I was told my baby had died moments after birth…Only to find she might be alive 20 years later in the most horrific way
IT was a scene of unimaginable horror.
Ruth Appleby’s legs almost went from under her as she watched cemetery workers remove the coffin lid of the baby she lost almost 19 years earlier.…only to find the skeleton of an older child instead.
That heart-stopping moment led Ruth to believe she is one of thousands of victims of Spain’s notorious baby snatching scandal – and that the baby girl she gave birth to may still be alive.
Now her moving story is being told in a Long Lost Family special with Davina McCall.
Ruth, 61, of Richmond, Yorkshire, said: “It was an image I will never forget, it was like something from a nightmare.”
Teaching assistant Ruth was just 18 when she agreed to go to Spain with her then boyfriend Howard, who took a teaching job in the north of the country in 1982.
They married and Ruth later discovered she was pregnant with a little girl the couple named Rebecca before her arrival.
In a city hospital in La Coruna, overlooking a beach, Ruth gave birth and Howard was overjoyed to see his little girl in the hospital creche.
Ruth tells Long Lost Family: “Howard said she was absolutely beautiful, very healthy, but after about five minutes the nurse looking after the babies said he couldn’t stay, he needed to go home, he’d had a long day.”
Two hours later Howard got a call asking him to come back to the hospital and, when he arrived, was told his newborn daughter was dead.
Ruth, who had an emergency c-section, says: “The doctors were waiting for him. They told him in a stairwell, sat on the stairs, that the baby had passed away.
“After I came around from the operation, my husband came in and as soon as I saw him I thought ‘what’s happened?’. He had to break the news to me that he’d been told Rebecca had died.
“My whole world fell apart. It was such a shock. I just couldn’t stop crying and I’d never felt such sadness in my life.”
Overtaken by grief, Ruth and Howard refused an offer by the hospital to cremate Rebecca and had her buried in a local cemetery looking out on the Atlantic Ocean.
For years, Ruth, who went on to have two more children Rosie, 29, and 23-year-old Benjy, visited her daughter’s grave, laying flowers in memory of the little girl she never even got to hold.
She and Howard split in 2004 and Ruth later returned to Britain to start anew.
Extreme shock
In 2010, with Rebecca still in her thoughts every day, Ruth made the decision to have her daughter cremated and her remains brought to Yorkshire.
She said: “It was an incredibly difficult decision. I was worried about disturbing her peace, which is so sacred, but after a lot of thought, I felt it was the right thing to do.”
She flew to Spain with her solicitor – a requirement by law – to oversee the removal of Rebecca’s body.
The crematorium sent a special chest for Rebecca’s coffin but Ruth was shocked to discover that it didn’t fit.
Without warning, the cemetery workers took a crowbar to the coffin and opened the lid where a shocked Ruth saw the skeleton of what she describes could have only been a young child.
She said: “The remains in that coffin were intact, a complete skeleton and the skeleton was big. It was impossible it was a newborn baby, maybe an older child.
“I was just doing everything to stay on my feet because the shock was so physical and emotional.”
Stunned and beside herself with shock, Ruth went ahead with the cremation, something she now deeply regrets.
The remains in that coffin were intact, a complete skeleton and the skeleton was big. It was impossible it was a newborn baby, maybe an older child
Ruth Appleby
She was still reeling when a year later a friend from Spain told her about a new scandal that had broken in her home country.
As many as 300,000 babies are believed to have taken from mothers who gave birth in Spain from the 1940s through to the 1990s.
It started under the regime of General Franco who took children away from couples who opposed him and those deemed ‘unsuitable’ parents, like single mums.
The babies were given to childless couples.
Suspect paperwork
Even when the dictator died in 1975, the practice continued. It’s thought organised criminal gangs had become involved, selling infants with doctors, priests, nurses and nuns all complicit in return for pay-offs.
After being told about the national scandal, Ruth looked out papers related to Rebecca’s burial and found vital details missing, including the signature for burial.
She reported the case to North Yorkshire Police who requested the report into Rebecca’s death and officers discovered one very strange detail.
Ruth said: “I had a file in the attic with everything about the pregnancy. The first thing I opened was the licence to have Rebecca buried and it wasn’t filled in.
Knowing my child is alive and well would change my life
Ruth Appleby
“North Yorkshire Police requested the hospital report for me to look at and there’s at least three, maybe four different times of death.
“There was an appointment card for a check up six weeks after the birth. Why would you make an appointment for a dead baby?
“I don’t have one single paper that doesn’t have something strange on it.”
Ruth believes her child was taken away from her because she had no family support in Spain – “nobody to ask awkward questions.”
Long Lost Family got Ruth to undertake a DNA test after other mothers in Spain were reunited with children using the same technique, which matches living blood relatives to each other.
Sadly, there were no hits.
Spain's shame
The stolen baby scandal rocked Spain when it was revealed
Lawyers believe that up to 300,000 babies were taken.
The practice of removing children from parents deemed “undesirable” began in the 1930s under the dictator General Francisco Franco.
They were given to ‘approved’ parents under an ideological regime. But even after Franco died in 1975, babies were still being taken from families thought to be morally deficient or too poor to have more kids.
The Catholic Church, which had a leading role in Spain’s social services, including hospitals, schools and children’s homes, has been implicated in the cover-up.
Nuns and priests are said to have compiled waiting lists of parents desperate for children while doctors and nurses lied to mums that their babies had died.
In 2018, a Spanish gynaecologist called Dr Eduardo Vela, pictured above, faced trial over the scandal but could not legally be convicted because too much time had passed.
In 1981, paperwork revealed 70 per cent of births at his San Ramon clinic in Madrid were registered ‘mother unknown’.
It’s alleged the tag, designed to protect the identity of unmarried mothers, was widely used to cover up baby thefts.
Twins ‘taken’
The show also features a Spanish woman living in Clapham, London, who believes her twins – a girl and a boy – were also stolen.
Ana Aparicio Paillet, now 93, gave birth in Madrid in 1958 under very unusual circumstances, in a room with blankets that appeared to be used for storage, rather than on a proper ward.
Her daughter Maria said: “They gave her (Ana) an injection and she said that when she woke up one nun said she had a boy and a girl. The next day she came in and said they had passed away.
“My mum asked them how to arrange the funeral and they said they would do everything. Mum said in a way she felt grateful to the hospital.”
When news of the baby snatching operation broke, Ana became convinced that she too was a victim and contacted police in the UK.
The family asked for burial records for the twins but were told none existed. Nor was there any record of her children being baptised, which was normal at that time.
Maria said: “Mum and dad had seven children altogether and I don’t think this was political.
“It was just ‘these people have too many kids’, somebody was asking for babies and they were prepared to pay.
“They have lied about everything.”
Long Lost Families took Ana and daughter Maria to Madrid but drew a blank.
Ana admits she has little hope of finding her babies.
A Spanish woman Irene Meca Mateor tells presenter Nicky Campbell how she was adopted as a baby – only to find out she had been forcibly taken away from her family.
She managed to track down her mum due to DNA advancements but she had died two years after Irene was born. She is now in touch with cousins.
Meanwhile, Ruth refuses to give up on her search for what really happened to Rebecca.
She said: “I want the truth. I need the truth.
“If my baby did die, it should be easy to prove and, if she didn’t die, my dream would be to find her.
“If that were to happen, would she want to meet us? I’ve always hoped she would but if she didn’t I would respect that. For me, just knowing my child is alive and well would change my life.
“I’m sure I would still feel wronged but it’s that protective thing. You want your child to be happy and well.”
- Long Lost Family Special: The Spanish Baby Scandal is on ITV1 at 9pm tonight