AGONY OF BRITISH FATHER WHOSE BABY SON WAS SWAPPED AT BIRTH
‘ We just want our baby back. Where is he? Who has him?’
A BRITISH father has told how he is convinced people traffi ckers swapped his newborn son for another baby at a Central American hospital.
Missionary Richard Cushworth says he and his wife Mercedes Casanellas were given a substitute child after she gave birth in her native El Salvador.
The couple had booked into an exclusive private medical centre because they wanted their child to be born in his mother’s home country.
But they grew suspicious about the boy’s appearance after taking him home – and a DNA test then proved he was not their biological child.
Police have arrested a senior doctor at the hospital and the country’s attorney general has launched a major inquiry into traffi cking allegations.
The couple appealed for help fi nding their real baby yesterday.
They fear he was snatched by criminals who can sell him to a family for a high price because he is fair- skinned.
Mr Cushworth, who is originally from Bradford, West Yorks, said: “It’s a horrible situation.
“Someone took my child and I have no idea where he is, who is taking care of him or what has happened to him. It’s awful. I sometimes try not to think about it because it is so frightening.”
His wife added: “We haven’t been able to sleep for thinking about where he is and who has him. We just want them to give us our son back.”
The couple, who live in Dallas, Texas, booked into the Ginecologico private hospital in the Salvadoran capital San Salvador in May.
They noticed that Alejandro Guidos, the mother- to- be’s obstetrician-gynaecologist, kept telling them their child would be born with dark skin, even though his father was white.
At one point, the doctor – who they say was overly attentive – claimed that the child would be dark because “Latin genes are stronger”.
Ms Casanellas added: “I always thought that was strange.
“How would he know that from the ultrasound scans? And why would he keep saying it?”
The couple said the doctor warned that the pregnancy was “high risk” and he needed to deliver the baby urgently because the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck.
Ms Casanellas asked if they could delay the birth because she was only 35 weeks pregnant.
But Dr Guidos told her they needed to perform an emergency Caesarean section.
Mr Cushworth was not able to be at the birth but a gynaecologist friend stood in for him.
But his wife noticed after the birth that the boy resembled her husband and had a pale complexion.
She said: “The baby took a while to start breathing but then I held him and remember thinking that he looked like my husband.”
Afterwards, the anaesthetist gave her a sedative which made her fall into a deep sleep until the next day. She added: “Around 8am, they started to bring the babies to their mothers and I waited for mine.
“But when I took him I saw that he was very different to the one I had held in the delivery room.”
She noticed that the baby handed to her was heavier, had more hair and had acquired a mole.
Despite their uncertainty, they took him home to Dallas.
But their doubts grew when the child became darker by the day.
After three months, they took a DNA test which proved beyond any doubt that the child they had been given was not theirs.
The couple returned to El Salvador to report their suspicions and began trying to track down their own baby.
All the other women giving birth at the hospital at the same time were found to have received the correct babies.
A friend took photographs of the baby at the time of his birth and the couple say the pictures prove he was substantially lighter than the child they took home.
Ms Casanellas said: “I just want them to give me my baby back. I want to know that my child hasn’t been traffi cked or any other crime committed against him.
“I need my baby, I’m just asking for my baby.”
The inquiry was launched at the end of last month and the El Salvador authorities arrested Dr Guidos a few days later.
The attorney general’s offi ce released details yesterday of the indictment against him, alleging he swapped the infant with another.
The authorities also ordered confi scation of the hospital’s CCTV equipment, administration and medical registers and information about Dr Guidos’s patients.
Government lawyers believe that urgent searches of the hospital would reveal “objects linked to the probable crime”.
Meanwhile Mr Cushworth and his wife have decided that if the real parents of the baby boy they were given cannot be found they will raise him as their own.
Despite her heartache, Ms Casanellas insisted: “If they can’t find his mother, he already has parents – us.”