Roma girl mystery solved

(Vatican Radio) A Bulgarian Roma couple are the biological parents of a 4-year-old blonde girl found in a Roma camp in Greece last week.
As John Carr reports from Athens, DNA tests were fundamental solving a mystery that had captured global attention.

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The week-old mystery of Maria, the 6-year-old blonde girl found in a Greek gypsy settlement, has been cleared up, as a DNA test in Bulgaria has shown that Maria’s parents are Bulgarian Roma.
The test is 99.9 percent accurate, according to the Bulgarian authorities. Maria’s real mother gave birth to her while doing seasonal farm work in Greece, and claimed she couldn’t afford to take the child back home, and so left her with a Greek gypsy family for a couple of hundred euros.
Maria’s blonde and blue-eyed looks, in contrast to the dark complexion of her biological parents, are attributed to a genetic quirk that’s not all that uncommon.
It remained unclear here in Athens what would be done with Maria, who is now being looked after by a Greek charity. There will certainly be an outcry if she is returned to Bulgaria, where her parents live in squalid conditions. Meanwhile, the Greek gypsy couple who were jailed on charges of abducting a child are expected to go free, but still face charges of claiming false child benefits.
The case of Maria has brought to light a spate of similar cases of gypsies holding other people’s children all over Greece. Many of these people claim multiple child benefits after falsifying birth certificates. The mayor of Athens has pledged an investigation into allegations that city clerks taking bribes were part of what looks like a surprisingly pervasive racket.