Mexico City - The elderly founder of a Mexican shelter accused of serious child abuse has been released from hospital where she had undergone a series of tests.
Doctors at the exclusive Puerta de Hierro Medical Centre near the western city of Guadalajara said on Tuesday that Rosa Verduzco, better known as “Mama Rosa”, responded well to heart catheterisation and decided it was no longer necessary to keep her under observation.
“It went very well at the hospital,” the woman's nephew Roberto Diaz Verduzco told AFP.
On Monday, Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam said Verduzco had apparent senile dementia and as such could not be tried, while acknowledging “many, many” allegations of abuse perpetrated by her, mainly beatings.
The elder Verduzco, who is about to turn 80, founded the home, known as “La Gran Familia”, in the western town of Zamora, more than 60 years ago.
Police raided the shelter last week amid reports that five kidnapped children were being held there.
They found those children and much more: 400 minors and 200 adults living among piles of rotting food and other fetid trash, as well as horror stories about sleeping amid rats and insects - and even being forced to perform oral sex on adults.
Since then prominent Mexicans have rushed to the defence of Verduzco, including former president Vicente Fox.
An open letter signed by leading intellectuals demanded recognition for Verduzco's work helping children over the years. - AFP