European social services took hundreds of Ukrainian children away from their parents, the latest case occurred in the UK (video)

Victoria Shchelko, who is applying for temporary protection status in Britain, had her ten-year-old daughter Zlata taken away. And this is far from the only case in EU with Ukrainian refugees, and one of several hundred. What’s happening?

As before reported Our publication, a representative of the Ukrainian Ombudsman for the Rights of Children, Family, Youth and Sports, last June spoke about 240 known cases in which European social services took children from refugees from Ukraine. As of June 1, approximately 1.3 million Ukrainian children live in the countries of the European Union, but each such case brings pain and tears, anger and despair to children and parents. At the same time, children are taken away by social services, and then the courts en masse deprive their mothers of parental rights. The latest incident in a series of hundreds occurred in London with Ukrainian refugee Victoria Shchelko, who was planning to apply for temporary protection status in Britain. What happened?

Three months ago, social services took away their 10-year-old daughter Zlata from 34-year-old Victoria, a blogger, model, TV show participant and former policewoman from Kyiv, with the help of the police. During several court hearings after this, decisions were made: a ban on approaching the child, the surrender of passports, and the removal of information about this incident from social networks.

As Victoria herself says, writes edition of “Country”, the child was taken away without good reason – due to the fact that she did not want to be in temporary housing provided by the local authorities in the London district of Hammersmith. According to the woman, it was a “real bed bug.”

Meanwhile, social services say that the Ukrainian woman “did not provide adequate living conditions for the child,” caused him “emotional harm,” and called her “mentally ill.” The last epithet is because she did not give up the girl. By the way, after undergoing a medical examination (on her own initiative), Victoria received a verdict of “mentally healthy.”

First, Victoria Shchelko and her daughter came from Ukraine to Germany to treat the consequences of a shrapnel wound to the back received during a rocket attack. Then they went to London to visit friends, she says:

“At first, my daughter and I came to London at the invitation of friends to look around, evaluate options for employment and life in the country. The main reason was that I am fluent in English and there would be more chances to get a job in England than in any other country in Europe. I planned close your status in Germany and register under the Ukrainian program for refugees Homes for Ukraine in Britain.

But my attempts to rent an apartment were unsuccessful – in Britain this is a complex procedure. Firstly, you need a huge deposit the size of a year’s rent (in London this comes out to about 25 thousand pounds). But even this is not the main thing. There the owner of the apartment chooses who to rent it to. How many people would want to rent a room to a Ukrainian refugee with a child and no job, 26th in line?

Then I submitted a preliminary petition to the British government to formalize my status, indicating that I would renounce my residence permit in Germany. I also contacted the local authorities in Hammersmith, London, asking for help with temporary housing. Later I realized that this was my mistake. We were checked into a dirty hostel, which turned out to be a real bedbug infestation, a breeding ground for infection – with lice, hypodermic mites and bedbugs. We lived there for a week, after which we became infected and were treated with antibiotics and ointments for another three months.

After that we left Britain, but returned in September at the invitation of local authorities, who asked me to speak at an event as a public person from Ukraine. I stayed at my own expense at the Holiday Inn Express in London for a week. She again turned to local authorities asking for help with housing. We were offered to live in a tiny “gnome room” with black mold on the walls. Of course I refused. And then a couple of days later, on September 29 of last year, an official came to the hotel and suggested the same bedbug-infested hostel where we had become infected with subcutaneous mites earlier in April. They even wanted to give us the same room.

Naturally, I said that we would not return there, we had just recovered. Then she said: “Okay, then I’ll call the police, you refuse to provide a safe place for the child to live.” And indeed, soon a squad of six policemen arrived at the hotel, arrested me without a warrant and using brute force – they handcuffed me, broke me (bruises remained on my body), and took my girl away, despite her screams and stress. They took the sleepy one out of bed! They were simply taken away in an unknown direction.

And they called an ambulance, which arrived, measured my blood pressure, did a cardiogram, and there was only one medicine for all diseases – paracetamol. This happened on a Friday night, so I couldn’t even complain anywhere over the weekend. At first I was allowed to communicate with the child via video call, but then they banned any contact, citing the fact that it was “not in the interests of the child.” Complete chaos, they made the case on 56 sheets. There is another legal conflict there – they do not recognize my Ukrainian jurisdiction, that is, the child was taken away from me, like a British woman, although I do not even have a residence permit in Britain.”

Due to stress, pregnant Victoria lost her child – she had a miscarriage. The Ukrainian embassy could not help her, nor could the Ukrainian lawyers in Britain, who received several thousand pounds from her.

In December, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine held a meeting of the headquarters on the protection of children’s rights under martial law under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister Irina Vereshchuk. There they raised the issue of the forced removal of Ukrainian children from their parents abroad, including separately the Shchelko case. But… there are no results yet, the woman is still trying to return the child.

On social networks, Victoria published a recording of communication with her daughter, even when they were allowed online dates. During the day, the girl attends a Catholic primary school in London and lives temporarily in a shelter. Ten-year-old Zlata confessed to her mother with tears in her eyes:

“They don’t let me out into the street only if she (the social worker) needs to buy something. It’s like a prison, I’m so tired. They shout at me, I watch cartoons all day, sometimes late at night. What do they feed me? Well, almost in the morning nothing – a piece of bread with cheese, in the afternoon they gave me a piece of pizza. I feel terrible. The only thing I like is the toy that you gave me. I can’t move a millimeter, they don’t allow you to call, I look out the window, it’s all mine “The day is passing. I want to get to you and our dog Luna as soon as possible.”

The girl can’t stand it and starts crying, and so does her mother. Similar cases with Ukrainian refugees have become more frequent in Europe – in Poland, Germany, Italy, France. In the summer, according to the office of the Verkhovna Rada Commissioner for Human Rights, there were not less than 240. According to Shchelko, there are already more than 400 of them – women from different European countries who are faced with a similar situation write to her.

For example, French social services took away the newborn from 18-year-old Ukrainian refugee Lyudmila Koltunovskaya. The reason is that she “treats the child coldly.” A BBC journalist spoke about Elena from Lugansk – she ended up in Berlin in March 2022 with her 10-year-old disabled daughter, who needs special care.

Teachers at the school suspected the girl’s mother of drug use – she was taking antidepressants prescribed by a doctor and looked sleepy. It was only on this basis that the Jugendamt, the German child protection service, took the girl. Mom was allowed to see her only on certain days and under supervision. The disabled child’s condition worsened sharply due to stress. However, this story has a happy ending – a few months (!) the girl was returned after the intervention of a lawyer and an appeal to various structures, including the European Parliament.

And Shchelko, who is now in Germany, registered a petition on the website of the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers “Against the illegal removal of children by social services in other countries, the deprivation of the mother’s rights to raise them, the inaction of consulates, ombudsmen and the public sector, as well as the illegal use of the jurisdiction of Ukraine by other countries in the process “.

It says Ukrainian mothers and their children regularly face difficult challenges, while consulates and other authorities that should guarantee the protection of their citizens in such cases fail to act. Shchelko proposes to create a mechanism on the basis of which foreign states will have to return all selected children to Ukraine in accordance with the two Hague Conventions.

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