Mum reunited with stolen daughter after 41 years

Julia (right) was reunited with her long lost daughter Cristina (left) after she was stolen and sold as a baby. Photo / CEN

A mother has been reunited with her daughter 41 years after she was stolen and sold as a baby.

Julia, 64, who prefers not to disclose her last name, describes how she was told her baby had died shortly after she gave birth at an illegal clinic in the city of Cordoba in 1976, in the north-central Argentine province of the same name.

Julia says she was 23 and alone after her partner abandoned her, so a friend took her to the clinic of Malfada Espina de Journade.

Alone and without work, she says she was the perfect victim for Malfada, who would allegedly put the mothers to sleep after they gave birth and told them their babies had died when they woke up.

The midwife who ran the clinic in her house between 1959 and 1991, then allegedly lied to adoptive parents, telling them the babies has been abandoned by their families as she sold them.

Julia, who could never have more children for medical reasons, never believed the story clinic staff told her and continued to look for her baby until now.

However the clues were few and far between until she joined an association called Mothers and Sisters of the Soul.

She was also helped by Maria Gracia Iglesias, Argentina's Secretary of Human Rights.

Ms Iglesias said: "Last year we began looking for Cristina and we found her in a province of Buenos Aires, then we did a DNA test to make sure."

Shortly afterwards Julia and her daughter were reunited.

Iglesias described the event saying: "The meeting was very emotional, nobody could believe how much they look like each other. They hugged each other for ten minutes."

Cristina stayed in her mother's house for three days and now she is planning to move with her family to Cordoba.

Ms Iglesias added: "It was a big event, Cristina came with her six children and they called Julia grandmother."

Cristina, whose adoptive parents have both died, says she will move to be closer to her mother; "who always looked for her".

She is the second child sold by Malfada to be reunited with their family. The first was Soledad Carillo Pinero, 38, who was also taken from her mother.

She was reunited with brothers and sister Daniel, Jose Luis and Susana last year.

Midwife Malfada operated with impunity from 1959 until 1991. She was then jailed for six years, not for child trafficking but for carrying out illegal abortions.

Ms Iglesias said: "She decided her prices depending on the skin colour of the baby and always sold to rich families, sometimes charging what a house cost at the time.

"She even sometimes made the mothers work for two months after to cover the cost of the birth."

She died at liberty in 2012.