in case anyone is following the story of maria, the roma child in greece

I honestly couldn't figure out how to title this because pretty much the entire thing is textbook appalling, and by the way, now international.

Woman in Bulgaria says girl found living with family in Greece may be hers - Maria, a blonde haired, green eyed Roma child living with her Roma family and community in Greece, was seen during a police raid on the Roma community and on visual inspection was found too blonde or something to be Roma as her parents were both dark. She was taken from her parents and a DNA test confirmed she was not genetically related, which as we all know is the only real way you can be a parent to a kidd. The woman in the report, Sasha Ruseva--who is also Roma--said she left the girl with the Roma family in Greece because she couldn't afford to care for her and they offered to adopt her.

I want to note here that this one freaked me out from the get-go and it gets worse pretty much daily, because it hit the twofer of racism and the fact that I'm a mother; I honestly can't imagine how I would have reacted to my kid taken away from me and put in a group home for reasons. I mean, it's one of those things where I see myself running after the car screaming in sheer horror while my kid cries in the back window. Sure, he's sixteen now, but in my head right now he's six, and at six, he wouldn't have understood anything except someone was taking him from his mom.

The early accusations were so textbook horrifying folklore shit about the Roma that I had heard them before and context, I live in Texas, which doesn't have (that I have ever met or know of in my area) Travellers or Roma. Though I think I heard them in Grimm's fairy tales, which actually required me to re-read because I kept thinking I was like, missing something, like sanity.

Further News

Sasha Ruseva is now under investigation--they're actually saying 'pressing preliminary charges'--for selling Maria to the child's parents, which I'm sure eventually they'll produce evidence or like, reasoning other than 'Roma' and 'poor'. In case this has any bearing, they haven't actually confirmed as of google five seconds ago that there's been DNA confirmation she's the mother. I guess getting a head start is good, in the event that this woman is 1.) the mother of Maria and 2.) sold her child, because I feel personally that it saves a lot of time if we get them charged with a crime before we even know if the subject of the theoretical crime is the right subject and if there was in fact a crime.

Christos Salis and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, Maria's parents who raised her, are still being charged for abduction, though, so--I guess this covers all the potential bases or something?



In case there is any doubt here about the racism involved, which I can't figure out why one would think so after reading more than article solemnly reporting--Jesus, like a real article by a person--about how Gypsies (term used in the article) steal white children to use for begging and a couple of them speculating about huge human trafficking rings involving pregnant Bulgarian and Greek women and their babies that I started tuning out of because at some point my brain shut down because I was still lost on how on earth you jump from 'parent at some point did tax fraud regarding kids she didn't have' (in case you're curious, not limited to Roma women or Europe; check the US history of income tax circa 80s. I'm gonna go out on a limb and be crazy and say that tax fraud is racially everybody and that extra kid thing enormously popular, especially when you're living poverty-level) to 'Roma community running slave rings because child was terrified and dirty' (newflash: clean children don't exist. Where the fuck do you get one of those? Terrified children do when they're pulled screaming from the only parents they know and their community by terrifying people in uniforms raiding your home. I wonder if there's a connection here.)

I'm taking this so badly, and I get on some level that if I were objective about this, it still wouldn't make any sense whatsoever, but I keep thinking about this. I have this horrible feeling this won't end with Maria returned to her parents and her community anytime soon, or possibly ever.

The thing is, in the US, the reaction to a parent/step-parent/guardian/person with a child when the child is white or light-skinned and the adult is African American or Hispanic with dark skin is striking similar in insta!suspicion, sometimes questioning, and on occasion harassment and arrest. While in the US the race in question is different, I'm not sure many people with mixed race families are reading this and not thinking how it's 2013 and this kind of shit doesn't happen anymore because it's getting better or something.



I'm sure this is completely unrelated:

Irish police return blonde girl to Roma family - in Ireland, a blonde Roma child was removed from her family home due to--not actually kidding--an anonymous facebook message--for a DNA test. Also in a different family--I bet you know where this is going, right?--a two year old blond Roma boy was removed from his family, and Dad actually pulled out a pic of his blond Romanian grandfather to try and prove how genetics from freshman biology sometimes work. In the former case, there was a history of harassment of the family--they had a CCTV outside their house to protect themselves and apparently suspicion was excited that they used in the home a name for their daughter that wasn't on her passport.

Further Information

Call for Irish ombudsman to investigate Roma family removals
Roma fear witch hunt

I really, desperately need the report that says Maria was returned to her parents who raised her or at least to her family members in her community and is not being held in a group home, like yesterday. I speak here as a mother; this is bothering me to the point I have an alert on this and google daily to see what's happening pretty much every time I have a computer around. Unless I missed something--and dude, I got the stealing babies trafficking pregnant women shit, so I couldn't have missed this one--there was no indication that her parents were abusing her and poverty isn't a goddamn crime and neither is the relationship between children and dirt, and it seriously blows my mind that this was actually like a point of argument.

Comments

[lilacsigil]

I may not be a parent and thus not feel it as viscerally but this whole story disgusts and terrifies me. It's like the Stolen Generations (lighter-skinned Aboriginal children taken from their families to "good" homes) all over again.

[ratcreature]

It's kind of ironic in a sad way that overall Roma are probably far more likely to have their children taken by some authority under the pretense of child welfare than some random non-Roma child actually being "snatched" by one of those supposedly Roma gangs to be trafficked.

The level of anti-Roma prejudice all across Europe is appalling. Recently I read some news article about a "problem apartment building" in Duisburg (it being a "problem" mainly for the number of Roma living in it, i.e. there's a landlord profiting from overcrowding, and the neighbors complain about their property values, and that litter gets thrown out of windows and such stuff) where the reporter then asked someone his reasons for moving to Germany with his wife and four kids, and got the answer that besides the children's benefits in Germany being better than in Romania (and his hope to find regular work here once the EU labor market fully opens to Romanians in 2014) the level of hostility and prejudice was actually better than other places he'd tried with his family over the years after first leaving Romania (Belgium, France, and Spain apparently), and that is with some kind of neighborhood initiative that wants to get rid of them and right wing extremist threats to burn the house down... I mean, WTF?

[monanotlisa]

Urgh, I remember reading similar articles.

I genuinely like Germans, *especially* after having lived in other places, but the classism is really quite something in my country, and the racism is still unrealized in many ways that itch me and hurt actual people of color.

But still, that

the level of hostility and prejudice was actually better than other places.

is an overall damning statement for Europe.

[malkingrey]

I know . . . it's like racism against the Roma doesn't count, or something.

And it's been going on since forever, and usually in the name of progress, too. The Empress Maria Theresa (who was busy being an enlightened Enlightment monarch at the time) did the remove-Romany-children-from-their-parents-and-place-them-elsewhere thing back in her day . . . which is probably why, when my husband's sister had her maternal DNA tested, the biggest proportion of it turned out to be not German as she'd expected, but Eastern European Rom.

[monanotlisa]

Shivers down my spine...

Europeans, as I just explained to a Seattle attorney the other day, are not in the habit of inquiring into their heritage much the way New World folks are, but I guess it often would be a good idea; it would let, among others, them discover their Eastern European, their Rom or Sinti, and of course their Jewish ancestors. (I have 'em, by name for sure and by looks of my -- gorgeous -- sister too.)

[domarzione]

Not to defend the indefensible here, but in the Greek case, there is a little bit more going on -- massive welfare fraud on the part of the Roma woman raising Maria. She's on record as having birthed six children in ten months, she has two official IDs by which she draws separate benefits... there's absolutely a case here of Parenting While Roma, but even if Maria were a non-factor, this would be an actionable case and this woman would be in trouble were she Roma or Greek or American.

[seperis]

I mentioned the tax fraud in my entry? That part I don't have a problem with; fraud is fraud and requires action; god know Greek economics are--still there, I think. What they're using that now as an excuse for is more worrying.

[norah]

Fucking horrifying. On so many levels.

[sapote]

I was pretty exasperated by the pictures of her contrasted with her adoptive parents; one side of my family starts off very very blond and grows up to be dark-haired and olive-skinned, and in the generations where people were outside more, our pictures look just like that. Some of the rumors that were going around - and by going around, I mean printed by the BBC with no attempt at fact-checking - were just so ugly, too. I mean, I would be very very sad if this child has been abused or exploited, and I would, in that case, be pleased that the proper protective services stepped in. But in that case I expect there to be some evidence besides ugly stereotypes of the parents.

[silverflight8]

Yeah, it's horrible how the first thing the articles talk about is blond haired! green eyed! little girl! and DARK ROMA "PARENTS".