Greek Girl Really a Bulgarian UPDATED

“The first pictures of the gipsy camp where an abducted four-year-old girl was rescued in Greece emerged yesterday as the international appeal to identify the child continued.

The discovery of the blonde, blue-eyed girl, who police believe may be from northern or eastern Europe, gives hope that Madeleine McCann may also be found alive.

Last night, the girl – known only as Maria – was safely playing with other children at a house run by Greek charity The Smile Of The Child, which is caring for her.
The authorities are sure she does not belong to the adults she was living with, and her nationality and the circumstances under which she left her real family remain a mystery.

Maria was found last Wednesday in a Roma settlement in Farsala, central Greece, after a police officer became suspicious because her pale complexion and blonde hair stood out during a routine raid on illegal activities.

DNA tests proved she was not related to the couple with whom she was living.

A 39-year-old man and a woman, 40, have been charged with abducting a minor.

Police have requested assistance from Interpol.

Photographs of the girl suggest her hair may have been dyed when she was younger as the bottom half of her plaits are brown.

Maria only speaks Roma but appears to understand Greek and is also being communicated with using sign language, according to staff at The Smile Of The Child.

One employee told The Mail on Sunday: ‘The little girl was terrified when she first came to us and didn’t talk at all, but she is now calm and has been playing with the other kids.’
Panayiotis Pardalis, a spokesman for the charity, said: ‘It was obvious that she was not a Roma girl. She was afraid and under some psychological pressure when she arrived.

‘She was living under bad conditions and was very dirty, but is now safe.’

Charity director Costas Giannopoulos said the child was undergoing medical examinations.
We are shocked by how easy it is for people to register children as their own,’ he told Greek television.

Police believe up to ten more children found at the camp may be the victims of a trafficking ring.

Delphine Moralis, secretary general of Missing Children Europe, said: ‘This case is very unusual in that we’re looking for the child’s family, rather than the child.’

She said The Smile Of The Child, a member organisation of Missing Children Europe, have several houses in Greece where they take children ‘who have nowhere else to go’.

Maria’s discovery gives fresh hope for other British families with missing children, including the tragic case of Ben Needham, the Sheffield boy who went missing in Kos in 1991, aged 21 months.

Ben’s sister, Leighanna, said the discovery was ‘very significant to Ben’s case’.

‘It gives us great hope that one day this will be Ben.

Child trafficking and illegal adoption in Greece has been pretty high and that’s exactly what they thought had happened to Ben – that he was taken for a childless family and passed through gipsy camps,’ she told the BBC.”

 

Revealed: The rundown home where the four-year-old ‘Greek Maddie’ lived with her gypsy ‘abductors’[Daily Mail 10/18/13 by Simon Murphy]

Bulgarian

“DNA tests prove that a Roma couple living in Bulgaria are the biological parents of a blond, blue-eyed girl seized from another Roma couple in Greece, the Bulgarian Interior Ministry said Friday.

The DNA tests confirm that Sashka Ruseva and Atanas Rusev are the biological parents of the girl known as “Maria,” according to the Interior Ministry.

Sashka Ruseva came forward Thursday to say that she is the girl’s mother and that she left her in the care of a couple she had worked for in Bulgaria in 2009.

“We gave her, we gifted her, without money,” she told Bulgaria’s TV7 on Thursday. “I didn’t take any money. I didn’t have any food to give to the kid. I saw it yesterday and I’ve been sick. I haven’t eaten since last night.”

“What will happen to the girl now is unclear. She is in the care of the Greek children’s charity Smile of the Child, said the group’s spokesman, Panagiotis Pardalis.

Authorities took her from the Greek Roma couple last month after her appearance raised questions about her origins. Her features didn’t appear to be similar to those of the couple, who have darker complexions typical of Roma.

Greek authorities charged the Roma couple living in Greece — Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, and Christos Salis, 39 — with abducting the child. They appeared in court Monday and were remanded into custody pending trial.

Medical tests showed she wasn’t their daughter, authorities have said. Their lawyers said the couple took Maria, believed to be 5 or 6 years old, into their home after her biological mother, who they say was from Bulgaria, was unable to look after her.

Residents of the Roma community where the girl lived said the story is true.

“Maria used to play here with the other children and go to the store with her mum; Maria was not hidden away,” Maria Kaleas said. “The mother gave her away and Eleftheria was enchanted by Maria’s beauty. She shared the food for her own children with Maria.”

Roma, who descended from Indian nomads, face widespread discrimination in Europe.

Longstanding prejudice in Greece and elsewhere in Europe depicts them as a people who steal children for forced labor, Amnesty International has said.

Authorities have produced no evidence that that was the case with Maria, although the Greek government news agency raised “the possibility of the existence of a ring bringing pregnant women to Greece from Bulgaria and then taking their children for sale.”

The agency cited past reports that empty coffins had been found for infants who supposedly were stillborn to foreign mothers in Athens.

In a separate case, a Greek couple was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of buying a Roma baby from the child’s mother, Greek police said Friday.

The suspects, ages 53 and 48, are accused of buying the child in March for 4,000 euros ($5,510), police said in a statement. They were to appear in court Friday to face charges.

The couple is alleged to have sought the baby because they had no children of their own, police said.

In yet another case involving Roma and children, Irish authorities this week returned a blond, blue-eyed girl to her Roma parents after DNA tests confirmed she is their daughter, a source familiar with the case’s legal proceedings told CNN on Wednesday.

Police, acting on a tip, had removed the 7-year-old from a home Monday and placed her in protective care before returning her to her parents.”

DNA from Roma girl ‘Maria’ matches that of Bulgarian couple[CNN 10/25/13]

“Bulgaria is to ask the Greek authorities to hand over a young girl who was found in a Roma camp in Greece.

Four-year-old Maria made global headlines when she was found living with a Roma couple – who were not her real parents – in the Greek town of Farsala this month.

DNA tests last week confirmed a Bulgarian couple, Sashka and Atanas Ruseva, were the blonde youngster’s biological parents.

The pair, who have nine other children, five of whom are also blonde, live in a ghetto in the central town of Nikolaevo.

Mrs Ruseva, who is under investigation for allegedly selling Maria in 2009, has said she gave birth to a baby girl four years ago in Greece while working as an olive picker.

She has admitted giving the child away because she was too poor to care for her, but has denied she took any money for her, and has said she wanted to take the girl back.

The Greek Roma couple, who have been charged with abducting Maria and procuring false documents relating to the girl’s birth certificate, have also said they want to keep her.

The pair, named locally as Hristos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, deny the charges.

Bulgaria’s child protection agency said on Tuesday that it would “undertake the necessary actions for the return of Maria … who was indisputably proven to be the child of Sashka and Atanas Ruseva”.

However, she is unlikely to rejoin her poverty-stricken family if she is sent back to Bulgaria and will instead be placed in a crisis centre or in foster care.

“Maria will remain there until a solution is found for her upbringing – a return to the biological family, or placement with relatives, in foster care or in a social institution,” the agency said.

The agency also ordered a review of the conditions under which Maria’s seven younger siblings were raised, with a view to taking protective measures if necessary.

Maria is currently in the care of Athens-based charity Smile of the Child.”

Maria: Bulgaria Seeks Greece Roma Girl’s Return[Sky News 10/29/13]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Update:“A Greek court has ruled that a children’s charity is to be awarded custody of a five-year-old girl who was taken from a Roma family that had been looking after her.

Blonde-haired, blue-eyed ‘Maria’ became the focus of international media attention last year when police in Farsala arrested a couple claiming to be her parents on suspicion of child abduction.

Although it was later proved that Eleftheria Dimopoulou and Christos Sali were looking after Maria with the permission of her Bulgarian birth mother, authorities formally removed all guardianship rights from the couple last October.

Maria will now be raised until the age of 18 by the charity Smile of the Child, who have been taking care of her since she was taken away from the Roma camp

Maria was discovered by Greek authorities when police raided a Roma camp on the outskirts of Farsala. They were investigating claims that weapons were being hidden in the camp illegally.

A prosecutor noticed that the pale-skinned little girl bore little resemblance to the couple looking after her – with the case going on to make worldwide headlines as rumours raged that she may have been abducted from a non-Roma family.

Court rules that blonde girl taken from Roma family in Greece last year will be raised by children’s charity[Daily Mail 6/3/14 by John Hall]