To think not looking like you parents

[DevonLodger]

Is not a good reason to take a child into care and carry out a DNA test.

I look nothing like my daughters. Should I be worried?

Even if they are obliged to follow it up becuase someone else has reported it... can you seriously imagine someone removing a white child from a white middle class family whilst they wait for DNA results.

No-one can possibly can given the police convincing evidence that the child wasn't theirs except "she really doesn't look like them" - they can't have, because she is.

I look nothing like DS. WE are different races. We recently moved so no neighbours know us. Do you really think that if someone rang the police to say "we are very suspicious of the woman next door because she and her child are obviously different races and we have no idea where he appeared from" that their first reaction would be to remove DS from my care.

And if they found Maddie McCann by this method, what would you all say then?

Well Baby P's mother was always given the benefit of the doubt. Sadly.

It's wrong to remove children based on looks. Ends don't justify means.

so you have to fuck over the lives of thousands of families just to fond one missing child?

what if they just tested every kid in the world?

what if they demanded to test your child?

no I dont agree with it 'just in case they find Maddy' its ridiculous.

Maddy McCann might not evem be blonde anymore. my hair went from her colour to Brown at 10

stupid idea.

fuck me Ronnie off eastenders stole a baby - lets test everyone on Albert square and their babies

(Probs not the best solution given tge bed hopping tbf)

There is no way the police would have removed the child if the parents hadn't been Roma. That poor family. It's incredibly heavy handed even if there were legitimate concerns over the child's origins.

In what way is the baby P case similar to this?

Any one single tiny thing would be helpful for me to understand why that tragic case has been trotted out.

Even if they had suspicions, unless they had some grounds to fear for the childs safety then teh child would normally be left in situ whilst testing wouldn;t they?

There was a great deal of evidence in teh case in Greece - multiple children "born" to the same mother in the same year - it was perfectly clear that some of teh children were not biologically theirs. There were additionally suspicions of neglect.

I really hope the police have more than "they tried to get a birth certificate without hospital records" as a reason to remove a 7 year old child.

Two words for you archie; Dale Farm. It's not just the Irish who don't want travellers beside them.....

How is baby P relelvant here?

Surely its even more worrying that some children are being removed from their families where there is no sign or suspicion of harm whilst the abuse of other children is systematically ignored.

they aren't trying to rescue beige children from white people only the other way around

In a nutshell. I'd better not let my black father out on his own with my white daughter until the fuss dies down.

They act because someone has reported something and they are then obliged to follow it up. They can't sit on their behinds saying 'Aww, this looks like a load of nonsense.'

Seriously? So I could, for example, phone up the police and report all of my neighbours as child abductors, and the police would then have no choice but to take all the children into care and DNA test their parents? You don't think that might end quite badly? It would certainly up the stakes in custody disputes: phone up the police, have them go around and take a child being cared for my one parent and the parent's new partner, demand DNA tests, etc, etc.

Is the problem here rather than a race issue one of documentation?

I assume if I adopt a baby there will be paper work, people handling it in the SS or wherever? If someone said that baby doesn't look like you, i would be able to say immediately, no your right we adopted her from X and here is the paper work, ask so and so from x place.

It seems babies get passed round a bit sometimes, there is no documentation or ability to clarify where the baby was born or came from, surely , that does need following up?

It seems babies get passed round a bit sometimes,

Based on what evidence? So far, a rather fact-free account of a case in Greece which has not yet reached court, and...?

over the years i've endured countless comments abput how different dd1 looks. she'z the same age as the girl in the irish case, & the thought she could be removed due to basic ignorance about how genetics actually works is really scary.

"The Irish child’s parents, who are in their thirties, produced a birth certificate and passport for their child, but neither was accepted as conclusive proof of her identity and police could find no relevant records at the hospital where she was born."

That is from the Telegraph. Why are some posters saying that there was no documentation or that the documentation was dodgy? The police didn't say the documents were dodgy, they just said that they were not conclusive as the hospital had no records.

I have never produced DD's birth cert or passport and been told that it's not enough without hospital records, maybe because I'm not Roma? Also, it is lawful to be born at home, it is not compulsory to give birth in hospital so hospital records cannot be better documentation than birth certificates and passports.

produced a birth certificate and passport for their child but neither was accepted as conclusive proof

If the Irish police are concerned that their passport office is issuing passports for fake IDs, that is a deeper problem than hassling one family.

If the Irish policy are concerned that poor Roma families are able to obtain plausible fake passports that detectives, who will be experienced in handling such documents, cannot reasonably accurately as fake, that is a deeper problem than hassling one family.

Obtaining fake passports, whether by forgery or by playing with the enrolment process, is hard. It's not impossible, by any means, but it's neither cheap nor straightforward. If Ireland has lost control of its issuing of identity documents to the point that Roma families living on the margins of society are able to construct plausible fake identities that require DNA testing to confirm or deny, then Irish passports cannot be trusted for even the most basic of purposes. If the Irish government doesn't regard them as good for identifying poor children, why should other governments accept them at their borders?

It is wrong to take children away on the basis that they don't look quite like their parents. That's important.

I can see how the thinking went though. If you suspect that someone without a fixed address has a kidnapped child then making an appointment to discuss it another day isn't going to work is it. If they were kidnappers they'd be gone.

Just to turn it around. Suppose the police said "We took a blood sample and when we went back they had gone and the DNA matched that of an abducted child (perhaps maddie?)". There'd be calls for the officers to be sacked or lynched now.

We need to make it clear that you can't take a child away even if you suspect it is maddie. But we also need to think of a fast way to make sure one way or another without causing distress.

I don't think kids should be taken away from parents if they haven't gone through the proper channels of adoption as long as they haven't been stolen or trafficked, and as long as the kids are reasonably well cared for.

Backonlybriefly that's a problem police have to deal with all the time. They go round making inquiries. Sometimes they even tell the people they are questioning not to leave the area as they might want to question them further. They don't arrest everybody just in case they do a runner before the inquiries are complete.

If you're saying Roma people should be treated differently by police because Roma people are travellers and more likely to move on then that's a bit racist I think. Anybody who doesn't fancy being interrogated is a flight risk when police are investigating crimes. Not just Roma.

Yes, and also this particular family have been in Ireland for 12 years since they moved from Romania, so they were no more of a flight risk than any non-Roma person would be.

And the police kept the girl for three DAYS to do their DNA tests. Three whole days, must have felt like a lifetime.

I think this is the face of modern racism, the fact that there are some posters here who don't see the seriousness of this issue because they are not Roma, they will never be Roma, and so they think this problem will never affect them. Some people even saying it wouldn't be traumatic for the child, when the news report states clearly the trauma suffered by the girl and her family.