-10information to identify them. The witness was at the Red Cross for about a month and does not know whether the Red Cross took any action to seek and find her family. Subsequently, the witness and five children, including María Elsy Dubón, were transferred by ambulance to the SOS Village in Santa Tecla. There, the personnel always tried to give them as much as possible, but it was insufficient; she felt very alone and sad because of all she had endured. In the SOS Village they knew the witness as Andrea Serrano, because the Director of the Village gave her that name and provided her with an identity document; he did the same for other children. A file was prepared on each boy and girl in the SOS Village. At times, the Red Cross female volunteers wanted to take a child, but the Village authorities never allowed this. Neither the Red Cross, nor the SOS Village authorities, nor the State tried to trace the witness’s family. She was reunited with her family with the help of a cousin and the Asociación Pro-Búsqueda. She considers that the State should create an institution to seek the children who disappeared. b) Proposed by the Inter-American Commission and the representatives, and presented by the latter 3. María Victoria Cruz Franco, the alleged victims’ mother6 The witness was 61 years old when she gave her testimony. She was the widow of Dionisio Serrano Morales and mother of 12 children, all Serrano Cruz: Marta, Suyapa, Socorro (deceased), Arnulfo, Irma (deceased), Enrique (deceased), Fernando, Juan (deceased), Ernestina, Erlinda, Rosa and Oscar. During the war, members of the El Salvador Armed Forces set fire to the witness’s house and, consequently, burned the birth certificates and photographs of her children. During the armed conflict, the Registry Office of the Mayor’s office of San Antonio de La Cruz was also burnt down. The children Ernestina and Erlinda Serrano Cruz were born in the witness’s home in Santa Anita, San Antonio de La Cruz. They were both baptized, but in different places. Ernestina had pale skin, black hair and “curls”, with a “blue vein” that crossed her face, and she was very subdued. Erlinda had pale skin, “light blue eyes,” thick, straight, blond hair, a large nose and was very lively. The witness referred to the military operation, owing to which she had to flee from her home with her family for protection, particularly what happened to her daughters, Ernestina and Erlinda. When they fled, the family traveled together at first, but then they separated because the witness, together with her children, Fernando and Rosa, got lost on hearing shots when they were close to a military patrol. They met again about one month later at their home, when the members of the family “began arriving one by one” at different times, except for Ernestina and Erlinda who never arrived. She asked where her daughters Ernestina and Erlinda were, but they did not want to say they were lost, until Enrique, one of the witness’s sons, made “signs” to her that they were lost. The witness’s husband was murdered from a helicopter while he was looking after his rice field on the edge of the Manaquil River. 6 Mrs. Cruz Franco died on March 30, 2004, almost four months after she made this statement.