Three nuns who alleged they were being held in their convent against their will have been freed by Spain’s National Police.
The three, originally from India, have been living in a cloistered convent in the pilgrimage cite of Santiago de Compostela since the 1990s.
They entered the convent when they were still teenagers.
But on Saturday police arrived at the Convent of Madres Mercedarias and freed the women. They were responding to a complaint lodged with the immigration office that Indian women were being held against their will in “conditions of virtual slavery”.
The letter had come from a former nun at the convent who used the ruse of visiting a sick relative to leave, prompting Magistrate Ana López-Suevos to start an investigation.
The tip said the three nuns had wanted to renounce their vows and leave the convent, but were threatened “that they would be deported and returned to their families in India in disgrace," according to a statement seen by ElDiario.es
It explained that the three teenagers had expected to join the order in order to provide help to the needy, but instead they found an order devoted to silence and “exhausting work from six in the morning until nightfall within a stone prison”, ElDiario wrote.
An investigation is being conducted. Meanwhile the women are being looked after in a safe house in Madrid.
