We have no idea what vetting her biological parents did before choosing to leave Maria with the family they did, but I guarantee you it was not with the "casualness one would afford a puppy. Their only mistake (though it was probably brought about by lack of money and previous negative experience with Greek legal authorities) was not paying a lawyer a few thousand dollars to record the process in using terminology that wouldn’t be exact for their culture and possibly offensive to them in a language they probably could not read.
Do you know how many very blonde blue-eyed couples I could find strolling around a typical suburban shopping mall with an Asian or Meso-American looking child? Would you be happy if the police were stopping each and every one of those couples and demanding legal proof of either biological paternity or legal guardianship of each and everyone of those children complete with a hard interview while in custody of legal authorities.
There’s good reasons that you can’t just go around giving away your children and it seems to me by ceasing a child from people who they rightly suspected did not have legal custody of the child they were doing their job.
Is there a problem with Roma children being snatched for adoption? A bit of reaseacrh makes me feel that you may’ve made this up. It seems far more likely that the mother did not hand her over to the authorities in Bulgaria because there is a problem there in that there are a lot of Roma children in the care of authorities and few people willing to adopt them.
ETA: it seems to me the real problem was the sensationlist reporting of the story
I didn’t say you did, and indeed I put the mention of “abuse” in a separate paragraph to separate it from my response to you. The first paragraph is dismissing your reasons for removing her from her home; the second is saying what a real reason would look like, and that the attempts to establish a real reason so far are pathetic.
No, I quite got what you were saying. It’s an offensively stupid thing to say.
Biologically? No. Legally? No. In every sense that matters? Yes. They’re the ones that have raised her and taken care of her; in every real sense, she’s their kid.
If you want an analogy, look at same-sex marriage in 2006. It wasn’t marriage in the traditional definition, nor in the legal sense, but in every sense that mattered it was marriage, because the heart of marriage is the relationship between people who love one another.
That’s the heart of the parent-child relationship too.
I understand what you are saying, but is there any way that they legal system would have allowed the bio-mom to place her child in a Rom family, or would living within the Rom culture categorically make adoption impossible, leaving the bio-mom with two choices–to keep a child she couldn’t care for, or to remove her child from her culture entirely?
If that’s the case, it seems problematic, at best. It would be like if I had a baby I could not care for and wanted him or her to be raised by my best friend, who was gay. In some times and places not too distant, that alone would have disqualified them. Would relying on an “informal” adoption in that case really be the greater evil?
Oh, I see, their only mistake was breaking the law, but it’s OK because they had a good excuse. :rolleyes:
They weren’t strolling around the mall. They weren’t randomly stopped on the street. In fact your histrionics about the abject racism/xenophobia of the those involved is proved absurd by the fact that they were able to do all those things for years with a child that looked nothing like them whom they had no legal guardianship of without others batting an eye. It was only when they were discovered living in a community with criminals, a community in which guns, drugs, apparently stolen credit cards, and forged documents were found, that suspicions were raised and their fraud uncovered.
Your first paragraph certainly danced right up to the precipice of claiming I said they abused her and the second seemed to continue the attack not reset the argument. But as always you’ve left yourself just enough wiggle room to feign innocence.
The analogy was perfectly innocent and quite apt. They treated the transfer of guardianship of a human being with the nonchalance normally only seen with companion animals. That alone, along with the aforementioned criminal elements would be reason enough to remove her from her ‘home’ while investigating the situation. You can continue your quest to be the Truest Bleeding Heart by insisting they were racist and pathetic reasons, but anyone with an ounce of common sense and intelligence would read a race blinded account of this and agree it would be best for the state to take custody of the child until things can be sorted out.
In the real world the only sense that matters is biologically and legally. You can live in your delusion that love trumps all, but when you get smacked in the face with the reality of having to prove the child in your possession is yours or the person in the ICU is your partner, love means jack shit. That’s why the fight for marriage equality was/is important and so vehemently fought for. Legal protection matters and you failure to fully comprehend that is part of the problem.
Give me your tears, Gypsy, or I will take them from you!
Cite for Roma kids being snatched up?
So, all is fine and dandy? It’s perfectly OK to hand over your kid to some family of your choice and fake documentation if you feel like it. Surely, it’s not like this could lead to anything harmful to the child. Why should the authorities bother about kids handed over informally, really? :rolleyes:
How can you guarantee that?
It’s true that giving the kid to raise to a couple in poverty with thirteen other children and from what I read in this thread, with a father previously sentenced for armed robery shows how carefully the “adoptive parents” were selected.
That’s the only mistake??? :rolleyes: Yes, why bother doing anything openly, it’s just a 6 yo kid we’re talking about. It’s not like it’s a kiten they’re adopting out of a shelter, where there would be required paperwork and stuff…I can’t believe I’m reading that.
You don’t know whether they could read or not, and if they couldn’t maybe learning how to should have a higher priority than raising a 14th child. That argument is ludicrous.
And what do you know about Romani culture and their terminology or customs regarding adoption, anyway?
Do you even know for how long they raised her? Do you have the slighest clue about how the girl felt about it?
First, I’m still not assuming that the biological mother (and adoptive parents) is being truthful. For all I know, she sold the kid and couldn’t care less about who raised her. And if you find this kind of suspicion unfair, that’s what happen went you “informaly” hand over toddlers. Especially when there are known precedent in the same population.
Also, read what I wrote above about how carefully she selected the adoptive parents. Must have had the best interest of the girl in mind.
I would also point out that people abandoning their children or giving them up to adoption have no say about what culture they should be raised in. I’m not sure why her supposed desire to have the girl raised a Roma (where did you find the idea that she wanted that, anyway?) should matter, let alone trump all laws in place to protect children.
Seriously, even assuming that everything was nice and dandy in this particular girl’s life, how would you react if a kid was beaten up/raped/whatever? Would you accept arguments like those posted in this thread (peculiar customs, lack of confidence in authoritues, desire to pick the culture of the adoptive family…) as valid reasons why this kind of child hand over without any overview was tolerated? Don’t you think there might be some reasons not to let this happen?
Definitely. You can’t let people hand over kids to whoever they please for whatever reason they feel like handing them over. It seems quite blatantly obvious to me and I can’t believe this is disputed.
Seriously, if these people weren’t Romas, would there be anybody who would support this kind of “informal adoption”?
Of course bio parents do. I mean, they don’t if the state severs the relationship, or if they abandon their child, but private adoptions happen all the time. Bio parents find a family they like, make the arrangements, and only go to the state to formalize the deal. The state can deny the adoption, if they think it’s not in the best interest of the child, but that’s generally only if there is overwhelming reason to think the adoptive parents are unfit.
ETA: If these parents are unfit, all their kids should be taken. But much of the outrage seemed to be the idea that a white girl was living like a Roma, and the specter of gypsies kidnapping children.
I am Roma. I know a great deal about my people’s culture, terminology and customs about childcare. I have taught numerous classes and workshops for law enforcement officers, social workers, and teachers who interact with my community. After my father died I gained considerable experience fighting social services in the United States to keep my youngest brother from being adopted out, so I am very, very aware of the tendency of adoption agencies to try stealing children out of the Roma community.
It’s clear that there is horrific institutionalized racism towards the Romany people. It’s also clear (to me) that our friend ZPG is about the worst possible ambassador or activist they could have. Don’t let her views color opinion about this story.
Unless I missed the meeting, she’s not an ambassador for Romanies. (Nor am I). She’s a poster who’s pissed off about something and is bitching about it in a place set aside for doing that.
That’s how it should be. clairobscur isn’t an ambassador for French people, MeanOldLady isn’t an ambassador for black women, Gary Kumquat isn’t an ambassador for the English, you are not an ambassador for whatever nationality/ethnicity you are. Posters should be free to talk or bitch about things related to being French, a black woman, English or Romani without being regarded as a spokesperson or held accountable for the millions of others who are too.
Mind, if you want to know about Roma culture, she’s the one with the greatest knowledge on the subject. What rubs people up the wrong way (and what I feel is probably a misstep) is that she doesn’t tailor what she says for the specific audience. For example, I really fucking hate being touched. If mentioning that on here, I’d sugar coat it. She doesn’t do that.
No, it’s not how she says it - it’s what she says. “I don’t like to be touched” - fine. Perfectly reasonable. “If you offer to shake my hand, you have committed a violation equal in severity to rape” - batshit insane. There’s no way to sugarcoat that opinion that makes it less batshit insane.
Indeed. I would never have believed that listening to someone’s argument that kidnapping a child away from her rightful parents without reason is wrong would make me feel sympathy for the kidnapper. She just exudes so much lunacy that it’s hard not to automatically reject the idea of being on the same side as her.
FWIW I do not see extremism as such from our Roma posters in* this particular case() – just the steadfast holding of a position that in a matter of conflict between official legal formality and community identity and cultural mores, actions were taken due to racism and bigotry, and that they believe the law should accommodate those aspects of cultural identity and mores. Being the pit, those who are perceived as acting in a bigoted manner get flamed.
Equally it is licit to counter argue that the law should be the law and should override traditional practices. Then it becomes a matter of which way brings about better justice.
(* the handshake thing is another matter entirely, sorry…)
My own position is I feel massively sorry for the Roma and similar travelling communities in Europe in many ways. Their culture traps them in the lifestyle early so in practice very few have the opportunity to do anything else outside of the black and grey economies which is where those fully entrenched in the lifestyle make most of their living and the very nature of their lifestyle and culture makes people suspicious of them. Or in other words their are bad people and good people in travelling communities and hell of lot in-between, just like any group. And people can talk about them choosing to live in that lifestyle, but in practice most have little choice as by the time they are 13 or 14 they are considered adults fully versed in that way of life and with no real alternatives. However many of ‘their ways’ aren’t really compatible with the larger societies they live in and unfortunately doesn’t give people in those larger societies much scope to trust them.
I do disagree with you though the way in which that certain posters have chosen to see this as it’s completely divorced from reality. Trying to paint halos over the heads of both the family that the girl was seized from and the mother I find distasteful; it seems likely that all could still face criminal charges and rightly so. It is sad, but it seems that this girl was treated like an unwanted puppy, even if there was no particular ill-intent towards her by any of the parties, is probably closer to the truth than the romanticised picture some on this thread would have us believe. Further it is unrealistic to think that arguing that people can just decide which laws apply to them and which don’t is going to hold any water. It won’t and especially when those laws are there to protect vulnerable children from exploitation.
Oh, so long as they had custody of this prepubescent girl for the purposes of forcing her into an arranged marriage, that makes everything OK.
Just because something is traditional to certain cultures doesn’t mean it’s not horrible or that it shouldn’t be stopped. Hell, oppressing Romani people is a traditional part of many cultures.
Rapist.
This quote has been handshaken by the handshaker!
Did any other Spanish-speaking doper remember that Mecano song Hijo de la Luna?*
*Mecano was a Spanish band from the 80s. The song was about the legend of a gypsy couple begetting a very blonde child, and the tragedy that ensued. Beautiful haunting song.
Here’s my attempt at capturing some of the nuance of the situation.
What I’m pretty confident about:
-The girl was with the Dimopoulou (hereafter D) family at the request of her biological mother. No kidnapping was involved.
-The D family broke some laws surrounding child custody and official record-keeping. This probably included claiming they were the girl’s legal guardians in order to gain welfare payments on her behalf, when really they were her long-term informal guardians.
-The D family is poor.
-The media coverage of the whole thing, emphasizing a blonde angel kidnapped by gypsies, is racist as all shit.
-The dude responsible for the girl’s custody, the one who looked at a video of a dancing child and compared her treatment to that of a dancing bear, is also racist as all shit.
Here’s what I’m less confident about:
-The D family may have been engaging in deliberate welfare fraud in an attempt to gain money above and beyond what the state considers necessary to care for the number of kids they care for. (I rephrased that several times, trying to be precise, so if you disagree with this, I hope you’ll use the words I used. There are definitely ways of paraphrasing it that don’t say what I said).
-The police may have taken custody of the girl out of a racist impulse. I think they probably did, but I don’t feel as confident in this judgment as I do in the things in the first category.
-The family does not appear to have engaged in any crimes the penalty for which ought to be that they lose caregiving rights to the child they’re providing care for at the child’s mother’s behalf.
Here’s some straight-up opinion:
-If you’re not a Roma and you’re gonna talk about gypsies kidnapping children and committing fraud, be fucking aware of the racist history of such accusations and how they might influence your willingness to go along with them. If you’re not willing to pay attention to that, you’re willing to be a racist asshole.
-In a case like this, in which people have for whatever reason not followed appropriate channels for transferring custody, the proper procedure should be to ensure that there’s no immediate evidence of abuse in the custodial household, and then to help the custodial adults get their legal shit together. That’s what’s in the best interest of the child, and that’s what the legal system ought to focus on.