Back  |  Email to a Friend  |  Print  |   Send in Your Comment

'My baby was stolen from my womb'

Pregnant Juana Arteaga felt a rush of excitement as she added last-minute touches to the nursery she was preparing for her fourth child. She’d lovingly placed a blanket in a new crib and prepared a playpen ready for the baby girl she was going to call Maria Cristina.

But her plans were cruelly destroyed when, just three weeks before she was due to give birth, the terrified housewife was abducted by a callous baby-snatching ring, who drugged her and took her to a clinic where she was forced into labour.

Juana, 32, remembers hearing the cry of her baby, but never set eyes on the newborn as she was snatched straight from her.

In agonising pain and unable to remember anything, Juana was then dumped at a local hospital, where she was reunited with her devastated husband Rildo. Now, the couple have been left feeling helpless as baffled police try to find out who took their baby.

“I just want them to bring her home,” says a tearful Juana from Portoviejo in Ecuador, South America. “I can’t stop thinking about where my baby is and who is holding her. I miss her so much.”

The day of the kidnapping

Last month, on 8 August, heavily pregnant Juana – already a mum to Susana Stephaniee, 14, Carlos Alberto, 11 and Christhian, three – had taken a bus to visit her family when a stranger sat next to her and started asking questions.

“There were other seats where the woman could have sat,” recalls Juana. “But for some reason she chose to sit next to me. She asked lots of questions about my pregnancy and I told her I was having a daughter and was nine months pregnant.”

But Juana became suspicious of the stranger’s constant questioning and the fact that she kept fumbling in her handbag.

“She took out a white envelope and as she did I started to get drowsy,” recalls Junana. “I must have fallen asleep, and when I woke up the bus had stopped and the woman next to me was gone.”

Feeling dizzy, Juana slowly staggered off the vehicle, but as she walked across the street she started to haemorrhage. “I couldn’t walk properly and then I realised I was bleeding,” she says. “I thought I was losing my baby and started panicking because I wasn’t near anyone I knew.

“So I was relieved when a woman pulled up next to me in a car and offered to help. Because she was well dressed and had a little girl with her, I trusted her.”

The mystery woman helped Juana into the car and said she’d take her to a clinic. “I asked her to take me to Rodriguez Zambrano Hospital in Manta, where a relative of mine is a nurse. But she insisted on a clinic I’d never heard of. I found it hard to think straight because I was so worried about my baby and felt as if I was losing consciousness.”

Maria struggles to remember exactly what happened next. “We arrived at a building and the woman led me in,” she says. “I was ushered downstairs into what seemed to be a basement room. All I can remember next is being surrounded by a group of people and being made to lie down.

“I lay there unable to move, slipping in and out of consciousness. The next thing I remember is hearing a baby cry, but it seemed very distant. Everything is a blur, I’ve tried so hard to remember more.”

Juana then recalls being in the car again with the woman who had picked her up at the bus stop. She said she was taking her to the hospital in Manta because she had been involved in a traffic accident.

Juana says: “She left me outside the emergency ward hospital and disappeared. I stumbled in. I looked down and my blouse was stained with blood. “My right leg and buttocks ached – and I couldn’t feel my baby moving inside me any more. I burst into tears.”

Junana told the doctors she thought she had been in a road accident, but when they took X-rays there was no sign of any injuries. But after an examination, a horrified Juana was told she had a dilated uterus and had just delivered her baby.

“I couldn’t believe what I was hearing,” she says. “I didn’t remember having my baby. Nothing made sense to me. I went into shock.” 

Doctors believe Juana had been injected with Pitusin, which induces labour. She says: “I must’ve been conscious enough to push the baby out, but I have no recollection of it. They told me whoever had delivered the baby were professionals. I had been the victim of baby snatchers.”

A devastated Juana had no choice but to return home without her baby. Meanwhile, her husband drove around dozens of different hospitals on her bus route to see if  he could find their child.

Police are still investigating, but so far have found no leads. It is thought that Juana was drugged by the stranger she met on the bus, who was part of a baby-snatching racket. This woman then tipped off the woman in the car, who took her to the clinic where she was forced to give birth.

Baby-snatching rings are rife in some South American countries, where stolen babies are sold on to couples for between £15,000 to £25,000.

Last week, an abandoned dead baby was found by the police, who thought it could be Juana’s daughter, but the baby turned out to be too old.

“I couldn’t stop crying that day. I was relieved that she wasn’t mine. I know my baby is alive and I’ll search till I find her,” says Juana.

She recently made an emotional plea on Ecuadorean national TV to the people who took her child. “Please, give me back my baby,” she said. “Leave her in a church or a park and I won’t do anything to track you down. We had been so looking forward to having a baby girl. We were going to call her Maria Cristina, after my late grandmother, as I felt this baby was a gift from her.

“I am trying to stay strong for my other children, but it’s so very difficult when my whole body yearns for my missing baby.”
By Cynthia Vice Acosta