A sweet 8-year-old girl, who became a victim of domestic violence a few days ago, experienced an unimaginable “adventure”.
The girl was kept in the station from noon until the next morning, made to sleep directly on plastic chairs in the corridor of the police station. According to the guardians, the police officer said that he could not find anyone in the prosecutor’s office who could tell him what to do next, so the child was left in the department.
As kallitheaonline.gr reports, it has not yet been clarified why no one did not call or inform the girl’s relatives that she needed to be picked up immediately, so that she wouldn’t have to spend the night at the Kallithea police station. At the same time, no one even fed the girl (!), and the representative of the shelter and the biological mother were detained, as a result of which they could not “come to her aid.”
At the same time, sources in the prosecutor’s office report that the prosecutor was given an oral order to notify a person from the family environment to take the child from the department, which was done only the next day.
18 months in prison for mother
It all started when the child’s father reported the biological mother to the police for beating the child. By decision of the Rhodope Court of First Instance (51/2020), custody of the child was transferred to a children’s institution (Πρότυπο Εθνικό Νηπιοτροφείο Καλλιθέας).
In February 2023, the child’s biological mother, a 40-year-old native of Uzbekistan, was sentenced by the Rhodope Court to 18 months in prison for systematically causing bodily harm to her daughter between January 2018 and January 2019.
In October 2023, the Rhodope Court of First Instance, with a new decision (213/2023), transfers the girl into the care of a state orphanage, on the condition that the “grief” will cooperate with juvenile services.
“I do not want to leave”
A few days ago, on October 26, 2023, the child’s mother came to pick up her daughter from the state institution where she had been kept all this time. However, the baby stubbornly refused to follow her.
President of the Orphanage Iro Zervaki explained to the mother that after 4 years in the orphanage it would not be easy for the child to give up everything overnight. And that the recommendations of the social service of the National Children’s Institution are that to give time for adaptation and preparation of the child for his return to the biological family. Indeed, the juvenile prosecutor also ordered the same.
However, the girl’s biological mother was adamant, saying that “the child was turned against the mother,” and therefore she did not want to return home.
Thus, the transfer of the child to the mother did not take place. And the incident was reported to AT Kallithea. There, the mother began to demand that criminal proceedings be initiated for the kidnapping of a minor (against the President of the President of the Republic of Armenia Iro Zervaki). The official, in turn, sued the lady “for false accusations,” as a result of which they were all detained to testify in court (since they were detained “red-handed”). As a result, the girl ended up in the police station along with those quarreling.
In particular, the child remained at AT Kallithea throughout the night, from 17:00 on 26 October until the following morning on 27 October. According to her guardian, due to the “adventure” that the girl experienced, she received psychological trauma.
To this day, it remains unknown by what order the child was “detained” and left in the Kallithea pre-trial detention center, and which police officer allowed the child to remain in these terrible conditions inside the pre-trial detention center.
“I don’t feel like you’re my mom”
The girl’s adventures did not end there: on Tuesday (7/11) she almost ended up back at the Kallithea police station. The deadline set by the prosecutor’s office for minors is, from November 1, to leave the child in a shelter (orphanage) and do everything necessary to adapt and prepare the child for life with the biological mother.
As it became known, the girl within an hour and a half answered questions from 2 lawyers, two social workers, a psychologist, two representatives of the board of directors of the shelter, as well as two bailiffs, who carefully wrote down everything, finding out the reasons why the child does not want to return to his mother.
The eight-year-old girl answered questions from social workers and a psychologist, as well as from her biological mother, too boldly for her age.
“I don’t want to be with you,” “I don’t feel you are my mother,” “Since childhood, I was afraid that you would hit me again,” the girl told her parent. Given the child’s refusal to follow his birth mother, it was decided that representatives of the orphanage would meet today with other relatives of the child in the presence of social workers in order to find a mutually acceptable formula.
In any case, a girl who actually grew up in an abusive environment and, after the “misadventure” she experienced that day, fought alone to convince adults that she was afraid of returning to her biological parents, should not have spent the night in the police station, thrown on chairs like a “sack of potatoes” either in the courtyard or in the AT corridor.
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