Mexico City ( More Missing Persons Located in Mexico Children’s Shelter Scandal )

 
MEXICO CITY – Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office said it has located three people who went missing six years ago from a children’s shelter in this capital, two of whom are now adults.

It said in a statement that its organized crime unit and the local branch of the AG’s office in the central state of Puebla located the three individuals on April 2.

The AG’s office noted that 15 kids went missing in 2008 from the Casitas del Sur children’s refuge in Mexico City and two other private shelters for minors in northern and southeastern Mexico, prompting the Federal District Attorney’s Office to raid the Mexico City establishment and arrest its administrators.

The AG’s office also launched a search for the youths and members of the evangelical Restored Christian Church who operated the shelters and “were responsible for removing the minors and giving them to other members of the same congregation,” the statement said.

To date, the AG’s office’s organized crime and people-trafficking units have recovered 12 of the 15 missing persons, who have been fully identified and reunited with their relatives, the statement said.

The scandal erupted in 2008 when a woman reported that her granddaughter had disappeared from the Casitas del Sur shelter.

At least seven people – including Restored Christian Church leader Antonio Domingo Paniagua Escandon, a dual Spanish-Mexican citizen – are currently being prosecuted for the disappearance of the minors.