Baby-theft victim testifies

Several human rights trials are underway in Argentina at the moment. One of the most compelling is the case of a young woman who was taken from her mother as a baby during the last dictatorship.Now she's bringing charges against her adoptive parents. Yesterday I attended the courtroom session in which Maria Eugenia Sampolla testified. Here´s what I wrote for the BA Herald.

The courts on Comodoro Py were the scene of a kind of testimony yesterday not often heard in public. For the first time ever in Argentina a young woman, snatched from her kidnapped mother as a baby during the last dictatorship (1976 -1983), has taken her adoptive parents to court. In the courtroom by the docks she told her life story.

Maria Eugenia Sampallo Barragán is 30 years old, she thinks. When asked by the judge to state the date and place of her birth, she answered nervously, “I don‘t know.” Those present in the courtroom exchanged glances of pity.
Her testimony sketched a miserable childhood. Constantly fighting with her adoptive parents, who were far from affectionate, she felt alone and rejected.

While still very young she was told she was adopted. Her parents, they said, had died in a car crash. They were left nameless. “It made me want to find out who my parents were.” Maria Eugenia said. She questioned her adoptive parents about them often, but never got a reply.

They, Maria Cristina Gómez Pinto and Osvaldo Rivas are charged with kidnapping and hiding an infant, denying her her civil status (not telling her who she was) and falsifying her birth certificate. Also charged in the case is former army captain Enrique Berthier, who allegedly handed the baby over to the couple.

Maria’s real mother, Mirta Barragán was a union delegate during the first years of the dictatorship. She was kidnapped and taken to an illegal detention centre in December 1977, six months pregnant at the time. After Maria was born, she was “disappeared.” Along with Maria’s father, Leonardo Sampallo, Mirta joined the ranks of the 18,000 who were kidnapped and never heard from again. Some rights groups put the figure of “disappeared” at 30,000.

Among the most horrifying crimes committed during the military regime, was the theft of babies. Taken from their mothers, they were placed with families of policemen or soldiers. Their parents were “disappeared” and the children were raised as if their mothers had never existed. Investigators estimate that there are some 500 cases like Maria’s, 90 percent of which have now been traced to their biological family thanks to DNA-testing and campaigning by the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo.

Throughout her testimony, Maria - dark rimmed glasses and dressed in black with a hint of red - referred to the defendants by their surnames. At first “Gomez and Rivas” stuck by the accident story, but later they came up with different versions about Maria‘s parents. “They said I was the daughter of a maid who had worked in the home of Rivas’ mother. That struck me as odd, because she lived in a two-room apartment.”

The nameless maid then became a nameless stewardess, who had gotten pregnant abroad and had to hide the baby from her husband. “That‘s when I developed the headaches,” Maria told the court. They were so serious she was examined by a pediatrician. “The doctor said the pains were caused by a violent emotion or trauma.”

She finally reached what the prosecution was pushing for - the link to Berthier, suspected of taking the baby from a military hospital, possibly wanting to keep the child for himself and his wife and finally giving her away. He was a friend of Cristina Gomez and a regular visitor to the home. A mutual acquantiance told Maria she was the daughter of Berthier and his wife.“By now I was really confused and refused to believe anything,” Maria testified.

Years were spent arguing with her adoptive mother. She no longer saw Rivas. Then, in 1994, she had the courage to confront Berthier, demanding to know where she came from. He denied any knowledge at first. Later he confessed to hearing about an abandoned baby in a military hospital. He said he had phoned Gomez to ask them if they wanted the baby, but that was all.

Maria fought with Gomez over who she was, but the woman refused to yield. “That was the deal, we could keep you if we said nothing,” she told Maria, according to her testimony.

Finally in 2000, on a friends insistence she went to the CONADI, that researches crimes committed during the dictatorship. A year later, the test results of a blood sample revealed to Maria that she had a grandmother, a brother and an aunt who were still alive.

“They asked me if I wanted to meet them,” Maria related, and added with a half smile. “I said yes, of course. That’s what this whole joke has been about.”

Photo AP