the articles of Law 10.903, a court with a case that involves a minor under 18 (either as author or victim of a crime) who has been materially or morally abandoned or is in moral danger, may make a temporary custody disposition to a guardian, with or without supervision by the court. Furthermore, upon reaching a final sentence, the court may make a permanent decision.[126] The question in Laura’s case was whether or not the moral danger that triggers this responsibility includes the risk of mental or psychological injury.[127]

The Abuelas’ legal team helped the aunt to appeal the jurisdictional decision. They sought a Recurso Extraordinario, or extraordinary appeal from the Supreme Court of Argentina. While the Court was still considering its decision, a draft resolution by one of the judges, which he circulated as an internal memo, was leaked.[128] The draft by the respected family law expert and Radical Party sympathizer, Judge Belluscio,[129] acknowledged that the blood tests proved that the Cacaces were not Laura’s parents and that she was a member of the Scaccheri family. But the judge saw the issue as a question of whether it is best for Laura to remain with her supposed parents with whom she had lived her entire life or to be placed with blood relatives? He opted for the first solution for several reasons. There was no conflict in this case between the Cacaces and Laura’s legitimate parents, who were dead. Furthermore, real parental ties are not so much procreational as founded on how parents treat their children. Laura had no memory of the parents she lost at three months. For all intents and purposes, the Cacaces were her parents. Finally, on the jurisdictional point, Judge Belluscio could not see how the child could be considered either abandoned or in moral danger, as was re-


*** Top of Page 148 ***

quired for the federal criminal court to have jurisdiction. He simply did not see that the single fact of having her origin hidden from her constituted such a moral danger as to trigger the provisions of the law. Indeed, he accused the lower court judge who initially restored Laura to her aunt of subjecting the child to a brain-washing worthy of the Soviet psychiatric establishment.[130]

It is worth recalling what was happening politically in 1987 when the leak of this memo caused such a storm. The elected civilian government of Raoul Alfonsín had shown a strong desire to make its peace with still-threatening military forces. Two significant amnesty laws had already been passed, the Punto Final (Full Stop) of 1986 and the Law of Due Obedience of 1987. The watchwords of the day were putting an end to the chapter of the dirty war and moving on from there. Like many other human rights groups who were struggling to defend a shaky democracy, however, the Abuelas did not accept the notion of impunity.

When the Supreme Court rendered its decision on October 29, 1987, Judge Belluscio was out of the country and did not participate. The result was quite different than he proposed. Four judges of the Argentine Supreme Court agreed that the federal criminal court did indeed have jurisdiction to determine the custody of Laura.[131] The controlling statute, Law 10.903, required evidence of abandonment or moral risk, and the statute applied either in state court or where, as here, a federal crime vested jurisdiction in the federal court. The President of the Court stated that two crimes were committed: suppression of civil status (an ordinary crime) and falsification of public records (a federal crime). The appellate briefs had argued that the alleged altruistic intent of the Cacace family had not been proven and that the interests of all of society were affected by the problem of the missing children. Judges Fayt and Bacque concluded that there was irreparable damage to the psychological health of the child involved. While affirming the right of a federal court to provide for the custody of a child who had been the victim of a crime, they also recognized the risks to her psychological health. The judicial function to protect the child’s health, they opined, cannot be separated from the historical and social transformations of the country or its living reality. The problems of the family and the child must be taken in their cultural context. While vacating the appellate court’s ruling on jurisdiction, these judges were mindful of the special care owed to children by judges and society to ensure that they would always be subjects and not just objects of the rights of third parties.[132]

The fourth judge, Doctor Petracchi, wrote eloquently about the harm from fraudulent suppression of a legal relationship and concealment of the actual situation. Social tolerance for this practice, he wrote, derives from a


*** Top of Page 149 ***

conception of children as property. Of all the judges, Doctor Petracchi insisted most rigorously on coming to terms with the nightmare years. He also was the least sympathetic to the Cacaces, mentioning that they had not made the transition any easier on Laura. Although psychologists advised a gradual introduction of the truth to avoid causing the girl any harm, the Cacaces abruptly dumped the truth of her identity on her. As a result, the girl was confused and anxious. The initial kidnapping of Laura’s biological parents and the lying by her raising parents contributed to the trauma. Doctor Petracchi argued that with the blood tests, there was no doubt about Laura’s identity. Consequently, she should be restored to her biological relations unless it was otherwise shown that for the good of the child she should continue to live with the Cacaces. However, the considerations he previously listed persuaded him that Laura’s psychological health and social and cultural development would be served best by the stable reconstruction of her identity and relationships with her biological family (not excluding regular contacts with the Cacace family). It was thus the ruling of the Court that Laura’s identity was declared and that she was placed in the permanent custody of her biological family.[133]

Paula’s and Laura’s cases established powerful, albeit nonbinding,[134] legal precedent in disputes involving children of the disappeared. Meanwhile, the Ford Foundation continued its support for the scientific work on which proof of identity rested. The last Ford Foundation grant to the Abuelas was designed to help them put the final touches on a national genetic data bank that had been officially sanctioned by the Argentine Congress.[135] In a race against time, as the grandmothers and their grandchildren aged, the Data Bank sought to complete testing at Durand Hospital in Buenos Aires of all the missing children’s relatives, including those living in the provinces of Argentina or abroad.[136]

In 1987, after intense lobbying by the Abuelas, the Argentine Congress passed a law,[137] which created a National Genetic Data Bank (BNDG) based on the Abuelas’ project at Durand Hospital.[138] Its purpose was to create an archive of genetic data and to produce reports and technical opinions by experts, as required by the judiciary. Families ofdisappeared children or those thought to be born in captivity could resort to the BNDG to register their own genetic data. In a civil action to establish filiation, a court could order genetic tests on behalf of someone with a reasonable claim (“la pretension . . .


*** Top of Page 150 ***

verosimil o razonable”). Refusal to take the tests could be counted as evidence against the person who resisted.[139]

With the National Data Bank legislation, establishment of the ties of blood and the true identity of the children of the disappeared through scientific analysis became an institutionalized part of the Argentine legal system. Correspondingly, it appeared that “truth,” the accurate determination of a disputed child’s real identity, was accepted as a guiding principle in these cases.[140] This verdad or truth was not conceptualized as competing with and in tension to the best interest of the child. Rather, although the course of acceptance did not run smoothly,[141] judges and the national Congress seemingly embraced the Abuelas’ argument that knowing the reality of one’s identity was in itself in the best interest of the child. On the other hand, it was also clear that the actual custodial arrangement might vary, depending on individual circumstances.[142]

V. Extra-Judicial Versus Judicial Recovery: The Gatica Children

Ana Maria and Oscar Gatica lost both of their small children at different times.[143] They also recovered both of their children, but in strikingly different ways. The contrast between voluntary, or extra-judicial, recovery from a relatively innocent adoptive mother and involuntary, or judicial, restitution from a police commissioner implicated in the crimes of the regime, illustrates the political character of the competing versions of the “best interest of the child.”

The Gatica’s oldest child, Maria Eugenia was disappeared along with the friends of her parents who were caring for her while her parents took the baby, Felipe, for a doctor’s visit. A military officer later took Felipe and his mother, but returned Felipe to a neighbor. Both parents were exiled to Brazil shortly thereafter, where they survived the “nightmare years,” but without their children. The parents searched for their children for many years


*** Top of Page 151 ***

and recovered them both, but in very different manners. After seven years, they recovered Felipe extrajudicially by agreement with a woman who was not a repressor but who had registered the baby as if he were her own child. However, they had to go to court to battle for their daughter, Maria Eugenia, who was found in the hands of a police commissioner, Rodolfo Silva, who was accused of being responsible for creating a corps of women to take temporary charge of the kidnapped children.[144]

Felipe was difficult to find because the neighbors that received Felipe from the military officer did not keep him, and the neighbors were themselves hard to locate. Even when the neighbors were located, they kept silent for a long time and were only willing to reveal that Felipe was in good hands. Finally, the neighbor woman agreed to reveal the identity of this person, but only to an intermediary chosen by the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. The Abuelas’ president then approached Felipe’s adoptive mother Nelly, who later told a reporter how she reacted at first; she claimed that it had never occurred to her that the child’s parents might be alive and well. She reacted with tears, a nervous attack, and hysterics, but, she says, never with hostility to the child’s parents. She explained that she obtained Felipe through a nursing sister at an infirmary. Since Nelly and her husband already had one adopted child (and previously had temporary guardianship of another child), the nurse thought of them, and they accepted. They did not attempt to adopt Felipe, however, and instead registered him as their own son. When asked why a knowledgeable notary public would do a thing like that, Nelly declined to answer the interviewer. In her own defense, she did say that she should not be taxed with complicity with the regime just because she did not have the courage to seek out the Abuelas herself. She asserted that from the age of five, she had told the Felipe that she was not his biological mother, but that she loved him like her own son. Although professing sympathy for her loss of a child, Felipe’s parents noted that although Nelly was not guilty of stealing the boy, she was guilty of remaining silent.[145]

Felipe was reintegrated into the Gatica family, while not losing his ties with Nelly.[146] The interviews with both families reveal that it was not an easy transition and that Felipe’s mother still resented Nelly’s intrusion into her family and needed psychological help to deal with it. Ana Maria told the interviewer that despite all the love Nelly gave her son, she still was the person who appropriated him and dispossessed him of his identity. At the same


*** Top of Page 152 ***

time, having lost her children, she seemed to identify with Nelly’s loss too.[147] She felt that after all of her children took a vacation with Nelly, relations between her and Nelly became more harmonious to the children’s benefit.[148]

The restitution of the older child, Maria Eugenia, required judicial action against a “father” found to be criminally responsible for a number of serious offenses. Rodolfo Oscar Silva was a police commissioner who played an active role in the dirty war’s campaign against “subversives;” he was said to be responsible for a “female brigade” which temporarily took charge of children in La Plata after their parents were kidnapped. Even in prison, however, he was unrepentant, denying the charges of which he was convicted and the reality of the kidnappings.[149]

Silva and his wife already had a little boy when he took the three-year old Maria Eugenia and rebaptized her as Elisabeth Silvina. His son died, however, and he poured all of his affection onto the girl, continuing to see her virtually weekly even after he separated from his wife, who moved 300 kilometers away. The Abuelas suspected that this girl was the Gatica child and secretly obtained photos of the now nine-year-old for the family to scrutinize. Even when old photos seemed convincing, the Abuelas explained that although they might create a strong presumption, blood tests were necessary for proof.[150]

Fortunately, the case was randomly assigned to Judge Borras, a criminal judge described by interviewer Irène Barki as an old humanist influenced by Anatole France.[151] Even during the nightmare years, this judge had procured a conviction against a police officer who beat three people in a bar. Judge Borras lost no time in ordering Silva, his wife, and the child to submit to blood tests at the Durand Hospital, but Silva refused to comply. A further order also was to no avail. Finally, the court had to resort to force, and in September 1985 Judge Borras referred the matter to the Juvenile Court in San Nicolas. The Durand Hospital genetic team waited in one part of the court building while court employees went to look for the girl at school, but she was not there. She was located in La Plata with her father and was brought into the court for testing, confused and upset that she was to have blood drawn though she was not sick and her “mother” was not there. The blood sample, when analyzed, proved that she was Maria Eugenia Gatica.[152]


*** Top of Page 153 ***

The nightmare was not over, as Silva fled with the child, telling her “lies” about the situation. Finally, he turned himself in, along with his wife and the girl. On September 18, 1985, the court proceeded with the reintegration of Maria Eugenia into the Gatica family. The judge himself prepared the way, meeting alone with the girl even before the child psychologist of theAbuelas’ expert team, Dr. Norberto Liwski, saw her. Following these meetings was the reunion. Maria’s parents entered the room, the mother singing a favorite childhood song to her. At this, the girl leapt into her mother’s arms. After the meeting the family retreated from public view, reaquainting themselves with each other with the assistance of the child psychologist. They later told their interviewer that there were no problems reintegrating Maria Eugenia into an extended family with siblings and with cousins who were the same age as the girl.[153]

On February 25, 1986, Silva was convicted of the crimes of kidnapping minors, aggravated suppression of civil status, and forgery of public documents. He was sentenced initially to a four-year prison term. Although the kidnapping charge was not upheld on appeal, the prison sentence remained.[154] There also was a civil damage award for “moral damages,” which in civil law countries includes any moral, physical, spiritual, or emotional distress, pain, and suffering that a person may experience as a result of a wrong inflicted by another.[155] Silva’s defense had been twofold; he still questioned the validity of the blood tests and the identity of Maria Eugenia. At the same time, although he refused to say from whom he received the child, Silva portrayed himself as the rescuer of an abandoned and endangered child. He argued that he raised her and educated her as his own child for eight years.[156] Judge Borras accepted neither argument.

The Judge first ruled that the tests which compared the child’s blood to that of the Gatica couple, her biological parents,[157] were valid despite defense arguments based on a 1982 opinion by his superior court, the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires.[158] Judge Borras found blood testing to be a sui generis


*** Top of Page 154 ***

measure of proof, not requiring certain procedural formalities, and that it must not be treated as a seizure. He further found that this valid scientific proof established the identity of Maria Eugenia Gatica.[159]

The question of the legality of compulsory blood testing was not resolved until rulings by the Argentine Supreme Court in December of 1995 and in 1996. With respect to the minors, the Court ruled that even in a criminal case against “parents” who were charged with falsely registering children as their own, compulsory blood testing of the children worked no violation of the constitutional guarantee against self-incrimination of Article 18 or of other basic liberties, such as the right to privacy. The Court distinguished the production of material evidence from the kind of compelled communication prohibited by the Constitution. It did not see the extraction of a few centimeters of blood by ordinary scientific methods as a violation of basic liberties, particlarly in light of the superior liberty interests of another, the defense of society, and the prosecution of a crime. The privacy argument failed because the basis of the objection was not actually to protect the body, but rather to create an obstacle in a criminal investigation in which the objectors were the accused, and the minors were the victims, third parties whose rights were violated. The test was neither degrading nor humiliating. Finally, under the Convention of the Rights of Children, incorporated into the Argentine constitution on a par with other constitutional provisions, the child had a right to know her identity.[160] Whatever the merits of the self-incrimination objections by defendants to the extraction of their own blood, the Court made it clear in a 1996 case that the reasoning could not bar the testing of the blood of those with conflicting interests, that is, the minor victims.[161]


*** Top of Page 155 ***

Dr. Borras also rejected Silva’s second defense, that he “rescued” an abandoned child. The Judge was convinced that the police commissioner knew the truth about the origins of the girl.[162] Rodolfo Silva, on the other hand, clung to his version of the “Official Story” even after he was sent to prison.[163] He spoke only of his “daughter” and denied all the charges of which he had been convicted. He said he was never engaged in the struggle against subversion or any kidnapping of children.[164] Indeed, in a manner reminiscent of those who say the Holocaust never happened,[165] he insisted that many of the infamous events of Argentina’s nightmare years were pure fiction. He still balked at the child psychologists’ recommendation that the girl needed a clean break with her past with him and protested that he loved her and would do her no harm.[166]


*** Top of Page 156 ***

The Abuelas’ child psychologist, Dr. Norberto Liwski, however, questioned this kind of love. “Do you call this love?” he said, when people take children and reduce them to war booty, appropriating them like commodities, falsifying their identity, raising them amid lies and falsification, stealing a part of their past, after directly or indirectly being implicated in the deaths of their parents?[167] Dr. Liwski argued that this kind of emotion is merely the desire to possess a coveted object, not the true love that requires respect for the other, for the truth of her identity. Nothing was more important for the stability of a child than this truth. Indeed, Dr. Liwski remembered one day when he took leave of Maria Eugenia playing happily with her cousin, and she said to him “Goodbye, Mr. Truth.”[168]

VI. Worse than Slavery?:
The Best Interest of Kidnapped Children

By 1988, the Abuelas, their expert psychological and legal teams, and the jurists who agreed with them had articulated a fully developed definition of the “best interest of the child,” a counter-story to the version offered by the “parents” who were found in possession of the kidnapped children. Although the need to do justice in the face of such horrors clearly counted, the emphasis was on the “best interest of the child,” defined by the healing power of “truth.”

This can clearly be illustrated by the 1987 recovery of María José Lavalle Lemos, the second child born in one of the secret detention camps to be returned to her biological family.[169]The Lemos case is particularly revealing because the opinion was written by Dr. Juan Maria Ramos Padilla, who was involved in four judicial restitutions.[170] In 1987 and 1988, theAbuelas held conferences which reached resolutions incorporating the Abuelas’ positions on restitution under a variety of circumstances.[171] All these sources reflect that the Abuelasalways had to fight for their version of the “best interest.” After one more major success in 1989, to be considered in the next Part, and amid a changing political climate, the tide of public opinion turned against restitution of the children of the disappeared to their families of origin. These developments underline once again the accuracy of Martha Fineman’s observation that family law decisions are “inescapably political.”[172]


*** Top of Page 157 ***

Monica María Lemos de Lavalle was eight months pregnant when she was kidnapped along with her husband and young daughter.[173] The child was returned to one of her grandparents by the authorities,[174] but Monica’s baby was born in captivity and given to a policewoman while her umbilicus was still attached. The policewoman, Teresa Isabel Gonzalez, worked directly for the Brigade of San Justo where there were a number of political prisoners. When ten years later she was called to answer criminal charges initiated by theAbuelas, Teresa averred that she wanted to cooperate with the court in every way, but that she did not remember who gave her the newborn baby. Teresa testified in her confession that she had been saying she would like a sibling for her other child, and such requests were probably the reason she was given the infant. The policewoman and her husband falsely registered the baby as their own, but blood tests taken pursuant to the genetic data bank law (Ley 23.511) proved María José to be the Lavalle-Lemos child with 99.98% certainty.[175]

Reminiscing in a later interview entitled “The Truth is the Truth,” Judge Padilla remembered that he had doubts before deciding to restore the first child to her family. He did not know what was best for her and feared that it would be painful for her learn that her so-called “parents” were not her parents after all.[176] He was persuaded less by the experts than by his own twelve-year old son, who told him that “the truth is the truth.”[177] Rejecting one psychologist’s proposal to subject the girl to ten hours of preliminary psychological counseling, the judge instead successfully introduced her to her older sister (also named Maria).[178]

Judge Padilla explained in the criminal case why he rejected the defenses of the policewoman. He was unpersuaded by arguments that it was not proper for the head of the Abuelas’ legal department, Dr. Mirta Liliano Guarino, to represent grandmother Haydee Vallino de Lemos, or even for the grandmother herself to participate as a representative of the girl, so long as there was no definite pronouncement of her identity. As to the contention that only her parents could legitimately act, he pointed out that it was not possible to forget the reality of Argentine history during these years, with its detained and missing. The judge was impatient with the argument that it was not proven that María José’s mother gave birth in a detention center because all that existed was Teresa Gonzalez’ confession. He emphareached consideration of Teresa’s sentence, Judge Padilla reflected on the sad years of recent Argentine history. The crime of appropriation of children ironically was punishable by a lesser sentence than that for stealing a car by gun, even though there was more at stake, i.e., the human rights and guarantees of children and their dignity. The judge supported the right of any person to know her own history and to be raised amid her own family. Instead of enjoying these rights, María José was treated like an object, the possession of the policewoman.[180]

Judge Padilla confronted Teresa with her lies and the contradictory messages that she communicated to María José when she likened the situation to an adoption and told the girl that she was a child not of her belly, but of her heart. Instead of this benign view of psychological parentage, he agreed with the court’s social assistant, who argued that no one can own a human being and take control of her personal, familial, and social history, consisting of the values, guidelines, beliefs, and norms of the parents who gave her life. If the parental relationship was not based on love and respect, but on falsifications and concealment, then it was injurious to the health and emotional development of the child. Just as Dr. Petracchi, the judge in the Scaccheri case, said, a case like this affects the community, if it permits toleration of treatment of a child as property. The child has suffered a serious injury by being denied her identity, by having her need to construct her own identity subordinated to the need of adults to impose a false construction.[181]

The court went on to cite famous psychoanalysts such as Winnicot, Anna Freud, P. Aulagnier, Aberastury, all of whom agreed on the pathological impact of raising a child on a lie. Double messages bombarded the child, one given verbally, the other nonverbally and unconsciously. María José had been treated for many years as a “thing.” Despite all the luxury that might surround her, she was like a domestic animal that was treated well only for the benefit of the owner. María José’s situation was worse than slavery. Slaves, at least, were allowed to know their history.[182]

Like a number of other such children, María José was treated as a child-object. Judge Padilla warned that those who have these children need to know that they are harming them. He felt that the entire society has an ethical duty to these children, who in no way could be compared to adopted children. While adoption is founded on love and respect for the individuality of the child and on the parents’ free choice, what happened to María José and the other children of the disappeared was not. The appropriation was made with fraud and falsification of documents, without law or truth,


*** Top of Page 159 ***

thereby damaging the maternal relationship with Teresa from the beginning and harming the psyche of the child. Nobody has the right to suppress or hide the history of another, even if it proves painful to bring the truth out into the open.[183]

The court entrusted María José to the custody of her grandmother, Haydee Vallino de Lemos, one of the original Abuelas.[184] Both the granddaughter that was returned immediately and María José, who spent ten years in the hands of the policewoman, are now activists like their missing parents. María José was reintegrated into a large extended family and enjoys a continuing and close relationship with the judge in her case. At sixteen, she claimed that the hardest part was not the trauma of the restitution, but the continuing loss of her missing parents.[185]

Judge Padilla elaborated on the distinction from adoption he made in María José’s case in a later interview. He criticized an old-fashioned view of adoption prevalent in Argentina, which saw the institution exclusively as satisfying the desires of adults. Although a valid consideration, the most important purpose is to find a place for abandoned children without denying them the right to know their origin and identity. He was critical of what we would call the sealed-records approach, in which the law will not force the adoptive parents to reveal the truth to their children. He believed that the adoptive family should be a second-level institution, coming into play only when the biological family is not there or the child is abandoned. In any case, if there is an intent to substitute the adoptive family for the biological family, instead of love there is a background of falsehood.[186]

This issue of the distinction between appropriation and legitimate adoption of children clearly troubled the Abuelas. In a book published in 1997 on the occasion of their twentieth birthday, they included an explanation of why Francoise Dolto, a French psychoanalyst who was influential in Argentina, was misinformed in a December 1986 interview published in thePsyché


*** Top of Page 160 ***

journal.[187] They insisted that the correct word was not “adoptive parents,” but rather “appropriators.” While Dr. Dolto remarked that it was important not to tell the child he was raised by executioners, the Abuelas felt it was critical to allow the child to talk about what he “knows.” The Abuelas rejected the analogy to the situation of orphaned Jewish children adopted by French families and emphatically disagreed with the contention that by taking the children from their “adoptive” family to restitute them, a second trauma was inflicted. This wrongfully put restitution and appropriation on the same level, whereas restitution is a new situation, one of truth. The children learn that their parents never abandoned them and that their families searched for them for a long time. The Abuelas insisted that their children were not abandoned or like those in a war (which Dolto studied). Rather, they could be identified, and their families were looking for them. This was more like genocide.[188]

The legal position of the Abuelas was expressed in resolutions produced by conferences in 1987 and 1988: Where a child of disappeared parents had been subjected to an “adopción plena,” or full adoption, but there was positive identification through blood tests, custody should be given to the biological family. Furthermore, in cases of false registration of the children as their own, the registration should be invalidated, the child’s true identity determined, and custody should go to the biological family. The 1988 conference in Buenos Aires recommended reintegration into biological families and compensation in damages for the crimes inflicted on the children.[189]

The Abuelas version of “best interest,” however, was never as simplistic as this sounds. Individual grandmothers clearly had their doubts.[190] Before the


*** Top of Page 161 ***

Ford Foundation agreed to fund the first grant to the Abuelas, their evaluators wanted to know whether the organization had considered the disruptive effect on children of being removed from their “adoptive families” (familias adoptivas).[191] Dr. Hernández replied, saying that the problem went beyond strict limits of medical or psychological competence. To focus solely in this fashion decontextualized a social anomaly. He would judge that the restitution of the children benefitted them and would advise that they receive social and psychological support, drawing on the theories of attachment and loss developed by John Bowlby, Mary Ainsworth, and others.[192] Following up in 1985 after the first one-year grant to the Abuelas, the Foundation’s Mr. Gridley Hall explained that the impact of the knowledge of their true identity on the children tested and the effect of separating them from the only family they had ever known were major concerns of the granting agency. Potential trauma was balanced against the crime of kidnapping. Mr. Hall reported that although the Abuelaswere sensitive to the problem, they felt strongly that the children had a right to know who they were and that ties ought to be reestablished with their biological families. The Abuelas also argued that when the children became suspicious and learned the truth as they grew older, the trauma could be worse. After meeting often with the Abuelas, Foundation staff in Lima were persuaded that the organization was taking the “best interests” of the children into consideration. They were convinced in part by the Abuelas decision to form a team of mental health professionals to advise them on specific children. Further evidence of this concern for the “best interest of the child” was evidenced by two agreements reached with biological families that allowed the children to remain with their “adoptive families,” while resuming their real names and recreating ties with their biological families.[193] Mr. Hall noted that evaluation of the grant would pay particular attention to the “extent to which standard mental health practices, including home studies and counseling, are employed to insure that the interests of both the children and, where appropriate, the adoptive families are also given full consideration.”[194]

The team the Abuelas assembled consisted of pediatricians, neonatologists, and specialists in child psychiatry and psychology. Its aim was to facilitate handing the children over to their families “in the best possible conditions.”[195] This team worked on judicial action and provided extension ser-


*** Top of Page 162 ***

vices to interested parts of the community.[196] It provided a “prolonged follow-up” to children who were restored to their biological families.[197] In a book published in 1990 by theAbuelas, their psychological team explained the impact of restitution on children psychologically and medically. The psychological team understood that they were dealing with something unique that required more than knowledge of theory and classic psychopathology. Drawing on their previous experiences, the team planned the upcoming restitution together with the biological families that would be involved. They conceived of their job as aiding in the restoration of the children to an entire ecological nest or social network. They were prepared for crisis intervention because of the drastic impact that judicial restitution could have on the child.[198] They found, however, that the children surprised them and “showed them the correct way,” by adjusting to their legitimate families and identifying with them much faster than might have been expected.[199] The children displayed some shock and confusion and even anger, but also a tremendous amount of curiosity and growing attachment. The seven member psychological team kept the media away and advised the court about the course of the reintegration. For children that were abducted from their parents, the team looked for “clicks” of recognition or “insights” that might trigger memories of a pet name, a voice, or a gesture from the past, thereby recapturing the lost identity. They told some amazing stories about such instances[200] and insisted that the children were not depressed after the transfer, as might be expected.[201] Obviously, no such “click” was possible for children actually born in captivity to mothers who were killed immediately upon their birth. The Abuelas’ psychological team had a different view of why these children were also better off after the restoration. The lives of these children had been permeated with lies, sometimes even including made-up accounts of a birth experience that never happened. Psychologically, the team believed that it was quite different to be told falsehoods and to hear true stories about the child’s origins. The adjustment certainly was painful, but the team was convinced from their experience that the children did want to know about their “existence.”[202] Pediatrician Dr. Norbert Liwski observed that as the children progressed through the stages of restitution, they made gains in growth, which often had been developmentally delayed, and overcame a variety of psychosomatic ills such as bed-wetting.[203]


*** Top of Page 163 ***

Three psychologists and psychoanalysts associated with the Abuelas further elaborated their views on the importance of restitution to the mental health of the kidnapped children in a round table discussion published in the 1990 book.[204] They developed a complicated theory that distinguished the healthy connections of a child to the longings and desires of her legitimate family from the place she occupies in a kidnapper’s family. They seemed to focus on ruptures in a child’s identity. For example, the “adoptive” parents want to valorize the children by separating them from their parents. If the children want their original identity back, the desire inevitably opens a breach (chasm) between them and those who raised them.[205] One of the round table members also discussed a breach of the genetic line and its history, even where no lies are told. But living with secrets and lies has a terrible effect on a family, transforming it into a non-family.[206] The third round table participant mused on the importance to the children of finding small points of physical similarity to the families to which they were restored. From there, she said she entered a second stage of thinking, in which she paid more attention to the law. The law provided that adoption is permissible when a child is abandoned. But in a moment of “social catastrophe” some people exploited those rules. Perhaps some were even in good faith to begin with, but if the improper adoption continued after the truth emerged, they acted in good faith no longer.[207] The round table participants went on to discuss living with a secret,[208] turning a child into an object,[209] and facing tragic truths (such as that for children born in captivity, their birth was the occasion of their mother’s death).[210]

Out of praxis, the Abuelas’ mental health team developed a theory of healing which they believed worked for the children of the disappeared.[211] The team consisted of clinicians who did not ignore the particular circumstances of individual children or the fact that there was disruption and pain in the transition. But they also firmly believed that restitution was in the best interest of the children involved. Whatever the clinical validity of that position or the needs of individual children, however, the team also operated within a social context.[212] As theAbuelas noted, the meaning of restitution


*** Top of Page 164 ***

“transcended” individual justice and was also a matter of the reconstruction of society.[213]

As the Abuelas successfully established a national genetic data bank, the Ford Foundation grant was renewed. A Foundation memorandum specifi-cally noted the variety of resolutions for the forty-two children (of 200 documented kidnapped) located by the Abuelas so far: nineteen were returned to biological families; twelve remained with “adoptive families,” while resuming their real names and ties with their biological families; six cases were in the courts; and five children were known to be dead.[214] The agency representative acknowledged that the goal of the Abuelas was reunification, but observed that they “take the specific circumstances of each case into account, to assess what is most appropriate and consistent with the children’s rights and well-being.”[215] Just as in the original grant evaluation, the renewal acknowledged that the Lima staff recognized the sensitive issues involved—the fear of trauma when a child is separated from the second family after a long period of time. They were still persuaded, though, that the Abuelas had addressed the issue with their mental health team on staff and that it would be worse to let the children find out the truth even later.[216] By 1990, when the Ford Foundation was ready to make its closing grant, however, they were not as comfortable with the best interest balance; the final evaluation spoke of a “growing concern about the possibly traumatic effects of a separation of a child from his or her adoptive parents, especially after a certain period.”[217]


*** Top of Page 165 ***

VII. Ximena Vicario: The Last Restitution?

Although a court granted her grandmother provisional custody of thirteen-year-old Ximena Vicario in 1989, a drawn-out battle over restitution and then over visitation rights extended back to 1984 and forward into the late 1990s. Fought in the courts, the media, and on the international stage, the struggle over this case marked a turning point, after which it was virtually impossible to recover a child of the disappeared.[218] This change coincided with additional calls for impunity, which led to the pardoning of the major figures of the juntas for their varied crimes and to their release from jail. After Ximena Vicario’s case, the Abuelas’ version of the “best interest of the child” lost favor in Argentina, even as the organization continued to enjoy some international success.

On February 5, 1977, Ximena’s mother was taken with the nine-month-old baby to federal police headquarters in Buenos Aires. Her father was disappeared separately the following day. Neither parent was ever seen again.[219] The baby, however, arrived at a state orphanage wearing a sign that said, “I am the daughter of Subversives. They killed my parents today.”[220] The Abuelas located the girl in 1984, discovering that she had been “adopted” and named Romina Siciliano by Susana Siciliano, who worked in the institution where she was left.[221] When located, Siciliano refused to come to any kind of agreement with Ximena’s grandmother that would involve them both in the raising of the child. It took four years for the girl’s identity to be proven through genetic testing.[222] Although the adoptive mother was never part of the military or the police, she was charged with falsifying her knowledge of the child’s origin and taking Ximena illicitly from the orphanage.[223]


*** Top of Page 166 ***

Even after biological ties were established with grandmother Darwinia Monaco de Gallicchio, the first federal judge, Juan Fegoli, ruled that Siciliano could keep Romina-Ximena with visitation rights to the grandmother.[224] On January 2, 1989, the grandmother gained provisional custody of the child[225] after seven hours of interviews with court-appointed psychologists.[226] Dramatically, the twelve-year-old girl stood on the courthouse steps swearing that she did not want to go with “that old woman” and that she would escape from her or commit suicide if she was forcibly separated from Siciliano. Shortly after the transfer, court psychologists reported that the girl was doing fine, but did not answer to her birth name, Ximena Vicario. Her biological family claimed, “She is reconstructing her life and learning about her real family and real identity. She has the telephone next to her but has not chosen to call the other family.”[227] The adoptive mother continued her campaign after the transfer, taking it to the media, both domestic and international,[228]and applying for visitation rights.[229]

Ximena-Romina remained with her biological grandmother for nine months, but in September 1989, there was a setback in the courts.[230] Relying on an antiquated law, the Supreme Court of Argentina ruled that only the parents and a legal guardian have standing and may directly participate in the proceedings; the grandmother lacked standing.[231] The Court distinguished a proceeding concerning the custody of a child, which created this problem, from other proceedings in other courts to determine the familial relationship. Until Siciliano’s adoption of Ximena-Romina was declared null, the Court considered her the parent. Thus, they were prepared to vacate the lower court’s order.[232] The lawyer appointed to represent the child, who had also been the defense attorney for ex-Junta chief General Videla, recommended that the Court turn Ximena-Romina back to Siciliano.[233] In ordering a remand, however, the Supreme Court noted that the fact that Ximena had lived with her grandmother for most of the last year could not be ignored. The Supreme Court directed the lower court to consider the


*** Top of Page 167 ***

girl’s interests and wishes in making any custody disposition, even if the original order was vacated.[234] The lower court eventually left Ximena with her grandmother, subject to visitation by her adoptive mother. The visitation was a great frustration for Ximena and her grandmother, and they finally appealed to an international court for relief.[235]

Meanwhile, the criminal action and the direct attack on the adoption (adopción plena or full adoption) both stretched out unconscionably long.[236] Finally, in 1991, a lower level court ruled that the adoption was a nullity. Siciliano claimed that the adoption could not be attacked because of “prescription,” that is, the principle of finality. She also disputed the validity of the blood test and claimed to have found Ximena abandoned.[237] The court rejected the “adoptive mother’s” arguments about prescription due to reasons of public order and social interest.[238] It held that the case was one of family status, defined as the position or relationship that someone occupies in a family.[239] The judge likened this to a jurisdictional issue to which prescription simply did not apply.[240]

The lower court reviewed the evidence, including the blood tests that had been ordered as part of the criminal proceedings. The tests showed a 99.82%


*** Top of Page 168 ***

probability that Ximena was the granddaughter of the Vicario grandparents. Although the criminal action had not yet reached a conclusion, the judge considered it urgent to act to resolve the fate of a girl who was fifteen years old and who had experienced a painful past filled with concealment of her origins and a present filled with uncertainty and conflict. The procedural fraud in obtaining the adoption was enough to act to nullify it. Based on the evidence, he was persuaded that there was no consent by the parents for the adoption and that it was therefore a nullity. At last, Ximena Vicario’s real identity was declared legally.[241] Despite this conclusion, however, litigation stretched out into two appeals, finally reaching the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires in 1994, the year Ximena Vicario reached age eighteen.[242]

In a lengthy 1992 decision, the court of the second instance, or intermediate appellate court, upheld the nullification of Siciliano’s adoption of Ximena. By now, Ximena-Romina had spent several years with her grandmother, but without finality in the confirmation of her name, identity, or right to resist visitation by Siciliano. There are two particularly interesting features of the court’s analysis. First, it referenced international law, specifically the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989, which Argentina had ratified and adopted into domestic law. Second, the judges correspondingly placed the “best interest of the child” at the center of their reasoning.[243] The conclusion was that regardless of the love that Siciliano might have for Ximena, her best interest prevailed; she had a right to her real name, to be cared for by her biological family, and to enjoy her identity and her family relationships without illicit interference.[244] The girl herself said she did not want to see Siciliano any more. With this evidence, this was enough.

One of the intermediate appellate judge’s remarks illustrated how easily “best interest” could work against the grandmothers and in favor of the “adoptive” family. Judge Conde agreed with the judgment affirming the nullification of the adoption, saying that he had read articles about the children of the disappeared and their displacement from one family group to another. He observed that these children have a difficult time adjusting to a new family and that, above all, the best interest of the child should govern. In this case, according to what the child herself said, there was no dispute


*** Top of Page 169 ***

about what her best interests were.[245] The child’s own wishes and the status quo of her grandmother’s custody coincided in 1992. Thus, Judge Conde justified the complete nullity of Siciliano’s fraudulent adoption on the grounds of a best interests definition that departed from the version of best interests that the Abuelas had struggled so hard to establish.[246]

In 1994, when Ximena was nearly eighteen years old, the nullity of her fraudulent adoption achieved finality. Siciliano still contended that the adoption was final because she had committed no fraudulent acts and because the girl had been abandoned. However, Siciliano’s prescription argument and application for an extraordinary writ were both denied by the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires.[247] However, Ximena and her grandmother continued pressing their claims in international courts for reasons that will be discussed below. After Ximena’s case, in the context of a changing political climate, legal and public opinion turned against the claims of the Grandmothers.[248] Until political pressure by the Abuelas induced a change in the law,[249] the Argentine Supreme Court’s 1989 decision on standing made future cases more difficult by limiting appeals by biological families.[250] According to a 1993 report, courts subsequently were reluctant to order blood tests and no other children had been restored in the interim. Conceding tactical defeat, the Grandmothers concentrated on restoration of the children’s identities without a change in custody. They also looked increasingly to international courts for hope of any action on the remaining high profile cases.[251]

VIII. Developing International Norms To Right Wrongs

After Ximena Vicario’s case was decided, the Abuelas ">*** Top of Page 170 ***

and Political Rights (CCPR).[252] Because Argentina has adopted the Optional Protocol to this Covenant, individuals who believe themselves to be victims of a violation by a State Party of any of the rights protected in the Covenant may communicate directly with the Committee.[253]

Ximena’s grandmother alleged that they were victims of violations by Argentina of a number of Articles of the CCPR, which entered into force for Argentina in 1986.[254] She complained that the forced visits, which were still occurring in 1990, subjected Ximena to a “psycho-affective involuntary servitude” in violation of articles 15 and 8 of the CCPR and constituted an arbitrary intrusion on both her own and Ximena’s privacy, which was forbidden by article 17. She also alleged that the Argentine court’s refusal to afford her standing in the guardianship proceeding denied her equal protection before the law and the right to privacy. In addition, she claimed that Ximena suffered psychological torture from the forced visits and was being denied her right of identity because she was required to bear the name given to her by Siciliano.[255] Her grandmother persisted, even after the visitation ceased in 1991, Ximena received her identity papers in 1993, and the guardianship ended in 1994, arguing that the proceedings violated rights by stretching out unreasonably long and establishing injurious precedents that would bind other Argentine courts.[256]

The Committee’s findings were mixed. It felt unable to rule on the invasions of Ximena’s human rights that occurred prior to 1986, when Argentina ratified the Optional Protocol. It was mindful of the numerous proceedings in which Ximena’s grandmother was allowed to represent her and in which the State Party’s courts attempted to determine the facts, balance the “human interests of the persons” involved, and give redress. On the other hand, it took a long time to afford any relief in the domestic courts,


*** Top of Page 171 ***

and this delay was certainly encouraged by the initial denial of standing to her grandmother to represent the girl. Consequently, the Committee concluded that there was a violation of the Covenant because the State was required to take affirmative steps to protect a child such as Ximena in a timely manner and not to deny her grandmother the right to represent her.[257]Although it came at great psychological cost to the girl, whose life was subjected to a long period of uncertainty, Ximena’s grandmother and the Abuelas ultimately prevailed in Argentina’s domestic courts as well as in the international human rights venue.

The Abuelas appreciated the importance of international appeals from the beginning of their existence, while they still lived under the hand of the military regime.[258] After the restoration of civilian government in Argentina and as the Abuelas drew closer to locating and reclaiming some of the children, a number of kidnappers fled to Paraguay with the children they had appropriated. The Abuelas called this the “segunda desaparición” or “second disappearance.” Paraguay was a logical choice, as it shared a border with Argentina and was under the rule of General Alfredo Stroessner, “the longest-running dictatorship in the hemisphere, which ran the country from 1954 to 1989.”[259] Paraguay had also participated in the collaboration between Southern Cone countries, which led to kidnappings of Uruguayan, Argentinian, Chilean, and Paraguayan citizens wherever they were found. In response to these flights, the Abuelas urged international action. In 1988, they persuaded the Human Rights Commission of the United Nations to send an investigator, Theo van Boven. The Paraguayan government, still under Stroessner, refused to cooperate, but van Boven was able to base his report on information he gathered in Argentina.[260]

In his report, van Boven accepted the Abuelas’ version of the “best interest of the child” and found it to be incorporated in existing international norms. He concluded that “these children are deprived of their right to keep their own identity, to know their past, to enjoy parental care and not to be separated from their parents against their will.” The children lived with the kidnappers who were responsible for atrocities in violation of international humanitarian principles, and thus they themselves were denied the opportunity to develop normally “in conditions of freedom and dignity (Principle 2 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child).” They learned intolerance and discrimination rather than friendship among peoples, peace and universal brotherhood (Principle 10 of the Declaration) from the parents who appro-


*** Top of Page 172 ***

priated and fled with them. Van Boven concluded from “lengthy and intense discussions in Argentina with relatives of disappeared children, health professionals, psychologists and judges,” that “nearly without exception the return of the child to the legitimate family is in “the best interests of the child” (see also Principles 2 and 7 of the Declaration) and an imperative requirement of justice.[261]

In his report, van Boven examined two infamous cases: the case of the “Rosetti-Ross twins” (now known to be the Tolosa twins) and the case of the children raised by Major Norberto Atilio Bianco.[262] Bianco was a military doctor who worked at the Campo de Mayo Hospital where children were born in captivity to detained mothers who were later murdered anddisappeared.[263] He took two babies born there, a girl and a boy, and falsely registered them as his own.[264] The Abuelas located the children in 1984, but Bianco fled with them in 1986 before genetic tests could be administered.[265] Paraguay rebuffed Argentine efforts beginning in 1987 to extradite Bianco and his wife Susana Wherli.[266] An appeals court in Paraguay accepted Bianco’s argument that the extradition would endanger his two children.[267] Bianco successfully resisted for nearly ten years after the initial charges and after van Boven’s report to the United Nations. Bianco and Wherli were finally arrested by Interpol on March 3, 1997 and extradited to Argentina to face charges of forging documents and misappropriating minors.[268] Even though the Bianco couple admitted at the extradition hearing that they were not the biological parents of Carolina and Pablo, they insisted that they had the consent of the biological mothers to take the children.[269] By that time,


*** Top of Page 173 ***

both of the children had married Paraguayans and were fiercely protective of their “parents.”[270] They have refused to submit to genetic testing, and Paraguay refused to require it.[271]

The case of the Rosetti-Ross twins involved twin boys, located in the hands of Samuel Miara and his wife Alicia Beatriz Castillo. By many accounts, Samuel Miara was a brutal police sub-commissioner who actively participated in repression and torture.[272] He appropriated twin boys, born in captivity, who then were falsely registered as being born to his wife, Beatriz. In 1984, the Abuelas denounced the deception, but like Bianco, Miara fled to Paraguay with his “family” before genetic tests could establish the twins’ identities.[273] In 1988, when Theo van Boven submitted his report, it was mistakenly believed that the children were related to the Ross-Rossetti family.[274] Even with irrefutable evidence that the boys were kidnapped, however, Argentine authorities were unable to reach Miara in Paraguay until after the end of Stroessner’s dictatorship there. Genetic testing in 1989 overwhelmingly established that the now twelve-year-old twins were the sons of María Rosa Tolosa and Juan Enrique Reggiardo, young architecture students who were kidnapped and disappeared by the military regime. Despite the test results and Miara’s confession that the children were not biologically his, the court initially granted custody to the Miaras.[275] As late as May 1993, the sixteen-year-old twins remained with Beatriz Miara, even after new decisions that annulled their false birth certificates and gave them the last name of their biological parents.[276]


*** Top of Page 174 ***

The Abuelas appealed to the International Commission of Human Rights (“The Commission”) of the Organization of American States (OAS), which referred the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“The Court”) for “provisional measures” available in cases that threatened irreparable harm to human rights.[277] The Commission and the Court are the official interpreters of the American Convention on Human Rights (“ACHR”).[278] The Court ruled that Argentina should take steps without


*** Top of Page 175 ***

delay to protect the psychological integrity of the minors and to avoid irreparable harm to them.[279] Some commentators consider the Argentine response an unusually effective example of the impact of the Inter-American Court,[280] as Argentina first moved the boys into a foster home and then into the care of their maternal uncle.[281]

Rita Arditti reports that the domestic decision to return the Tolosa twins “was based on Article 8 of the United Nations International Convention on the Rights of the Child—the right to preservation of identity, an article for which the Grandmothers had lobbied extensively at the United Nations.”[282] Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (“Child Convention”), adopted in 1989, provides:

1. States Parties undertake to respect the right of the child to preserve his or her identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law without unlawful interference.

 

2. Where a child is illegally deprived of some or all of the elements of his or her identity, States Parties shall provide appropriate assistance and protection, with a view to speedily re-establishing his or her identity.[283]

This provision was included “at the suggestion of Argentina in the light of mass ‘disappearances’ of children whose identity papers had been deliberately falsified and family ties arbitrarily severed.”[284]


*** Top of Page 176 ***

The original version submitted by the delegation of Argentina was even more pointed. It would have established that “the child has the inalienable right to retain his true and genuine personal, legal, and family identity” and imposed affirmative duties on states to assist any child who “has been fraudulently deprived of some or all of the elements of his identity” to reestablish his “true and genuine identity.” In a reflection of the Abuelas’ position in Argentina, this obligation would have included restitution or restoration of the child to his blood relations.[285]

In response to questions from Norway about whether the same guarantee generally was covered in other provisions, Argentina insisted that specific protection was necessary. They distinguished between a child’s true and genuine identity and his or her legal one. There was some concern expressed by other representatives about hidden family law problems in the proposal as drafted and about the meaning of “family identity.” As a result, the term “family identity” was replaced by “identity, including nationality, name and family relations as recognized by law.”[286]

According to Cynthia Price Cohen, a leading scholar and activist who participated in the drafting of the Child Convention,[287] the “best interest of the child” is only one of four major themes that pervade the agreement.[288] The Child Convention makes many references to “best interest,” which appears to be the standard by which to measure state compliance.[289]For example, though Article 3 makes the “Best Interests of the Child” a primary consideration in all actions regarding children,[290] there is also a recognition of the child’s own evolving capacities, implying that care and protection must be balanced against a child’s “individual personality rights.” Nondiscrimination is a third major theme. Fourth, “respect for the child’s human dignity” is also required. Cohen believes that the chief importance of the Child Convention is that it establishes the child, rather than the adults who care for the child, as the rights holder, and that its standards, (while “pro-family”), make it clear that the child is a separate human being, not the family’s property.[291]

Interestingly, in the working groups that drafted the Child Convention, debate and revision reduced the Article 3 “best interest” standard from the


*** Top of Page 177 ***

paramount to a primary consideration.[292] How then is Article 8’s “right to identity,” the provision which the Argentine delegation contributed out of their own experience, to be understood? Is it the implementation of the best interest of the child standard, or is it one of those instances, referred to in the working groups, of a competing interest in justice?

After the twins were placed in the custody of their uncle, the case became a cause celebré in the media, and the boys’ custody was changed yet again in the name of their “best interest.” It began with an appearance on a “show hosted by a right-wing politician,” but extended to the “most popular prime-time programs.” In Rita Arditti’s words, audiences in these programs were “manipulated” to favor the Miaras, now called “love parents” or “historical parents.” Shortly thereafter, the judge placed the twins with a foster family and permitted visits with the Miaras.[293]

The criminal case finally reached a conclusion at the end of 1994. Miara was freed based on credit toward his sentence for time spent in pretrial detention.[294] On appeal, the judges were convinced that the couple knew the illicit origins of the twins, though they felt that the charge of kidnapping could not be proven against them (a problem in most of these cases). Most interesting was the appellate judges’ treatment of children’s “choices.” The chief opinion observed that the Miaras never intended to tell the boys the truth because it would have damaged the couple’s selfish interest in possession. Miara did not care about the suffering he imposed on the children he forced to be his “sons.” Any “consent” by the minor children, moreover, was ineffective in light of family rights and the boys’ lack of legal capacity to make a choice. Only their legitimate parents could consent.[295] The court continued in this vein, commenting on legal scholarship that discussed the protection afforded by law to familial and social integration. Because a child under ten years of age is totally dependent, the law punishes anyone who encroaches on the only valid exercise of will—that of the parents or legiti-


*** Top of Page 178 ***

mate custodians. The defendants deprived the twins of a necessary component of their upbringing: knowledge of their parents and their history. Thus, the Miaras damaged the boys psychologically and took away their choices by removing them from one world and placing them in another. The lies told them permeated the children’s upbringing. Not surprisingly, the judges in this criminal proceeding against the Miaras did not rely on the “right to identity” of Article 8 of the Child Convention. They focused on the guilt of the defendants rather than on making any decision concerning the custody of the children.

IX. Impunity Under Attack:
Recent Developments in Proving a Systematic Plan

Even as it became more difficult to succeed legally and in the court of public opinion, the Abuelas persisted. They methodically began building a case designed to demonstrate that the kidnappings of the children of the disappeared were not isolated occurrences, but part of a systematic plan orchestrated from above.[296] The late human rights activist Emilio Mignone, whose own daughter was disappeared, reported that while he looked for her, “an officer told him the army was working on a system by which the children of ‘subversives’ would not grow up hating the military”—a doctrine based on abduction and change of identity.[297]

After 1995, changes in the political and legal climate in Argentina and abroad once again brought to the forefront the children of the disappeared. With the arrests of high officials of the juntas beginning again in 1998, it was clear that the fate of the children of the disappeared had an impact that went far beyond the sixty-three resolved cases, affecting Argentine literature, music, popular culture, public life, criminal justice, and, once again, politics.[298] In 1995, navy officer Adolfo Scilingo became the first member of the Argentine military to break the silence about the “dirty war.”[299] Horacio Verbitsky published The Flight: Confessions of an Argentine Dirty Warrior,[300] in


*** Top of Page 179 ***

which Scilingo expressed his remorse about participating in the death flights in which the disappeared were thrown into the sea.[301] His admissions forced Army Chief of Staff General Martin Balza to admit for the first time that “illegal means” had been used to fight the dirty war.[302] The revelations reignited public outrage.[303] In June 1996, the Madres marched for the 1000th time. A new generation of young activists admired them[304] and challenged the spectacle of known murderers and torturers walking the streets with impunity.[305] Calling themselves HIJOS, they began to conduct “outings” (“escraches) in which they followed the former officers of the dictatorship, carrying posters accusing them of their crimes. They occupied the streets in front of the houses of the dirty warriors and drove them out of public spaces.[306]

In October 1996, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón opened an investigation into the fate of Spanish nationals who were disappeared in Argentina.[307] Garzón, sometimes called “King Baltasar,” led a high-profile campaign against Chile’s infamous former dictator that resulted in the detention in London of Augusto Pinochet.[308] In the Argentine case, Judge Garzón heard testimony from, among others, Carla Artes, a HIJO whose Spanish-Argentine mother was disappeared by the regime in 1976. Her nine-month-old baby was given to Eduardo Ruffo, who worked at the concentration camp where the mother was confined and presumably murdered. Carla was raised by Ruffo until her grandmother made an open appeal on Argentine television. One hundred former Argentine officials were initially named as suspects in Judge Garzón’s investigation of genocide and terrorism against Spanish citizens. If they were


*** Top of Page 180 ***

summoned, the judge was empowered to seek international search and arrest warrants, but then-President Menem said that he would not honor any requests for extradition.[309] He issued a presidential decree in January 1998 instructing Argentine federal courts not to cooperate with Judge Garzón’s extradition efforts.[310]

The Abuelas had already filed lawsuits designed to establish that the kidnappings were pursued according to a plan.[311] Although Carlos Menem, the man who issued presidential pardons to the leaders of the junta in 1989 and 1990 and who initially fostered impunity, could hardly be accused of pressing for action, events began to overtake his government. In June 1997, the transcript of an interrogation under torture was broadcast on television, lending credence to the idea that not all archives were purged at the end of the dictatorship and that evidence would still be found.[312] Graciela Fernandez Meijide, former secretary to CONADEP with a human rights reputation whose own son was disappeared in 1977, swept to victory for the Buenos Aires legislative seat, temporarily making her a leading opposition candidate for the 1999 presidential elections.[313]

In November 1997, attorney Alberto Pedroncini filed a lawsuit on behalf of twelve of the disappeared, alleging that the pardons were ineffective in cases of kidnapping where the victims were never found, thereby creating a continuing offense.[314] Popular protest forced Menem to shelve his proposal to build a shrine to national reconciliation on the site of the most brutal detention center, the Navy’s Mechanics’ School (ESMA). This gesture to the Argentine military came just hours after legislators announced plans to draft


*** Top of Page 181 ***

a law annulling amnesty and was called a “provocation” by the Abuelas and other human rights groups in Argentina.[315] After Navy officer Alfredo Astiz, “the blond angel,” publically admitted his role in the dirty war on January 13, 1998, he was summoned to civil court by the relatives of one of the disappeared to be interrogated.[316] An avalanche of complaints followed.[317]

By the middle of 1998, the scale and success of the HIJOS “escraches” or “outings” had quickened,[318] and the federal Congress had enacted a symbolic repeal of the amnesty laws.[319] A federal judge investigating the kidnapped babies, Judge Antonio Bagnasco, received a hoax bomb threat.[320] In June of 1998, federal judge Roberto Marquevich dropped a legal bombshell. He ordered the detention of former President General Jorge Videla on charges that he was responsible for the kidnapping of five children of thedisappeared.[321]

For the Abuelas and other human rights groups, this development evoked a mixed reaction. Though Videla was questioned and detained on charges relating to the kidnapping of first five, and later more,[322] children, he was not arrested for the 66 charges of murder, 306 abductions, 97 cases of torture, and 26 cases of theft for which he had originally been sentenced to life imprisonment in 1985 but for which he had been pardoned by President Menem in 1990.[323] This was because the amnesty laws and pardons were said to have exempted the crime of kidnapping children from their purview.[324] Even this rather strange result, which might insulate Videla from accountability for murdering the parents but at least hold him responsible for kidnapping their children, was not a certainty. A former federal prosecutor doubted that legal charges could be filed against Videla because he was absolved of the crime of theft of minors by the Federal Chamber in 1985. At


*** Top of Page 182 ***

that time, the child stealings were considered isolated cases not to be pursued. Videla could not be tried twice for the same crimes.[325] Even as the general prosecutor announced the creation of a special unit to work on kidnap cases on the same day that Judge Marquevich ordered Videla’s detention, human rights groups expressed skepticism about the motives of the office and the judge.[326]

In any event, however, the arrest of the former junta head Videla reignited debate over the stolen babies,[327] produced evidence of a plan orchestrated from above and executed with the cooperation of other Southern Cone nations,[328] and led to the arrest of a whole string of officials of the late dictatorship.[329] The cases were consolidated in front of another federal judge, Antonio Bagnasco, who had already been investigating the child stealings. He ultimately issued a lengthy indictment involving seven former officials.[330] President Menem promised he would not interfere with the workings of the judicial system,[331] but his government nonetheless opposed any extradition to Spain, Italy, or Switzerland where inquiries proceeded about the disappearances of Argentine citizens.[332] Menem was disqualified from serving a third


*** Top of Page 183 ***

term,[333] and his Peronista (PJ) party suffered a resounding defeat on October 24, 1999, at the hands of the center-left Alianza (a coalition of Frepaso and the Radical Party), led by Fernando de la Rua, the former mayor of Buenos Aires.[334] Although the election contest centered around the stalling economy, corruption, and the flamboyant excesses of the Menem years, its result also changed the climate for human rights complaints.[335]

Since the detention of Videla, the number of teenagers coming forward to determine whether they are children of the disappeared has tripled.[336] Yet, after all the years of theAbuelas’ work, only sixty-three children have been identified and had their cases resolved.[337] Although one of the officials interrogated gave some information about the outline of the kidnapping plan,[338] no lists of the disappeared have been forthcoming.[339] Some of the now-grown children of the disappeared who are learning their identity at this late stage find it hard to accept the implications of that truth.[340] It remains to be seen what effect the arrests will have on the future of Argentine democracy[341] or even on the individual officers charged.[342]


*** Top of Page 184 ***en of the disappeared, the “best interest of the child” is not just an individual question, but necessarily reflects the social, cultural, that is to say, political, context in Argentina.[344] Consequently, there are competing versions of what indeed constitutes the “best interest of the child.”

 

Second, even procedural issues may reflect the political context of family law decisions. In Argentina, the Abuelas struggled to establish a procedure for determining identity in these cases. To the extent that they succeeded, they made inroads on the impunity for their crimes enjoyed by the former regime. To the extent that the courts permitted procedural doctrines such as jurisdiction, standing, and prescription (limitations periods),[345] to block or


*** Top of Page 185 ***

significantly delay the ordering of blood tests and the resolution of custody, impunity benefitted, but the children suffered the costs of delay. Even if incurred in the name of finality of legal proceedings or of stability in a child’s life, in the Argentine context, the delays added to the injury she suffered.

A. The Best Interest of the Individual Child Is Political

The political context was evident in the competing versions of “best interest” propounded by the parties. The Lavalléns’ lawyers in Paula Logares’ case for example, argued that those they called the “padres de crianza” or raising parents were the protectors of the child. The fact that they engaged in criminal conduct was secondary to the interest of the child. The lawyers defined those interests as being protected from disturbance or trauma or having custody changed solely in the interests of third persons, even of the biological parents themselves.[346] This was a kind of “psychological parent”[347] argument that seemed entirely abstracted from anything that had happened in Argentina or in the child’s own life.[348]The defenders also talked about the wishes of the child and the affection they felt for their raising parents, an argument that was particularly dramatic in cases of older children like the Tolosa twins who were displayed in the media, articulately expressing their attachment for the Miaras and their strong identification with them. The Miaras claimed in their own defense that “the children should have the right to choose, to be happy, to be with whom they want to be.”[349] During the long legal battles the teenaged boys resisted admitting their biological relationship to the Tolosas and defended their adoptive family from the allegations made by their maternal uncle: “He can’t come saying my father is a kidnapper, because if you attack my father, you’re attacking me.”[350] One of the boys said that he already had an identity which could not be changed.[351] After years in the hands of the Miaras, the demand that


*** Top of Page 186 ***

they be reintegrated into their legitimate family seemed threatening to the Tolosa boys, and they were not able to make an adjustment to living with their maternal uncle when the transfer finally occurred at age sixteen.

The Abuelas, and the Argentine legal system to a greater or lesser extent, had a counter-story to this a-contextual view of the “raising parents” and the alleged stability and security they provided. Although the Abuelas talked about “strict and pure justice to the bitter end” for their murdered children and kidnapped grandchildren,[352] this was not simply a matter of “best interest” versus “justice.” Rather, the Abuelas developed an entirely different version of “the best interest of the child,” one that was grounded in Argentine social reality and was about the children’s right “to their name, to their heritage, to their identities.”[353]

The assertion that the criminal conduct of the appropriators of children was irrelevant certainly would be hard to swallow. The famous Argentinean dissident and victim of the regime, the late Jacobo Timmerman, said that he could not feel calm at the thought of the boys in the custody of a “beast of that caliber.” He explained, “a torturer cannot say, ‘I feel like a father for these children.’ . . . If we accept that, we have to accept that they were right when they killed, they were right when they tortured, and they are right now in keeping the children.”[354]

The Abuelas’ views, however, went beyond the claim of injustice. In the context of the wrenching and murderous secrets and lies of the nightmare years, they believed that the truth was healing for the children and in their best interest.[355] The Abuelas were reacting to a deliberate plan devised by a dictatorship to wipe out the identity of part of their own people by murdering them, taking their children, and raising the infants with values alien to the whole familial and social setting from which they had been stolen.[356] Restitution (or reintegration) was a social remedy for a social crime in the sense that it was a reclaiming of the children by the families of the victims for the values the children would otherwise have enjoyed.[357] The Tolosas spoke of the boys’ need to learn their own history and said that the then-


*** Top of Page 187 ***

fifteen-year-olds had been lied to and brainwashed and could not be expected to make their own choices.[358]

The competing versions of “best interest of the child” are also competing versions of “children’s rights.” Best interest of the child implies what is called parens patriae in United States law, that is, that adults, in particular the court, substitute for the minor’s parents to protect and make decisions on her behalf.[359] Children’s rights, on the other hand, connote interests that the child herself posesses, not just as the object of the parents’ care and affection.[360]

The Abuelas decried the treatment of children as chattel, objects, war booty who were taken and distributed to satisfy the desires of adults.[361] They upheld the child’s right to identity and were instrumental in the passage of Article 8 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which establishes that right as a matter of international law. Some children, though, were unwilling to accept their legitimate identity, and the appropriators also claimed that they were defending the child’s right to choose which identity he or she wanted.[362] This reflects a troubling dilemma: whatever is said about “children’s rights,” someone else always speaks for the child and defines those rights. The competing views of “children’s rights” in Argentina, like the story and counter-story of “best interest of the child,” pit the overtly social against the covertly political. The Abuelas’ definition is grounded in their view that a child stolen out of his social environment has a “right” to regain his origins, his history, and his identity. The Abuelas demanded full restitution of the child to the legitimate family at first and then later at least restoration of that family’s name.

In the hands of some jurists, this easily could slide into a parental rights claim,[363] but the Abuelas consistently maintained that they were promoting children’s rights. The care with which they negotiated individual accommo-


*** Top of Page 188 ***

dations and with which they managed transitions in the restitution process lends significant support to this claim.[364] Their definition of “children’s rights,” however, clearly was a social one.

The appropriators’ definition was superficially grounded on the needs of each individual child. By ignoring the context, however, it in fact serves the desires of “raising parents” and their right-wing political position and does little to secure “children’s rights.” Moreover, they often failed to show care and concern for the impact of the transition on the children they had appropriated, instead telling them abruptly and only when caught, continuing to lie about what happened, fleeing with them, and delaying and extending their suffering.[365]

Under United States constitutional law, the approach would be strikingly different. First, the United States is one of only two states in the world that have not signed the Child Convention that includes the concepts of “children’s rights” and the “right to identity,” shaped largely by the Argentine delegation.[366] Second, many of these issues would be resolved strictly as a matter of individual rights under the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution rather than as a social question. The critical inquiry would be whether or not the grandmothers enjoyed a protected “liberty interest” in their putative relationship with their missing grandchildren, or if the children enjoyed a “liberty interest” in their relationship with their families of origin. The United States Supreme Court has recognized the constitutional dimension of the parent-child relationship since Meyer v. Nebraska,[367] a 1923 case which held that parents have a liberty interest in educating their children in a foreign language.[368] Over twenty years ago, in Stanley v. Illinois,[369] the Court made it clear that the right to family integrity is a basic one that is protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It stated:

The Court has frequently emphasized the importance of the family. The rights to conceive and to raise one’s children have been deemed “essential,” . . . “basic civil rights of man,” . . . and “rights
*** Top of Page 189 ***

far more precious than . . . property rights.” It is cardinal with us that the custody, care and nurture of the child reside first in the parents, whose primary function and freedom include preparation for obligations the state can neither supply nor hinder. The integrity of the family unit has found protection in the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . . . .[370]

The Court has extended the recognition of a liberty interest to other instances where the father was not married to the mother of the child, but where there was both biological fatherhood and an established parental relationship.[371] It has limited this protection, however, where the father was competing against a traditional marital family consisting of the mother and her husband.[372]

If a “liberty interest” is not triggered, the protections of the Due Process Clause, whether procedural or substantive, do not come into play. Without a “fundamental” liberty interest, government is free to regulate in any fashion that is procedurally regular and not totally arbitrary or irrational.[373] A plurality of the Court in Michael H. v. Gerald D.[374] decided that unlike other family units that have traditionally merited constitutional protection, the unwed father’s relationship with his young daughter did not, either historically or in contemporary constitutional jurisprudence. Although observing that the United States Supreme Court has “never had the occasion to decide whether a child has a liberty interest, symmetrical with that of her parent, in maintaining her filial relationship,” the plurality also found that the girl’s due process claim was even weaker and must fail as well. To the extent there was a social component here, it was the right of the state to decide to protect a marital family against an interloper, albeit one who was both a biological and psychological father.[375]

It has been much more difficult in United States law to gain recognition of a liberty interest on behalf of anyone other than acknowledged parents and blood-related family groupings in certain contexts. Recently, in Troxel v.


*** Top of Page 190 ***

Granville,[376] the Court held that a Washington State statute, which permitted any person to petition for visitation rights at any time so long as visitation is in the best interest of the child, violated the substantive due process rights of the mother as applied in that case. Earlier, in Moore v. City of East Cleveland,[377] a divided Court invalidated a zoning regulation that had the effect of prohibiting a grandmother from living with her two grandsons by different children, and the cousins from residing together. The Court noted that the minors’ relationships with uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents merited constitutional protection.[378]

By contrast to even this relatively modest ruling, “psychological” families have had a great deal of difficulty establishing a protected constitutional interest, largely because of Smith v. Organization of Foster Families for Equality and Reform (“OFFER”).[379] In OFFER, a class of foster parents lost on their claims that after a child lived in a foster home for twelve months or more, the foster parent and child developed psychological and other familial ties, creating a protected liberty interest in the foster parents entitling them to procedural fairness before the foster family is disrupted. The Justices emphasized three distinctions between foster parent-child relationships and the families that were constitutionally protected: there is no biological tie, there is a conflict and tension between foster parents and the biological parents, and foster parents assume the relationship contractually, knowing it is not meant to be permanent.[380]

Attacks by adoptees on sealed records in the United States, although they may be based on a child’s “right to identity,” nonetheless also are grounded


*** Top of Page 191 ***

in the constitutional jurisprudence of “privacy,” “liberty,” and “due process.”[381] But even a brief comparison underlines an important feature of the story of the children of thedisappeared in Argentina. Although not lacking in “rights” language, there is a social meaning in the Abuelas’ legal position which is something different than the United States’ framework of individual rights and liberties.

B. The Procedural Is Political

The significance of social context in the Argentine cases extends to legal procedures. The searches started with individual grandmothers (and other family members) who transformed themselves into the Abuelas by developing a social perspective and a political and legal strategy. They had to meet both a social and an individual burden of proof in order to establish the identity of the children. The Abuelas’ strategy moved Argentine society from very uncertain legal precedent and a science that had to be invented for just this purpose to the National Genetic Data Bank and Ley 23.511. It is possible to consider the 1987 legislation an acknowledgement of the social probable cause.[382] The Argentine legal system thereby admitted the truth of the secret kidnappings and disappearances in society as a whole. It also established a mechanism for proof of individual cases. The individual standard required a reasonable claim before genetic tests could be ordered. Refusal to take the tests counted as evidence against those who refused. By using informants and pictures and pointing out discrepancies in the stories of supposed parents, the Abuelas sought to meet the legal standard and make individual claims that were true and reasonable.[383]

This certainly is too simple a picture because, as discussed above, the search for the children of the disappeared is inextricably intertwined with the politics of impunity in Argentina. Even the 1987 legislation did not guarantee results. It depended on the court, the timing of the latest military rumbles, the civilian government’s interest in assuaging that group, and on public opinion, which could be influenced by the Abuelas on the one hand, or right-wing media, on the other.[384] It also mattered whether the case involved a birth that was falsely registered or a full adoption which was final


*** Top of Page 192 ***

(even if alleged to be fraudulent).[385] Finally, as time went on, the children got older and the delay itself had its own effect.

Delay was caused by many things in these cases. First it was the dangers of the dictatorship. When children were located prior to 1983, and their families had the courage to seek judicial remedies, the outlook was bleak.[386] Even after 1983, searches were not easy and children once located might disappear again. Some were taken abroad to Paraguay or other refuges for junta veterans.[387] Meanwhile, the Argentine legal system was still staffed with many of the 400 judges appointed by the dictatorship as part of the Proceso, or general reorganization of all of Argentine life undertaken by the juntas.[388] There were lengthy delays in ordering genetic testing and even lengthier delays in disposition of the criminal cases against the appropriators.[389] Just as in United States’ law, “jurisdiction,” “standing” and “prescription” procedural doctrines operated as gateways to the merits. They created obstacles that had to be overcome in order to reach the substantive issues of custody or the child’s true identity. In the case of Argentina, “jurisdiction” was a question of the competence of a federal criminal court to provide for the children who were the victims of the alleged crimes. In order for the court to be able to order a custodial disposition, it had to find that the child was abandoned or in moral danger.[390] In the case of full adoptions (adopción plena), “standing” objections created delay. The argument was that only parents or legal guardians had standing to participate in custody proceedings and that the grandmothers therefore could not represent themselves or the child until after the adoption was nullified.[391] In other cases, “prescription” defenses (limitations on the accused crimes) were raised. During these delays, judges did not agree about what to do in the meantime, whether to leave the child in situ, transfer the child to her legitimate family, or even to send the child to a neutral foster family.[392]

Procedural devices which have the effect of promoting stability and finality in child custody disputes are appealing. The Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act (UCCJA)[393] and its recent successor, the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Enforcement Act (UCCJEA),[394] along with the full faith and credit provisions of the federal Parental Kidnapping Prevention


*** Top of Page 193 ***

Act (PKPA),[395] create their own gateways which are supposed to force the disputants to return to the original court for any modifications of child custody so long as there is continuing exclusive jurisdiction. Because jurisdictional limits discourage forum shopping for a more sympathetic court, this is a major way of controlling outcome through procedural devices. It is also a way of promoting the best interest of all children, even if it is at the expense of any individual child. Because we think that “snatch-and-litigate” is bad for children, we legislate to discourage that kind of behavior. The individual court which has a child before it who is already subject to an order by another court with continuing jurisdiction is not supposed to make a merits inquiry.[396] Instead, when the court enforces jurisdictional mandates, it upholds a substantive decision made by the system as a whole; the less incentive there is to grab children and try for a better result in another court, the better it is for children as a group.

In Argentina, delay meant the passage of time for a child who was growing up with the “wrong” set of parents, time in which the child also imbibed the values of the family raising him and came to believe the lies offered to him as truth. Delay and lack of finality created terrible conflicts for Ximena Vicario, left in a no-man’s land between her grandmother and her “adoptive mother.” Initially, she was left with Siciliano, even when the genetic tests established her true identity with a 99.82% certainty. Subsequently, this decision was reversed, and she went to her legitimate family. Nine months later, the court ruled that her grandmother lacked standing but decided to leave the girl with her, together with compelled visitation by Siciliano. Even after the false adoption was nullified, the appeals went on for years. The struggle over visitation, which the child herself did not want, continued in Argentine and international courts until Ximena turned 18.[397] Delays caused by flight, extradition, and legal processes meant that the Tolosa twins were sixteen-year-old adolescents by the time they were unsuccessfully entrusted to their maternal uncle.[398] Carolina and Pablo were over eighteen and married by the time the Biancos were brought to justice. The two children raised by Bianco, a brutal servant of the dictatorship, were unwilling to return to Argentina or submit to genetic testing that would establish their true identity.[399] Delay clearly compromised the best interest of the children caught in its sticky embrace and made the question of remedy much more complicated. Even the Abuelas had to recognize the significance of delay. As the years went by, they changed their demands from restitution


*** Top of Page 194 ***

of the child to restitution of the child’s identity, knowledge of her origins and name and return of her legal identity.[400]

The procedural delays suffered by the children of the disappeared, even in the name of stability or finality, were a mistake. The truth that these terrible things had happened in Argentina and that these “parents” had taken children illegitimately could not be denied. This was a situation of planned, mass kidnapping of young children and babies with an ideological motive. In that context, procedural devices that artificially prevented or slowed the legal resolution of that truth could not be justified. Similarly, the refusal to rectify the wrong when other proof existed and identity was established to a 99.82% certainty by scientific tests was harmful in that context.

The disputes over procedure and substance were “political” in the sense that they were contests over values. The question was who would get to control the transmission of values to the next generation. The Abuelas took the position that the legitimate families of the kidnapped children were entitled to pass on their values. They argued that the children had to be restored to an entire ecological nest or social network from which they had been wrongfully stolen.[401] Theo van Boven concluded in his report for the United Nations that the appropriators taught children values which violated international norms: intolerance and discrimination rather than friendship among peoples, peace, and universal brotherhood.[402] Finally, for theAbuelas, restitution was necessary for the reconstruction of a society that had been shattered by the nightmare years.[403]

On their part, the appropriators often were more than just psychological “parents” trying to protect their children. The basic argument of the “raising parents” was that no matter how guilty they were of criminal acts, they were entitled to retain custody of “their” children.[404] They did not really talk about their right to transmit their values, an argument the courts would have been likely to reject. Instead, they talked about “attachment.” Yet it was no accident that Miara and Bianco fled to Paraguay with their kidnapped children, where another right-wing dictator remained in power for a long time and where they socialized with one another.[405] Nor was it coincidence when lawyers for the junta officers accused of horrific crimes in the name of national security and the fight against “subversion” showed up to defend the “parents” of the children under dispute.[406] Siciliano (who had raised Ximena Vicario) and the unhappy Tolosa boys became the darlings of


*** Top of Page 195 ***

the right-wing media,[407] just as the Abuelas learned how to appeal to international opinion.[408] Insofar as “impunity” was the watchword for the aftermath of the nightmare years, it was difficult to reclaim the children. Insofar as the Abuelas succeeded, they also made inroads on “impunity.” Both in the broader sense, which applies to all family law, and in a meaning that is more specific to the Argentine situation, family law once again has been shown to be “inescapably political.”

 


[*] Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center. Ph.D., Yale University; 1974; J.D., University of Houston Law Center, 1980. This Article was written with the assistance of Carmen Carranza, Alejandro Nila, and Arturo Fernandez. I wish to thank the Ford Foundation, Dr. Rolando E. Gilaldino, Maria José Guembe, Mario Lopez-Garelli, Raquel Poitevien, Juan Mendez, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, all of whom provided research sources. Thanks also to Jonathan Pratter, Jonathan Miller, Jordan Paust, Harriet Richman, and Helen Boyce. This Article is an outgrowth of a paper originally delivered at the North American Regional Conference on Parent and Child in North America on June 15, 1996. It was made possible by the financial assistance of the University of Houston Law Foundation. It is dedicated to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo and to my children, Leah and Sam Oren-Palmer.
[1]. Martha Albertson Fineman, Legal Stories, Change, and Incentives—Reinforcing the Law of the Father, 37 N.Y.L. Sch. L. Rev. 227, 229 (1992).
[2]. In 1984, Nunca Más, the official report of the Commission on the Disappeared (CONADEP) conservatively estimated the disappearances at 9000. Nunca Más: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared 5 (1986) (explaining why they believe the true figure is much higher) [hereinafter Nunca Más]. See also Alison Brysk, The Politics of Human Rights in Argentina: Protest, Change, and Democratization 71–72 (1994) (detailing the controversy over underrepresentation of disappeared numbers in Nunca Más). For figures estimating the number of disappeared up to 30,000, see Rita Arditti, Searching for Life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina 44 (1999); Marguerite Guzman Bouvard, Revolutionizing Motherhood: The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo 31 (1994) (claiming the number of disappeared to be as many as 45,000). 
[3]. Ronald Dworkin, Introduction to Nunca Más: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared, xvi–xvii (1986).
[6]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 35–37; Brysk, supra note 2, at 48–49, 55–56. 
[7]. See Juan Gelman & Mara La Madrid, Ni El Falco Perdó De Dios: Hijos De Desparecidos (Editorial Planeta Argentina S.A.I.C.1997). The “HIJOS” in the title are the children of the disappeared, including both children who were and were never kidnapped. See also Michael S. Serrill, “Dirty War” Crimes; A Resolute Spanish Judge Seeks Justice for the Victims of a Shameful Episode in Argentina’s Past, Time, Oct. 21, 1996, at 46. See also Michael McCaughan, “HIJOS” Expose Argentina Tormentors; Protest: Children of Those Who Disappeared During the Dictatorship Don’t Let Misdeeds Lie, Orange County Reg., Sept. 20, 1998, at A35. 
[8]. See Former Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla Detained for Stealing Children During Repression, Notisur-Latin Am. Pol. Aff. (U.N.M. Latin Am. Inst., Albuquerque, N.M.) June 12, 1998. General Videla was arrested June 9, 1998. See, e.g., “Gov’t to Leave Human Rights Cases to Court,” inter press service Jan. 4, 2000 (new center-left government of de la Rua distancing itself from position of former president Carlos Menem).
[9]. See, e.g., Former Argentine Soldiers Arrested For Alleged Child Theft, Agence France Presse, Jan. 8, 2000, available at LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence Fr. Presse File (at least six non-commissioned officers were arrested on charges of kidnapping of children born at the Mar de Plata Naval base, some of whom adopted the children of the murdered detainees themselves). 
[10]. For the nineteenth-century development of the “best interest of the child” standard in the United States, see Michael Grossberg, Who Gets the Child? Custody, Guardianship, and the Rise of a Judicial Patriarchy in Nineteenth-Century America, 9 Feminist Stud. 235, 235–60 (1983). See also Michael Grossberg, Governing the Hearth: Law and Family in Nineteenth Century America (1985). 
[11]. See Irene Barki, Pour Ces Yeux-La: La Face Cachée du Drame Argentin: Les Enfants Disparus 13 (Editions La Decouverte 1988).
[12]. Dworkin, supra note 3, at xii.
[13]. The right-wing death squad Alianza Anti-Comunista Argentina (“AAA”) killed thousands of leftists. Brysk, supra note 2, at 30.
[14]. See id. at 26–27, 30–36.
[15]. See id. at 34. See also Tim Dockery, Note, The Rule of Law Over the Law of Rulers: The Treatment of De Facto Laws in Argentina, 19 Fordham Int’l L.J. 1578, 1604 (1996); Dworkin, supra note 3, at xiii; Serrill, supra note 7, at 46 (more than 400 judges still in office in 1996 who were appointed by the military dictatorship). 
[16]. Dworkin, supra note 3, at xiii–iv, and Nunca Más, supra note 2, at 442–45.
[17]. Ian Guest, Behind the Disappearances: Argentina’s Dirty War Against Human Rights and the United Nations 31 (1990). (The word desaparecido, originally coined in Guatamela in the 1960s, “became synonymous with Argentina”). 
[18]. Dworkin, supra note 3, at xiii–xiv.
[19]. Nunca Más, supra note 2, at 28–29, 33–35, 42–43. See id. at 447 for the number of secret detention centers documented. The efforts to conceal and demoralize included burning the corpses and cutting off identifying characteristics. See Bouvard, supra note 2, at 42 (quoting the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Madres, Boletin, no. 12, December 1983).
[20]. Bouvard, supra note 2, at 43 (quoting the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Madres, Boletin, no. 12, December 1983). For a summary of events, see Joseph A. Page, Argentina’s dilemma of conscience; punishing the guilty; resolution of human-rights violations by the Argentine military, 239 Nation 369 (Oct. 20, 1984). Alison Brysk says that the repression was most intense from 1976 to 1979 and peaked by 1980 and 1981, although new disappearances were reported as late as 1983. Brysk, supra note 2, at 36.
[21]. Nunca Más, supra note 2, at 286.
[22]. Julio E. Nosiglia, Botin De Guerra, 8 (1985).
[23]. Nunca Más, supra note 2, at 14.
[24]. Id. at 14, 286–90. For the varieties of circumstances, see Bokser & Guarino, supra note 5, at 245–72 (Anexo 2, “Situaciones Observadas,” a study of 27 cases). 
[25]. See Brysk, supra note 2, at 42–45. When the courts and church failed to respond and trade unions collapsed as centers of resistance, the human rights movement emerged as the critical center of resistance.
[26]. See Bouvard, supra note 2, at 65–89.
[27]. For a definition of these denucias, see Brysk, supra note 2, at 176.
[28]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 37. See also Rita Arditti & M. Brinton Lykes, The Disappeared Children of Argentina: The Work of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, inSurviving Beyond Fear: Women, Children, and Human Rights in Latin America 169 (Marjorie Agosin ed., 1993). The children were called “human spoils of war” by Argentinean newspapers. Isabel Vincent, Argentina Copes with “Human Spoils of War;” Rights Groups Fight to Return Children of “Disappeared” to Natural Families, S.F. Exam’r, Mar. 6, 1994, at A9. One hundred forty women were kept alive just long enough to give birth while in captivity. Id. See also Nunca Más, supra note 2, at 288–300.
[29]. Guest, supra note 17, at 212.
[30]. Id. at 304–05, 363–65. The Grandmothers ultimately were disappointed with the meager response from the United Nations. 
[31]. See Simon L. Garfinkel, Genetic Trails lead to Argentina’s missing children, Boston Globe, June 12, 1989, at 25 (quoting Christian Orrego, then a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s (AAAS) Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility; Mary-Claire King; Geneticist; Interview, 15 Omni 68 (July 1993); Jared M. Diamond, Abducted orphans identified by grandpaternity testing, 327 Nature 552–53 (June 18, 1987). The grandpaternity index used initially was based on the probability of the child sharing alleles with the putative grandparents. However, Drs. Mary-Claire King and Christian Orrego were already at work on DNA techniques such as the one based on mitochondrial DNA which is transmitted only by the mother, is identically shared by siblings, and is therefore useful in cases where the mother is dead but putative maternal aunts or uncles survive. 
[32]. See Brysk, supra note 2, at 45–56, 56–58. See also Dworkin, supra note 3, at xv.
[33]. See Dworkin, supra note 3, at xv.
[34]. Barki, supra note 11, at 246. 
[35]. See Dworkin, supra note 3, at xvii; Decree No. 158, Dec. 13, 1983, [XLIV-A] A.D.L.A. 132 (law voiding the self-amnesty), Decree No. 187, Dec. 15, 1983, [ILIV-A] 137 (law establishing CONADEP).
[36]. See Brysk, supra note 2, at 71–72. Over 250,000 copies were sold in Argentina alone to readers from remote farmhouses and the elite alike. There was a televised version viewed by over a million people on the first showing; 2000 copies of the report were distributed to government officials, national and international human rights organizations, and embassies. A march of 70,000 people accompanied the submission of the report. 
[37]. See Dworkin, supra note 3, at xx–xxii. Ronald Dworkin attended the trials as an observer along with a delegation of British and American philosophers and lawyers. Id. at xxi–xxii.
For excerpts from the judgment, see Enrique Dahl & Alejandro M. Garro, Note, Argentina: National Appeals Court (Criminal Division) Judgment on Human Rights Violations by Former Military Leaders (Excerpts), 26 Int’l. Legal. Materials 317 (Mar. 1987).
For an explanation of the “plaintiff-prosecutor” or querellante system of private parties bringing criminal prosecutions, see Emilio Fermin Mignone, Cynthia L. Estlund, & Samuel Issacharoff, Dictatorship on Trial: Prosecution of Human Rights Violations in Argentina, 10 Yale J. Int’l L. 118, 123–25 (1984).
[38]. Ceasar A. Chelala, Grandmothers of the “Disappeared,” Christian Sci. Monitor, Oct. 6, 1986, at 37 (Official Story won the award for Best Foreign Film). 
[39]. For a discussion of the Paula Logares case, see infra at notes 70–117 and accompanying text.
[40]. Andrew A. Skolnik, Mitochondrial DNA Studies Help Identify Lost Victims of Human Rights Abuses, 269 JAMA, Apr. 21, 1993, at 1911. John Barham, Mothers Who Mourn Their Lost Innocents: Argentina’s “Disappeared” Children, Fin. Times, May 9, 1992, at 1, available at LEXIS. 
[41]. Argentina: Names Commission to Search for Children of Disappeared, Inter Press Service, Dec. 15, 1988, at 1, available at LEXIS.
[42]. Brook Larmer, The Lost Generation, Newsweek, Feb. 8, 1993, at 39.
[43]. See Brysk, supra note 2, at 98.
[44]. Law No. 23.492, Dec. 24, 1986, [XLVII-A] A.D.L.A. 192 (Punto Final); Law No. 23.521, June 8, 1987, [XLVII-B] A.D.L.A. 1548 (Obediencia Debida). 
[45]. See Brysk, supra note 2, at 80–84. Menem’s pardon of General Videla in 1990 was an apparent trade-off with the military, which agreed to let him cut military budgets as one means to curb overspending and hyperinflation. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 48–49 (on presidential pardons). See also An Enemy of Argentina’s People, Boston Globe, June 14, 1998. at F6. 
[46]. Law No. 23.492 (Punto Final), Artículo 5, “La presente ley no extingue las acciones penales en los casos de delitos de sustitución de estado civil y de sustracción y ocultación de menores”; Law No. 23.521 (Obediencia Debida), Artículo 2, “La presunción establecida en el artículo anterior no será aplicable respecto de los delitos de violación, sustracción y ocultación de menores o sustitución de su estado civil y apropiación extorsiva de inmuebles.” 
In its evaluation of the Abuelas’ grant application, the Ford Foundation emphasized the law’s exemption for “misrepresentation of another person’s identity.” See Inter-Office Memorandum to Franklin A. Thomas from Michael Shifter, 575 (July 16, 1987) (PA 855-0381, Ford Foundation Archives) [hereinafter Inter-Office Memorandum]. Mr. Shifter commented that despite the demoralizing impact of the Punto Final (Full Stop) and Due Obedience laws, the exception for the missing children and forging of documents about their identity at least gave promise of generating judicial proceedings which might reveal some of what happened and start the healing process. Id. at 575–76.
The Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo were unhappy about the child kidnappings being singled out as an exception to a general grant of impunity. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 47.
[47]. In a telegram dated November 3, 1983, General Bignone ordered all chiefs of police to return records to be burned. See Barki, supra note 11, at 246. The purging may also have included documents about the children of the disappeared and what happened to them. Id. at 246–47. This instruction also told them to follow normal procedures concerning children of subversives who have disappeared, procedures that apparently were promulgated on April 19, 1977 at the outset of the repression. Id. at 246–47. When confronted with this suggestive evidence years later, even a judge with a good reputation, such as Andres D’Allessio, president of the federal court in Buenos Aires, nonetheless maintained there was no proof of a systematic plan to kidnap the children. Id. at 242–43. 
General Martin Balza told the troops at an army day celebration in 1999 that the military currently has no records of disappeared persons, if such lists ever existed. No lists of Argentine Disappeared—Army Chief, Agence France Presse, (May 30, 1999, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence France Presse File. In March 2000, Balza’s successor, Gen. Ricardo Brinzoni, ordered the army’s 300 sections to institute a search for any documents that might exist. Marcela Valente, Army Chief Condemns ‘Baby Stealing,’ Inter Press Service, Mar. 13, 2000, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press Service File.
[48]. Nunca Más, supra note 2, at 9.
[49]. See id. at 285. 
[50]. See id. at 14.
[51]. See id. at 288–300.
[52]. See id. at 302. See also Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 13–14. 
[53]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 17 (For example, Madres’ founder Era Azucena Villaflor herself disappeared).
[54]. Id. at 17–25.
[55]. Id. at 25 (Opinion by judges Adolfo Gabrielli, Abelardo Rossi, Pedro Frias, Emilio Daireaux, & Elias Gustavino). 
Argentina is a federal republic. It consists of the Federal Capital and 22 provinces. Federal rules are valid in the whole of the country’s territory, but there are also local rules for each of the 22 provinces. Although the provinces retain all powers not delegated by the Federal Constitution to the federal government, the system is actually more centralized than this sounds. Humberto Quiroga Lavie, “Argentine,” Nat’l Reports at A–33. The court system is divided between federal and provincial courts. The federal court system is capped by the Supreme Federal Court of Justice, and each province also has its own judicial system. Id.
For the federal system, see also Thomas A. Reynolds & Arturo Flores, Foreign Law: Current Sources of Codes and Basic Legislation in Jurisdictions of the World 1–7 (1999). Of four Latin American nations modeled on a federal system, Argentina and Mexico are the only ones with historically developed judicial and legislative structures that resemble the North American concept of a dual or federal form of government. There is a national Supreme Court in Buenos Aires with lower federal courts in the provinces and the Federal Capital, supported by a range of administrative courts and tribunals. Each of the provinces has a supreme court and courts of the first instance. Decisions of Argentine courts have precedential value, but, as in the civil law tradition, are not binding until a whole series of similar precedents can be isolated and described and only then applied. Although legal codes are so extensive that opinions might seem to have little precedential value, “well-reasoned decisions tend to be followed in later cases.” Id.
[56]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 26–33.
[57]. See Brysk, supra note 2, at 36. But see Dworkin, supra note 3, at xv (the disappearances largely ceased after 1979).
[58]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 67–69 (interview with Chicha Mariani regarding CLAMOR). The Abuelas recounted how the organization CLAMOR opened their files to them. SeeGrandmothers of Plaza de Mayo, Missing Children Who Disappeared in Argentina, Between 1976 and 1983 26 (Ricardo Couch trans., 1988) [hereinafter Grandmothers]. 
[59]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 47, 245. See also Nosiglia, supra note 22, at 171; Barki, supra note 11, at 268–75.
[60]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 245–49.
[61]. Id. at 252–54.
[62]. Id. at 255–58. See also Arditti, supra note 2, at 109 (recounting an interview with Tatiana explaining why she did not want to recognize her grandmother at first and suffer another uprooting).
[63]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 259–62. A full adoption substitutes a new relationship or filiacion entirely for that of the original family. It extinguishes all the rights of the blood family, with the sole exception of the restriction on incestuous marriage. The adoptee acquires all the rights and obligations of a legitimate child. See Law No. 19.134, July 21, 1971, [XXXI-B] A.D.L.A.1408 (Capituolo II). 
[64]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 262. For adopción simple, see Law No. 19.l34, July 21, 1971, [XXXI–B] A.D.L.A. 1408 (Capitulo III). This legal status confers on the adopted child the position of a legitimate child, but does not destroy the rights of the blood relatives except to the extent expressly determined in this law. See also Arditti, supra note 2, at 210–11 n.27: (“‘Simple’ adoption confers rights to the adoptee as a member of the adoptive family but does not extinguish the rights and responsibilities of her or his family of origin. Adoptees are allowed to add the last name of their original family to their names, and the adoption is revocable. ‘Full’ adoption results in the adoptee no longer being a member of her or his family of origin. It is irrevocable, and the adoptee cannot recover affiliation with her or his family of origin”).
[65]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 264–67. For additional information on the Britos case, see Arditti, supra note 2, at 109 (interviewed child at age 20).
[66]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 153.
[67]. See, e.g., “Mónaco de Gallicchio, Darwina Rosa contra Siciliano, Susana. Nulidad de adopción,” en la causa Ac. 51.831, CJ [slip op.] (Sept. 20, 1994) [hereinafter Mónaco de Gallicchio]. My gratitude to Dr. Rolando E. Gialdino of the Argentine Supreme Court (Secretaría de Investigación de Derecho Comparado de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación) and to Maria Silvia Galindez for providing me with a copy of this opinion.
[68]. But see Bokser & Guarino, supra note 5, at 245–72 (appendix describing 27 cases studied by authors and listing all the legal proceedings, criminal and civil, that related to each child).
[69]. See Nunca Más, supra note 2.
[70]. James F. Smith, Sought by Argentina; Children of ‘Dirty War’: Sad Legacy, L.A. Times, Apr. 20, 1988, part I, at 5. See also “Paula Eva Logares Grinspon,” (sentence by Federal Judge Juan Edgardo Fegoli against Raquel Teresa Leiro Mediondo and Ruben Luis Lavallen for kidnapping of a minor) en la causa Ac. 202/83 (Feb. 19, 1988), reprinted inlos Niños desaparecidos y la justica: Algunos fallos y Resoluciones 43 (Maria Teresa Pinero ed., Abuelas de plaza de mayo 1988) [hereinafter Paula Eva Logares Grinspon]. My gratitude to the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo for sending me a copy of this publication.
[71]. Barki, supra note 11, at 255. 
[72]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 58–59, 154; James F. Smith, Sought by Argentina, supra note 70.
[73]. Vincent J. Schodolski, Legacy of Argentina’s ‘Dirty War’: Search for a Stolen Child, Chi. Trib., Sept. 22, 1985, at 3, zone c.; Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 58.
[74]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 59–60. See also “Paula Eva Logares Grinspon,” (Feb. 19, 1988), supra note 70, at 44–46 (girl born Paula Logares and kidnapped in Uruguay was enrolled by the Lavallens as their own child with a false birth certificate provided by a police doctor).
[75]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 61–67, 154. A team of pediatricians and other professionals explained that there might be delayed growth in a child subject to such trauma. Barki, supra note 11, at 260.
[76]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 154. The Lavalléns at first insisted that Paula was their biological child. Schodolski, supra note 73, at 3, zone c. The federal court stated that the Lavalléns refused to submit to the blood test, no doubt because they expected an adverse result. See “Paula Eva Logares Grinspon,” supra note 70, at 58.
[77]. Barki, supra note 11, at 260–62.
[78]. The genetic testing established the relationship between the grandmother and Paula with a probability of 99.8%. See “Paula Eva Logares Grinspon,” supra note 70, at 58. 
[79]. For a history of the treatment of blood tests under European and Argentine law, see Dr. Torres Molina, Appendix to Abeulas De Plaza De Mayo, Los Niños Desparacidos y la Justicia: Algunos Fallos Y Resoluciones (Maria Teresa Pinero ed., 1988).
[80]. See Grandmothers, supra note 58, at 10. The Abuelas reported that they had traveled to scientific centers all over the world, including the University of Upsala in Sweden, the Hospital of the Piete in Paris, and the Hospital for the Advancement of the Sciences and The Blood Center in the United States. In these last places, they “found what we were seeking: the certainty of being able to prove with 99.95% accuracy that a child belongs to a given family, through very specific blood analyses which are carried out on the grandparents, the siblings and the aunts and uncles of the little victims.” Id.
[81]. See Eric Stover, Scientists Aid Search for Argentina’s ‘Desaparecidos,’ 230 Am. Assoc. For Advancement Sci. & Policy, Oct. 4, 1985, at 57.
[82]. Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 574. 
[83]. Id. At the request of the Abuelas, a symposium organized by the AAAS was held in New York City on May 27, 1984, at which geneticists and hematologists presented their views. The Abuelas were aware that advanced centers existed in their own country for dealing with these matters, but “given the magnitude of the spoilation which the armed forces here have carried out among us, we could not carry out these analyses here since we presumed interference would take place. At stake were our grandchildren.” Grandmothers, supra note58, at 11. The Abuelas established their own “filial determination committee” consisting of two doctors and a biochemist. Four types of analyses were carried out: blood groups, HLA or histocompatibility, seric proteins and blood cell enzymes. Id. at 11.
[84]. Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 574. 
[85]. Jorge Berra, et al., Geneticial Identification of Missing Children in Argentina 3 (PA 855-0381, Ford Foundation Archives). The authors were members of the Equipo de Filiació Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, i.e., the Abuelas’ filiation team of experts. This 1984 report describes the methodology of genetic markers and the index of grandpaternity developed by theAbuelas’ team. It noted that in the cases studied so far, none of the parents who had possession of the children and claimed to be their biological parents would agree to be tested themselves. Court orders for testing six children had not been executed yet due to the objections of the claimed parents. In two of the cases, the court order had been upheld by the Court of Appeals, in one instance authorizing the compulsory taking of blood from the minor regardless of opposition from the parents in possession. 
[86]. Id. at 5. 
[87]. Inter-Office Memorandum to Files from A. Gridley Hall 850 (Mar. 27, 1984) (PA 855-inafter Inter-Office Offenheiser Memorandum].
[90]. Id. Mr. Shifter noted that unlike some of the other human rights organizations that were too steeped in the past, the Abuelas offered hopes of moving forward under the new circumstances. He also praised the Abuelas approach, which combined human rights advocacy and scientific expertise, thus strengthening their credibility. They had clear objectives and managed to work with two otherwise mutually antagonistic groups: human rights organizations, on the one hand, and the national government, on the other. Id. 
Even before their final grant, the Ford Foundation evaluators made it clear why they preferred the Abuelas to other groups; the Abuelas were less “politicized” than, for example, theMadres de Plaza de Mayo. See Inter-Office Hall Memorandum, supra note 87, at 850. The Ford Foundation felt that the Madres and other human rights organizations like CELS had lost some of their potential, but that the Abuelas could still play a political role and could get the children back. See Notes of discussion with Juan Mendez of Americas Watch, Washington, D.C. on Argentina and a bit on Peru, 848 (June 30, 1987) (PA 855-0381, Ford Foundation Archives). In a changing political climate, in which some of the human rights groups were demoralized by the pardons and impunity granted by the national government to ex-dictators and the military, different organizations had made different kinds of adjustments; CELS, for example, broadened its mission to include civil rights, while the Madres, Mr. Shifter felt, clung to an increasingly unrealistic demand for the return of their disappearedchildren. Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 574. The Abuelas, on the other hand, still had hopes of moving forward with their agenda. Id. 
[91]. Inter-Office Hall Memorandum, supra note 87, at 850. 
[92]. See Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 573 (noting the Laws of Punto Final, or Full Stop, and Due Obedience, as well as the call for a complete end to trials and prison sentences).
[93]. See id. at 575.
[94]. See id. at 575–76.
[95]. Inter-Office Memorandum to William D. Carmichael from A. Gridley Hall 578–79 (Mar. 7, 1985) (PA 855-0381, Ford Foundation Archives) [hereinafter Inter-Office Carmichael Memorandum]. 
[96]. Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 576.
[97]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 154. When the judge still hesitated, the Lavellens took the girl and fled toward Uruguay. Barki, supra note 11, at 262.
[98]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 154.
Although, as an organization, the Abuelas were not without their qualms about the impact of uprooting on the children, see, e.g., id. at 95, they generally believed that the impact of restitution would be salutary for the children. Paula’s grandmother Elsa said that it was wrong to focus on the trauma of separation by force from the adoptive family, when “the worst damage was when [the children] were seized the first time from their real parents, from the warmth of their mother, when they cried and cried, maybe for days. This must have made a terrible mark on them, they will never forget this, subconsciously at least . . . But the people want to forget this initial damage.” Smith, supra note 70. The Grandmothers maintained that children who had been subjected to furtive lives may be withdrawn at first, but they opened up subsequently. Officials from the government department in charge of minors claimed that, except for the families who had adopted in good faith, the stolen children suffered from all kinds of physical ailments which cleared up after they were restored to their true families. Dr. Liwski, the child psychiatrist employed to help the Grandmothers’ organization, insisted that knowledge of the truth and the natural familial bonds would be enough to produce a healthy adjustment. Schodolski, supra note 73, at 3; Edward Schumacher, Children of the Disappeared: Argentine Doctors Find a Syndrome of Pain, N.Y. Times Feb. 21, 1984, at C1. 
[99]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 155–56. 
[100]. Id. Psychological experts employed by the defense emphasized the trauma of separation from the adoptive parents. See Schodolski, supra note 73, at 3 (Dr. Harold Visotsky questioned the long-run fate of the restored children, observing that the children knew the adoptive families as their parents, regardless of what they were doing politically). See alsoSmith, supra note 70. The Paraguayan psychiatrist that had been employed by families fighting extradition to Argentina warned that separation by force would have “traumatic consequences” that would “prejudice the child’s whole life.”
[101]. Karen Robert & Rodrigo Guierrez Hermelo, The Unofficial Story: A Family Reunited, 27 Nacla Report on the Americas 13 (1994).
[102]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 155.
[103]. See supra notes 75–78 and accompanying text. 
[104]. This initial individual burden was later incorporated into law. See infra note 139 and accompanying text.
[105]. See infra notes 116133 and accompanying text. 
[106]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 176–81 (interview with Judge Andrés D’Alessio). Judge D’Alessio was a former member of the federal court that judged the military dictatorship and also had been a federal prosecutor. Id. at 176. He was president of the federal court in Buenos Aires. Barki, supra note 11, at 242. 
[107]. Herrera and Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 176–79. An expert on adoption who was interviewed on the McNeil-Lehrer show, however, used the King Solomon story in a strikingly different way, saying that the true mother was the one who would give up her child rather than see him suffer. McNeil-Lehrer News Hour: Los Desaparecidos: The Vigil Continues (Educational Broadcasting and GWETA, Aug. 14, 1984).
[108]. Robert & Hermelo, supra note 101, at 13.
[109]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 69. 
[110]. Id. at 69–71, 75. Paula clearly was shocked when she saw the picture. Id. at 179. A court social worker gave her a small mirror, and the girl could not stop looking at it and the picture. Id.
[111]. Smith, supra note 70. 
[112]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 180. For another account of the restitution of Paula based on interviews, see Barki, supra note 11, at 262–68. Barki’s account, based on an interview with the grandmother, states that when they returned from court to the family’s house, Paula went without hesitation to the room which she had occupied as a toddler, as if she remembered it. Even so, the girl was unwilling to call Elsa “Grandmother” at first. Id. at 264. 
[113]. Robert & Hermelo, supra note 101, at 13.
[114]. Kathy King Wouk, Argentina’s Missing Kids; Grandmothers Must Search, Record, Mar. 22, 1988, at B11. Pavon, however, refused to comply with the order to call Paula by the old name and was cited for contempt. Id.
[115]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 77–78.
[116]. Scaccheri de López, María Cristina s/ su denuncia, CSJN, Provincia de Buenos Aires (Oct. 29, 1987) in Los Niños Desaparecidos y la justica: Algunos Fallos Y Resoluciones 72 (Maria Teresa Pinero ed., Abuelas De Plaza De Mayo 1988) [hereinafter Scaccheri de López]. The Argentine Supreme Court acts as an extraordinary Court of Appeals to decide on the constitutionality of all legal rules applied in a final judgment in any provincial or federal court; it rules on jurisdictional conflicts of inferior courts; it reviews its own rulings and explains them; and it acts on direct appeals following denial of leave to appeal. Lavie, supra note 55, at A-36.
[117]. See “Paula Eva Logares Grinspon,” supra note 70, at 61–62 (explaining that the courts of Argentina have accepted the scientific proofs of blood tests since the Scaccheri case in 1987).
[118]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 162. Scaccheri de López, supra note 116, at 78.
[119]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 162.
[120]. Scaccheri de López, supra note 116, at 72–73. Laura was registered as Laura Daniela Cacace. Id.
[121]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 162–63. 
[122]. Miguel A. Ekmekdjian, Manual De La Constitucion Argentina 386, 395 (Ed Depalma 1991) (Manual of Argentina’s Constitution). There are three different types of law in Argentina: The first is Federal law, which is enacted by the federal Congress and is applicable throughout the nation. Federal courts, distributed in federal circuits very similar to the system in the United States, have exclusive jurisdiction to enforce these laws. The second is provincial (like a state) law, which is enacted by the provincial Congress. The provincial courts have exclusive jurisdiction in this domain. The third category of law, however, is “Ordinary Law,” consisting of the substantive legal Codes such as Civil, Criminal, Commercial, Mining and Labor. These laws were enacted by the federal congress and are applicable throughout the country in provincial courts. If an issue of “Ordinary Law” is connected with a federal question, however, then it falls under the exclusive jurisdiction of the federal courts. For example, a simple murder may be within the jurisdiction of a state court, but if the victim is a senator, then it becomes a federal crime, subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of a federal criminal court. The federal court will apply “Ordinary Law” where appropriate in that case. My thanks to my research assistant (and former federal criminal prosecutor in Argentina), Arturo Fernandez, for his clear explanation of these jurisdictional issues. See also Lavie, supra note55, at A-35.
[123]. See, e.g., Scaccheri de López, supra note 116, at 73.
For the criminal framework for these cases, see Cod. Pen., Article 146, “Sustracción de un menor de diez años,” (kidnapping of a child under 10); Article 138,”Supresión y suposición del estado civil,” (falsifying someone’s civil status or identity); Article 139, “Supresión y suposición del estado civil agravado,” (aggravated falsification of identity); Article 293, “Falsedad ideológica de instrumento público,” (falsifying public documents).
[124]. Law No. 10.903, Oct. 27, 1919, [XXVII] B.O. 781. 
In the United States, a family or juvenile court appeals to a similar doctrine of parens patriae. For the nineteenth-century development of what he calls “judicial patriarchy” (i.e., the court’s authority replacing the father’s authority) through the doctrine of parens patriae and the device of habeas corpus, see Grossberg, supra note 10.
[125]. Nullification of the fraudulent adoption, on the other hand, must be accomplished through the civil courts. See, e.g., “Mónaco de Gallicchio,” supra note 67.
[126]. Law No. 10.903, Oct. 27, 1919, [XXVII] B.O. 781 (articles 14 & 15). Article 21 provides that material or moral abandonment or moral danger includes acts prejudicial to the physical or moral health of the minor. Id. 
[127]. See, Scaccheri de López, supra note 116, at 76–77.
[128]. Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 162–63.
[129]. Judge Belluscio was a renowned expert in family law and author of a leading treatise, as well as a figure in the Radical Party, i.e., Alfonsín’s party. He could not be characterized as a rightist.
[130]. Id herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 163–64
[131]. Id. at 166.
[132]. Scaccheri de López, supra note 116, at 77.
[133]. Id. at 81–85.
[134]. See supra, note 55.
[135]. Inter-Office Offenhesier Memorandum, supra note 89, at 639.
[136]. Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 575. See also Arditti, supra note 2, at 72–74 (on the National Genetic Data Bank).
[137]. Law No. 23.511, June 1, 1987, [XLVII-B] A.D.L.A. 1529. 
[138]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 72.
[139]. Law No. 23.511, June 1, 1987, [XLVII-B] A.D.L.A. 1529. Other materials such as photos, fingerprints, and personal documents could also be submitted, and four kinds of tests were to be performed on the blood samples at the Durand Hospital.
[140]. But see Bokser & Guarino, supra note 5, at 90 (In nine cases the authors studied in which the children were fraudulently registered as the pretend parents’ own children, courts compelled blood tests only in two; in the worst scenario of an adopción plena, the pretend parents argued that the relationship was legal and refused to submit the child for testing). 
[141]. See, e.g., Arditti, supra note 2, at 73 (stating that NGDB work was in jeapordy).
[142]. Bokser & Guarino, supra note 5, at 247–72 (twenty-seven cases studied, with forms of reintegration, from return to biological family or parents (with or without contact with raising parents) to continuation with raising parents under various legal statuses and sometimes with significant contact with biological family).
[143]. Barki, supra note 11, at 269. Irène Barki is a French journalist and photojournalist whose first book was based on original (unedited) documents and interviews (testimony) of survivors, families of victims, found children, and even some of the torturers. Id. at backpage. For the Gatica story, she interviewed Ana Maria and Oscar Gatica (the parents who survived), the baby Felipe’s adoptive mother, Judge Borras, and even Rodolfo Silva in prison.
[144]. Barki, supra note 11, at 271–76.
[145]. Id. at 269–73.
[146]. Id. at 269–73. The extrajudicial solution reached in Felipe’s case is not unlike some of the mediated agreements reached in some Texas courts. Although parental rights are legally terminated, and new parents adopt the child through the process of mediated termination, it is hoped that an agreement to continue some relationship between child and the original parents may be maintained. See Children’s Permanency Cooperative, “Fast Forward to Permanency,” [The Mediated Permanency Process for New and Long-Standing TDPRS Cases in Harris County, Texas, developed by the Children’s Permanency cooperative Work Group in Association with The Honorable Mary Craft, Judge, 314th District Family Court of Harris County, Texas] (November 1997) (on file with author).
[147]. Barki, supra note 11, at 273.
[148]. Id. There were siblings in both the Gaticas’ and in Nelly’s households, so Felipe stood to lose and to gain more than just parents.
[149]. Id. at 276–77, 295–96.
[150]. Id. at 277–81.
[151]. Id. at 282. Judge Borras presided over the court of the first instance, or lower level court, of La Plata. Juez Penal del Departamento de La Plata, “En la causa contra Rodolfo Oscar Silva,” (Feb. 25, 1986) in Los Niños Desaparecidos y la justica: Algunos Fallos Y Resoluciones, supra note 70, at 10. 
[152]. Barki, supra note 11, at 283–86.
[153]. Id. at 286–90.
[154]. “En la causa seguida contra Rodolfo Oscar Silva,” Cámara de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional de la Plata (July 8, 1987) in Los Niños Desaparecidos y la justica: Algunos Fallos Y Resoluciones, supra note 70, at 40. 
[155]. Id. at 21. The kidnapping conviction was reversed on appeal, but the other two (suppression of civil status of a minor and falsification of public documents) were upheld. The sentence was reduced to three years. The court nullified the false birth certificate, ordered moral damages reparations of 6.000, seis mil Australes paid with interest and indexing, and confirmed restitution of the child to her parents. Id. at 40–41. 
For the definition of moral damages, see Henry Saint Dahl, Dahl’s Law Dictionary/ Diccionario Juridiso Dahl 111 (2d ed. 1996). 
[156]. “En la causa seguida contra Rodolfo Oscar Silva,” Cámara de Apelaciones en lo Criminal y Correccional de la Plata (July 8, 1987) in Los Niños Desaparecidos y la justica: Algunos Fallos Y Resoluciones, supra note 70, at 13–18.
[157]. Id. at 17.
[158]. Id. at 15–16: “La extracción de sangre es en sí misma un secuestro.” (The extraction of blood is like a seizure.) The full passage, as quoted by Dr. Torres Molina in his article on compulsory blood testing, reads as follows: “La extracción de sangre a los efectos de practicar un dosaje, cuyo resultado ha de ser decisivo para la elaboración del juicio relativo a la materialidad de la infracción—en cuanto, virtualmente, constituiría la única prueba de tal extremo—es, en sí misma un secuestro y por ello está sujecta a las formalidades previstas por los arts. 96 a 99 de la ley procesal.” Molina, supra note 79, at 169 (quoting Suprema Corte de la Provincia de Buenos Aires causa P.29.115 del 11-5-82 en D.J.B.A. To 123 p.86). I am grateful to Professor Jonathon Miller for helping me understand this passage. 
Judge Borras was a criminal judge of a court of the first instance, or lower level court, in La Plata, the capitol of Buenos Aires province. Id. at 10. While lower courts are subject to reversal by their superior level courts, it should be noted that the 1982 opinion by the Supreme Court of Buenos Aires was handed down during the dictatorship, while Judge Borras was sitting on the Gatica case in 1986, after the fall of the juntas.
[159]. Id. at 15–17. 
[160]. “Recurso de hecho deducido por la Defensa de XX en la causa XX y otro s/ apelación de medida probatorias,” Case No. 197/90,” CSJN, [slip op.] (Dec. 4, 1995).
[161]. See Judgment of December 27, 1996, “Guarino, Mirta Liliana s/querella,” Case No. 449, CJ, [slip op.] (Dec. 27, 1996). This test case involving an adopción plena, or full adoption, had been dismissed on the grounds of limitations. This decision prompted a public relations campaign and a complaint before the Human Rights Commission of the OAS. SeeArditti, supra note 2, at 149. But the reasoning of attorney Alcira E. Rios, professor of civil family law at Universidad de BA and one of the Abuelas’ legal advisors, prevailed in the 1996 decision. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 149. 
See also Cecilia P. Grosman, “Argentina: Recent Developments in Legislation and Case Law,” 32 U. Louisville J. Fam. L. 227, 230 (1993-94). 
Under United States’ law, even compulsory blood testing of the parent-defendants may be considered constitutional. See Schmerber v. California, 384 U.S. 757 (1966) in which a divided court held that there was no constitutional violation in the use of a blood sample which showed the defendant to be intoxicated. At the direction of a police officer, and over the objections of the defendant, a doctor had drawn the blood from a man whom he was treating in the hospital for injuries received in a car crash. The Supreme Court agreed that under the circumstances of this case, there was no due process violation. Id. at 759–60. Furthermore, it held that testimonial compulsion, i.e., self-incrimination, was not implicated. Id. at 760–65. This was so because there was a distinction between compelling communications or testimony, and compelling the suspect to be the source of “real or physical” evidence. Id. at 764. While acknowledging this was a troublesome distinction, the Court felt that the extraction of blood was clearly not testimonial. The Court noted that an accused cannot object to fingerprinting, photographing, measurements, writing or speaking for identification, appearing in court, standing, assuming a stance, walking or making a particular gesture. Id. (The Court also found that the blood extraction in Schmerber did not violate the Fourth Amendment’s protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, id. at 766, or the Sixth Amendment right to counsel, id. at 765–66).
Although the typical state paternity statute provides that if the alleged father refuses to be blood tested, this may constitute a presumption or evidence against him on paternity, some cases have also upheld contempt as a penalty for such noncooperation. See, e.g., Bowerman v. MacDonald, 427 N.W.2d 477, 478 (Mich. 1988) (holding that neither a search warrant nor an evidentiary hearing was required before ordering blood tests in a paternity case brought on mother’s verified complaint, and that contempt is a permissible sanction). See also Eagan v. Ayd, 313 Md. 265, 545 A.2d 55 (Md. 1988) (holding that Schmerber, 383 U.S. at 757, establishes that even in a criminal case, a compulsory blood test does not interfere with the privilege against self-incrimination). Id. at 275. Eagan also upheld the use of contempt power to enforce a blood test order and summarized other state statutes. Id. at 276. 
Argentine law appears to make the same distinction between compelled testimony and the production of material evidence in criminal cases that is evident in Schmerber. See Claria Olmedo, Jorge, Tratado De Derecho Procesal Penal 422 (Sociedad Anonima Editora 1964). The treatise’s author explains that the person who is charged has the right to refuse any coercive measure that would compel him to personally supply evidence against himself. This does not include such coercion that attempts to acquire in a direct way the object of the evidence, such as a search with a court order or corporal inspection. 
[162]. “En la causa contra Rodolfo Oscar Silva,” supra note 151, at 13–15.
[163]. The “Official Story” was the fictionalized account of a kidnapping of a child of the disappeared that won an academy award in 1984. In the film, the seemingly idyllic domestic life of the family, including a loving and devoted husband and father who is an official of the regime, and a mother who never questioned too carefully the story he told when he brought home the baby who became their beloved daughter, is ultimately shown to be based on a lie and on an underlying violence. 
Irène Barki was granted permission to interview Silva in prison. Silva agreed on condition that the journalist would bring him pictures of his “daughter.” Barki, supra note 11, at 290–92.
[164]. Id. at 294. 
[165]. See, e.g., Arthur R. Burtz, The Hoax of the Twentieth-Century: The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry (1997).
[166]. See Barki, supra note 11, at 294–95, 297.
[167]. Id. at 298.
[168]. Id. at 298.
[169]. Id. at 336–37; los Niños Desaparecidos Y La Justicia, supra note 70, at 89.
[170]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 181–82 (interview with Judge Padilla, “The Truth is the Truth). See also id. at 167 (Padilla opinion is one of the most elaborated in relation to the disappeared children).
[171]. Bokser & Guarino, supra note 5, at 55–56; Arditti, supra note 2, at 106.
[172]. Fineman, supra note 1, at 229.
[173]. “En la causa No 6681 del registro de la Secretaría No 2 seguida a Teresa Isabel González,” Juzgado Federal de Morón (Jan. 19, 1988) in Los Niños Desaparecidos Y La justicia: Algunos Fallos Y Resoluciones, supra note 70, at 93 [hereinafter “En la causa GBR> [176]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 182.
[177]. Id.
[178]. Id. at 90–91.
[179]. “En la causa González,” supra note 173, at 97–99.
[180]. Id. at 102–03.
[181]. Id. at 103–04.
[182]. Id. at 105.
[183]. Id. at 105–06. These circumstances caused the judge to take the sad history of the Argentine people into account in the criminal charges against the policewoman. On the other hand, the judge also considered some mitigating circumstances, even if he had reservations about them: the defendant apparently came forward with a document that facilitated the identification of the child quickly; there was no other criminal record; and the purpose of criminal law was rehabilitation above all. As a result the sentence imposed allowed the application of a law which permitted probation and did not deprive the defendant of her liberty. Id. at 107. The appellate court affirmed, interviewing the child before doing so. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 168. 
[184]. “En la causa González,” supra note 173 at 108–09; Arditti, supra note 2, at 118–21, 176 (biography of grandmother).
[185]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 119–21.
[186]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 185. Compare the sentiments of Leopoldo Schiffrin, who participated in the restoration of Laura Scaccheri as part of the Cámara Federal de la Plata. When he was asked about a legitimate adoption, he said it was complex, but that the difference is that when the adoption was illegal and the natural family appears asking for its rights, the adoptive parents do not have any rights. Adoption is designed to help abandoned children but not to take children from their own group, which gives them their identity. It is best for children to know the truth about their origin. Id. at 193. 
[187]. Abuelas de plaza de mayo, Restitución De Niños 87 (Eudeba 1997). Dr. Dolto had worked with children that had been illegally adopted by the Nazis. Based on that experience, and believing that the children of the disappeared were bonded to the raising families rather than to their grandmothers, Dolto argued against subjecting them to another separation and another trauma. Arditti and Lykes, supra note 28, at 172–73. Although Dr. Dolto is said to have changed her views later, others have made similar arguments. For example, an article published in March 1984 also argued that parenthood was psychological, not primarily biological. Lidia Castagno de Vicentini published an article in the Rosario morning paper entitled, “The True Parents are the Psychological Parents.” After reviewing the psychoanalytic and psychological literature, the author recommended against the return of the children. She contended that parenthood was a cultural and sociological phenomenon and not simply a biological fact. Id. at 172–73. 
[188]. Id. at 87. See also Arditti and Lykes, supra note 28, at 171–72 (Abuelas’ arguments for restoration). The Grandmothers had seven arguments for restoration: (1) because the children have the right to recover their identity; (2) because the children have the right to live in freedom and dignity without lies or secrets; (3) because the children must know their origins; (4) because these children have not been abandoned but have been illegally appropriated; (5) because these children carry engraved in their psyches the sinister conditions of their kidnapping and the tortures of their mothers; (6) because that trauma would impede their normal physical and psychological development; and (7) because only by returning to their ‘ecological nest’ can they grow free, with the love and security that their legitimate families will offer them.” 
[189]. bokser & Guarino, supra note 5, at 56.
[190]. See, e.g., Barki, supra note 11, at 195 (dialogue with “Sara,” a mother who had a false lead on her son, Simon, but is still searching, although perhaps with less ardor). Sara asked, can you imagine losing a baby of 20 days and finding an 11-year-old? It is frightening, isn’t it? Sara also noted that she was separated from his father, who is in Spain and in bad health. Id. Irène Barki commented that the grandmothers had the same problem when they found their grandchildren. Although it might have been difficult at first, it eventually seemed like the most natural thing in the world. Despite their age, the reintegrations worked out well. Id.
[191]. Letter to Dr. Max Hernandez from A. Gridley Hall, 824 (June 20, 1984) (PA 855-0381, Ford Foundation Archives).
[192]. Letter to A. Gridley Hall from Dr. Max Hernandez, 826 (June 25, 1984) (PA 855-0381, Ford Foundation Archives).
[193]. Inter-Office Carmichael Memorandum, supra note 95, at 580–581. 
[194]. Id. at 581. 
[195]. Grandmothers, supra note 58, at 12.
[196]. Id. at 12.
[197]. Id. at 13.
[198]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 215–30.
[199]. Id. at 218. Adjustment difficulties, however, may show up later in a child’s life.
[200]. Id. In one instance, a child was insisting that the adoptive father was the true parent, but when the Grandmother quietly repeated the baby name the girl used for her biological father, the child responded immediately. Id. 
[201]. Id. at 221. 
[202]. Id. at 222–23.
[203]. Id. at 225–30.
[204]. Id. at 272. The three discussants were Eva Gilberti, a psychologist, professor, consultant to the Pan-American health office, and author of a book on adoption, who monitored the restored children; Fernando Ulloa, member of the psychoanalytic association of Argentina and professor on the psychology faculty, who supervised the treatment of various children; and Maria Lucila Pelento, professor of psychology and psychoanalyst, who served as expert adviser to judges of first instance, Congress and members of Supreme Court. Id. 
[205]. Id. at 273–75 (Gilberti).
[206]. Id. at 275–76 (Ulloa).
[207]. Herrera & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 280 (Pelento).
[208]. Id. at 281 (Pelento).
[209]. Id. at 282 (Ulloa).
[210]. Id. at 283 (Ulloa).
[211]. Grandmothers, supra note 58, at 12.
[212]. Theorists of contemporary United States social work likewise have argued that in order to act as agents for social change and to enlarge the public good, even social workers who focus on “micro, direct service practice” (e.g., family therapy) urgently need “the larger contextualization of macro practice.” R. Fisher and H. Karger, Social Work and Community In A Private World: Getting Out in Public (1997). Fisher and Karger define “contextualization” as “knowing and understanding the connection between daily social work practice and the structural dynamics of society—its history, economy, politics, and social and cultural dimensions. Contextualization assumes that individual, family, and community problems are always tied to larger structural factors. At the heart of a critical contextualization is an analysis of power and inequality and a social change ideology that translates this critical analysis into action.”Id. at 43. As an example of contextualized social work and of an approach that is explicitly founded on feminist ideology, Fisher and Karger offer PIVOT, a therapeutic intervention program for male batterers in Houston which was founded by Toby Myers. Id. at 57. “The individual issues of each offender are seen not only as personal problems, but as collective ones resting on a base of patriarchy and violence. Contextualization occurs at the base of the group and the individual work that follows. During the process, individual needs get met in group and individual work, while problems are contextualized and collectivized. Here, social movement ideology serves to unmask oppression and fuel individual healing and collective actions. Similar collective ways of contextualizing social justice can be found in other women’s agencies, African American efforts, and community organizing projects in the United States and worldwide.” Id. It is certainly no more surprising that the Abuelas’ ideas about the therapeutic value of restitution for the children of the disappeared also reflected the context of Argentine society, of the disappearances, and of the need to confront rather than deny the reality of the nightmare years.
[213]. Grandmothers, supra note 58, at 12.
[214]. Inter-Office Memorandum, supra note 46, at 574.
[215]. Id. at 574.
[216]. Id. at 575–76. 
[217]. Inter-Office Offenheiser Memorandum, supra note 89, at 640. Mr. Shifter observed that the passage of time had changed the best interest calculus for the children and also had begun to tarnish the Grandmothers’ image and reputation when they insisted on restoration in less sympathetic cases. Mr. Shifter concluded that with the “new political realities in Argentina,” it had become right to close the grant and to give higher priority to political and civil rights type groups instead. 
[218]. Although the Argentine Supreme Court left custody with the grandmother, it made future cases more difficult by limiting the appeals by biological families. Larmer, supra note 42, at 39. According to a 1993 report, courts subsequently seemed reluctant even to order blood tests anymore, and not another child had been restored in the interim. Argentinians track down children of the Disappeared, Plain Dealer, July 9, 1993, at C22.
[219]. Communication No. 400/1990: Argentina, 27/04/95, Hum. Rts. Comm., 53rd Sess., Annex, para. 2.1, at 1, U.N. Doc. CCPR/C/53/D/400/1990 (1995) (submitted by Darwinia Rosa Mónaco de Gallicchio, on her behalf and on behalf of her granddaughter Ximena Vicario) [hereinafter Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio].
[220]. Larmer, supra note 42, at 39. See also Arditti, supra note 2, at 108 (stating that the murdered parents were called “guerrilleros”).
[221]. Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219, para. 2.1, at 2.
[222]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 108.
[223]. See George de Lama, “Dirty War” Still Tears at Families in Argentina, Chi. Trib., Jan. 17, 1989, at C1.
The prosecutor asked for “preventive detention of ‘S.S.’ (Siciliano) on the ground she was suspected of having committed the offences of concealing the whereabouts of a minor (ocultamiento de menor) and forgery of documents, in violation of articles 5, 12, 293, and 146 of the Argentine Criminal Code.” Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supranote 219, para. 2.2, at 2. This was not a case of falsely registering the child as her own. Rather this was a full adoption or adopción plena based on false representations, a much more difficult legal situation.
[224]. See de Lama, supra note 223, at C1.
[225]. “Incidente tutelar de Romina Paola Siciliano,” CSJN, 312 Fallos 1580, 1583 (Sept. 5, 1989). My gratitude to Dr. Roland E. Gialdino of the Argentine Supreme Court (Secretaría de Investigación de Derecho Comparado de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación) and to Maria Silvia Galindez for providing me with a copy of this opinion.
[226]. Id. See also de Lama, supra note 223, at C1.
[227]. See de Lama, supra note 223, at C1.
[228]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 108.
[229]. Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219, para. 2.3, at 2. 
[230]. The appeal to the Supreme Court was backed by the support of an influential press. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 108. 
[231]. See “Incidente tutelar de Romina Paola Siciliano,” supra note 225 at 1588–89; Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219, para. 2.3, at 2.
[232]. “Incidente tutelar de Romina Paola Siciliano,” supra note 225, at 1584–92. Siciliano was entitled to a presumption of innocence until she was convicted of falsifying the adoption.
[233]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 108. In 1998, Videla was charged with orchestrating the systematic kidnapping of the children of the disappeared. See infra notes 329–31 and accompanying text.
[234]. “Incidente tutelar de Romina Paola Siciliano,” supra note 225, at 1590–91. Dissenting Judges Drs. Petracchi and Fayt disagreed with the finding of nullity. Id. at 1592. They found that the cited law was only applicable to regular situations, not to one where the grandmother’s daughter had disappeared and in which criminal prosecution was continuing. Id. at 1593-94. The majority judges included Jose Severo Caballero, Jorge Antonio Bacque, and Augusto Cesar Belluscio (whose leaked internal memo caused such a stir in the Scaccheri case). 
[235]. Ximena’s grandmother complained to the international court that her actions were dismissed for lack of standing and that she had exhausted her domestic remedies in proceedings so prolonged that the girl was going to grow up with the name that her false adoptive mother Siciliano gave her. Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219, para. 2.4, at 2. She alleged that the forced visits constituted a “‘psycho-affective’ involuntary servitude.” Id. para. 3.1, at 2.
[236]. This was the first case of a successful attack on an adopción plena. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 151.
[237]. “Monaco de Gallichio, Darwina Rosa contra Siciliano, Susana, Nulidad de Adopción [of Romina Siciliano/ Ximena Vicario],” en la causa Ac. 27.585/87, 1 a Inst., Judicial Department of Moron, Province of Buenos Aires [slip op.] 3-15(Aug. 9, 1991) [hereinafter Nulidad de Adopción—Siciliano, First Level]. My gratitude to Dr. Roland E. Gialdino of the Argentine Supreme Court (Secretaría de Investigación de Derecho Comparado de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación) and to Maria Silvia Galindez for providing me with a copy of this opinion.
[238]. Id. Unlike the crime of falsely registering a child as one’s own, an adopción plena is a completed legal action that has to be overturned, if it is attackable at all. 
[239]. Id. at 9.
[240]. Id. They also afforded retroactive effect to their decision, since status in the family is always created by human acts, voluntary or biological and is always a jurisdictional act. 
Under the Texas Family Code, there is an effort to promote finality of adoptions which on its face takes a different approach than that of the Argentine court. See Tex. Fam. Code § 162.012 (1999) which provides that the validity of an adoption order is not subject to attack, apparently for any reason, after six months from either the date of rendition or the date the adoption order was signed. Final adoptions are not subject to attack at any time because the required health, social, educational, and genetic history was not filed. (Previously, the period for this kind of finality was two years). See also Tex. Fam. Code § 161.211 (1999) for the equivalent provision for finality in termination of parental rights. Despite this provision, either the United States Constitution Due Process clause or the Texas Constitution’s Open Courts or Due Course of Law provisions may well provide the basis for attacking such a final adoption on the grounds that it was based on a kidnapping.
[241]. “Nulidad de Adopción—Siciliano, First Level,” supra note 237, slip op. at 12–19. The court also refused to deny standing to the grandmother to represent the girl, as had happened in the custody proceeding decided by the Argentine Supreme Court.
[242]. Monica de Gallichio, Darwina Rosa contra Siciliano, Susana, Nulidad de Adopción,” en la causa No. 27.585/87, CApel.CC, Judicial Department of Moron [slip op.] (August 11, 1992) [hereinafter “Nulidad de Adopción—Siciliano, Second Level]. My gratitude to Dr. Roland E. Gialdino of the Argentine Supreme Court (Secretaría de Investigación de Derecho Comparado de la Corte Suprema de Justicia de la Nación) and to Maria Silvia Galindez for providing me with a copy of this opinion; see also “Mónaco de Gallicchio,” supranote 67.
[243]. “Nulidad de Adopción—Siciliano, Second Level,” supra note 242, at 5–13.
[244]. Id. at 27–28.
[245]. Id. at 29 (Judge Conde).
[246]. By contrast to Judge Conde, Judge Horacio Cattani, who was involved in the appellate decision that returned Ximena/Romina to her biological family, a decision that he said kept him up nights, reflected a concept of “best interest of the child” which was like the Abuelas’ version. See Larmer, supra note 42, at 39: “My friends said, ‘how can you do this, opting for the family of the womb over the family of the heart?’ But we knew that we had to change the power relations, so that she could escape the lie and start living the truth.” 
[247]. “Mónaco de Gallicchio,” supra note 67. 
[248]. Angela Singer, Stolen Children, Argentina’s Dirtiest War, Universal News Services, Jan. 8, 1991.
[249]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 144, n.1.
[250]. See Larmer, supra note 42, at 39.
[251]. See Argentinians track down children of the Disappeared, supra note 218.
[252]. See Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1966, establishes in Article 28 a Human Rights Committee, which in Article 41 (1) is empowered to “receive and consider communications to the effect that a State Party claims that another State Party is not fulfilling its obligations under the present Covenant.” International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. Res. 2200, U.N. GAOR 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 52, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966) [hereinafter CCPR].
[253]. Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. Res. 2200, U.N.GAOR, 21st Sess., Supp. No. 16, at 59, U.N. Doc. A/6316 (1966) [hereinafter Optional Protocol]. The Optional Protocol further implements the Covenant by permitting individual parties who claim to be victims to file complaints. Argentina is a party to both the original CCPR and the Optional Protocol, while the United States is a party to the Covenant but not to the Optional Protocol.
[254]. Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219, at 1. The CCPR and the Optional Protocol require that all domestic remedies be exhausted, or that the “application of the remedies is unreasonably prolonged.” See Optional Protocol, supra note 253, at Article 5(2)(b) and CCPR, supra note 253, at Article 41 (1)(c). The Argentine State’s chief argument against jurisdiction over Ximena’s complaint was that all kinds of domestic proceedings were still in progress. See “Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio,”supra note 219, at 4, paras. 4.1–4.5. Ximena’s grandmother, however, argued that even after the 1991 nullity of adoption decision, there was no final solution for the case, which was stretched out and “unreasonably prolonged.” Id. at 4–5, para. 5.1.
[255]. Communication No. 400/1990 by Gallicchio, supra note 219, at 2–3, paras. 3.1, 3.3. 
[256]. Id. at 6–7, para. 5.1–5.2.
[257]. Id. at 8–9, para. 10.3. The Committee also concluded that the State was obligated to provide an effective remedy, including compensation for the “undue delay in the proceedings and the resulting suffering,” and to make sure this kind of thing does not happen again. Id. at 9–10, para. 11.2.
[258]. See supra note 56.
[259]. Arditti, supra note 2, at 128 (by 1987, Abuelas knew of at least 7 children taken in the so-called second disappearances). This is what Silva was trying to do in his abortive flight with Maria Eugenia Gatica. See supra note 154.
[260]. Arditti, supra note 2, at 128–30.
[261]. Report prepared by Mr. Theo van Boven on the Prevention of the disappearance of children, Comm’n on Hum. Rts., Sub-Comm’n on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, 40th Sess., Agenda item 9 c, at 14, U.N. Doc. E/CN.4/Sub.2/1988/19 (1988) [hereinafter van Boven Report].
[262]. Id. at 8–9. He also considered the cases of Mariana Zaffaroni Islas; and the child who was in the hands of former Captain Jorge Raul Vildoza. Id. at 9-10. As these children grew up, neither story had a happy ending. The Zaffaroni girl wrote letters to her biological family accusing them of being communists, while the boy raised by Vildoza first learned of his identity while surfing on the Internet. He voluntarily went to be tested, but continues to stand by his fugitive father and is uncomfortable with his biological family.
[263]. Id. at 9. Bianco was a trauma expert in the Army and worked in Campo de Mayo, an army compound 15 miles northeast of Buenos Aires where there was a clandestine detention center. Human Rights: Kidnapped Children May Return to Argentina, Inter Press Service, Mar. 16, 1988. He was in charge of pregnant detainees there. Arditti, supranote 2, at 129. 
[264]. See van Boven Report, supra note 261, at 9. Van Boven believed that the boy is likely the son of Abel Madariaga. His wife, Silvia Quintela, the mother of the child, has been missing since she was disappeared in 1977. Argentine courts initially refused to allow the father to appear in the proceeding against Bianco because there was no proof that he was the father. Bianco then fled with the boy before blood tests could establish the biological relationship. Id. 
[265]. Van Boven Report, supra note 261, at 9. See Alan Riding, Argentines Fight for Orphans of a Dirty War, N.Y. Times, Dec. 30, 1987, at A1 (after court ordered blood tests in April 1986, Bianco fled with the children to Paraguay where they successfully resisted extradition).
[266]. Arditti, supra note 2, at 129.
[267]. See Marta Gurvich, The Dirty War’s Family Secrets, 21 In These Times 27 (Apr. 28, 1997).
[268]. See Paraguay to extradite Argentine “Dirty War” couple, Reuters North American Wire, Mar. 4, 1997.
[269]. See Gurvich, supra note 267.
[270]. See Amaranta Wright, Missing generation in unwanted spotlight, Gazette (Montreal) at A8. Pablo and Carolina highlight the mixed reactions of the kidnapped children who were located; while some, such as Elena Gallinaris, who was rescued at age 10, battled for years to obtain proper identity papers acknowledging her birth family, others found the whole thing a nightmare inflicted by the Abuelas. Julieta de Petrillo, age 18, for example, had been adopted by a woman who served as midwife to the murdered birth mothers. She believed her adoptive mother’s teachings that the disappeared were subversives and lived in terror that the Abuelas would try to take her away by force. Id. One of the grandparents who believed that their daughter had given birth to one of the Bianco children expressed sympathy and understanding for Pablo and Carolina: “It is very painful to follow the path of truth, knowing that you were raised among lies, and that your ‘parents’ are really the murderers of your parents.” See Marcela Valente, Rights-Argentina: Accounts of Minors Abducted During Dictaef499525692">2, at 135 (Miara was infamous for his role in several concentration camps; he was accused of rape, kicking pregnant women in the womb, looting, particularly hateful treatment of Jewish prisoners, and picking who would be executed at the camps). 
[273]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 135.
[274]. See van Boven Report, supra note 261, at 8. 
[275]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 135–36. The court took this action on the advice of the children’s court-assigned defender, Dr. Carlos Tavares, the very same attorney who defended the dictator Videla in the 1985 trial of the juntas for their human rights violations in connection with the disappearances of thousands of Argentines. See id.The boys’ biological uncle called this decision “an act of hatred.” Larmer, supra note 42, at 39.
[276]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 136. The judge, however, let the boys keep the first names the Miaras gave them in order “to avoid confusion.” Larmer, supra note 42. Miara himself was in jail on evidence of illegal appropriation of children and evasion of justice charges. 
[277]. Unless the provisional shortcut for cases of irreparable harm is triggered, the parties must utilize an unwieldy two-tier procedure in which the Commission has first to make a report and attempt settlement before making the referral to the Court. See Jo M. Pasqualucci, The Inter-American Human Rights System: Establishing Precedents and Procedure in Human Rights Law, 26 U. Miami Int-Am. L. Rev. 297, 306, 311–12 (1995). 
Argentina is a party to the Convention, which provides that any “person or group of persons, or any nongovernmental entity legally recognized in one or more member states of the Organization, may lodge petitions with the Commission containing denunciations or complaints of violations of this Convention by a State Party.” American Convention on Human Rights, November 22, 1969, OEA/ser. K/XVI/1.1., doc. 65 rev. 1 (1970) at art. 44. Corr. 1, January 7, 1970, 9 I.L.M. 101 (1970), 65 A.J.I.L. 679 (1971), 9 I.L.M. 673 (1970) at Art. 44 (American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man). Article 46 requires exhaustion of domestic remedies. If the Commission considers the complaint “admissible,” it can request information from the state party, investigate, and attempt a settlement between the parties (Article 48). The Commission also may transmit the matter to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (“The Court”), which consists of seven judges elected in an individual capacity from among nationals of the member states (Article 52). Only the Commission or state parties may submit a matter to the Court (Article 61). The Court may find that there has been a violation of a right protected by the Convention and order reparations or compensation (Article 63). It can order provisional measures where necessary to avoid irreparable damage to persons (Article 63). 
On November 8, 1993 the Commission sent a resolution to the Court seeking provisional measures in compliance with Article 63, including immediate transfer of the minors to the temporary custody of a substitute family until the issue of delivery to their legitimate family was resolved. “Caso Reggiardo Tolosa, Medidas Provisionales Solicitadas por la Comision Interamericana de Derechos Humanos Respecto de la Republica Argentina” (Jan. 19, 1994) [hereinafter Caso Reggiardo Tolosa], athttp://www.umn.edu/humanrts/iachr/espanol/B_11_2E.htm (Feb. 14 2000).
As late as 1998, the Commission found another case arising from the children of the disappeared in Argentina to be “admissible.” The case of Emiliano Carlos Tortrino Castro had created serious legal problems for the Abuelas in domestic courts that were refusing to order compulsory genetic testing of a child who was alleged to have beendisappeared with his mother when he was eight months old. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 148. A child with the same distinguishing physical characteristic was found and quickly adopted (adopción plena) shortly after the disappearance. It took years for the case to reach the Argentine Supreme Court, which initially failed to rule on the mandatory genetic testing, but declared the case closed due to the statute of limitations. See id. at 149. Rita Arditti reports that the Abuelas consequently launched a national and international campaign to collect one million signatures on a petition to be presented to the Commission in protest of this decision. Id. In 1996, the Abuelas achieved a significant victory in the Argentine Supreme Court, which ruled in favor of compulsory genetic testing for the children, although not for the parents who had taken them. See infra note 161 and accompanying text, for a discussion of this decision. Although the genetic testing decision ultimately was favorable to the Abuelas’ position, the Argentine Court did not reach the prescription issue, which continues to be the subject of international litigation.
[278]. See Nestor Pedro Sagues, Judicial Censorship of the Press in Argentina, 4 SW. J. L. & Trade Am. 45–46 (1997). After the constitutional reform of 1994, Section 22 of Article 75 of Argentine Constitution “conferred constitutional hierarchy to several international documents, including the Pact of San Jose of Costa Rica, officially called the ‘American Convention on Human Rights.’” Id. This means that the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child now also has a “place in the constitutional hierarchy.” Id. at 68 and n.155. 
As of 1996, 26 countries were signatories to the American Convention on Human Rights (“ACHR”), and every country had ratified it except the United States. While only 16 of the 26 signatories accepted the jurisdiction of the Court, Argentina was one of them. See Holly Dawn Jarmul, Note The effects of decisions of Regional Human Rights Tribunals on National Courts, 28 N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. 311, 312 (1995–96). See also Pasqualucci, supra note 277, at 305–06 (The ACHR protects 26 substantive rights). 
[279]. “Caso Reggiardo Tolosa,” supra note 277, at para. 4. 
[280]. See Pasqualucci, supra note 277, at 350–51. Argentina complied so completely with the President of the Court’s order of urgent measures that the plenary Court did not need to order provisional measures. Id. at 350. Argentina responded to the international Court, stating that since the domestic courts had ordered the children into substitute custody and that they were now living with their maternal uncle, there was no further need for action. Id. at 351.
There is no real international enforcement mechanism if a country does not wish to comply. See Jarmul, supra note 278, at 315. The Court has only decided a few cases since 1988, making it difficult to evaluate its impact on national law. However, the influence does seem more extensive in Argentina than elsewhere. Id. at 323.
[281]. See “Caso Reggiardo Tolosa,” supra note 277, at para. 4.
[282]. Arditti, supra note 2, at 137, 145–48. 
[283]. The United Nations Convention On The Rights Of The Child: A Guide To The “Travaux Preparatoires” 291 (compiled and edited by Sharon Detrick, 1992) (hereinafter Guide To The “Travaux Preparatoires”). For background on the Convention, see Cynthia Price Cohen, Role of the United States in Drafting the Convention on the Rights of the Child, 4 Loy. Poverty L.J. 9 (1998). The Convention derived from a Polish proposal for the 1979 International Year of the Child, itself commemorating the twentieth anniversary of the 1959 Declaration of the Rights of the Child. See also Cynthia Price Cohen, The Developing Jurisprudence of the Rights of the Child, 6 St. Thomas L. Rev. 1 (1993); Michael Jupp, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child: An Opportunity for Advocates, 34 How. L.J. 15, 21 (1991).
[284]. Guide To The “Travaux Preparatoires, supra note 283, at 28, 291–96.
[285]. Id. at 292.
[286]. Id. at 292.
[287]. Cynthia Price Cohen is Executive Director of the Child Rights International Research Institute, which she founded in 1992. Cohen, “Role of the United States in Drafting,” supra note 283, at 15.
[288]. Id. at 19.
[289]. Id.
[290]. Guide To The Travaux Preparatoires, supra note 283, at 131. The Polish draft made the best interest of the child the “paramount concern.” Id. at 133. Although there were questions about the best interest of the child being too subjective a term, a number of delegations favored that formulation. Id. at 137. A number of delegations questioned whether the BIC should be the primary consideration in all actions, e.g., where there were competing interests such as justice and of society at large. As a result, Canada proposed changing it to “a” primary consideration. This suggestion was supported by the United States, Japan, and Argentina, and consensus was reached on that basis. Id. at 137–38.
[291]. Cohen, The Developing Jurisprudence of the Rights of the Child, supra note 283, at 19.
[292]. Guide To The Travaux Preparatoires, supra note 283, at 292. 
[293]. Arditti, supra note 2, at 137. The boys were allowed to return to a private school previously attended; their uncle gave up custody after only seven months, admitting that he might have made some mistakes. He expressed his hopes that they would realize someday that they too were victims of the dictatorship, just like their parents.
[294]. “Miara, Samuel yotra s/suposición de estado civil, etc. “en la causa no. 11.000, Provincia de Buenos Aires (Dec. 19, 1995). My gratitude to Dr. Ronald E. Gialdino of the Argentine Supreme Court (Secretaría de Investigacín de Derechro Comparado de la Corte Suprema de Justica de la Nacíon) and to Maria Silvia Galindez for providing me with a copy of this opinion.
[295]. Id. at 16–18. The term used by the court is “patria potestad.” “Patria Potestad” is defined in Dahl, supra note 155, at 305 as parental authority. Dahl says that the “patria potestas” over unemancipated legitimate children belongs to the father and mother jointly. The Court decides in case of any disagreement between them. Illegitimate children and adopted minors are under the “potestas” of the father or mother acknowledging or adopting them. Parents who exercise this authority over unemancipated children have a duty to support them, keep them in their company, educate them, and instruct them in accordance with parental means. The parents represent the children in the exercise of all actions, which may redound to their benefit of such children, and they exercise the power to correct and moderately punish their children. The authority ends with death of either parents or child, the emancipation of the child, or by adoption of the child by another. Id. (citing Spanish Civ. C., sec. 22, 223, 233). 
[296]. See Marcela Valente, Rights-Argentina: Jurists Say Case on Theft of Minors Weakened, Inter Press Service, June 12, 1998.
[297]. See Marcela Valente, Rights-Argentina: Loophole May Allow Prosecution of “Dirty War” Generals, Inter Press Service, June 10, 1998. Mignone was founder and director of the Center for Legal and Social Studies, or “CELS,” and has been regarded as Argentina’s best-known human rights activist, especially during the dictatorship years. He was a lawyer and had been an official of the OAS but was retired by the time of the Juntas. However, after one of his own children, a Catholic social justice activist, was disappeared in 1976, he began his unsuccessful search for her and founded CELS. See Michael T. Kaufman, Emilio F. Mignone, 76, Dies; Argentine Rights Campaigner, N.Y. Times, Dec. 25, 1998, at B11.
[298]. Rock stars and bands, such as Los Caballeros de La Quema, 2 Minutos, Fun People, and Los Periocos, and documentaries, such as Por Esos Ojos (Through Those Eyes) by the Uruguayans Gonzalo Arijon and Virginia Martinez or Botin de Guerra (Spoils of War), publicized the plight of the kidnapped children. See Daniel Gatti, LatAm-Rights: Hunt Continues for ‘Disappeared’ in S. America, Inter Press Service, Mar. 24, 1999.
[299]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 159.
[300]. Horacio Verbitsky, The Flight: Confessions of an Argentinian Dirty Warrior (trans. Esther Allen 1996).
[301]. Scilingo was slashed in the face by unknown assailants after he publically described these flights. Michael McCaughan, Long Memories of a Continent’s Shallow Graves Still Fester, Irish Times, Feb. 21, 1998 at 13. He subsequently traveled to Spain, where he testified about the “death flights” before Judge Baltasar Garzon. But after two years of being held in custody in Spain, he subsequently retracted his “confession.” See Marcela Valente, Scilingo’s Retraction Doesn’t Change Facts, Inter Press Service, Nov. 5, 1999.
[302]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 159–60.
[303]. See Linda Diebel, Trying to Cage a Deadly Angel, Toronto Star, Feb. 15, 1998, at F6. 
[304]. Stephen Brown, Argentine Mothers Mark 1,000 Sad Thursdays, Reuters North American Wire, June 27, 1996.
[305]. See, e.g., Marcela Valente, Accounts of Minors Abducted During Dictatorship, Inter Press Service, June 15, 1998.
[306]. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 167. HIJOS is a human rights group established by about seventy children of the disappeared (whether they themselves were kidnapped or not) in 1995. The initials stand for “HIJOS por la Identidad y la Justicia, contra el Olvido y el Silencio,” translated by Arditti as “Children for Identity and Justice, against Oblivion and Silence.” They demanded annulment of the amnesties and pardons, prosecution of their parents’ murderers, and restitution of the kidnapped children of thedisappeared. See id. 
[307]. The controversial Judge Garzón, who has been called Spain’s best known magistrate, initiated his investigation at the behest of several groups that filed complaints.See Serrill, supra note 7; Marlise Simons, Unforgiving Spain Pursues Argentine Killers, N.Y. Times, Oct. 24, 1996, at A3. 
[308]. Hubert Kahl, Spaniards dub magistrate Garzon ‘King Baltasar,’ Deutsche Presse-Agentur, Nov. 3, 1999. Pinochet was held under house arrest in London for more than sixteen months. While new precedents were set for holding foreign dictators accountable in the courts of other nations for crimes committed at home, the British government released him on humanitarian grounds on March 2, 2000, and he returned to Chile a free man. 
[309]. See Serrill, supra note 7. Although Spanish law does not allow trial in absentia, the judge took testimony and issued international arrest warrants for members of the former ruling juntas. Argentina’s then-President Menem (who had pardoned these same individuals in the 1980s), however, angrily refused to extradite them, calling Garzon a “publicity-seeking show off.” See Jack Epstein, Legacies of Terror, Houston Chron., May 10, 1998, at A1. 
[310]. Marcela Valente, Rights-Argentina: Gov’t to Leave Human Rights Cases to Courts, Inter Press Service, Jan. 4, 2000, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File. Interior Minister Carlos Corach later stated that he would defend the principles of territoriality and non-retroactivity and the fact that these cases had been closed. Viviana Alonso,Rights-Argentina: Menem Expresses Concern Over Pinochet Case, Inter Press Service, Nov. 27, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File. 
International law scholar Jordan Paust states that there are five theories of “jurisdictional competence”: (1) territorial (alleged offense happened within the jurisdiction or where there is an impact within the territory); (2) nationality of the defendant; (3) passive personality, or victim theory, i.e., the victim is the jurisdiction’s national (this is a minority view); (4) universal jurisdiction (any state may address a violation of customary international law) or its subset, “universal by treaty” (applicable only by mutual consent of the signatories of a treaty); and (5) protective jurisdiction, which applies to significant national security crimes against the state, and is enforceable only when the defendant is present in the state (as in the Eichmann trial). Jordan J. Paust, International Law as Law of the United States 387–412 (1996).
[311]. See Marcela Valente, Argentina-Human Rights: Plaza de Mayo Grandmothers to Meet Pope, Inter Press Service, Nov. 20, 1997, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File; Marcela Valente, Videla on House Arrest for Humanitarian Reasons, Inter Press Service, July 17, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File.
[312]. Marcela Valente, The Reappearing Ghosts of the Disappeared, Inter Press Service, June 3, 1997.
[313]. Marcela Valente, Menemism in Trouble, Inter Press Service, Nov. 3, 1997.
[314]. See Epstein, supra note 309. 
[315]. See Marcela Valente, Outcry Over Proposed Monument, Inter Press Service, Jan. 8, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File.
[316]. See Marcela Valente, Astiz Appears in Court as Crowds Howl Outside, Inter Press Service, Jan. 19, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File. He claimed to regret nothing about his role in the dirty war. McCaughan, supra note 301. 
[317]. Valente, Astiz Appears in Court as Crowds Howl Outside, supra note 316.
[318]. See, e.g., Epstein, supra note 309.
[319]. Id. Public opinion had shifted from believing the protesters to be “insane,” to seventy-eight percent in favor of reversing the pardons of junta leaders. McCaughan,supra note 301.
[320]. Marcela Valente, Dictatorship Child Theft Judge Intimidated, Inter Press Service, Mar. 4, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File. 
[321]. Daniel Zadunaisky, Former Military Junta Leader is Arrested for Child Kidnapping, AP, June 9, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, News; AP File.
[322]. Ex-Argentine Dictator Faces More Kidnap Charges, Agence Fr. Presse, Aug. 12, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence Fr. Presse File.
[323]. Former Dictator Jorge Rafael Videla Detained for Stealing Children During Repression, Notisur-Latin Am. Pol. Aff. (U.N.M. Latin Am. Inst., Albuquerque, N.M.) June 12, 1998.
[324]. See supra text accompanying note 46. In a landmark ruling on March 6, 2001, however, a lower court federal judge ruled that the pardon laws, which shield lesser officials of the regime from prosecution for murder, torture, and kidnapping, are unconstitutional because they violate international human rights treaties signed by Argentina. Anthony Faiola, Argentine Amnesty Overturned; Ruling Could Bring Trials of Soldiers Involved in “Dirty War,” Wash. Post, Mar. 7, 2001, at A19. If upheld, this would mean that the crimes against the parents could be prosecuted along with the kidnapping of the children.
[325]. See Valente, supra note 296. The attorney for the Abuelas agreed that there might be a problem with some legal elements.
[326]. See Valente, supra note 296. On the new unit, see Argentina Creates Special Office to Probe Missing Children Cases, Agence Fr. Presse, June 12, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence Fr. Presse File.
[327]. Valente, supra note 305.
[328]. Daniel Gatti, Rights-Latam: New Proof of Coordination Among Dictatorships, Inter Press Service, June 30, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File.
[329]. The second official arrested was Emilio Eduardo Massera, seventy-three, former admiral in charge of the infamous Navy Mechanics’ School. His case involved the children of Patricia Roisinblit and Cecilia Vinas, two women who disappeared from that facility. Vinas’ son was raised by Jorge Vildoza, one of Massera’s chief assistants, until the son took a DNA test at age twenty and found out his real parents. See Kevin Gray, Former Argentine Military Junta Leader Detained on Child Kidnap Charges, Ap Worldstream, Nov. 24, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, News; AP File.
Subsequently, the most notorious member of the military junta, Leopolodo Galtieri, (who was its chief at the time of Argentina’s invasion of Malvinas/Falklands) was detained. After Massera was arrested, a group of about 100 naval officers formed the Group of Retired Admirals, apparently to combat attacks on the institution of the military; they said no action should be taken in these cases. See id.
General Reynaldo Bignone, the military chief before the return to democracy, was ordered to testify on Dec. 23. See Oscar Martinez, Another Argentine Ex-dictator Investigated for Baby Stealing, Agence Fr. Presse, Nov. 3, 1998, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence Fr. Presse File.
The investigations and detentions, and then actual charges, began to mount up: Argentina army dictators formally charged with baby-snatching, Agence Fr. Presse, Jan. 22, 1999, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence Fr. Presse File. (seven formally charged: leaders Reynaldo Bignone, Emilio Massera, Cristino Nicolaides, Ruben Franco, and naval officers Antonio Vanek, Jorge Acosta, and Hector Febres; liens were placed against them in anticipation of possible money judgments).
Conditions of detention, however, were not too onerous, especially for the over-seventy-year-olds, who are permitted to remain under house arrest by Argentine law. SeeMarcela Valente, Activists Hound Admiral Holed Up in Posh Estate, Inter Press Service, May 27, 1999, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Inter Press File (noting that Abuelasdemonstrate outside of Massera’s family estate, where he is receiving a stream of visitors while under “house arrest”; Videla leaves his apartment at will; and Galtieri appeared at the army’s independence day celebration on May 25).
[330]. Argentina army dictators formally charged with baby-snatching, supra note 329.
[331]. President Rules Out Pardons in Argentina Baby-Stealing Cases, Agence Fr. Presse, Jan. 1, 1999, LEXIS, Nexis Library, Agence Fr. Presse File.
[332]. Travis Lea, Cleaning Up the Dirty War, In These Times, July 11, 1999, at 16.
[333]. Argentines Take to the Polls, UPI, Oct. 24, 1999, LEXIS, Nexis Library, UPI File.
[334]. Clifford Krauss, Party of Peron Loses its Hold on Argentina, N.Y. Times, Oct. 25, 1999, at A1. 
[335]. See Clifford Krauss, Sour on the Status Quo, Argentines Vote Today, N.Y. Times, Oct. 24, 1999, at § 1, pg.3 (election issues); De la Rua Says Judges to Consider Spanish Judge’s Request, BBC Monitoring Latin Am., Jan. 6, 2000, LEXIS, Nexis Library, BBC File (reporting that the newly installed president said that if his government receives an arrest warrant from Spanish judge Garzon, they will consider it and decide in accord with existing treaties).
[336]. Gatti, supra note 298.
[337]. See, e.g., Lea, supra note 332.
[338]. Seven Retired Officers in the Dock; Federal judge commits Massera and Co for Trial, Latin Am. S. Cone Rep., Feb. 2, 1999, at 3 (Acosta, who may have been most directly involved, is cooperating and providing details).
[339]. No Lists of Argentine Disappeared–Army Chief, supra note 47.
[340]. See, e.g., Gatti, supra note 298 (Mariana Zaffaroni, raised by a man who participated in the kidnapping and perhaps the murder of her parents, still does not want a relationship with her biological parents and has written them letters accusing them of being communists); Wright, supra note 270, at A8; Katherine Ellison, Cry for Argentina’s Children, Calgary Herald Observer, Apr. 17, 1999, at H3 (noting the case of Javier Vildoza, who located his identity by surfing the Web, but still stands by his naval officer adoptive father and wants to keep his name). As one of the grandparents who believed that their daughter had given birth to one of the Bianco children said, “It is very painful to follow the path of truth, knowing that you were raised among lies, and that your ‘parents’ are really the murderers of your parents.” See Valente, supranote 301.
[341]. The election of October 24, 1999, which unseated Menem’s ruling PJ party in favor of the opposition Alianza, was more a plebiscite on the ills of the Argentine economy and the personal style and political corruption of the Menem regime than on human rights or fear of the military. See, e.g., Krauss, supra note 335, at §§ 1, 3; Anthony Faiola, Argentine Voters Pick Opposition in Landslide; Polls Show De La Rua Ahead, Wash. Post, Oct. 25, 1999, at A19; Rodolfo A. Windhausen, De la Rua’s victory marks new Era, UPI, Oct. 25, 1999, LEXIS, Nexis Library, UPI File.
[342]. Many of them are over 70 years old and may face only house arrest at the worst. See Didier Lapeyronie, Former Argentine Army Chief Accepts Baby-Stealing Probe, Agence Fr. Presse, ntive and a methodological insight. Substantively, it is a rejection of the distinction between the public world of politics (inhabited by men) and the private world of home and family (the realm of women). It also reflects a methodology of social change by which women gathered in “consciousness-raising” groups to share personal experiences, which led them to a political understanding of their common experience as women.
[344]. This statement does not refer to the same phenomenon as the one that Professor Jonathan Miller is describing in his excellent article on Judicial Review and Constitutional Stability: A Sociology of the U.S. Model and its Collapse in Argentina, 21 Hastings Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. 77–176 (1997). He is explaining a kind of collapse of judicial independence in Argentina, which resulted in a highly politicized judicial review which de facto always supported the actions of the executive branch. See id. at 151–52. This Article is concerned with a different kind of “political” meaning, i.e., in the sense of a dispute that is contested with respect to important value judgments and power relationships in society. 
[345]. Similar gateway issues arise and cause delay in US courts when babies are accidentally swapped or adoptions go wrong due to fraud, mistake, or jurisdictional defects. See, e.g., In re Clausen, 502 N.W.2d 649 (Mich. 1993) stay den. sub nom. DeBoer v. DeBoer, 509 U.S. 1301 (1993) (“Baby Jessica” case in which child returned to biological parents from adoptive family); In re Petition of Doe, 638 N.E.2d 181 (Ill. 1994), 649 N.E.2d 324 (Ill. 1995), stay den. sub nom. Baby Boy Richard v. Kirchner, 513 U.S. 1138 (1995) (“Baby Richard” case in which child returned to biological father from adoptive parents). Regardless of the legal outcome in some of these high-profile cases, there was not a happy ending for the children. Baby Richard’s father subsequently divorced his mother, whom he had married during the fight for the boy. Kimberly Mays, who was swapped at birth, but permitted by a court to “divorce” her biological parents and stay with the man she had always believed to be her biological father, ended up a runaway, a young bride and mother, accused of abuse or neglect of her own child, and divorced herself. See, e.g., Girl Who ‘Divorced’ Parents is Missing, Chi. Trib. Apr. 14, 1996, at 12c. About six months after Kimberly Mays testified that she wanted nothing to do with her biological parents, and a Florida court determined that Regina and Ernest Twigg would not be permitted to prove their biological parentage of the girl, Kimberly ran away from the Mays’s home to a youth center. She later moved in with the Twiggs as part of a negotiated settlement. Subsequently she was reported missing from their home as well and found safe at a youth shelter. 
The decisions awarding absolute custody of children like Baby Jessica or Baby Richard to their biological fathers have been criticized on the grounds that courts are ignoring the “best interest of the child.” See, e.g., Nancy Gibbs, In Whose Best Interest?, Time, July 19, 1993, at 44. Dr. Albert J. Solnit, Connecticut state mental health commissioner, commented about a case involving a baby who had been abandoned in the hospital by her teenage mother and adopted by a family who was raising her. When the homeless birthmother, Gina Pellegrino, subsequently sued and obtained custody of the child, Dr. Solnit remarked: “The best interests of the child were totally ignored. What was worshipped was the technicality of law and the mystique of blood ties.” Id. Professor Elizabeth Bartholet, author of Family Bonds: adoption and the politics of parenting (1993) and an adoptive parent, expressed similar sentiments about the “Baby Jessica” case: “It’s outrageous to say the only issue that can be thought about is whether Dan Schmidt’s rights were appropriately terminated or not” in light of the fact that “you’re dealing with a child who has had a 2 1/2 year relationship with a set of de facto parents.” Id.
An assessment of whether the gateway devices are useful or harmful in these domestic cases, however, may very well depend on the context and requires further study.
[346]. See supra notes 99–100 and accompanying text. 
[347]. For the concepts of the “psychological parent” and the child’s need for stability with that family, see generally Joseph Goldstein, Anna Freud, & Albert J. Solnit, Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (1973), Before the Best Interests of the Child (1977), and In the Best Interests of the Child (1986).
[348]. Compare the views of Francoise Dolto, the French psychiatrist who studied orphaned Jewish children adopted by French families, supra note 187 and accompanying text.
[349]. Gary Marx, For Children of the Disappeared, a different Torture, Chi. Trib., Apr. 4, 1993, at 21, zone C.
[350]. Sam Dillon, Custody of twin boys is a battle that lingers from Argentina’s “dirty war,” Houston Chron., Apr. 10, 1992, at A24.
[351]. Marx, supra note 349.
[352]. Id.
[353]. James F. Smith, Sought by Argentina; Children of “Dirty War”: Sad Legacy, L.A. Times, Apr. 20, 1988, Part I, at 1. 
[354]. Children of the Disappeared Primetime Live,(ABC News Television broadcast, Aug. 19, 1993).
[355]. See, e.g., supra notes 204–210 and accompanying text.
[356]. See, e.g., van Boven Report, supra note 261 at 14 (children learned values of intolerance and discrimination from “adoptive” parents); supra note 113 and accompanying text (Paula Logares kidnapped from Jewish family of left-leaning sympathies and raised by wealthy conservative Catholic police family); supra note 293 and accompanying text (unhappy Tolosa twins permitted to return to private school attended when in custody of the Miaras).
[357]. See, for example, the Lemos case in which Judge Padilla rejected defense arguments because no one has the right to own a human being and take control of her personal, familial, and social history, consisting of the values, guidelines, beliefs, and norms of the parents who gave her life. “En la causa Gonzalez,” supra note 173, at 104.
[358]. Buenos Aires, Argentina, UPI, Nov. 26, 1989, LEXIS, Nexis Library, UPI File. 
[359]. For the parens patriae doctrine and the historical development of what he calls “judicial patriarchy” based on it, see Grossberg, supra note 10, at 235.
[360]. See, e.g., supra note 283 and accompanying text (U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child rests in part on the idea of the child as separate rights holder).
[361]. See, e.g, supra note 182 and accompanying text (the defendant parents’ kind of love is merely the desire to possess an object); supra note 183 and accompanying text (judge in Lemos case analysis of objectification of the child).
[362]. See supra notes 97–99 and accompanying text (appropriators’ arguments).
[363]. See, e.g., Herrara & Tenembaum, supra note 5, at 190 (Interview with Leopoldo Schiffrin, ex-secretary of the Supreme Court and then- member of La Plata “Cámara Federal,” an appellate court). He participated in both capacities in the restoration of Laura Scaccheri. Schiffrin explained that the issue was one of defense of the family order, an almost preservative value. This was an old value. The norms that protect the legitimate family, usually one tied by blood except for particular circumstances, are a fundamental part of the development of the civilized world; they are universal, neither progressive nor conservative. The familial group had a right to transmit its values and traditions. Schiffrin further explained that the kidnappings robbed the family of its legitimate role to acculturate a child and pass on its values, a role which is related to biological inheritance and blood ties. When the junta argued that children should not be educated as subversives, they acted like a platonic state in which children were educated by the state. Id. at 191–93. 
[364]. See, e.g., supra text accompanying notes 193–194. 
[365]. See, e.g., supra text accompanying note 294 (Miara case in which the court observed that the couple only told the boys about their being adopted after they were caught and then did it in the most suppressive way possible).
[366]. The Child Convention has been ratified by 191 states, with only the United States and Somalia abstaining. The United States refuses to ratify because many states have death penalty laws that allow an adult to be executed for a crime committed while still a child. Convention on the Rights of the Child, United Nations General Assembly Resolution, U.N.G.A. Res. 44/25, annex, 44 U.N. GAOR, Supp. No. 49 (Nov. 20, 1989), 28 I.L.M. 1448 (1989).
For the role of Argentina in the adoption of the “right to identity” provision, see supra notes 283–286 and accompanying text.
[367]. 262 U.S. 390 (1923).
[368]. Id. at 399. See also Pierce v. Soc’y of Sisters, 268 U.S. 510 (1925) (right of parents to send children to private school).
[369]. 405 U.S. 645 (1972).
[370]. Id. at 651 (citing Meyer v. Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 399 (1923), Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942), and May v. Anderson, 345 U.S. 528, 533 (1953)). 
[371]. See, e.g., Quilloin v. Walcott, 434 U.S. 246 (1978) (upholding Georgia adoption statute which permitted adoption on the sole consent of the mother unless the father had legitimated child by marriage to mother and acknowledgment or court order); Caban, v. Mohammed, 441 U.S. 380 (1979) (invalidating New York law which permitted adoption of an unmarried father’s children by mother’s husband without his consent, under circumstances where father had lived with and supported the children); and Lehr v. Robertson, 463 U.S. 248 (1983) (upholding New York’s adoption statute permitting adoption without notice if the biological father failed to send a postcard to the putative father registry, had not been adjudicated a parent, and also had not lived openly with the child or been married to the mother). 
[372]. See Michael H. v. Gerald D., 491 U.S. 110 (1989).
[373]. See Laura Oren, Section 1983 and Sex Abuse in Schools: Making a Federal Case Out of It, 72 Chi.-Kent L. Rev. 747, 759–61 (1997) (liberty interest is necessary for due process protection, but strict scrutiny review is not triggered unless the liberty involved is held to be fundamental).
[374]. 491 U.S. 110 (1989).
[375]. Michael H., 491 U.S. at 124, 130–31.
[376]. 120 S. Ct. 2054 (2000). Justices Souter and Thomas concurred in the judgment and wrote their own opinions. Id. at 2065 (Souter, J., concurring in the judgment) and at 2067 (Thomas, J., concurring in the judgment). After the death of their son, the paternal grandparents in Troxel were dissatisfied with the amount of visitation that the children’s mother was willing to allow them. Consequently, they brought suit seeking visitation rights under the state statute. The Washington high court found that, in the absence of any showing of potential harm to the children, the broad grant of standing to seek visitation was an unconstitutional interference with the rights of parents to raise their children. Id. at 2057–59. Justice O’Connor’s opinion for the United States Supreme Court did not address the question of whether actual or potential harm must be shown, but it did find that in the particulars of this case, the application of the broad and sweeping visitation statute unconstitutionally infringed on the mother’s fundamental right to make childrearing decisions. Id. at 2063–64. Given the multiplicity of opinions in Troxel, it is difficult to determine either the scope of the due process “liberty” interest possessed by the parents or of any countervailing “best interest of the child.” Furthermore, the biological mother in Troxel also was the raising parent. The grandparents clearly were interlopers, even if they had a prior relationship with the child. The issue, therefore, was not one of blood ties versus psychological parentage. Different fact scenarios in future grandparent cases, however, may come closer to the Argentine conflict.
[377]. 431 U.S. 494 (1977).
[378]. Id. at 504. 
[379]. 431 U.S. 816 (1977).
[380]. Id. at 839, 845. Since child protection agencies often prefer placing children with relatives, it may not be accurate to say that there are no biological ties. A lower court has found a recognized liberty interest by contrast for foster parents whose child’s biological parents’ parental rights have been terminated, who have cared for the child continuously for more than 12 months since infancy, and who have entered into an adoptive placement agreement. See Rodriguez v. McLoughlin, 214 F.3d 328 (2d Cir. 2000).
[381]. See, e.g., ALMA Soc’y Inc. v. Mellon, 601 F.2d 1225 (2d Cir. 1979). The adoptees also argued unsuccessfully that they constituted a suspect class for purposes of the Equal Protection Clause and that sealing records of their birth was an incident of slavery barred under the Thirteenth Amendment.
[382]. Compare the first element of the two-prong test used by the OAS’ InterAmerican Court in cases of disappearances (which by their nature, are designed not to leave much evidence) in Honduras; the burden of proof on the party making the allegations was first to show that the state engaged in an official practice of disappearances or at least tolerated such a practice. For the second prong the Commission then had to establish a link between an individual’s disappearance and that state practice. The Honduras cases reflected a state practice of disappearances notoriously carried out by the military or the police. Then, they showed a link to particular victims. SeePasqualucci, supra note 277, at 343–44.
[383]. See supra notes 138140 and accompanying text. 
[384]. See, e.g., the story of Ximena Vicario, supra notes 218257 and accompanying text.
[385]. See supra note 142.
[386]. See, e.g., Smith, supra note 70, Part I, at 5.
[387]. See supra note 259 and accompanying text.
[388]. See Serrill, supra note 7, at 46 (in 1996, there were more than 400 judges still in office who were appointed by the military dictatorship).
[389]. See, e.g., supra notes 222242 and accompanying text (Ximena Vicario case).
[390]. See, e.g., supra notes 116–132 and accompanying text (Laura Scaccheri case).
[391]. See, e.g., supra notes 229232 and accompanying text. (Ximena Vicario case).
[392]. See, e.g., supra note 105 and accompanying text (Paula Logares case).
[393]. Unif. Child Custody Jurisdiction Act § 14, 9 U.L.A. 580 (Modification of Custody Decree of Another State). 
[394]. See Tex. Fam. Code Ann. § 152.202 (Exclusive Continuing Jurisdiction).
[395]. See 28 U.S.C. § 1738A (affording full faith and credit afforded to child custody orders of the court with continuing exclusive jurisdiction). 
[396]. There is an exception for an emergency which permits a merits hearing but which only supports a temporary order. See Tex. Fam. Code § 152.204 (Temporary Emergency Jurisdiction). 
[397]. See supra notes 225–248 and accompanying text.
[398]. See supra note 281 and accompanying text.
[399]. See supra notes 262–271 and accompanying text. 
[400]. Rita Arditti calls it a change of strategy. See Arditti, supra note 2, at 144–58.
[401]. See supra note 189 and accompanying text. 
[402]. Van Boven Report, supra note 261, at 14.
[403]. Grandmothers, supra note 58, at 13. 
[404]. See, e.g., the arguments of the attorneys for the Lavallens in the Logares case, supra notes 100 and accompanying text. 
[405]. For the “segunda desaparición,” see Arditti, supra note 2, at 128–31.
[406]. For example, the attorneys for the Lavalléns had also defended notorious ultra-rightists of the dictatorship. See Herrara &Tenembaum supra note 5, at 156.
[407]. See, e.g., Arditti, supra note 2, at 137–38 (Tolosa twins).
[408]. Id. at 149 (the Abuelas were able to gather a million signatures to send to Human Rights Commission to protest decision declaring Emiliano Carlos Tortrino Castro case closed on the grounds of limitations).

CV Hans van Loon

Member of the Council of International Social Service, Geneva (1986-2003).Member of the Board of the Dutch branch of International Social Service (1985-1994).C U R R I C U L U M V I T A E

Hans van Loon

Johannes Hendrik Albert (Hans) van Loon, born at Utrecht, the Netherlands, 15 April 1948. Married to Ir Caroline H. Engels; two daughters and one son.

Education and employment:

Studied law at the University of Utrecht (1966-1971), and international law and international relations at the University of Leyden (1971-1972) and at the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva (1972-1973, scholarship of the Swiss Government).

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry (1)  (continued)
    by SUE ARRIGO, M.D.

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry (1)

THE EXPECTED LIFESPAN OF A SEX SLAVE

The economics of a child being sold into sexual slavery are such that it is very lucrative.

A child in the sex slave business has a useful expected lifetime of two years. They fail to thrive in that setting. They die of disease, neglect, abuse and giving up.

The kids are killed if they are seriously hurt, refuse to work, or become too jaded to attract customers. They are almost never freed by their owners because they could talk. It is a dead end occupation usually.

No one takes a child like that to an ER because the sexual abuse might come to light. They are expendable goods that the owners don't expect to last anyway. If they are boys, they might grow up up to be a pimp. S
ome children run away, but they are often re-captured by other pimps. If they come from another country, they have no papers and poor language skills. If they are picked up by the police, they are detained for months to years and deported, often back to the same war zone.

Some were child soldiers or child spies before being forced into sexual slavery. Even without that, they have disabling Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome intentionally inflicted in them in order to disable them and keep them from being able to run away successfully.

THE ECONOMICS OF SEX SLAVERY

If they are transported to a place like New York City, the owner can make about US$50 per hour for about 10 hours a day, roughly US$500 a day or $3,000 a week, which is $150,000 a year.

The kid's food costs next to nothing. The owner has to house them. The rent and clothes, etc. are less than $10,000 depending on the location. It is still $140,000 profit per year, or about $300,000 for the expected life span of the child.

The going price for brothel owners to buy a kid on an auction block in New York City and D.C. is between $500 dollars for a sick kid to $50,000 for a choice virgin who is blond and blue eyed and speaks English.

The average price for a kid from a war zone is about US$2,000. Then there is about a $10,000 cost to get into the auction at all.

(Note: I have attended a number of these. I used to have a hobby of figuring out how to shut the auction houses down. It is a dangerous hobby. People practicing it are flirting with death. Hopefully, they are good spies or operatives before they try it. For training good spies, it is an intiation practice; like the American Indian practice of slapping a grizzly bear. )

The CIA runs the kids in and sells them in large lots like by the ship full or several hundred on a trainload to the auctioners. In that regard it is like the CIA drug running, the CIA only does the big stuff.

If you mess with them at that level they order a hit on you without thinking twice. If one interfers with the next level down, after they sold the kids already, they are not so uptight about it--it may not be their financial loss.

Gathering the "harvest" of orphans in war zones

The CIA and its corporate bosses like the Rockefellers and Bushs make about 1,000 USD per kid from a war zone if they sell them to auctioners. Of that 1,000, the CIA will get about 300, and about 700 will go to the corporate bosses. For drugs the split is more like 15 USD per 100 in profit going to the CIA. There is much more money to be made when the bosses keep the kids in their own hands. So the best kids are skimmed off the top and never make it to the auction houses. Kids are skimmed off either because of looks or smarts. A smart kid, like I was, can be a life long asset and make an owner a lot more money. About 1 -2 percent of kids are tried that way, as spies or corporate slaves. About 5 percent of the kids are skimmed off by the bosses for looks. The best of these end up as a house boy or girl of a politician that the boss wants to keep happy and controlled. They will also be spying on the politician for the boss. In that position some of these kids make it into adulthood.

PRESIDENTIAL MODELS: HARVESTING THE CHILDREN OF US MILITARY OFFICERS

"Presidential Models" who get trained by the CIA are in that category. Brice Taylor is an example of that (See her books).

She says that 3,000 women got made into Presidental Sex Slaves per the figure she heard. They are mind control victims.

See Dr. Colin Ross's book "Bluebird: the deliberate creation of multiple personalities by psychiatrists" which he wrote after having patients like this and reading 15,000 pages of CIA documents released under the Freedom of Information Act.

Their minds were split using torture at an early age. Mine was split at age 3 to 4. One or more of the parts is often very psychic. There are however much better ways to make accurate psychics without trauma.

Presidential Models often have been trained by the CIA in special ESP skills like having a photographic memory. Other special CIA spy ESP skills they may have been programmed to have include the ability to speak "in tongues" i.e. in any language, the ability to see and hear at a distance, as in clairvoyance and clariaudience) A/K/A remote viewing, shapeshifting, and forecasting the future, including stock prices, etc.

The CIA needed these skills in spies. Shamans had the skills and the CIA did the R&D to get them. (See John Perkins' "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and "Shapeshifting" books.)

PRIVATE PROFITS FROM TAXPAYER PAID RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT (R&D)

The bosses own their own high class call services that make lots of money off of servicing their friendly business men.

(See Washington Post Expose at http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/01/309481.shtml )

This is sometimes associated with an escort type of service allowing children to grow up as well by being charming. But that is really difficult as most of the children are too hardened and jaded after a year or two to carry that off.

In the highest class settings, the bosses make up to a million dollars a day for the slave's service. That sounds unbelievable but it is a function of how rich the buyers of the services are and what the skills of a good stock price forecaster are worth to them for a day.

See Hilter's Psychic for a historical example of stock price forecasting(http://www.salon.com/people/feature/2002/02/27/hanussen/index.html).

An Arab sheik wanting to please the President to put through an oil deal will think nothing of spending the million to have a girl the President has slept with; it is sort of a status and male bonding thing.

WHITE HOUSE DINNERS - LUCRATIVE PROSTITUION OF AMERICAN BOYS & GIRLS OF ANY AGE

Presidential models made in CIA mind control fashion, beautiful girls and boys who were charming spies without advanced ESP skills, usually fetched $10,000-30,000 a day for their bosses when used atWhite House functions.

The girls would be at the White House dinner and the men would indicate their preferences by talking to them and showing an obvious interest in them.

Either the man was rich enough not to care about the cost until he received the bill later or he was politely informed of the price by having it listed on the bottom of a card placed next to his drink on a silver or gold tray.

It was up to "the Butler" to know which category the man was in in terms of his wealth and personal preferences.

I usually came into dinner on the arm of the DCI and sat next to him through much of the evening so that he could have me answer his questions as a remote viewer of known accuracy in that personality.

It was up to him if I was to be surrendered to another man for the evening as it affected national security.

Consider for a moment the usual White House dinner. They range in size from 5 women to about 50 women slaves on a given night.

At an average profit of $20,000 per night, 5 nets $100,000 and 50 nets $1 million. Not all nights does that happen.

But roughly the President personally makes a good $30-100 million a year just on the Presidential model sex slaves. That starts to tell you about the conflict of interest in stopping this corrupt system. It has been going on a long time, since about President Kennedy.

President Carter is the only exception to the rule that I know of.

Since I personally was forced into the beds of Johnson, VP Nelson Rockefeller, Reagan, Bush, Sr., Clinton and Bush, Jr. this is not theoretical for me.

However, because I was really a Director of Central Intelligence Model primarily, I ended up mainly the the beds of DCIs from Helms to Tenet.

The $100,000-a-month club to ensure one's political success through blackmail

Now let's talk a little bit about the babies coming out of war zones because I strayed too far into the American children in talking about the escorts for foreign and domestic dignataries.

Women are raped in war and often abandon the babies at birth. The CIA helps fund orphanges in the war zones so that it can skim off the kids it wants. The children under 2 usually are too neglected to survive - failure to thrive syndrome.

The cute ones are bought up by the CIA for the cabal bosses and sold as part of the $100,000 a month club.

Rich people like fine wines to show up monthly and this is a variation of that. They are signed up for it almost automatically without any choice in the matter if they attend certain high class estate ceremonies around the world hosted by people like the Rockefellers.

Getting in the door means that you can't get out it again when the ceremony starts unless you are a very good spy. The ceremony will involve the human sacrifice of some person - often a toddler or young virgin.

After that initiation in the fine art of human sacrifice the guest is expected to carry on that tradition of entrapping others just the same way. Failure to do so is associated with death and blackmail threats. Death can be the result of "accidents".

Few people are sophisicated enough to know not to get into one of these traps or how to get out of them. They have families and they cave in to the pressure. It then perpetuates itself. They get a baby a month to ritually kill and entrap all the politicians and police chiefs that might try to stop their rise to fame.

REVERSE CHRISTIANITY - THE RELIGION OF PRESIDENTS, POLITICIANS & DCIs

They go on practicing Christianity by mouth by day, and satanism by night in their deeds. Some of them are mind controlled by the trauma and drugs at the initial ceremony and do not even know later that they are satanists. Others do know.

I would say that about 20 percent are fully aware that what they are doing is evil and wrong and just don't know how to stop it. About 50 know what they are doing but deny that it is evil.

They excuse it as their right to be pagan and uninhibited. Then about 10 percent are full multiples and are clueless during the day as to what is happening at night.

Then about another 20 percent are too lazy and apathic to think about what they are doing. They are just doing it because others do it.

ORPHANAGES FUNDED BY THE CIA

Let's get down to some of the details, where an investigator could start to hit pay dirt, namely Yugoslavia, which had many abandoned babies, many of them light skinned.

The CIA founded three major orphanages including one of UNESCO’s. The Rockefellers funded four orphanages. There was overlap at one of them which caused some problems. The CIA "talent scouts" came by a week after Rockefeller’s did and that made the nuns suspicious.

In each case, the nuns were told that the scouts were working for large adoption agencies in the US and the kids were to be quickly processed in a large lot for adoption.

The local orphanages in Yugoslavia were absolutely swamped. There were tons of babies and large numbers of war orphans, the later mainly the result of US bombs killing their parents. Some had been dug out of the rubble days later. Many of these kids were extremely traumatized already.

That saved the CIA work some of the work to traumatize them themselves, if they were going to be made into mind control slaves. Some of the bright ones get training to be heads of puppet govt's later.

The US sends them back in 20-30 years later as the head of a country or as an important minister.

Any time you hear of a US-educated native of a country returning to it to suddenly assume an important position in its new US-friendly govt. think about this mind control slave possibility. It happens much more often then people realize.

The CIA and the cabal bosses have been making mind control slaves out of war orphans by the thousands since WWII.

The CIA has been using children from orphanges since its inception

Remember that in WW II the UK and US took in Jewish and East bloc refugee children WITHOUT their parents. Their parents were alive the US just didn’t want them.

A woman I know well, who is older than I, ended up training some of the East Bloc orphans picked up by the CIA, not long after the end of WW II. They were trained as child prodigy musicians. Then they were inserted into East Bloc foreign embassies to provide musical and sexual services. They spoke the local language and passed as natives. They themselves did not know otherwise. But they had personalities that went to phone booths and called the CIA to report on the actions of their East Bloc "owners" at the embassies. Most of the kids were uncovered and killed by the KGB as "foreign agents."

The median time they lasted in the field before discovery and death was about two weeks. Some never made it through their first sonata.

The KGB figured out the scam after the first couple of months of it.

The CIA kept on sending in the kids knowing that their operational cover was blown. It did that for another two years just to pretend to its bosses including the Congressional Oversight committee that this was a successful covert operation that justified the CIA’s mind control experiments on children.

I read the reports at the CIA. I was there as a mind control slave for 40 years and I had an interest in the subject in one of my more rebellious personalities.

I never had the heart to tell that woman what actually happened to the kids she helped train as child spies while she was 12. She started training them after the KGB knew about that specific musical ruse at embassies, and after the CIA knew that the KGB knew and was killing them basically on arrival.

I know that is hard to believe. Betrayal of even its own agents is the middle name of the CIA.

The CIA during the Vietnam War sent thousands of South Vietnamese spies into North Vietnam after it knew that this secret route into the North was blown and the men were ending up being tortured and killed.

The US got caught betraying their agents of because it refused to pay the promised death benefits to the families. Some of the men who later returned after years of horrendous torture sued the CIA. They won a settlement on it.

I remember reading about it a long time ago in Time or Newsweek Magazine. Talk about betrayal. It is the middle name of most intelligence agencies.

Agencies are not run to protect their country’s citizens but to make big bucks for the overlords.

The CIA betrayed Korean children and sent them to almost certain death. The CIA is an equal oppurtunity "employer" who likes to pay nothing at all whenever possible for its spies

Here is a little reality check for you on the subject of the US’s use of child spies from Aldrich’s book "The Hidden Hand" in the chapter on the Korean war:

US intelligence (CIA-DIA unit) Combined Command for Recon Activities, Korea = CCRAK decided to try short penetrations with individual Koreans; Inserted 50 miles behind the lines and armed only with a pistol, they were expected to make their way back to their own lines, gathering military information en route.

Senior officers conceded that only about a third of those inserted would return, but they expected "some really good information".

Anderson, who had direct experience in Korea was less sangine. Scepticism turned to dismay when he learned that those selected for insertion were fresh recruits and would have 7 days to prepare for their mission. It was clear that these agents were regarded as expendable in the extreme.

When the '15 specially selected Koreans' he had been promised arrived at Anderson's facility for training, he could scarcely believe his eyes.

Pathetic and malnourished, they were mostly shy rustic youths in their teens, some as young as 15. A week was enough for them to master the use of basic firearms, but they 'had only the haziest idea of the parachute drill'.

Accompanying his 'agents' as far as their dropping zones triggered a sense of black depression:

Never before had I taken unprepared men into battle and now I was about to do something far worse. I was sending untrained men into the most frightening and lonely of battles...the cold night air rushed in through the open jump door...

The fourth hesitated and was pushed by those behind, and so the procession of fear went on until the fuselage was empty but for myself...

For one wild moment I longed to jump after them and, like the ancient Mariner, felt that I 'had done a hellish thing'.

(Page 284 of the Hidden Hand)

In regard to that dropping Korean teenagers behind enemy lines story. that was the tip of the iceberg. Eisenhower liked the idea, as did other US intell people back in Japan.

They dropped at least 10 per week, week after week, even though none of the ten sometimes were ever heard of again.

After 2,000 to 4,000 teenagers later they decided the intelligence was worthless and called it off. I thought you should know the end of the story.

HOW TO SPOT CIA USE OF ORPHANAGES IN A WAR ZONE

Back to the orphanages in Yugoslavia...

Parents want to adopt want 1 kid not 100 at a time. Anytime more than 3 kids move out of an orphanage at a time, a red flag should go up in someone’s mind. The scouts go in and pick out dozens to hundreds at a time.

A CIA scout looking for bright kids might even have them all tested by bringing a psychologist along and say that they are testing the kid’s ability to adapt after the war.

Or they might say that they are studying any number of problems that these kids have, while really they are looking for talent.

Some CIA operatives looking for sex slaves audition kids by having them do blow jobs on local officials on a special outing for the poor orphans. Those kids that are the best at socializing and sucking to stay alive, win a trip to the US. Yes, they do win a trip to the US -- but as sex slaves. They are unlikely to ever take a walk in nature again.

So an investigator should like for who moved kids out of orphanages in batches, who took them on “field trips” or tested them first. Forget about the innocence of foundations.

The UN, the Girl Scouts of America, the Catholic Church etc. can all be used as fronts for despicable deeds by greedy bosses.

Here is an example of the US Sex Slave trade in Bosnia from my first hand experience --

One of the worst scams that I know of in Yugoslavia during the US take-over wars in the 1990’s involved an orphanage in Bosnia near Sarajevo.

I kept looking for a reference on it in Canadian General Mac Kenzies’s autobiography of his time there as head of the UN Humanitarian effort.

I knew that he knew of the incident because I called him on the phone to report it to him and ask him to intervene.

Yet I could not find one word of it in his biography—that is how whitewashed the world is of these sex abuse scandals involving US politicians.

I had an assignment in Bosnia shortly before MacKenzie got there. The fighting in that region came later. I was assigned to set up an orphanage for the CIA. They wanted this really big facility built, ten to twenty times as large as anyone could believe was needed for that area.

My job was just to arrange to buy the land for the building of this big new “Catholic School” for children. The problem was that there were no schoolrooms in the plan, just endless dormitories.

The CIA wanted 10 acres of dormitories for kids. It looked more like a concentration camp for kids. And they wanted it built next to the train line. That train line to the coast was about the only thing in Sarevjo that did not get hit by bombs and artillery and continued working.

Regular people could not get out of the war zone. MacKenzie’s book shows that very plainly. Planes flew in supplies but the UN did not protect anyone or get anyone out. Those kids were not going to parents and to safety; they were going to sexual humiliation, torment, and eventually their deaths.

Now, I am a remote viewer. I could see what would happen to those kids if I helped the CIA buy land and build that facility so I came back empty handed.

The reason the CIA asked me to buy the land and not some regular person was that they wanted a piece of land that would be "defensible and not fall into enemy hands"---so they wanted a forecaster.

AN AUSCHWITZ JUST FOR CHILDREN

The CIA sent out someone else the next month. That person was not a remote viewer and did not know what would happen to kids if they got there. He bought 14 acres of land, and the CIA built its concentration camp for orphans. complete wi,h barbed wire and control towers with armed guards carrying machine guns. An investigator could check this.

All that happened before a single shot was fired to start that war in Bosnia. MacKenzie notes in his autobiography that when he arrived in Yugoslavia to help protect Croats, he was forced by the UN to open his office in Bosnia hundreds of miles away where nothing was happening - YET.

It was already planned back at the CIA. The CIA had already bought the land to house the children that they planned to sell into sexual slavery.

Remember that each child that gets sold into sexual slavery makes about $700 for the bosses if sold at auction, about $300,000 over its 2-year lifespan if the boss houses it in a brothel in the US, and millions of dollar if it can be raised in the US and turned into a “presidential model” or a “puppet government model” -- if it is male. And all the training, transport, etc. is paid for by the US taxpayer to torture these children into compliance.

Oh, yes, and don’t forget the $100,000 for the babies in the $100,000 a month ritual sacrifice category.

Knowing all that, I think that you can envision what that 14 acres looked like. It looked like Auschwitz.

Row after row of barracks for housing children and an small army of childcare workers.

Now I am exaggerating slightly here, because there was a playground and even a baseball diamond included.

It was built to house 5,000 children, but at the peak of its use per CIA records I saw at Langley it had 12,000 children. The CIA was interested not in having the children there but in moving them.

The CIA did research studies to see why it took an average of 2 months to move any given child out of there. It wanted them sorted and transported faster than that. The bottleneck was in shipping them by boat out of the war zone.

The ships were privately owned by front companies in order to give plausible deniability. The private companies did not want to dock that close to the fighting.

The CIA tried to solve the problem by helping them get cheap insurance that covered wartime loses (i.e. taxpayers subsidized the shipping of the sex slaves for the bosses).

That helped some but crews for those ships were reluctant to sign on once they knew its true destination.

The CIA helped the private bosses shanghai some crews--by kidnapping and enslaving mariners.

The Skull and Bones pirate origins of the CIA and the Cabal bosses were really showing in that manuveur. But that weakness in shipping the sex slaves stateside for the Bones' Bosses remained a problem for the CIA during the Bosnian war.

How many children were shipped out of Yugoslavia to be enslaved during the course of the war?

The CIA put the number at over a million over the period of the Yugoslavian wars (1992-1999). That includes other pick-up centers than this one. Even if one only made $1000 on the average per kid, that is a billion dollar business.

Now you see why the CIA took the trouble of building that concentration camp for kids. They built it before the war started because it is harder to build anything once the shooting starts. So it stood empty doing the first 6 months of its existence because the CIA was having trouble igniting the war in Bosnia.

It was behind schedule and that is why MacKenzie couldn’t see the war and any need for him to be in Bosnia when he was moved into place.

Any competent investigative journalist should be able to find the location of that camp and interview some of its small army of childcare workers. The ships carried all those kids away; someone loaded them.

The CIA and the UN worked together to enslave the children and not rescue them

I called MacKenzie from the CIA’s Headquarters because the CIA was training some of them as child soldiers to hit MacKenzie’s headquarters and I thought he should know. The CIA did that because MacKenzie actually wanted to help a few people survive that war. That was not on the boss’s agenda, unless they were slaves making them a profit. The 30 odd children that the CIA trained as saboteurs to bomb Mac Kenzie’s building never got used because of that call I made.

The CIA recorded the call and called off the attack. But MacKenzie did not do what I wanted and report the CIA’s enslavement of the children to the UN.

I had called the UN about it and they said that MacKenzie had to report it because my report was “unsubstantiated hearsay”. Here I am standing in CIA headquarters with CIA documents on this all over my desk, but whatever I say is discounted because they are too scared to take action. I hung up the phone and cried.

Ten minutes later there was a knock on my door inviting me to go down to the CIA’s basement for another torture session. It wasn’t that I didn’t know what was going on, it was just that the rest of the world did not want to hear it and act.

ANOTHER AUSCHWITZ FOR CHILDRFEN IN MOZAMBIQUE

Let’s look at another wartime example that I was personally involved in. This one was in the war in Mozambique in the late 1980’s, a few years earlier.

I was asked to look at that war remotely from the Pentagon’s War Room. The Soviet Union had not yet fallen. Blacks were dying in Mozambique in a US-Soviet proxy war.

That is, Rockefeller was selling weapons to both sides and provoking both intelligence agencies to increase the intensity of the fighting. It was good for arms sales.

It was good for the sex slave business. It kept his promise to the forces of darkness to rape, pillage, and destroy as much as is humanly possible to do so throughout the world.

I was in the War Room because the CIA sent me over to look for a mole in the Pentagon.

Some Soviet defector had said that a US general was one and the CIA sent out a psychic spy (me) to find and capture him. The place to hang out with and watch US generals is in the War Room.

It was a place that I had been in and out of since I was 15 and sent in to spy on General Westmoreland both in and out of bed to find out why he was not winning the Vietnam War.

In short, it was my second home away from home as a US mind-[control spy. The US military had trained me starting at age 12 at Miramar base in San Diego in military tactics and I was used often to remotely view wars. So that was my cover as I looked for the Soviet run general.

While I was viewing the war in Mozambique I noticed a US run training camp for child soldiers. The average age of the kids was 13. Some were as young as 9 or 10, and some were old worn out veterans of the war at age 16. These were boys.

Next door in a barbed wire compound were the girls of all ages, from babies, to age about 12. The older girls had already been shipped out into sexual slavery.

There were no black adults to be seen around. I wondered about that for a while. Then I saw why that was.

The CIA guards at those facilities did not want the black adults to know what was going on there so they had set up and maintained road blocks on all the roads coming into that about 50 square mile area which was informally known as the “children’s base”.

The number of boys that I saw being trained there was in the thousands, and the number of girls in the adjacent compound, a few hundred. Each girl was holding a baby in her arms even if she was only 4 years old and still there were babies laying listlessly on the ground by themselves.

There was no housing, just a wire enclosure like for a herd of cows. The boys had a shed for housing the machine guns to keep them dry if it rained, but nothing for themselves.

That all made me feel quite sad. I cry easily and so I started crying in the War Room.

The generals did not know why I was crying.

From their point of view the war was going well. There were dead bodies to prove it. There were even the right number of flies on the dead bodies on the pictures coming back from the field to show that these bodies were freshly killed and not from yesterday’s kill.

Yes, the war was going along and my tears were not appropriate to a war room one of the generals came up and told me.

He said, “Save your tears for the US dead and hope that you never have to see that day. By the grace of God we will have them [colored folk] all killed before that day comes.”

I started crying harder. I could see where that general was going to end up in Hell.

It made the life of a sex slave like me look like paradise by comparison.

That is one of the serious problems I have as a remote viewer—I know too much from a great number of different perspectives.

To explain my tears I started telling him about the children I was viewing. He told me the US doesn’t have any child soldiers. I asked him why he believed that and he said because all the pictures they received back from the war were of adult deaths.

I asked him who supplied the pictures. He said the CIA and the DIA. I said “See, that proves my point. You don’t know.” He refused to concede the point.

I came the next day with the proof from CIA headquarters about that specific children’s base I had viewed in Mozembique. I brought CIA photos of the children and CIA reports of their military training.

Then he said to me “The CIA has no right to train them, only we in the Army know how to train soldiers.” He didn’t care that they were children. He only cared about preserving the Army’s turf.

Then to shock him out of his intentional ignorance, I showed him the CIA report on the girls and their being sold into sexual slavery. He was outraged that I would show him such smut. There were some pictures of what the girls had been trained to do in a short period of time, including doing blow jobs.

The CIA authors of the paper had bragged about how well them had trained these girls in preparation for their new careers and supplied the pictures to prove it. The general refused to let this material affect his view of the US as honorable.

It was only when I showed him the CIA report and figures on the money made on the sales of weapons and sex slaves that he conceded that the war was corrupt. And that really only happened because I showed him the list of bosses and how much each one had made in the war.

One of the bosses was a man he had had some run ins with personally. When he saw that man’s name he said, “It figures. He always was a bastard.”

I did find the “mole” that the defector mentioned. He was a US general who did know about the sex slave trade run by the US. He just didn’t know about the Soviet run sex slave trade. He had given the Soviet some very minor secrets for free, thinking it would help shut down the Mozambique and other African wars. It had not unfortunately.

So then I had to run some information into the US war room about the Soviet use of child soldiers and sex slaves to help them keep a balanced picture. The US general got a slap on the wrist. The children got no help whatsoever.

The US generals knew the truth but refused to help. I went back to the CIA and cried in private in the woman’s restroom. I couldn’t cry about what had happened to me at the hands of the CIA and bosses repeatedly throughout my life. But I could feel the suffering of other children and know that what was happening to them was wrong.

SHIPPING SEX SLAVES

Let’s talk about the shipping of sex slaves since it as a bottleneck in the sex slave trade. We can try to make it more of a bottleneck by exposing it. It is obvious that that human cargo is never listed on the ship’s cargo list.

So how do you know which ships are carrying the sex slaves? For a remote viewer the answer is easy—one looks inside the ships from anywhere in the world and one sees the bodies of the slaves.

One can train one’s mind to highlight the ships carrying sex slaves in hot-pink, if one likes. It is not a hard thing to do even for a novice viewing. Any of the naval officers I trained could do that after a week’s training as a remote viewer. But I am going to tell you clues for spotting such shipping that a regular investigative journalist would find helpful.

Most people assume that all ships coming into a harbor are logged in and registered. That is simply not true.

There is a whole system set up for smugglers and regardless of what they are smuggling it is the same -- drugs, sex slaves, art treasures, landmines, chemical weapons, etc.

When a ship first comes in and makes contact with the harbor authorities by radio, it has to give the right signal or it will be bordered by the coast guard as an "illegal" vessel. When it radios, it indicates to the harbor authorities whether it wants to be inspected or not and how perishable its "fruit" is.

Any shipper in the "legal" loop knows the informal code that indicates whether the ship is clean and can be inspected to make the harbour authorities and the shipping co. look good, or is dirty and should not be inspected for those same reason.

It is all just a big game. I used to have my naval remote viewing students play a game in which they screwed up the radio communications for the harbor using their minds.

I scored it a win if they could get a dirty ship inspected and get away with it. It was a bit like the American Indian game of slapping a grizzly bear. It was fun but dangerous. They were training to be spies so they wanted a bit of danger. It is not a beginner's game. Beginners should clip the wings on the trade after the goods are sold to the free-lancers.

Having one or more independent brothel owners mad at you is not too bad. You can go to the police if they give you trouble.

Over 75 percent of sex slaves end up in the hands of the independent brothel owners so it is definitely a worthwhile part of the trade to target in terms of saving lives.

However, the bosses that skim off the top 10 percent of the children make more like 90 percent of the profits. It is like designer clothes--that is where the big profit margins are made. In both cases, one is paying more for an illusion of being rich and famous, than you are for the goods themselves.

If one wants goods shipped off the record it goes "by the way." That is code slang for "off the record."

One throws it into the shipping conversation. Suppose I at the CIA want to ship a load of goods to Iraq for “reconstruction” purposes. I call up almost any shipper in the world and say for instance, 'I want to send 17 “boxes” of construction goods, and “by the way” two bodies to look after them. Make sure they arrive safely, you know.'

The shipper then knows that there will be not two people, but two box containers, each containing many girls and boys. But the usual instruction to the shipper is more like “be sure they arrive in not too bad condition” because they want a high spoilage rate, but for some of them to survive.

Another way I have heard this phrased is, “deliver it ripe but not spoiled” as if one was talking about bananas. The shippers know what the bosses want—they are paid big bribes to know.

The conversation is like an insider’s language. You have to know it and not slip up on it to place the order to move them. But it is all done plain text, not in encrypted format.

Much of it is done on cell phones and is not secure at all, anyone could listen in. As soon as I send this to you it may be changed. The point is that an investigator could listen to shipping conversations for awhile and quickly figure out the system.

It is a system that is worldwide and involves thousands of people that the CIA does not want to send out new memos every week giving them a new code system because that would wreck the plausible deniability and the people loading the containers on the docks would have to learn a new system every week.

If the CIA goes to such a formal process, that will be easy to expose because any dock worker will be able to tell you that he is being given new terminology to use. The reason that sex slaves and renditions go on is because the average person is not watching the docks and the airports.

It only takes paying attention, not any special intelligence training to figure out that planes without other markings except a series of numbers and letters are CIA planes carrying people to black detention centers.

Average people paying attention threw a monkey wrench into the CIA’s kidnapping of people.

Any investigator who was willing to pay some dockworkers under the table would be told what the system is. Here is the way I would do it if I were an investigator to do it safely.

Go to a dock and watch what the dockers are wearing as they go into bars. Dress according. Then walk into a bar that is near a dock and make some friend drinking.

Don’t ask the questions in the bar that is a little too dangerous because of too many ears, some of them protective of their bosses. Invite a couple of your friends to a party at your hotel room. Listen to their problems for a while and then feel them out.

Most of these dockers do not like having to load human cargo. The smell of urine and feces inside gives it away. Water has to either go in on a two-week trip or be in containers on the inside. The water is almost always drugged.

Some of the people inside the containers die. It is intentional. The percent that die is called the spoilage rate.

The brothel owners want to buy children from a spoilage rate of 40 percent on up so that they can get kids too traumatized to resist or try to run away. The stench can be dreadful.

Dockers sometimes vomit as these containers get unloaded—that is how bad it is. Sometimes, they hose the containers down inside before they go into the harbor so that the smell does not give them away. But then they have to deal with the dead bodies that they find inside.

No one wants dead bodies floating into the harbor so they either toss them out the day before they get to the harbor, or they have to weight the bodies down to sink them closer in. In any case there are a lot of people who know what is going on—either by the smell or by trying to combat the smell.

Those human cargo containers are often unloaded as far away as possible from the public’s nose. Sometimes they are unloaded next to fishing vessels to confuse the nose.

Amateurs could easily train their dogs to sniff them out, if their own noses were not so good. Look for any dock unloading area which is long past a gate as distance is the major way that the smell is hidden.

In Vancouver for instance, there are very long docks far out in the bay far from where an unauthorized person can drive.

The human cargo has to be unloaded in a wherehouse and cleaned up. It is not like other cargo that can just be loaded straight onto trucks or rail cars because of the recurring stench problem. The wherehouse will thus have hoses and drains in their floors. Most of the auction “houses” are held in these wherehouses and the buyers are responsible for the next phase of transport onto shore. So a ship comes in, containers are moved into a wherehouse.

A lot of personnel swarm in, water is seen coming out the bottom of the wherehouse for at least 10 minutes as kids are washed inside. Then and only then, after the smell is dealt with, there is a sudden influx of rich men in fancy cars and limos and a bunch of usually unmarked vans without windows. The investigator should write down the license plates of all vehicles and make sure that if the investigator suddenly disappears, many people would send them to the police, and human rights organizations.

One can’t rely just on the police or FBI as the people at the top rungs of those are usually already bought off or blackmailed. One has to rely a lot on informal networks or NGO’s.

Even organizations like the ACLU often have on its board or at its head people who have been “Rockefeller” or “Carnegie” Scholars, or CIA operatives. Some of these people are mind control slaves themselves. They sound good but when you test whether you actually respond appropriately you find out differently.

Ordinary Quakers and other activists are of sometimes more helpful. It has to almost all be done informally. As soon as something is formalized, the CIA moves people in to try to stall it in some way. It all has to be done very ethically and non-violently.

As soon as someone suggests something the least bit unethical or aggressive, throw them out of your life—they are likely an agent provocateur that could lead you into being labeled a terrorist.

Slave auctions happen fast. People want to be in and out in under two hours max. It is not unusual for the whole thing to take 45 minutes including putting the kids in the vans. The vans are pulled into the wherehouse and loaded inside. A man wins the auction bid, and has his security man pull the van in and load it and then back it out. He doesn’t want to have “loose cargo” sitting out there for long. The kids are drugged up on the ships but they are coming out of it during the auction so that the buyers can see what kind of personality they have and whether they are going to attract customers.

As soon as a “lot” of kids, usually 10 to 100 are sold, then are given oral drugs again and loaded into the vans. But it takes up to 10 minutes for the drugs to sedate them again and in that amount of time they can do a fair amount of damage inside a van or make a fair amount of noise.

Some kids are killed in this process because stun guns are used too much or they are given too much of a drug. What drug they are given will depend on how long they have to be transported in the next leg of their journey.

Routinely the kids are naked the whole time. The vans are often naked inside too, with easy to hose out features. Slavers used to use U-Haul and Ryder vans, but those companies got wind of it and basically managed to get out of it by tightening their rules on recording the driver’s licenses and credit card numbers of the renters. That was all it took, forcing their own workers to follow their policies, to force the slavers to buy their own vehicles.

That means that their own vehicle license plate numbers are a weak point for them. If the buyers are front organizations for the bosses and the CIA, then those license plates may be “unregistered”—fakes that do not link up to a real name anywhere in the world. But the numbers still help one track the trade, just like the numbers on the rendition planes.

If the van owners are free lance brothel owners—then those vehicle numbers may go to a person who the police might be willing to prosecute in the sex slave business. Like in the drug trade, the police will prosecute the free-lancers to make it look like they are doing their jobs.

The free lancers are often fairly obvious—they are less rich and more varied in appearance both personally and in their vehicles. The rich often buy a vehicle, use it for a few months and then turn around and sell it for another purpose. The VIN numbers could be a problem for them even though the plates are false.

However, almost all of the vehicles that the rich use to transport the sex slaves on land in the US are made at one plant in the US. That plant in in Atlanta, I believe. It is the only plant that make vans with holes in the bottom of an enamel type of floor.

Cattle do not have to be hidden in transport, so this combination of having to be hidden and having to be hosed down and needing some ventilation but good sound-proofing is almost unique in the automotive industry.

Over 80 percent of those vehicles are bought for the slave trade originally. They are bought in lots of 100 or more by the bosses. Putting pressure on that auto manufacturer not to produce those vehicles would slow down the sex slave trade. I believe that it is Chevrolet that makes those vehicles. There is a legitimate use for those vehicles, but those people have another vehicle that meets their needs and most of them buy that alternative anyway. My mind has a little trouble bring this information up which is why there are long lead ins before I get to the point.

I ahve been to that factory in Atlanta. A Rockefeller took me because he wanted the vehicles re-designed and he wanted my opinion on the plant engineer’s plans and whether the price could be brought down. I was there for about 2 hours in the 1980’s.

It was during the Iran Contra hearings and I had to get back to testify in them in a closed door session in the afternoon. So we had flown down in a private jet in the morning, and then taken a chopper out to the plant. It was a very short ride. It felt like we just got up in the air and landed again.

The requirement of needing good drainage and needing soundproofing were almost contradictory. The engineer had wanted the kids just to be better drugged so that soundproofing wasn’t needed. That was an unrealistic expectation on his part but he had to hear it from a doctor to understand why and I guess that that was why that Rockefeller had me flown down to talk to the engineer.

In the face of the importance of the Iran Contra hearings to the CIA, it is interesting that that Rockefeller was able to cart me off to deal with a sex slave transport problem. I think that tells you something about how much of a bottle neck that was on the Rockefeller fortunes and also how well they believe that they had the congress already bound up as good slaves themselves.

Ok, so when one sees a van of this type drive up to a dock, it is extremely likely that it is carrying sex slaves. It would cost the bosses a lot to have the vans redesigned to look differently. So groups of concerned citizens could put a dent in having sex slaves brought into their communities by watching the docks and recording the license plate numbers of the vans driving out onto these long docks. Writing letters to the manufacturer or staging protest demonstrations outside the plant and demanding the list of corporate buyers of these vans would also be useful.

The vans—let’s see if I can adequately tell you what they look like so that you could recognized one when you see one. They come in a couple of different sizes. The biggest carries a 100 slaves. The smallest about 20, drugged and thrown in on the floor. That is not very big. They are really Ryder sized vans. But they have no over-the-cab van space as no kids go up in such a space.

The insides are a plain rectangle. The outside walls are about a foot thick and they are rounded on the outside. Their floors are surprisingly low to the ground like Ryders because the drugged kids are heavy and no one wants to lift them up, if one doesn’t have to. It almost always happens that some of the kids do not wake up between the ships and the vans.

The ships carrying such cargo almost always get first priority for unloading at a harbor. You can almost tell which ships are carrying “by the way” cargo by how fast they get unloaded. The harbor authorities are usually well aware of what cargoes they are not supposed to inspect and want them out of the way as soon as possible so that the DEA does not find them and give them, the harbor authoritiesm trouble. Almost everyone in the harbor authorities is on-the-take from the bosses.

In fact, how they could get such a job without the approval of the bosses and their agencies is beyond me. It would have to be a bureaucratic snafu or a small harbor not to have an adequate control system in place.

Since only about 2-4 % of all shipping containers are inspected anyway, it is not hard for the harbor authorities to avoid inspecting the “by the way” cargo. The job of the harbor authorities is to prevent competition from “illegals”—all those that the bosses do not authorize.

It is a monopoly system. The bosses sent up corporate agreements with their friends to share the trade and everyone else is considered an illegal. The distinction is entirely arbitrary. An illegal could sign an agreement with a boss and be legal next week. Or a legal could piss a boss off, and next week be an illegal. This is the way the world really works at this moment in history.

But I forced the “by the way” cargo off the Naval vessels by training Naval officers in remote viewing and then watching them to make sure that they didn’t let that cargo on board ship without having to answer to me for it. So I do know what it takes to clean up the shipping because I did it in one corner of shipping.

But the US Navy is not a small enterprise. It has a lot of ships and carries a lot of cargo. So to do in that size of outfit is no small feat. On the other hand I had the support of most of the Admirals and of the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) at the time and the status equivalent of a rear admiral.

Since I have not been embedded in US intelligence and military operations since Aug. 2004, the Navy ships may have gone back to carrying “by the way” cargo. But while I was at the ONI from 1993-2004, part-time I managed to free it from the control of the bosses including by making it financially independent of their control. I trained Naval officers on how to invest money cleanly and how to watch financial transactions to find corruption. It is possible to do. The results are good.

That type of “accounting” just needs to be generalized worldwide. I believe that even the bosses will eventually accept a clean system, because it will be to their advantage to do so.

Everyone uses cars and planes these days, even those people who used to own horse buggy cabby monopolies in New York City. Technological advances over ran their monopolies.

In the case of remote viewing, it is a technological advance in intelligence that in overrunning the old ways of intelligence of blackmail, force, and corruption. Working from the truth of the Akashic records using ethical methods is much more effective then cronyism and cooking intelligence in getting results, even if you still had the some goal of making money.

The old system has been outclassed. To go on using it is to keep using horse drawn buggies after the arrival of cars. It will be done for a while and then the car will be bought and rule until the next improvement comes along.

The reason I am sure that intelligence will go this way is because my remote viewing skills were so sought after and fetched such high prices. Tenet used to complain while I was in his bed that most of the phone calls were for me not for him. That was true because in any emergency, the person calling wanted a fast answer and an effective strategy.

If they talked to Tenet, he asked me what to do anyway. So by asking for me first it saved them time and effort. It is actually much faster and more effective to just see the correct thing to do, then to try to force people to do the wrong thing. The same phenomenon happened when I was with a Rockefeller at his office.

If another banker or CEO wanted to set up a deal and there wasn't much time, he would ask to speak to me instead of Rockefeller. I could see the right deal for the two to them to make better than they could even if they spent a week together. Then Rockefeller signed the papers without talking to the man. He was going to have me draw up the agreements and the lawyers put it in legalese anyway.

Once this happened so fast that Rodman Rockefeller did not even know later that he had just bought a big company. The DCI needed me back at the CIA immediately. It was a year before Rodman really figured out that he owned that company because he didn't keep up with his homework. In just this way, the old system will be bypassed because it lacks effectiveness and satisfaction.

The truth of the matter is that more than sex and drugs, people want to be free of their internal doubts and torments. Men paid a lot more to see me than the White House beauties for that reason. A really stunning girl went for 30,000 a day and Rockefeller was getting 30 times that for me.

People want truth and to solve the real problems in their life even more that they want sex and drugs. People had sex with me because they were looking for more out of life than they had and didn’t know how to get it. Once a person has the truth and internally satisfaction, sex and drugs are barely of interest to them anymore.

Once one learns how to be full of joy and contentment even under torture, one has something that is truly priceless. One has everything one needs, without needing anything at all. It is a type of freedom that few people even know exists. ecrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry(2)
    by SUE ARRIGO, M.D.

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry(2) How can we shine the light on this problem of sexual slavery so brightly that it vanishes under the exposure?

Suppose I told you that a particular Supreme Court Justice was getting kick backs on the sex slave business from the White House and told you how I knew that was true?

Let us go back to the 2000 election. I believe that Bush got into office because the Supreme Court was paid in favors and in money.

What I am alleging is a conflict of interest on the part of at least one Supreme Court Justice. Others of them might be involved as well. It is against the standards of legal practice for a justice not to recuse himself if he has financial ties to the members of a case.

When Bush got into office, all of the cabal that backed him and whose fortunes rose with him are members of the case.

Now my having been a sex slave to the Bushs and the Rockefellers is how I know this information. Since I was tortured periodically by Bush, Sr., Rockefellers and their henchmen I was under considerable duress to do as they said.

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry(2)  (continued)
    by SUE ARRIGO, M.D.

Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry(2) I was not a free agent.

Rockefeller had me reviewing financial transactions he made as I am a mathematician with some usual and valuable skills. About a year before the 2000 election I flagged a particular transaction, or rather set oftransactions as likely to prove highly problematic in the future. I recommended that they promptly be reversed. David Rockefeller declined saying that it would lead to too much trouble.

The transactions were a series of 6 payments to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. The payment amounts were large and curious. They were formed only of 6's and were progressive. It was like a person with a mathematical obsession was trying to inform the Justice of their problem in a creative way. The first check was for 66 dollars. The second was for 666. The next was for 6,666. The fourth was for 66,666. The fifth for 666,666 and the final one was for 6,666,666.

So we are speaking of a total payment of over 7.5 million dollars which is not a trivial amount to show up in a Justice's bank account in a period of one week. Now I said these were checks and that is not entirely accurate. It was a bank transfer that was listed as if it was a check on the statement. But there was no paper trail of checks to back it up.

The transfers came from a David Rockefeller account at his bank to the Justice's account at that same bank. That bank is one whose records I have monitored for years for unusualtransactions per Rockfeller's orders. Substantial assets of it are the direct result of the sex slave business, mostly from the US side of it.

For instance, when Rockefeller charged a man a million for my services, a million was received from that man by the bank the next day or two . That was a recurrent and predictable result of my spreading my legs and my mind as Rockefeller's slave.

I had been in and out of Rockefeller estates and beds as their slave since I was 16 and DCI Helms ordered it. I said to David Rockerfeller who was hard of hearing;

"DAVID, WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE YOU THINKING OF WHEN YOU SENT THOSE SUMS OF MONEY OVER TO THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE?" He appeared not to have heard me because he replied "I was thinking of you, my dear."

Undeterred, I repeated my question louder and closer to his ear;
"DAVID, WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE YOU THINKING OF WHEN YOU SENT THOSE SUMS OF MONEY OVER TO THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE?"

This time he looked at me quizzically and said, "Did I forget to put my hearing aid in?"

He never put it in in the morning before he got out of bed. I moved the cream colored satin sheet off my naked body and got up and got him hishearing aid and after he put it in I repeated my question for the third time.

"DAVID, WHAT IN THE WORLD WERE YOU THINKING OF WHEN YOU SENT THOSE SUMS OF MONEY OVER TO THE SUPREME COURT JUSTICE?"

He said to me "You don't have to yell at me. I can hear perfectly well." Meanwhile both the butler and the maid had come to see what the ruckus was about and became witnesses to the answer he gave me. He said, "I wanted him to know who his boss at theSupreme Court was so I sent him the message in a way that I knew he would get it. And don't forget it. I am your boss too."

Being a good slave, I kissed his naked thigh playfully and told him that I would never forget the he was my boss if he would explain to me, a simpleton, why he sent 6transactions when the last one would have conveyed the same message.

He looked off at the distance for a moment and then asked me "Don't you get it?"

The maid and the butler were both still posed at the edge of the bed awaiting his orders, if there were to be any.

"No," I said as innocently as possible. "Why?"

"You know why." He said somewhat angrily. "The devil can not refuse a request when asked 6 times."

"Asking him what?" I asked.

"Asking him to do whatever I want." he said somewhat nastily. And then in case I was too simple to have understood. He said. "I want him to serve my interests. I have paid him to serve my interests and that is that. He will do as I say from now on."

Months passed and the elections votes were counted and left uncounted both. The case went to the Supreme Court. No more than a month after that I was in that man's David's bed again in order to avoid his guards torturing me yet once again. He had hishearing aid in. We were in DC at a White House dinner under Clinton earlier in the evening.

He had mentioned the Chief Justice's name once in the conversation. He had gloated to Clinton, "That Justice is a good man. I believe that he would do anything I asked him, to as a personal favor, mind you." David had paid for my white silk sequinced gown and he was removing it at that moment to expose a breast.

I asked him in that opportune moment "David, do you think that I should sleep with the Chief Justice at the Supreme Court?" He asked in a little spasm of jeolous, as he liked to sell me but only if I objected to the man, "Why do you ask?"

"Because you don't love me anymore." I lamented.

"Yes, I do." he lied not so convincingly. "I never loved anyone better than you." Now that part I did believe. He never loved anyone. He did not know what love was. Love is taking on yourself torture to protect others. I let the gown fall to the floor and he hurried to pick it up. I kissed the back of his neck and asked him. "Why did you want to give my services to that Chief Justice?"

His neck flushed red and he turned to me and said "I didn't think that the money would cover the full amount for his election services. I was wrong. It was enough."

"But 6 transactions!" I fussed. "Surely someone will notice."
"I will pay them not to." he said. No one at the bank will tell.

I am not at the Chase Manhattan bank as I tell you.

How does one gets those records to prove the buying of a Presidency? I wonder how one proves that the Chief Justices's opinion was swayed by that 7million dollars?

Or is it just enough that he received the bribe? Since I am a sex slave and men deposited money into Rockefellers private account at that bank, the same exact account that the Chief Justice received the money from, I wonder if I can get the records of the money David Rockefeller made from my services and how he distributed my money?

Since my worth to him as a slave was dependent partially on whether the man he wanted got into the White House, and that was wages that he stole from me, don't I have a right to the records that show he paid the Justice to keep me enslaved to his man at the White House?

Really, I do not understand the law so well. I think that the Chief Justice owes us all a big apology--he put a sex slave boss's son inthe White House. He accepted a bribe that kept me enslaved and tortured to boot.

Now you could say that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court did not know that the money he was given came from the sex slave business. And that is possible. But I think it would be hard for him to say that he didn't know that David Rockefeller was in that business, because he asked Rockefeller for my sexual services. And that was before he received the 7 plusmillion dollars.

Now, bear with me as I slow down and try to go through this carefully. It was about in Clinton's first term. I was at a dinner of State atthe White House . David was there and so was that man who became or was chief Justice at the time. He was a rather handsome man for his age, though frankly, I would not have slept with him if I had a free choice without duress.

Part way through the evening he came over to where I was standing next to David holding his drink. He asked David confidentially-like "Why don't you send her over to see me sometime?" as if I wasn't there. David and he discussed the price for my services. The justice raised his left eyebrow at the figure and set his drink down saying "That is too steep for me".

David made him some kind of deal as I wandered off to get another drink for the judge so as to not have to listen to myself discussed as an innate object to be bought and sold at the whim of others. When I returned, a date was discussed. But the justice was impatient and led me into a bedroom in the White House. Not knowing his way around well, we will give him the benefit of the doubt, he put me on Clinton's bed. Clinton thus came in later in the middle of the evening to find us in his bed. He chuckled and said "Expensive date, huh?" and left. I guess that everyone knew Rockefeller was a tightwad. I did see the justice put money or a check in the hand of David.

I am happy to answer questions. The sex slave trade and the drug trade are directly related in a number of ways. They have the same bosses, the same agencies and the same money laundering practices in almost any intelligence setting.

However, the CIA and the KGB are not as separate as one would think. That has been the case since before WW I. One of the Rockefellers funded the Bolshevik Revolution for Lenin in order to acquire more of the Southern oil fields of Russia for his Shell Oil.

That meant that in WW I and WW II the Rockefellers had heavy influence on the KBG and the CIA. This is getting closer to answering your question when you realize since the Rockefeller's money was originally made in the opium trade in the 1800's. That family has also been one of the major movers in the sex slave business, accounting for about 40 percent of it world wide. They currently have about 28 percent of the drug trade, having slipped in it for a number of reasons.

Having said how intertwined the two are I now want to say that they usually have different men handling their operations once you get below the level of the chief managers.

For example, Nelson Rockefeller, was head of both his sex slave and his drug business and the heads of the CIA were his public side "employees" in that he had the power to get them fired or executed.

Casey died as a result of a hit by the Rockefeller family because he didn't do what they wanted enough to please them. The brain cancer he had was bogus. It was someone else's X-rays with his name on them. And he was DCI at the time. He did not fully understand the power structure that he was in. He was fooled by the organizational charts that show the CIA as a public institution headed by the President. I tried to explain to him how things really work. He didn't want to believe me.

The US is not a democracy nor a republic and hasn't been, certainly not since Carter, but I doubt it was functionally one doing the whole of the 1900s. Howard Zinn in the "People's History of the US" would probably agree with me. It is easy to see because the populist movement in the 1930's did not move the govt. The corporations called in the pinkertons and put down the strikes.

The CIA itself is divided into departments so that while the Dept of Ops handles moving both drugs and sex slave, different people handle those. It is like at a University, there are professors of Literature and of History and though they both read books and sometimes the same books they are responsible for different aspects of "culture".

Let me get more specific. There was a Deputy Executive Director of the CIA, #2 man in the agency at one point, who secretly agreed with me that the sex slave business was wrong. In his office was a filing cabinet that had all the contracts between suppliers and distributors in it. It was not kept on computers -- too insecure. The drug trade contacts were in a separate filing cabinet. He let me destroy the sex slave files in his office one day.

It set the sex slave trade in the Western World into slow motion. It took it almost two years to regain its momentum. I got tortured for it. I didn't regret doing it. What I did did not much affect the CIA officers running the delivery of sex slaves in the field much. They still knew where to get the slaves and who to deliver them to.

What happened was that the contracts between the bosses were destroyed and they bickered, each claiming more of a share of the market then they were entailed to. In the face of that disharmony they were unable to collaborate well and the trade slowed down about 30 percent, then more as they fought and they eventually recovered.

Surprisingly, it had very little effect on the drug trade even though the ships carry both sometimes. It didn't slow it because they still had the drug agreements and still honored those. The US Navy was coerced into running both sex slaves and drugs at various times.

Most admirals are strait laced and do not approve and will work very very hard to stop that sort of thing. But unless one is a remote viewer it is not possible to inspect every container coming onto a Navy ship for drugs. People are not as easy to hide.

Let me see if I can go deeper into your question because I think that it is an important one. The real issue for me is whether it is possible to get these immoral soul-destroying trades under control on the planet so that people can have sane lives. I believe that the answer is Yes, it is completely possible. That is after watching this business for 40 years from the inside.

Yes, it is completely corrupt and pervasive. Yes, it has corrupted banking, governments, and our every understanding of what intelligence agencies and national security is about and how to do them. Even so, even though this planet has these problems like a terminal cancer patient with several different types of invasive cancers, I still know that it is possible for the patient to recover.

I am going to see if I can explain how I know that to you in a way that you can accept. The simpliest answer is that Nelson Mandela knew he was going to be president of S. Africa and end aparteid. He said that before he went into prison the fist time. He said it at a rally. Winston Churchill as a child knew that England was going to be in trouble later and he would save her.

Gandhi knew he could force the British to walk out of India if he persisted. General Billy Mitchell knew in 1923 that he had to get the US to make airplanes because air power would determine who won WW II. I know that I will reform intelligence and governments world wide to prevent nuclear holocaust. I often know things with certainty which is why I was useful to DCIs. I intend to do this and I will, by the grace of God, because it is the job God has given me and He will not fail me. He never has.

Even though I have been a thorn in the side of Rockefeller, the Bushs, and the CIA and even the KGB for decades, they have tolerated me and used me, because my skills are very useful. I really only have one skill, faith. No matter what problem was brought to me, I could figure out how to reduce it to the ethical part of it to do and accomplish it - because I relied on all-knowing all-accomplishing wisdom. Christ walked on water and raised the dead. He healed the sick. People like Padre Pio have also been associated with miracles.

Yes, it will take a miracle for the world to change and become sane and stop worshipping death and destruction. But in my experience, miracles are not only possible but can be reliably invoked.

Maybe that is more of an answer than you wanted. I used to take an auditorum full of Naval officers and get them to be psychically very accurate in one evening. (Then it took they a week to get used to it.) That, like the 4 minute mile, used to be impossible. It isn't any more. The corruptions on the planet will disappear because of an advance in technology. That advance is this transmission of being able to directly read the Akashic records.

Then there is no way to hide corruption. The sex slave trade, the drug trade, the theft of elections, wars etc. all have secrecy as a necessary ingredient, and lies about the consequences of one's actions. They look like a lot of separate problems, all very overwhelming. But there is realy only one problem, a very simple accounting problem - people are not adding up the real costs to themselves correctly. They don't have the skill needed to do so. That can be corrected soon.

TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCES CHANGE SOCIETIES - RADICALLY AND PERMANENTLY

For forty years I have been a remote viewing trainer for the US govt. The bosses have liked the results that came out of it but wanted to hide the technology from the public. They are resisting it going public. But they will not be able to contain it. It is rather like the hundredth monkey experiments. The innovation has already become part of the collective unconscious and will manifest. I trained over 15,000 people. That is a lot of people who actually know the truth about how the world can shift out of annihilation. They may still have a little hesitation to use their skills to expose the corruption to release it into forgiveness and repentance, just like the early pilots had some hesitation to fly across oceans. But the inevitability was there.

The Akashic records will become the basis of people's decision making because so many people have tapped into it. Those records are without bias or flaw. The decisions that come out of union with them have certainty of result. Most people have never experienced knowing something with certainty. It seems like a contradiction.

When I taught at the Pentagon in 1981, I asked everyone who brought my class a problem to write it down and then later write down if they were satisfied with the solution that we provided them in a week's time. I had hundreds of difficult problems brought in and at the end I had only one man not sign that he was satisfied. He had died in the meantime.

There is a good and workable solution to every single problem that is ethical to solve. It is just that it can require a lot of faith, courage and dedication to get to it.

From my perspective Finders was a CIA run mind control sex slave experiment

1) I will first tell you how I knew about the experiment.
2) Then what the goal of the experiment was.
3) Then how the experiment was run.
4) Then what the lives of the children were like under it.
5) Then what went wrong with the experiment.
6) Then what the results of the experiment were.
7) Then what the CIA analysts said what the results were.

This really should be a full-length book on the enslavement of children.

I have 40 years inside the CIA and it was my intention to someday be able to expose all this abuse of children by the US govt. But I don’t have the time to write out all the details today. I just want to cover the overview of these topics.

My specific knowledge of the Finders experiment came from reading 3 books in the CIA and talking to two of the in-house researchers who were responsible for administering the Project in the Dept. of Plans, in the Division that should be called Mind Control but due the sensitive nature of the topic was instead called “Future Assets”.

Its main office was on the third floor of the main CIA building, until it moved to the 5th floor under Goss. By then I was gone. The importance of the move was that the higher up in the building the closer to the DCI, the higher the priority. That is the way the CIA works.

The main facility for that Division is not surprisingly in a separate building because the CIA has grown over time. It occupies 2 floors of a large building and has over 40 full time researchers in it. These are only devoted to mind control.

The CIA has a separate Division for Assets and their recruiting. The largest “Future Assets” facility is in Maryland, across the Potomac by about 40 miles; a fact one of its researchers we will call Ted Hallsted bemoaned to me as it caused him to be on the road a lot.

That facility has over 200 researchers in it and has a clinic and psychiatric hospital for children associated with it. Nominally it is a University Research center devoted to the study of childhood mental illness. However, the clients come for minor problems like learning disabilities, and attention deficit and leave as multiples without their parents knowing. The clinic only takes “high functioning” children—not schizophrenics, or cerebral palsy kids. Unsurprisingly, the Rockefellers, and the Carnegies are major funders of it.

To work there requires a special security clearance that only the CIA can give. I went over to look at the place once to size it up. That was in the 1980’s. Everyone was wearing the same badges that the CIA uses with the same magnetic strips on the back of a picture ID.

To get into the main research building one inserts the badge into the same type of entry stile as we were using at the CIA at that time. I inserted my badge from the CIA and got in no questions asked. Now I was on a bit of a mission at the time. I wanted to leave a particular book on the desk of a particular researcher—by hand and then leave before it was known who had done that. That action of my related to an unsolved murder of a child.

The researcher was supposed to follow up on all of his experimental subjects. I wanted him to know what had happened to that particular child as the result of the experiment that he had designed and run. The book was an internal CIA production FOR EYES ONLY and he was not on the list of EYES to see it. I felt that that was a deliberate oversight that needed to be corrected, so I did so.

The book had come to my attention at a meeting between the DCI and a CIA risk assessment lawyer on a possible lawsuit for a wrongful death. The DCI wanted me there to ask me if what was in the book was true. I asked for a copy of it to read it, naturally enough.

I was not on the list of EYES either but I had a NEED TO KNOW and so did that researcher. I told the DCI that the contents of the book, produced by a CIA analyst and an FBI homicide officer, were indeed true. The DCI frowned at that. The murderer was one George Bush, Sr. who was Vice President of the United States at the time. The book had been commissioned by the CIA to find all the loose ends and suppress them. To do that it had to have the truth.

It is not possible to do a competent cover-up job if you don’t have accurate intelligence to start with. The DCI wanted me to write a report on what else the CIA needed to know that was not in that book. Most of what I supplied was a list of over 20 other similar victims of the same Vice President; each one of which needed as thorough an investigation. They did not get it.

Part of how I later ended up as a "pathologist" part-time at the White House when Bush, Sr. was President, was due to this particular case almost coming to trial.

The boy was 6 when Bush ritually killed him in a Skull and Bones ceremony to curry the favor of the dark lord. The murder was committed within 5 miles of that “University Research” facility. Most of the 20 odd victims were killed at the same spot. It was a quick and easy drive from the White House.

This is hard on my regular personality to write down. She didn’t ever hear about this before. So bear with us as we try to go through this material in as straight a line as possible on a thorough fare without taking any turn offs, until you get to the exit and go about 2 miles east through a locked gate onto a military base that is quite small.

That base was put there just for Bush, Sr. as Vice President. The only function of it and it is still there is to skim off some of those research kids for rituals. The base is tiny by most standards. It houses only the guards that work the security of it—about 3. There are no Army offices, no PX, no parade grounds, etc.

It is still there today as I type this. It may be razed tomorrow, like the McMartin tunnels as a result of what I am saying. But today, as a remote viewer, I can see that it has one main square building on the center of a square lot with the entrance on its West side and a guard standing at it though the gate is locked. Only one person has the key. That is Bush, Sr. It is his private reserve still. The guards are his prisoners inside of it. They are Army recruits in theory and on paper.

No guard assigned to work there has ever made it out alive. That is to make sure that they don’t talk about what they have seen. What have they seen? Bush, Sr. come in and out. A boy child driven up in a van and unloaded when Bush, Sr. comes. A "pathologist" and the guards Bush brings with him carries out a coffin as Bush, Sr. leaves. Access to the road to the gate is restricted. So no neighbors or passing traffic sees this strange recurrence of events. While Bush, Sr. was President he didn't have time to go out there and the White House morgue and incinerator were used.

That base has no morgue or incinerator in it. Bush, Sr. arrives usually with 3 men - two of his own guards and the pathologist. They wait outside of the building while Bush Sr. sodomizes and tortures the kid to death. His counterpart the late Beria would be proud of him.

Why am I telling you this? The fact is that the way I have described this makes it possible for any intelligence service with a satellite to document that Bush, Sr. has done this. All they have to do it look back at their land sat images and watch the boy go in and the coffin come out. Time after time. I kid you not. They have the proof already in their files if they look closely. What pegs it as that base is the fact that the guards do not go in and out of the gate. That is easy to verify on sat images—that lack of regular traffic. The base has a “secure” phone line, a special type of receiver on the roof.

That also pegs it. The particular type of receiver is a “Presidential” Model. That is a little harder to see on the sat images but as the sun first rises on a sunny day it would show up due to the distinctive shadow of that model in low angle light.

I bet that that base will be razed tomorrow—gone, wiped off the face of the earth. But the sat data will still be there in Russia, China, and many other places.

Because my emails are of interest to many intelligence services, they will get this information. What they do with it will depend on future political situations that are hard for the average intelligence person to predict.

By the way, the guards that work there are mind control subjects, “graduates” of that University Research facility. The research there has been going on a long time. It was one of the early MKULTRA facilities.

Georgetown University should be called CIA U. The mental research facility is not on the main campus near the regular college students. It is on a separate piece of land that makes it harder to run away from. The name of it is not Georgetown, but it is part of Georgetown University.

Some people at the CIA have complained that attention deficit disorder is associated with the fluoridation of water and that the CIA refused to release the data on it in order to keep getting so many almost normal kids delivered to the door of their mind control clinics around North America.

They also complain that the CIA knows the treatment for attention deficit disorder, a drug to chelate the fluoride and expel it from the body and refuses to publish that data as well.

It is true that there are a number of books on the subject for internal consumption at the CIA. An ordinary epidemiologist could look at the issue and find out if those rumors within the CIA are true.

When this University facility’s history in mind control comes to the public’s attention, it will be a little hairy. Hundreds, no thousands, of parents will suddenly want to know if their child, grown or otherwise, was a mind control subject or in the control group. I will mention in passing three fairly reliable methods of knowing that.

That information comes from CIA reports about what to do to confuse parents if they get to another therapist later, ie what disinformation to give them to prevent them from uncovering that the kid was mind controlled.

That first piece of disinformation is -- "No one can tell if a person is a mind control victim—certainly not regular family and neighbors, only a qualified therapist could know and since they can’t tell no one can."

That is given because the CIA found out that 56% of the children were discovered to have been uncovered by relatives and family members as "robotic" or "messed up in their minds" or "with inexplicable behaviors that came from outside of themselves."

Teachers were particularly good at distinguishing control kids from experimental kids, and a number of teachers near that facility were killed by the CIA—on the order of a dozen in a decade.

The second piece of disinformation that the CIA primed therapists around the world have dispended is that it is "normal" for kids to act out in their teenage years by cross-dressing. It turned out that just the opposite is true of normal teenagers. They want to define their sexual identity and not cross dress.

Teenagers are the most intolerant to cross dressing per CIA research. Unless of course, they are mind control subjects and have been trained to sexually please chicken hawks by boys dressing as girls. There is no market for girls dressed as boys so the cross dressing only goes in one direction.

Surprisingly, the CIA research showed that homosexual boys rarely cross dressed on their own at that age - unless they had been used by porn filmmakers, chicken hawks and mind controllers. So the presence of cross-dressing in a teenage boy is highly predictive that he is a mind control or abuse victim.

The third piece of disinformation that the CIA fed therapists in journals to fool them and the parents is a bit subtler. The disinformation said "There is no normal age at which children should be told about sex. Sex education can occur at any age — it is up to the parents to decide. And sex education may be bad for kids so maybe we shouldn’t have it in our schools..."

The CIA spent a lot of money to convince parents, churches, and schools not to have real sex education classes. The reason was that when kids were allowed to freely talk in a group about their sexual experiences or fantasies or theories of sex, the kids themselves could see that some of them had very different levels of exposure to and sophistication in these matters.

So if sex education had to be taught the CIA wanted canned talks in which the kids were not allowed to talk. It thus trained sex educators to control the amount kids could talk and tried to make it taboo for the kids to talk to each other afterwards.

The CIA also found out that there was a best age for sex education –about the start of puberty. So then they fostered some campaigns to force the education to be earlier. The reason for that was that some young child whose native curiosity would not lead to sophisticated knowledge of sexual action, were coming out with it in front of parents and therapists.

It was better for the CIA if they could say that the kid learned it in a sex education class than from CIA prostitution of them. So although it sounds contradictory, the CIA’s bottom line on sex education disinformation was—don’t have sex education classes, but if you must have them have them very early and don’t let kids talk at them. Make it a more taboo subject by the way you skirt it or only allow it to be taught in a very short segment and never referred to again.

The CIA sponsored conferences for sex educators under a front company call “First Dating Experiences” if I remember correctly. Or maybe just “First Experiences”. When the abstinence only people objected the name of the front company was called something like “Wait for Marriage, Inc."

It was the same front. The same staff, address etc. The CIA also pushes abstinence and marital fidelity fronts while not practicing these things themselves. It does that to increase the effectiveness of its blackmail ops.

Sexual blackmail only works when the society is condemning towards others. It is not the abstinence of fidelity that the CIA is after, it is the condemning of others it is after.

Condemning is a form of hate and the CIA provokes hate and condemning as a way of controlling others. It is a mind control technique that can then be used to get people to fight wars etc against their best interests.

The CIA is looking for “handles” into a person’s psyche—an emotional issue that drives a person to act. Then it exploits it. It also creates handles by funding songs and lyrics into existence. That is another whole level of mind control directed at a population instead of individuals.

I have gotten off track some here. This is useful information but not staying focused on the main topic.

I want to mention one other way in which I learned about the Finder’s Experiment. The name Finders comes from a CIA slang word that was popular about the time this experiment started.

It was Fucked Into Not Denying (FIND). A boss at the CIA would tell an employee “Go find out who did this”.

It was like a game of musical chairs. Everyone would deny that they did it until finally somebody was the scapegoat and was fucked into not being able to deny it.

So the Finders acronym was a warning to people in the CIA to be careful and not get made into a fall guy for this whole Project by letting a word out about it. A person leaking such stuff usually got blamed for the stuff itself—as people outside the agency couldn’t tell who was above whom and where the buck stopped.

The first time I heard about the Finders Group was at a party. Some kids were brought in to a fancy DC estate dressed up almost in Halloween type costumes-clowns, witches, ghosts, etc. But the costumes had big buttons on back panels over the bottom so that the kids could easily have their private parts exposed. The kids were trick or treat age. But it was not fall.

There were about 15 of these kids brought into an upscale party of people in tuxes. I arrived on the arm of the DCI Colby. Men started messing with these kids sexually, putting them on their laps with their panels unbuttoned. They did not even go into a separate room to do it. I felt uncomfortable with that - it reminded me of my own abuse as a child—and I went out on the front steps to look at the night sky and imagine being on some other planet for awhile.

Colby came out and asked me if I wanted to go home—that meant back to his bed. I just couldn’t get away from this issue. I got a little mad at him and asked him who brought the kids, as if I didn’t know as a remote viewer. He was defensive and then admitted that they were part of a CIA experiment and this was their “coming out” test—their graduation test to see if they could seduce DC politicians (to stay alive).

Those who flunked the test were liquidated. I had been in that system all my life—be useful sexually or die. I was not amused. Colby went into the technical details of the experiment and a “Wasn’t it a good idea?’ type of pitch to me.

I threw up my dinner on the front steps of the estate and excused myself to go wash up in the bathroom. I was good at throwing up on cue.

What was it that Colby had said to me?

Colby explained to me that the point of the Finders' Experiment was to train children to be like drug sniffing dogs—only they were to sniff out who would make good pushers for not just drugs, but illegal weapons, sex slaves, etc.

The CIA was looking for a down line in these businesses and it wanted to use expendable agents. The CIA was having trouble explaining how many of its operative died. It never put names on the gold stars in the marble panel in the entrance way because that panel was a bald faced lie.

The CIA had lots of deaths in action of its officers. The gold stars were propaganda for the novices to con them into a sense of false security—like that the CIA cared about them. The CIA did not care how many of them died. The Rockefellers wanted their deaths. It was the GAO who cared.

Training agents was expensive. Covering up their deaths was even more expensive than that because of the expense of finding the loose ends and tying them off. So the CIA had decided, even before Colby became DCI probably, to go to the cheaper expendables to foster its trade in contraband. The kids were divided into two groups—those that received training on how to pick the people to become a pusher and make them into one, or no training.

In the no-training group you tell the kid, under hypnosis and torture what you want them to accomplish and let them figure out how to accomplish it. I grew up in that model—General Patton used it. It was cheaper. Kids died all around me. But some figured out what to do to succeed.

It had a kind of intelligence logic to it that was “if the kid has to figure out what to do on their own, maybe the KGB won’t have seen that strategy before and it will work.”

Next I want to talk about the type of training that the kids received if they were assigned to get any at all. The training consisted of two weeks of hard torture during which they were taught how to do blow jobs, spread their legs, ask for contraband to be moved and sign alias names to the right places on contract forms to “witness” them.

The contracts bound the pusher to work for the CIA front company without being able to sue. Let me say that another way. Both groups were tortured using electricity and severe pain for two weeks.

The trained kids, in addition to being told that they had to move contraband because their lives depended on it, also had a couple of hours worth of instructions and practical guidance on how to do it. What do you think were the results of the experiment?

The CIA found from this experiment that it made no appreciable difference whether the kid was trained or not. Its reports made no mention of the two weeks of torture as that was “off the record” after the 1977 MKULTRA Hearings.

They also made no mention of the type of training as the CIA wanted to hide from possible future Congressional prying eyes, that the kids were to move contraband by finding buyer-pushers.

Instead, the CIA documents said that the point of the experiment was to detect which kids could “succeed in life” and whether any training that the CIA gave them could make a difference in that.

The reason everything was limited to two weeks was that was the length of time that the in-hospital psychiatric hospitalization could maximally be extended to to run basically healthy kids “through testing of their condition”. The CIA developed a bunch of bogus tests to run on ADD kids to justify their two-week hospitalization like “withdrawing them from sugar, food dyes, etc.”

It was a total scam. They just needed something so difficult that parents couldn’t easily do at home to con the parent into letting Johnny stay at the hospital. They withdrew the food alright. They barely fed the kids at all. They fed them out of boxes, pre-packaged pototo chips like Pringles and called that a sugar free diet. The last day the parents would come to pick the kid up and the interaction was observed carefully to see how well the kid could lie about his stay and what he had eaten in the hospital.

It was a complete fantasy. The kid had been down in the basement without a bed, clothes, or single hot meal. The kids that passed had incredible abilities to make believe. So good that they even believed it. They were multiples just like me. They had gone through an hour’s hypnosis at the end of that torture and with the help of the hypnotist had imagined all that had happened to them in that two-week period of time.

The parents were told that they couldn’t see the kids because the kids needed to learn a new way to relate to them to help their ADD, and that had to be learned well before they saw them again.

The parents wanted a break from their ADD kids for 2 weeks so it worked. And the kids did relate to their parents differently after two weeks of hard torture without a hot meal. Meanwhile, some say the CIA did actually give them the fluoride chelating drug—a pill once a day so that the ADD was better. The program was popular with parents.

The University facility touted its benefits. Researchers forged results to show how effective it was and others studied how to torture the kids and split their minds more reliably.

Not all kids split well enough to pretend, or keep up the pretense. These are the ones people know of as the Finder kids. They were taken away from their parents. They were not able to find pushers in their communities, so they were sent to be sex slaves and drug mules where they didn’t have to perform at as high a level.

If they couldn’t even do that, they were killed. They were not one-use kids for the sexual/torture use of the Ultra-rich, they were already used goods. The kids that Bush Sr. was expending were kids that came to that facility that were selected to be held in reserve for his use and his use only. Their parents had applied for their son’s hospitalization but the “application had been held up.”

Bush, Sr. had a certain look of boy he liked, like the youngest boy “Eager to Beaver” in the Brady House Boys (?). They looked like he looked when he was a boy before “it happened to him” at age 6. He kept on sodomizing kids like his dad sodomized him. His father kept it up much longer than others can imagine. He kept it up until he was close to death. Some things run in families.

Would you want to see your dad if that continued to be what you had to submit to? Dark and ugly secrets that even the principals might not know—what with multiplicity being what it is. Bush, Sr. — does he even know that he goes to that base and why? I leave it to your remote viewing skills and imagination to decide.

I was not at the CIA because of my ability to imagine what loose ends there were. I was there to know what loose ends there were and failing to know could cost me my life and more than that.

The actual results were that the CIA training was not adequate in amount or quality to do anything to train a kid in pushing. So the experiment was not a test of that at all. The experiment was a cover story for how to get the kids into one’s hands.

There were lots of experiments on how to mind control kids, but it was mainly a matter of trial and error, not scientific research. There was a lot of variability due to the skills and personalities of the individual torturers. The CIA even poorly studied whether using multiple personality torturers was better to make multiple personality kids. That seemed to have some advantage sometimes—it depended on which personality they were in.

Since that was not always easy to control, it was a bit hit or miss if you used multiples for the torturers. They didn’t always know the protocols and follow them, because they were not in the personality that knew them. Yet they might still feel intuitively that it was dangerous to admit ignorance of the protocols. In the end the CIA rarely used multiples as torturers in experiments—they were too unreliable. One multiple helped a child escape and that caused a big flap.

That multiple was me. Bush, Sr. wanted me to torture a child in his family into being an "oracle" like I had been tortured into being an oracle. This was just one of several attempts that Bush, Sr. made to try to get "my" powers to belong directly to his family. I was training officers in remote viewing just fine without any torture or brainwashing at all.

But Bush, Sr. when he was DCI, left me in the basement of the CIA with this child, George, who was about 10 years old with the instruction to torture him into being an oracle. Given the ages of his relatives when he was DCI, this boy named George was probably his nephew George Herbert Walker IV. I had one scared boy on my hands. I had done "interrogations" before for the CIA. To do them I looked at the person’s mind for what the CIA wanted to know, and wrote that down. I didn’t have to see the person, let alone threaten or hurt them to do that. When I met with them it was pro-forma and I asked them what they needed in terms of food, clothing, cigarettes etc. to make them happy.

So the first thing I did was ask George if he was hungry and ordered food be brought down from the cafeteria according to his specifications. It was not how he wanted his hamburger. The ketchup was wrong; on when it should have been off, or visa versa. So I took him up to the cafeteria. It still wasn’t made right; he said that the lettuce was put on it backwards, whatever that means. Ok, so he was fussy about his food, it wasn’t my fault.

I ordered a cab. I was not that much older than he that I had my own extra set of wheels waiting for me at the CIA at the time. I had the cab drive us to a 4 star-restaurant at the Ritz hotel in DC and serve him what he wanted. His DCI uncle had taken me there before which is why I thought of it. He ate while I bugged out and abandoned him at the restaurant. It was a fancy one. I figured no one would harm him there. It was better than being tortured in the CIA’s basement. I went into hiding for two days. By then Bush, Sr.’s anger had found another target.

George had eaten his burger and asked for another. It was only after dessert two hours later that he wondered what happened to me. Eventually, he was found, meanwhile the FBI started a manhunt to find me.

I was wanted on a "kidnapping charge" for kidnapping the nephew of the DCI. It wasn’t as if I was trying to hide where George was: I’d used a CIA credit card with my known CIA alias on it to pay for the bill in advance.

I was just trying to be a good baby-sitter and get him the food he wanted. He wanted a Ritz hamburger made of a slab of grilled steak, barbeque sauce, and shredded lettuce. Who would not want such a thing instead of what the CIA’s cafeteria served?

When I came out of hiding, I called the FBI and told them where I was. Then I moved my location to their headquarters in DC, which confused them. The FBI man at their headquarters insisted that I “give myself up”, from where I had first called them. I guess my guardian angel was looking after me---I went back to the CIA instead.

I walked into Bush, Sr.’s office and asked him to call off the manhunt for me. Since I was standing in front of him and not missing anymore, he did. He was too busy to torture me right then so it didn’t happen.

The next time I saw that George he complained that I had ditched him. He didn’t seem to have a clue that I had been ordered to torture and brainwash him by his uncle. I let it ride. I can’t help it if some people are multiples on their own without my help. But maybe he was just clueless for another reason, like being boxed on the side of the head too often by a family member. There are several ways one can get amnesia. The CIA also studied brain damage as a way of inducing it.

Oh, I said that I would say something about the lives of those kids that went through that university facility. The torture was unimaginable bad for two weeks.

After that they had to report once a week or so to a CIA case officer on a corner near their school to give him a signed contract. If the kid did not deliver—did not seduce his parents friends and blackmail them into pushing for the CIA, or in some other way get a person that week to agree to push drugs, hand guns, or pimp girls, then the CIA put the heat on him. That could take a variety of forms and was largely up to the imagination of the case officer.

The simplest method was to bully the kid by twisting his arm or threatening him or his parents with death, dismemberment or torture. That was usually enough to get the kid to deliver. The kids ranged in age from about 6 to 16. The case officers preferred the younger ones—about age 8 to 10—they still tried to obey without a lot of flak. There was a quota system. The kid had to make a certain amount of money for the CIA each month.

If he didn’t he could be disappeared into the "Finder’s Den". Those kids had it much worse. Sometimes a case officer would take the kid to see those whorehouse drug dens to impress upon the kid not to screw up. The kids that ended up in the Finder’s Den were already severely traumatized before they arrived. Torture, whether it is consciously remembered or not, has a crippling effect on the mind. It is worse than broken bones. Bones heal up. Violated trust does not.

The kids made a kickback, a small "finder’s" fee for delivering each pusher. It amounted to about a 100 a month. It was a lot of money for poor kids. Occasional a parent figured out that the kid was being paid; and not for mowing lawns either.

A few parents sent other of their kids into the program to get a second dividend coming into the household. More often other kids noticed this extra money and wanted to know how to get it. As a result some kids got sucked into this CIA net to make money not knowing what was involved.

This was a national program. I am only talking about one facility. The failures ended up at Finder’s Dens, or dead. These kids were not usually sold into sexual slavery to independent brothel owners in the US.

They had been mind controlled at a fixed facility and had they remembered that it could have exposed that affiliated university to negative publicity and lawsuits. They were however sold overseas if they screwed up.

Part of the reason the CIA ran this program was because it felt like it was losing too much of the contraband profits to the middle men. Using kids like that, got rid of most of that expense.

It was against the child labor laws but the CIA and multinational Cabal did not care. If the kid was arrested by the police, the CIA just cut him loose and denied that they knew him. The kid could not prove it was the CIA. The case officers did not show them their badges or meet them at headquarters. A kid who was arrested spent time in juvenile detention. Sometimes they committed murder and big offenses to move the goods and ended up in the adult prisons.

At one point I looked at the issue of crime in the US. About 40% of crime in the US is directly due to the CIA. These kids were a major part of that.

The CIA only wanted to run them about 2 years. Then they were too streetwise to be easy to handle. After that they had to go independent or work for the competition if they wanted to continue making money that way. Some had no mental freedom to do otherwise because the mind control was not undone—it was merely not re-enforced and maintained.

Many ended up as pimps even at age 12 to 16. The CIA was having them sell tricks on the street for girls in its brothels or it any hotel room that it housed a sex slave in.

When the CIA turned the children loose, they sold their sister or their girlfriend, or the mentally retarded girl down the street. They knew by then how to hustle. They knew how to lie. And many of them figured out how to bribe the police to look the other way. They learned those things from the case officer and the pressure they were under not to get washed out to sea in the rip current to a foreign land.

Why end up as a sex slave in Saudi Arabia if you could live at home and work for yourself? Some sold their own bodies on the street. But they couldn’t usually make enough dough that way to satisfy the quota.

It was mainly a side line in case they couldn’t move the goods and had to make up a little on the side. The quota amounted to a profit of about $3,000 a month for the CIA, or about $40,000 per year. It was more than an average man’s income at the time. The bosses got roughly $33,000 per kid—about a full adult salary. So 3 kids were 100,000 a year for them, 30 were a million, 300 were 10 million, 3,000 were 100 million, and 30,000 were a billion. This was a worldwide operation, although in poorer countries the financial yields were different.

The drug trade is a big business. These kids were the child soldiers in it. They died of gun shot wounds, of suicide, of high speed get-away car crashes in stolen cars, of AIDS, of gang rapes, and of gang warfare. About 30% were dead by the time the CIA wanted to let them go two years later. It was about 20 times the expected death rate.

The CIA tried to figure out how to make 90% of them “phased out” of life by then so they couldn’t talk later. They fostered gangs and fueled gang warfare to do it. They supplied the names of the kids on the opposite side and gave bounties for their deaths of about $800. They got the extinction rate up to almost 90% by the end of the kids “useful life” to them.

Talk to the kids that survived in LA in the Bloods and the Crips. Talk to them about how they decided who to kill next.

To join the gang you had to kill. To make top dog you had to keep killing. The names were delivered with the money and the goods to sell. If you didn’t move goods you didn’t stay free. To move goods you had to have them.

To get them you had to kill a person on the list you got before the next delivery of goods or you didn’t get any. The reason for killing them was explained as “they are hurting our business—they are working for the opposition. Get them.”

The CIA was running both the Bloods and the Crips in LA. The opposition was a mirage. They wanted the kids dead after two years.

The CIA already knew where the kid lived and who it was selling to. If they wanted a kid gone, they made one call. The police came to the house and arrested the child or the CIA kidnappers arrived at the school and stole the kid.

Some kids tried to run and some managed to stay underground. But most did not understand that it was a nationwide and global problem. Setting up business in another city didn’t necessarily protect you.

I want to say a little bit more about how I knew about this “kill the kid” scheme because it is relevant to the issue of how trust worthy the information is. The CIA wanted to me as a past child assassin to train some of these kids. They figured that since they had forced me to kill as a child of 9, that I should be able to help them force these kids to kill for them. It was almost a reasonable assumption. But it was also true that I had learned as a child how not to kill people starting at age 10, even while I was inside the CIA. That was a much harder thing to learn to do because the pressure at the CIA was all running in the direction of killing.

MORE ON
Secrets of the CIA's Global Sex Slave Industry

CV joris demmink

Hon. Joris Demmink

Mr. Joris Demmink is Secretary-General of the Netherlands’ Ministry of Justice. He has a long

distinguished career within the Netherlands Justice administration and joined the Ministry of Justice in

1982. He was the Director of Police from 1983 to 1988 and Director-General for the Administration of

the Judiciary from 1988 to 1993.

Stolen Children - The German TRAUMA - WWII

Stolen Children

By Gitta Sereny

The Nazis took 250,000 children from their families, intent on"Germanizing" them.

After the war, author Gitta Sereny tried to help them find their way home.

Although I know the year was 1946, I cannot remember the date I met the first two stolen children in postwar Germany. It is dating the events of one's life that is most difficult. We recall the look of houses, of rooms, of landscapes, colors, and we remember faces, voices, movements, temperatures, and feelings, but more often than not it is impossible to put a day, a month, sometimes even a year to these memories.