Victims of abuse in a home for girls in Mississippi continue to search for the children who were stolen decades ago .
NBC takes up the story of Nancy Davis Womac , a woman who was able to find her first daughter, Melanie Spencer , 43 years after bringing her into the world .
During her pregnancy, Womac was sent to the Bethesda Home for Girls , just outside Hattiesburg, Mississippi , led by a group of Baptist pastors who forced them to do such unusual things as scrubbing carpets by hand and memorizing entire chapters of the Bible . Breaking a rule was worth blows with wooden boards.
Womac relates that there She was in control of every aspect of her life , from the amount of toilet paper she had to use to the fate of her baby once it was born.
For a “gift of love” of $ 250
The investigation of the chain shows that e n the decades of 1970 and 1980, Bethesda forced pregnant girls to give their newborns up for adoption to families who paid for the so-called “gift of love” to the house: 250 dollars .
Womac remember that, with years then, always thought about how to run away from home to raise her baby, but it did not succeed because it was always locked up.
In June of 1979 gave birth and was not even allowed to hold her baby before be given up for adoption. And never having lost hope of finding her again motivated her to begin in 2018 the odyssey that finally culminated with the phrase: “He did not spend a day in the one that I have not thought of you. ”
“ There is so much I want to tell you ”, it was read in the messages that mother and daughter began to exchange when they finally they hit each other. And then, the happy meeting finally happened between the two.
Hundreds of cases
But there were hundreds of girls who were separated from their newborns in those years by Bethesda, whose doors closed three decades ago due to a federal lawsuit and a state investigation .
About the cases, in addition to strong and heartbreaking testimonies, there are judicial records and material in archives such as photos, documents and newspapers.
Former residents report that they were beaten and insulted . They called them “whores” , and they could not communicate with their parents or guardians. Those who were pregnant were also put through the trauma of separating them from their babies. Attorney Dan Wise puts a hundred adoptions in Bethesda. And although that site is closed, there are still Christian institutes throughout the country, and there is no federal law that regulates them.