Kal, I didn’t explain myself properly in the post. What I meant to say was that giving a child away, or selling (whichever scenario ends up being true) can be a good thing if the relinquishing mother is so poor that she can not provide adequately for the needs of the child. I have no problem with that per se. In my perfect world, every child has a decent start in life with good food, housing, education and health needs provided for. Giving up a child that you cannot care for can be the ultimate act of altruism.
However, in this case, (from news reports I have seen, not just tabloid ones either) it appears that the Dimopoulous family were just as impoverished as the birth family. Maria was not afforded a better standard of living, in fact she looks damned neglected, just like all the other kiddies shown on the news reports.
Is that meant to be an integral aspect of Roma culture? Is it more important that the history and lifestyle are preserved at the expense of providing adequate care for children?
Fuck me…you and ZPG rant and rave about how maligned you are as a peoples, but when shit like this hits the airwaves, how on earth can you defend your precious ‘culture’ when kids are commodified and raised like flocks of chickens?
You call it rant and rave, I prefer to think I’ve been a sarky cunt. As to ‘culture’, you know I’m not Roma but Romanichal. Different, though related, beast. Some aspects of Roma culture (sans dubi-quotes) are as alien to us as they are to you. My lot don’t do that bride price thing, don’t beg, don’t marry that young and don’t have that many kids. I’m a single dad who lives in a two-bed end terrace with a two year old girl (non-blonde; made with my penis) who’s just started nursery and has a moderate to severe Bear in the Big Blue House addiction. What the fuck do I know about living in a fucking shack in Greece? I buy my shopping at Tesco instead of stealing chickens under cover of darkness.
In this specific case, from what I know, the kid had a better life than she would if she’d remained with her mother. Still a life mired in poverty, but better than it would have been. I think the police were right to investigate her background, am unsure about them removing her and would certainly prefer her to be placed in the care of people who at least speak her language.
Meanwhile, I’ve been both highly entertained and pissed off by press coverage over here and the comment threads that have been spawned. Go Google some front pages of British 'papers from the last week or so. They’ve been brill. It’s quite possible for me to be pissed off by some of the more outrageous 'Gypsies will steal your children!" headlines and the kneejerk removal of two children in Ireland, while also thinking “Oh, shit. Why does the adoptive dad have to look like Cletus?”, finding the possibility (denied by everyone involved) that the child was paid for distasteful and finding the fact that every child involved in all three cases is Roma to be fucking hilarious. That last one mainly because the gobby cunts who were spouting the more racist bullshit online appear to have crawled away. Well, there’re a few still advocating genocide, but there always is.
You view forging legal documents, committing welfare fraud and passing off a child with the casualness one would afford a puppy to be “handling” social problems?
To your stupidity, yes. If you honestly don’t understand why the figurative patch of vitiligo in a sea of darker skin raised suspicions it speaks volumes to your stupidity. Here’s a song to help you work through it. It should be on your level.
I find the forging of legal documents and welfare fraud to be Bad Things to Do. You’re being an idiot when it comes to the idea that they treated the child like a puppy. And all their actions are scads milder than the action of taking a child from her caregivers for racist reasons, whether or not the child calls those caregivers “mama” and “daddy.”
Show me evidence of abuse that goes beyond a poor child dancing, and I’ll change my tune. But seriously, the claims of abuse are really really stupid. And the penalty for welfare fraud is not, as far as I know, that you lose your kid.
Points taken Kal. And I have to admit (living in Australia where the only Travelers/Roma are those stupid Grey Nomads in Winnebagoes) that my only experience and/or opinions are vicarious ones gleaned from media coverage and the swathes of info you’ve shared here over the years, for which I thank you by the way.
That’s what the mother says. However there has been a number of cases of children sold to Romany “mothers”, and then used to beg and such, in several European countries (being organized by gangs, not merely by the individual parents/adoptive parents). And in Greece, these have commonly been children of poor Bulgarian mothers (I don’t remember the prices quoted for babies, but it’s a rather nice amount).
So allow me not to assume that the mother is telling the truth and wasn’t paid to give away her child. Besides, where is it perfectly fine to give birth to a baby, not registering the birth, and give it away to some random person because you’re too poor to take care of it, without any involvement of the authorities? And then fake the baby documentation? Can you mention a modern country where this would be acceptable and not considered at the very least highly suspicious?
Finally, the adoptive mother has 14 children, and the documentation for several of them is highly dubious. In particular, according to official documents, she gave birth to something like three children in the same year IIRC.
Even in the best case scenario, the adoptive mother commited a number of unnacceptable delicts.
This idea that the existence of fair hair/skin among the children of Romani peoples indicates “something wrong” (up to and including that any random blond girl child must be flipping Maddie) is fucking stupid at best and malicious racial profiling at worst. From Wikipedia, an overview:
Tdlr Racial mixing, recessive genes - understanding that Romanis can be fair themselves or have fair kids not rocket science.
Kal, you have done well to preserve your equinamity this past week.
Why the fuck whether or not the girl is Romani change anything? Because, she’s Romani, people should be allowed to “informally adopt” her to get social benefits (at best) or just buy her to beg and steal as it happened in other cases?
And I know that there aren’t any evidence at the moment of the latter scenario. But there’s a reason why you’re not allowed to “informally give babies to adoption”. In particular preventing human trafficking for nefarious purposes. And “adopting” secretely and faking documentation doesn’t speak in favour of the sooo nice adoptive parents.
Show me where I made the claims of abuse. What you might be having difficulty understanding is the analogy I made about her “adoption”, the informality of which I likened to the sort of thing one might do if their dog had puppies. If this is how the Romany are “handling” their social situations, describing it as “capable” is humorous.
She’s not their kid. Did you not get the memo? Nor, as far as I know, do they have legal custody. They were not vetted to ensure they were stable, law abiding people who had the means to support her. Given the arrest record of one (armed robbery), current means of support (welfare fraud) and social situation (guns, drugs, stolen credit cards) it’s highly unlikely they would pass that vetting.
What it changes is the perception that this story was about "gypsies stealing european children, specifically pretty blonde ones just like Maddie (whose sad story is back in the news at the moment). Now that Maria is “only another gypsy” much of the tabloid excitement has gone. And the fact is that this is a relief to those who feared a child stealing* witch hunt with police and social services all over Europe being set on Romani families whose colours didn’t match.
*Child stealing in the sense of the authorities taking children away from families until their provenance was proved.
You put “something wrong” in quotations as if it were something I said. It’s not. I said her appearance raised suspicions which lead to further inquiry which didn’t hold up. ZPG pretending to not understanding why it was only the child that stuck out like a sore thumb that raised suspicion is pathetic. Her outrage is manufactured and something tells me if they *had *then gone through and inquired about all the children she’d be foaming about that.
And sure, Romany people can have light features even if their parents don’t, but it’s far more complex with far more genes in play than the simple recessive patterns you learned in school and you’d expect some of their siblings (real ones not those made up to exploit the welfare system) to have some similar features – kind of like how she looks quite bit like her biological siblings.
The post you’re quoting is talking about how Mr. Yannopoulos, director of the charity caring for Maria, was quite a chatty fellow when it was suspected that she was an abducted white girl and/or blonde angel. Previously happy to provide the press a quote, he suddenly has no comment when the girl is shown to be Romani. This is a change in attitude that I find facinating. As to why the fuck the girl being Romani appears to have changed that attitude, you’d be better off addressing your inquiry to Mr. Yannopoulos.
Those reports are coming from people that a) took her away from her for racist reasons and b) haven’t bothered to question that child in the language she is most familiar with.
Have you read anything that has been posted? It’s highly doubtful this Roma family practiced “adoption” as non-Roma do. The informal nature of placing children with other families to raise however is a natural reaction to having Roma children snatched up and given to strangers by the adoption industry. Why didn’t these people go through lawyers? Probably because a.) they couldn’t afford it, and b) experience has taught them to distrust outside legal authorities.
