Shocking tales of separation

FROM a fear of frogs or sheep, to the terror of vomiting, around 10million people in the UK suffer from some kind of phobia.

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LONG LOST FAMILY SPECIAL: THE SPANISH BABY SCANDAL

STV, 9pm

IT is a scandal that doesn't even bear thinking about. This special follows the astonishing plight of mothers whose babies are believed to have been stolen at birth.

Among the thousands of applicants, the story from teaching assistant Ruth Appleby, from North Yorkshire, stopped producers in their tracks.

Mum-of-two Ruth, who's also a grandma, shares how she had her first.

child in Spain, where she was living with her husband, Howard, in 1992.

She gave birth at a hospital in La Coruna in northern Spain, but the following day was told her baby had died.

Ruth said: "They told my husband in a stairwell that the baby had passed away. My whole world fell apart and I couldn't stop crying.

"I believed for 19 years that my daughter Rebecca had died. And then suspicions came to light that my daughter may not have died and was stolen at birth." In a second story, Maria Elena, a Spanish woman living in London, approached the team on behalf of her 93-year-old mother, Ana.

They suspect that Ana's twin babies, born in Madrid in 1958, may have been stolen at birth.

Both women believe they were victims of a scandalous practice in Spain during Franco's reign, where it's thought babies were taken from parents at birth and given or sold to other families.