Sasha Ruseva, with one of her children, poses for photographers in the town of Nikolaevo in Bulgaria
A custody battle looms as DNA tests confirm that a Bulgarian Roma couple are the parents of the mystery blonde girl
The real parents of a mystery girl known only as Maria were finally identified on Friday night as an impoverished Bulgarian couple who abandoned her in Greece, triggering a legal row over the child’s future custody.
Sasha Ruseva, 35, and her husband Atanas, 38 were confirmed as Maria’s biological mother and father by DNA testing - 24 hours afterpolice traced the pair to their home, a hovel in a Roma settlement on the edge of the small Bulgarian town of Nilkolaevo.
Mrs Ruseva, a mother of nine other children, admitted she had left the girl in Greece several years ago because she could not afford to keep her, but insisted she now wanted her back.
“I never stopped thinking of her and I want her back,” Mrs Ruseva said. “She is my own flesh and blood.”
However the Roma couple who Maria was discovered living with when police raided their encampment in the Greek town of Farsala last week, said they now planned to seek legal custody of the four-year-old.
The pair, Christos Salis, 39, and Eleftheria Dimopoulou, 40, were arrested and charged with child abduction, despite always claiming they had been given Maria by a Bulgarian family.
Lawyers acting for the couple said they would apply for their immediate release and would then launch custody proceedings.
“My clients feel vindicated because this confirms what they have been saying from the beginning. We will appeal for their release and then they will apply for custody of Maria, whom they have brought up like their own child,” said Marietta Zafeiriou-Palavra.
“They truly and ardently want her back,” added another of their lawyers, Costas Katsavos.
The director of “Smile of the Child”, the charity charged with Maria’s care since her discovery, insisted that it would be up to the Greek public prosecutor to decide what was in the best interest of the child.
“It may be that it is decided that because of the circumstances she is better off in the care of an institution,” Kostas Giannopoulos told the Daily Telegraph.
A source at the Athens Supreme Court said the likelihood of Maria being returned to her biological mother in Bulgaria were “rather slim”.
“One cannot be judge or predict any legal decisions but any claimant will have to prove that she is worthy of motherhood of the child. In this case, the biological mother abandoned her child, possibly in return for money, then fled the country.”
It emerged on Friday that Mrs Ruseva and her husband, who rely on state benefits of around £40 a month, had been under observation by social services and had been warned several times over the welfare of their children.
Maria, who is blonde and blue eyed, closely resembles several of her nine siblings. “The family carries an albino gene,” said a social worker who worked with the family. She admitted that she had insisted the children seek medical help for problems related to their condition, including eye problems.
“Unfortunately they didn’t seek the help we advised,” said Snezhana Hristova, at the social services office in Nikilaevo.
The head of social services for the region admitted that an emergency review of the Ruseva family had been launched. “We are examining the home environment and whether the parents are in a proper position to care for their children and what special protection may be needed,” said Diana Kaneva from her office in Stara Zagora.
“If it came to Maria being returned to live with the family then we would only support that if it was decided the parents were capable of looking after another child,” she added.
Two of the children of Sasha and Atanas Ruseva in the Roma district of the central Bulgarian town of Nikolaevo
Mrs Ruseva said on Friday that she had originally given her daughter the name “Stanka” and defended her decision to leave the child behind in Greece.
“I left my daughter behind because we couldn’t afford her to keep her,” she said. “I meant to return for her but then I had two more babies. I never stopped thinking of her and I want her back.
“We gave her the name Stanka but the couple who took her on must have changed her name to Maria. We want her back.”
Mrs Ruseva and her husband, who are facing preliminary charges of selling a child, insisted they had not received money in return for their baby. “We didn’t take any money for her. We are very poor but we wouldn’t sell our children,” she said.
Maria was discovered last week when police searched a Roma settlement in Farsala, 200 miles north of Athens, for drugs and weapons last week and became suspicious because she did not resemble the couple who were looking after her.
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