Search underway for parents of blond girl found in Gypsy camp
UPDATED 12:46 ET (CBS/AP) ATHENS, Greece - A blond, blue-eyed little girl was found during a raid at a Gypsy camp in Greece last week and officials say DNA tests proved she wasn't the child of the couple she lived with.
Now, authorities are trying to figure out the real identity of the girl, who goes by the name Maria, and whether the couple whose custody she was in is linked to child trafficking rings.
The couple, a 39-year-old man and a 40-year-old woman, were arrested Wednesday.
The man, identified as Christos Salis, and the woman who used the names Eleftheria Dimopoulou and Selini Sali, were detained on charges of abduction and document fraud.
A skeptical prosecutor who accompanied police on the raid, Wednesday near Fasala in central Greece, thought it was odd that the girl looked nothing like her parents. The raid was performed in search of drugs and weapons, part of a crackdown on illegal activity in the Gypsy community.
The suspects are alleged to have offered conflicting initial accounts about how they came to have the child - that the girl was found in a blanket, that she was handed to them by strangers or that she had a foreign father.
But their lawyer, Marietta Palavra, said they took her out of charity, through an intermediary, while she was just days old from a foreign stranger who said she could not support her daughter.
Others have taken a dimmer view and believed that she was stolen for resale, or perhaps that she had some other value, such as a blonde child being good for street begging.
A family home video shown to reporters apparently confirms the child has been with the group, which is located in the central Greek region of Larissa, for some time. In the video she appears to be about 2-years-old.
The child is now being cared for by social services in Greece.
The couple accused of abducting the girl had used multiple identities to register 14 children in three different cities, of whom only four have been identified, regional police chief Lt. Gen. Vassilis Halatsis said. An examination of the birthdates of the children shows that the woman, at one point, was giving birth every four months, he said. Overall, the couple received 2,500 euros ($3,420) per month in state assistance.
"We are dealing with a very unusual case. Usually, parents report a child's disappearance and we look for the children. In this case, we have the child and we are looking for its (her) parents," Halatsis said. "So far, we have had calls from France, Poland, even the United States. We are looking at each case, to see if the ages match, and if there are similar features. DNA testing will follow."
"At this point, we can't say there is a child trafficking network involved, but we are looking at this possibility," the police chief said.
The young girl had been registered in Athens, from where the couple had obtained a birth certificate. None of the children declared missing in Greece matched the girl's profile, according to Costas Giannopoulos, the director of Greece's "A child's smile" charity, which is taking care of the girl. Giannopoulos said that the girl is undergoing medical examinations though she seems to be in overall good health.
A dental examination showed the child is older than previously thought, 5-6 years old instead of four, the charity said.