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ORIGINAL: ChatteParfaitt

Looks like racism to me. They pounced on those parents b/c they were dark skinned and raising a blonde child.

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ORIGINAL: AthenaSurrenders

Poor little thing, she must be feeling so lost and confused.

I can see that the police had to investigate the concerns that were reported, because until they checked, she really could have been a stolen child. But this surely needs to end now. What an awful mess for her to be in the middle of - and it's dragged on for so long.

The later case in Ireland is even more baffling to me - it's as if someone heard of the Greek case and took that to mean all Roma families were child traffickers and went out looking. I actually heard of a third case about the same time involving a small boy, but I can't find the details now.

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ORIGINAL: AthenaSurrenders

I think gypsy/traveller/Roma communities get blamed for all sorts of things. At work we've had a huge tightening of legislation around buying and selling metal because there has been so much theft. On a daily basis I hear customers saying 'it's because of them thieving gypos'. They often say this and in the next breath tell me their cunning plan to avoid declaring their income to the tax-man. I can never resist setting them straight on that issue.

Horrible story from a colleague of mine when I worked in the domestic violence unit. A Roma woman fled to a women's refuge. This in itself is fairly unusual because effectively she had to leave her whole very tight-knit community to do so (and in this area there was a lot of mistrust of the authorities in the Roma and Irish Traveller communities, because there had been a lot of discrimination). In the refuge she had a visit from a social worker, who immediately started a the proceedings for a child protection plan because no one could understand what the three year old was saying. They made the case that the mother had failed to seek help for what they considered to be a serious developmental delay. What should have been obvious, if anyone had taken the time to find out, was that the child spoke perfectly well, but he was speaking in Romani. As if that poor woman needed more stress and more confirmation that the authorities were not on her side.

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ORIGINAL: MariaB


In my opinion, this child, who has been shown to be healthy (even though living conditions are very poor) and happy, should be returned to her adoptive parents and siblings. I also believe that the adoptive parents should be as assisted by the authorities because in my opinion, there is only one thing that matters here... the child and her future stability.


What say you?

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ORIGINAL: LafayetteLady

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ORIGINAL: MariaB


In my opinion, this child, who has been shown to be healthy (even though living conditions are very poor) and happy, should be returned to her adoptive parents and siblings. I also believe that the adoptive parents should be as assisted by the authorities because in my opinion, there is only one thing that matters here... the child and her future stability.


What say you?

Admittedly, I didn't read all the articles and am basing my opinion soley on what MariaB and others say about those articles.

What I say is that for some strange reason, they are completely ignoring the best interests of the child, which in the US is paramount to these types of cases. It seems the only "crime" they can come up with is they were poor, and as Chatte said, that isn't a crime. She is healthy, well cared for, and apparently much loved. While she because a part of that community in a not traditional and not necessarily legal way, the child's best interest should still be the first order of business. Instead, it appears that they are traumatizing this poor child, who has no idea why she was separated from the only family she has known.

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ORIGINAL: MariaB

There was a recent case in France of a Roma girl from Kosovo being taken off a school bus by the French police. She along with her entire family were then deported. This caused a nationwide protests, demanding the girls safe return and that the interior minister resign. The girl has now been told she is welcome back in France but not her family .

Its too Nazi like for comfort.

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ORIGINAL: AthenaSurrenders

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ORIGINAL: MariaB

There was a recent case in France of a Roma girl from Kosovo being taken off a school bus by the French police. She along with her entire family were then deported. This caused a nationwide protests, demanding the girls safe return and that the interior minister resign. The girl has now been told she is welcome back in France but not her family .

Its too Nazi like for comfort.

Not to derail the thread, but I worked on several domestic abuse cases where the victims (though legal immigrants) had a type of visa which left them ineligible for public funds. Refuges are usually paid for through housing benefit, so these people weren't eligible for shelter no matter how much danger they were in (we were usually able to find some sort of accomodation in the end, but not without a great deal of arguing, begging, negotiating etc and often not in appropriate lodgings for their situation).

Anyway, the problem comes when there are children involved. Social services can't allow a child to be homeless. On multiple occasions social services offered to put the children into care, but leave the parent homeless. Financially speaking, foster care is more expensive than refuge accommodation, and you certainly can't argue that it's in the best interest of an already-victimised child to be separated from their one loving protective parent, and to know that parent is still in danger. On one memorable occasion, the woman was two weeks away from giving birth. They told her they would do nothing until she gave birth, and then they would place the newborn in foster care.

Since when did bureaucracy overtake both common sense and the child's wellbeing?