-18occurred because she was frightened. When the witness went to the Chalatenango court to make a statement, they told her that they would do everything possible to help her, but she has “not felt that they will receive help because many years have elapsed and she has not sensed […] any change.” She considers that the authorities have shown no interest in finding Ernestina and Erlinda. It has been very hard not knowing anything about Ernestina and Erlinda and having to imagine the conditions in which they are living. Finding Ernestina and Erlinda would mean a great deal. Even though “the wounds cannot be healed,” the witness and her family would feel “great happiness.” There have been many cases of children who are reunited with their families and she hopes that this will happen with her sisters. 2. María Elsy Dubón de Santamaría, a young woman who disappeared during the armed conflict in the 1982 “guinda de mayo” and who was found She was living with her family in Chalatenango at the beginning of June 1982, when they had to flee because helicopters of the Armed Forces began to bomb the zone. The witness and her father were separated from the rest of her family. Two soldiers in uniform killed her father; she begged them not to kill her, and they took her to a military camp. The following morning, they transferred her by helicopter to a military barracks in Nueva Trinidad, where she was kept with other children for about two weeks. It was then decided to hand the children over to the Red Cross, where there were other children. A soldier gave the witness’s name to the Red Cross; perhaps he knew it because her father was carrying her identification “papers” in his shirt pocket. The Armed Forces delivered a list of the boys and girls to the Red Cross. The Red Cross did not ask her what had happened to her family. She noticed that, in the Red Cross, the number of children gradually decreased; they told her that the children had been handed over to their families. Finally, she was transferred to the Santa Tecla SOS Village, together with five other children. While in the Village she retained her own name. The people working there did not ask her what had happened to her family, but told her that her family had died, and registered her again in the Mayor’s office with “data invented by the director of the Village.” While she was there, none of the children were adopted, because “the ethics of the Villages [were] that children were not provided for adoption.” The Red Cross female volunteers returned to the Village two months later to take the witness and the other children, but the Village volunteers did not allow this. The living conditions were satisfactory there, but she missed her family. In 1994, some time after leaving the Village, the witness met up with her family and was very happy because she had thought them dead. She had not made a statement about these events before any court or authority previously. She felt she had to appear before the Inter-American Court, because many people needed and hoped to be reunited with a family member. 3. Juan María Raimundo Cortina Garaígorta, priest and Director of the Asociación Pro-Búsqueda