Sunday, 2 January 2011

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General Franco pictured in 1936

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"Did my child die or was he kidnapped?" is something no parent should ever have to ask, and still less so when the kidnappers are the government. But that is exactly the question hundreds of Spanish families are currently demanding that their courts resolve for once and for all about the so-called "lost children of General Franco". They were already estimated to total around 30,000, and now, it appears, there may be many more.

In Franco's early years, "child-stealing" by the Spanish state was politically motivated, with its key instigator, Antonio Vallejo-Nagera, the army's crackpot chief psychiatrist who championed Nazi theories that Communism was a mental illness caused by the wrong kind of environment. Inspired by Vallejo-Nagera, Franco's government passed laws in 1940 that, as one judicial report in 2008 put it, "ensured that families that did not have ideas considered ideal [ie, supporters of Spain's defeated republic] did not have contact with their offspring".

Putting this policy into practice was brutally straightforward and efficient. In 1943, records show 9,000 children of political prisoners had been removed to state-run orphanages, and in 1944 that total had risen to more than 12,000.

Arguably the most infamous case took place at the Saturraran women's prison in the Basque country, when around 100 Republican children were removed in one fell swoop. Their mothers, who had been tricked into leaving their children alone for a few minutes, were told they would be shot if they so much as shouted when they came back and found them gone.

Julia Manzanal, 95, no longer talks to the press because her family say that it upsets her too much. But as a Communist whose 10-month-old baby died of meningitis in one of Franco's prisons she was a first-hand witness of the enforced adoption policy. When last interviewed in 2003 she said : "I never let my child out of my sight because when mothers were condemned [to death], they would rip the babies out of their arms. They would give them to priests, to military families, to illegal adoption rings and educate them in their own ideology. Conditions there were terrible... there were huge rats, lice, virtually no food, women would give birth in the washrooms with no help... I saw children die of hunger and thirst, and their mothers would go mad as a result."

Having the wrong name could be fatal. In a television documentary in 2002, Ms Manzanal described how when Franco's police discovered that one prisoner's child's name was Lenin, they picked it up by the legs and smashed its head against a wall.

Even after the collapse of Nazi Germany, the enforced adoption policies continued, and even intensified to include Republicans living abroad. As late as 1949, official documents of the ruling Falange party give detailed instructions on how children born to their former enemies then exiled outside Spain were to be kidnapped and brought back across the border for re-education. Their names were then changed to ensure no further contact was possible.

But by the 1960s what had begun as a politically motivated state policy slowly morphed into a more straightforward adoption trade – in some cases with the state's connivance. Parents were simply told their infants had died shortly after birth, and the babies were then sold on to families.

Mar Soriano told El Pais newspaper last year: "My sister was born on 3 July 1964, and my mother was breastfeeding her until they told her they had to take her baby to the incubator. When my parents went to look for her later, they told them she had died of an ear infection. My father wanted to see her and bury her, but they said they had taken care of everything and she was in a mass grave."

Other cases, like that of Maria Jose Estevez, were eerily similar. Ms Estevez's baby was born on 3 September 1965 in Cadiz, but even though she could hear him crying later in the next room, she was told she was imagining things and that he was dead. She was informed he had already been buried, next to the amputated leg of a recently operated patient.

With cases now up to six decades old, any hope of resolving them seemed doomed. But a recent wave of media interest has seen bereaved family after bereaved family recalling the same bizarre circumstances: the death of their newborns from ear infections or an equally implausible cause, followed by the hospital's point-blank refusal to show them the body.

By late November, Javier Zaragoza, Spain's chief prosecutor, had more than 300 new cases on his desk. Faced with growing demands, he formally requested that the Ministry of Justice set up a specific department to compile a list of the missing infants.

However, there was a catch. Mr Zaragoza was willing to run the investigation to cover a massive four-decade period – up until 1980, five years after Franco's death – but he also said that it would be purely administrative. In other words, even if crimes were uncovered, nobody would go to jail.

Discouraging as that may sound, it represents progress compared with 2008, when the first official report made into the cases of all the "disappeared" during the Franco years ordered by the crusading judge Baltasar Garzon, including the missing infants, ended up being shelved. Judge Garzon was accused by various extreme right-wing organisations of acting outside his legal powers, something for which he now faces trial.

This time round, though, the victims of enforced adoption are determined that they will not be shunted into a legal siding and forgotten. So far, they are succeeding. In Madrid, the hospitals have opted for a full-scale investigation of all infant deaths between 1961 and 1971.

In Cadiz, Algeciras, Malaga and Granada, four big cities in the south, the local state attorneys are reported to believe cases should be opened. In Valencia, a leading lawyer specialising in the cases, Enrique Vila, aims to open another legal front later this month when he files a formal complaint of mass kidnapping with Spain's equivalent of the Crown Prosecution Service.

There could even shortly be an international investigation. The Foros por la Memoria movement has taken the cases of all those missing from the Franco years to the United Nations to plead that they cannot simply be shelved. An answer is expected this summer.

As for the women of Saturraran prison, last year, for the first time, a film, Izarren argia [now Stars to Wish Upon], was made about their experiences. When it had its premiere at the San Sebastian Film Festival, a 93-year-old former internee, Ana Morales, stood up in the audience and thanked the director for "finally letting some light be shed on that terrible place".

Mrs Morales said she was lucky: she could place her own child out of harm's way with a sympathiser outside prison until she herself was released. But many others in the same predicament are still fighting to find out what happened to theirs.

Parents caught in adoption dispute

After investigating orphanages and adoption practices in Nepal, the U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services found no evidence of fraud but the families who are waiting for visas for their adopted children still must prove the children were really abandoned.

By Nancy Bartley

Seattle Times staff reporter

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Seeking help

Karalyn Carlton's thoughts rarely stray far from the child she left behind in Nepal.

What is her daughter doing? Is she healthy? Will the child recognize her when they are reunited?

Ever since Aug. 6, when the U.S. stopped granting visas to children from Nepal because of concerns about child trafficking, dozens of families, including four from Washington, have faced a difficult choice: Stay there with their children, risking financial ruin as the investigation runs its course, or return to the U.S. and live with the anguish of separation.

Several weeks ago, the families received what should have been good news: Wally Bird, the deputy chief of International Operations Division, U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services (CIS), said investigators could find no evidence of fraud on the part of the adoption agencies. But, he added, visas won't be granted until parents prove their adopted children really were abandoned.

The purpose for the extra step is to be sure the children were not taken from families who now might be looking for them, say officials. But in a poor country with minimal record-keeping and no regular practice of issuing birth certificates — as well as a law sentencing a mother to prison for years if she's caught abandoning a child — adoptive parents say that kind of proof is unrealistic.

Bird said he didn't know if those factors would hamper parents' attempts to prove abandonment. He added that if a birth mother was identified, she'd have to receive some kind of protection from prosecution but, he said, the situation has never come up.

To try to meet the U.S. government's requirements, the families have hired investigators in Nepal and attorneys in the U.S. And they've banded together and written a petition asking members of Congress to pressure the Department of Homeland Security and CIS to quickly resolve the cases.

"Broadsided" by ban

Between 2007 and 2009, Nepal shut down international adoptions as it investigated claims of child trafficking. There were numerous claims of older children being sent to India to work in circuses or the sex trade.

In 2009, after a new parliament came into power, Nepal reopened adoptions with new regulations. Many single women looked to Nepal to adopt because it didn't require two parents. That same year, Nepal joined the international Hague Convention on the Protection of Children, an attempt to standardize adoption practices worldwide.

As is the common practice when countries want to join, a committee from The Hague came to Nepal and investigated the adoption agencies. The committee accused the agencies of falsifying documents to make children (who never arrive with birth certificates) more adoptable, as well as committing other fraud.

The committee also requested orphanages provide medical and social history of the birth parents, among other things.

Irene Steffas, a Marietta, Ga., attorney who represents about 20 adoptive parents, said she found the report so out of touch with the realities of Nepal, she wondered "what planet they (Hague investigators) were living on."

Following the report, the U.S. joined 12 countries in stopping the visas. It was the start of heartache and frustration for the 80 U.S. "pipeline families" who were in the process of adoption when the visas ended.

"We were completely broadsided by this," said Carlton, who had been in the process of adopting for three years before the ban.

"The Hague Committee criticized the (Nepali) process and I don't believe the committee understood all the checks and balances in place," Steffas said. "They condemned adoption in Nepal only because they didn't dig very deeply."

Now that the CIS has found no evidence of the fraud cited in The Hague report, the families believe the visas should be granted with no additional steps required for proving abandonment. Of the original 80 families in the process of adopting children in Nepal, nine families have been granted visas. Fifty-four are still being investigated. The remaining families have apparently given up.

"I can't give up on her"

It was mid-August, when Carlton, her husband, Scott Holter, and their son, Emmett Carlton, 8, traveled to Katmandu to meet 18-month-old Swashti. Carlton said a shopkeeper saw Swashti, then just a baby, in an area where the bodies of deceased children were discarded among trash.

Police took the baby to an orphanage.

In the meantime, the couple wanted one more child and had spent thousands of dollars before going to Nepal to meet the shy toddler.

Finalizing adoptions is up to Nepal's Ministry of Women and Children, but once done, the child cannot be left at the orphanage — even if the U.S. doesn't grant a visa. New adoptive parents have no option but to wait in Nepal until the visa is granted.

Staying for that long wasn't an option for Carlton, 41. So the family didn't finalize the adoption. Like the others from Washington, Carlton has hired an attorney.

"I can't give up on her," Carlton said.

Karen Culver, 42, of Bellevue, and her husband, John, have three young boys of their own but, as she put it, they had room in their hearts for one more child. "Nepal resonated with us," said Culver, a stay-at-home mother. They were matched with 3-year-old Sachyi.

As soon as they opened the file and saw her photo, their hearts melted, Culver said, and she thought: "She is adorable and we are so lucky."

Like Carlton, they, too, hesitated making the adoption final until the visa was approved because it would be difficult for either of them to remain in Katmandu, and they didn't want Sachyi to "be orphaned twice."

"How heartbreaking it would be for me to show up and leave," she said.

In Nepal, Chris Kirchoff, of Seattle, and Jenni Lund, of Leavenworth, live in the same apartment building, spending holidays together and supporting each other as they wait for CIS to determine their fate.

Kirchoff, 40, can't imagine leaving her newly adopted daughter, Orion, behind. When she met the-now 14-month-old, "I saw her little face, she smiled, I cried and we have been inseparable ever since."

For Kirchoff, a personal trainer, her Seattle business is on hold. Her elderly father is ill and she hopes Orion will get to meet him.

Lund, 45, who owns a yoga studio, also has a business on hold and has seen her savings dwindle as she waits with her son, Pukar, 2.

"I miss my family and friends, I miss my home, and I want to get medical help for Pukar's rickets," she said.

In the meantime, "Pukar is absolutely thriving. Each day it seems he is happier, his eyes brighter and smile wider. He has a great sense of humor, loves to laugh and learn," she said.

As Lund played with Pukar a few nights ago she thought about the children remaining in the orphanages, how cold it is and how there aren't enough warm clothes, blankets or even socks for all of them. She thought, too, how unwanted children in Nepal, where the caste system survives, have few options in life. Then she looked at Pukar, asleep in her bed, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers.

"What a gift adoption is to these children. Truly, I cannot believe anything else."

Nancy Bartley: 206-464-8522 or nbartley@seattletimes.com