Breaking news: Unidentified 4 year old girl found in Roma camp in Greece (title edited by MNHQ)

[YourHandInMyHand]

Unidentified 4 year old found with couple who are not her parents.

www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/who-four-year-old-blonde-girl-found-2467385

news.yahoo.com/greece-trying-identify-girl-found-roma-camp-151038923.html

we don't know that the parents of the girl in Greece have not come forward. AFAIK they have received hundreds of calls and it will take time to check everything out and do DNA tests to prove anything conclusively. I think it will all take some time but I wouldn't rule out that she will be reunited with her biological parents.

The reports on the older girl found in Ireland are very disturbing since she seems to have been trafficked for sex. I don't know why she is not speaking (traumatised?) or why the language she is speaking has not been identified. Hopefully she will be able to communicate her story before too long , so she can be helped and any perpetrators tracked.The BBC also mentioned that the Greek authorities are investigating whether the girl known as Maria has been involved in a sex ring. THey see this as a possibility alongside the begging. Hopefully this will not prove to hae been the case but she was obviously in a bad way when they picked her up. This is all very serious and the tip of the iceberg as far as nefarious practices with children are concerned.

This has bugger all to do with "anti-Roma" or "Golden Dawn" - and everything to do with child abuse.

How fucking DARE you even suggest anyone interested in returning these children to their families is "racist". More fool you!

Agree with Toots.

Frankly it would be negligent to not thoroughly investigate this. Even if the parents parted with her willingly, she was living in squalor, being forced to dance/beg for money and possibly used in a sex ring. The videos and photos do not show a happy child to me.

Plus why the need to dye her hair and try to conceal her identity if there was nothing dodgy going on? Why the faking of the bedroom set up?

It's nothing to do with rascism. It's about child abuse being hidden by a closed community. People would be reacting the same way if it was a religious group, gated community or anywhere else that community members share this type of secret.

But will the Greek police investigate this adequately?

Different country, different rules etc.... Are the Greek people as outraged as us British?

Santiago - my point is regarding a country's pr, the news media and rubbernecking. Of course individual cases should be investigated but we all need to be aware that we can be manipulated by the news media's agenda.

My point is that the horror of trafficking goes far far beyond this case (but no one seems to care about that). This case has 'caught the imagination' because of the colour of the girl's hair. To think some more about why this is disturbing, I refer you to this column in the press
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/22/angel-kidnapped-by-gypsies-libel-replayed

Yes. It's very annoying that at least some of the other children there were not theirs either (unless they were extremely premature) yet there's no mention of them by the press. I hope that this is just shitty reporting rather than a reflection of what's being investigated.

according to BBc breaking news DNA tests have confirmed that the parents of the girl in Ireland are her biological parents.

really wannabe? very good news if they've got it right. fingers crossed.

That is good news
Thank goodness for DNA testing eh

just said on other thread that it is a terrible, terrible invasion of privacy that the girl's photo has been spread all over the place prior to any evidence.

the parents had said she was theirs and there'd been no dna results so i would imagine someone will be paying out heavily for this. the family will have been really identifiable.

and yes thewoman - prior to dna testing that child wouldn't be going home i guess.

I hadn't seen any photos of her. All the reports I saw weren't giving out much information. I guess if you were local you might work it out from the outside. Maybe I don't read enough sensationalist media outlets and I missed them.

it is really quite that they can just wade in and remove a child on the basis she happens to be blonde.

sorry hit post too soon - and can report in the news about sex rings and the like when actually it turns out to be their own child.

I don't think that in relation to the 7 year old girl from Dublin who is being returned to her family, any mention of sex rings was made. An older girl has been found in Ireland who apparently does seem to have been involved in the sex trade (not in relation AFAIK to any gypsy/Roma/Traveller connection) -and I think they were both taken in by authorities on the same day.

I wonder if it is the best way of handling these cases to take in a dc without the parents and to then try and sort out whether she is a member of the family she was found in.

There's no evidence that she was forced to beg/dance for money. I really doubt that they would have made her do that - her unusual looks would attract too much attention. The videos of her dancing were family videos.

I find the reporting on this story disgraceful, particularly the focus on her blonde hair (Roma is an ethnicity, not a race, and many Roma have light features and blonde hair). It's caused removals and attacks throughout Europe to the point of people begging the media to put in more caution. I along with many others find the focus on the conditions that the child lived in absurd when considering that Roma are being put in ghettos across the continent with refusal of any type of renovating services and legallyy enforced segregated education, and the sharp rise in Roma children being taken and the authorites refusal to get involved where is the global concern for the rest of them?. With the long history of Roma children being taken by authorities for being "too pretty to be Roma", the early reports of authorities refusals to use a proper Roma translator for the child or adults, and Greek's current hate rhetoric towards Roma now including mass searches for nothing other than being Roma, I find it hard to swallow much that is coming out of this case - all the reporting reeks of antiziganism.

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2473971/3-Roma-Gypsies-arrested-ANOTHER-child-kidnapped-Greece.html

And the plot thickens...thanks Flase for the link.

It thickens further. There are pictures of a Bulgarian family being checked out, the little boy and girl have blonde hair and blue eyes, they even have the same cow's lick at the front of the hairline. The family seem to be struggling from the pictures.

I am so very sad for the two Irish families. What were the Irish police thinking? I have to say the Greek Police behaviour and Irish were poles apart. The poor wee Irish children and families, how traumatic for them.

What were the Irish police thinking?

was there anything suspicious other than the child being blonde? Surely everyone knows the basics about recessive genes, that two dark-haired, dark-eyed people can have a blue-eyed blonde if each has those traits in their ancestry?

was there anything suspicious other than the child being blonde?

Yes, the documents were right or the hospital had no record of the birth apparently.

It's difficult isn't it? If the police suspect the child doesn't belong to the parents and then the paperwork doesn't match, what are the options really? Leave the child with suspected abductors who could be abusive? Unfortunately I think the only thing they could do is put the child in care until the DNA tests where back. At least the results were back quickly.

*Weren't right

If there is no evidence of abuse or neglect, then no children shouldn't be removed from their families because paperwork isn't up to scratch! What if you have lost your child's birth certificate? Apparently the family of the 7 year old had a passport with a baby photo so couldn't prove it was the same girl - well, I am dark with a blond DS and in his passport photo he is 6 months old. Is it reasonable to expect him to be removed from my care unless I get my paperwork in order?