Sephardic Bnei Anusim forebear/s who was/were forced to convert from Judaism to Catholicism. In regards to the second issue, in Rabbinic Judaism, a person's Jewish status is determined in one of two ways: Thus, natural-born Jewish status of a child (male or female) comes from its mother, via its maternal grandmother, via its maternal great-grandmother, and so on. As a consequence of the number of generations that have passed since the forced conversion of the Anusim ancestors of the Sephardic Bnei Anusim, the likelihood of a broken direct maternal Jewish lineage in that time (or the difficulty in producing documentary evidence proving otherwise)
Sephardic Bnei Anusim precludes the establishment of natural-born Jewishness. If the direct maternal lineage of a Sephardic Ben Anusim is not Jewish or cannot be proven to be Jewish (due to a lack of documentary evidence to that effect), it is irrelevant whether some or all other lineages of that Sephardic Ben Anusim are confirmed Jewish lineages (be it the direct paternal lineage, all other paternal lineages, or all other maternal lineages). Halakhically non-Jewish status, however, does not preclude Sephardic Bnei Anusim from being classed as Zera Yisrael, since they are otherwise of Jewish ancestry. On that basis, some individual Sephardic Bnei Anusim