Cousins have their day in court

COUSINS Ascensión Lopez and Dolores Baena Lopez finally faced each other in court.

The first is the Almeria president of SOS Bebes Robados, an association whose members were given in adoption as newborns and who suspect that they were taken without their birth mothers’ consent.

Dolores Baena Lopez is a nun and mediated in Ascensión’s adoption by her aunt and uncle who by then were in their 60s. Her cousin claims she organised the adoption which cost her adoptive parents 250,000 pesetas (€1,500) in 1964.

Ascensión Lopez, who was born in the Hospital de las Cinco Llagas in Sevilla, filed a formal complaint against the Sister of Charity, Sor Dolores. She has not produced documents or witnesses to back her suspicions and her cousin is now suing her for defamation.

The accusations are damaging her reputation, that of the Sisters of Charity and Nuevo Rumbo, the rehabilitation programme for drug addicts that she founded in Almeria, Sor Dolores said.

“What she’s saying is ridiculous,” the nun said during her Almeria high court appearance. “Nobody was behind the adoption, everything was legal and nobody was paid anything.”

The newborn baby was abandoned at birth and no details existed of her biological parents. “She asked me who they were and I have always told her the truth: I don’t know,” Sor Dolores told the court.