Salvadoran Babies Switched at Birth Are Returned to Their Real Families

According to a statement issued by the El Salvador Courts, the returns were made during a “special hearing” presided over by Justice of the Peace Josefina Martinez at which legal medicine authorities and representatives of the Attorney General’s Office participated “to make the handing over of the babies legal.”

The judge in charge of the case implemented a “complete gag order” on the facts of the case so that no details of it, including the identities of the minors, will be made public.

“The exchange occurred just two days after four mothers underwent DNA tests to determine their genetic compatibility with their children,” said the statement.

The case caused a public commotion after Mercedes Casanellas and her British husband, Richard Cushworth, went to a San Salvador court and complained that the hospital gave them a baby that was not theirs, a fact they verified by having genetic tests performed in the United States.

To resolve the situation, the AG’s Office ordered that DNA testing be done on all children who had been born on May 21 in the hospital in question, as well as on their parents.

The gynecologist who attended Casanellas’ delivery, Alejandro Guidos, is facing pre-trial procedures.

“The results (of the DNA tests) were turned over to the AG’s Office which presented the case to the court ... which held the special hearing, bringing to a happy conclusion the correct placement of the babies with their biological mothers,” said the judicial statement.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor in the case, Dinora de Sigüenza, told the press that “despite the fact that the babies are already with their respective mothers, the process is continuing, since we have to ascertain responsibilities and determine if it was human error or if there was malice” involved.

The identity of the other family involved in the case was not made known and legal authorities said that they do not know if they will file a lawsuit against the hospital or the doctor.