There is also this article:

The Independent

British woman is held in Greece after baby is abducted

By Jonathan Brown

18 December 2006

A British woman was at the centre of a child trafficking investigation yesterday after being arrested on the Greek holiday island of Cephalonia and accused of abducting a baby.

In a case which highlights the growing trade in children for adoption in the region, police believe the 41-year-old woman, who has not been named, snatched the seven-month-old girl from her Romanian gypsy mother during adoption negotiations in Athens.

(…) Go read the rest by clicking on

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article2083843.ece

well then delete my post

This story is just so wrong on so many levels. Very, very sad.

I just thought it was redundant but thanks for the promotion!

The story IS horrible on BOTH sides of this trafficking as well as for all THREE countries involved.

I will recall once more the UN Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children report on Greece:

http://daccess-ods.un.org/access.nsf/Get?Open&DS=E/CN.4/2006/67/Add.3&Lang=E

All f this reminds me of the mayor of a Greek village who got elected by promising to arrange a travel for all of its’ bachelor male citizens who wished to marry but could not find brides in their village nor women from other places willing to marry a villager.

So the bus made the trip, arrived in Ukraine, the folks found brides and almost venerated their mayor as a local hero. The story was so successful that it got repeated.

So if the Greek authorities wish to combat phenomena like human trafficing, they can simply organize them to work under their aegis instead of combating them. Either we like it or not, lots of people have arrived in Greece during the last two decades, mostly in an illegal fashion. There is no way of stopping it, but a lot of awful situations would be solved if there was an attempt to regulate all that.

If the mayors’ experiment was to be repeated for the whle of Greece, for both men and women, several impoverished Balkan, Ukrainian, e.t.c. girls would not sell their babies or prostitute themselves, but could find a permanent home and forge a strong family within Greece, and solve the root of their misery: Their own poverty.

Of course, you can always make a phone call to a bureaucrat somewhere in the U.N., and I am certain that he would pay some seconds’ attention to it before looking at the massacres in Darfur and after trying to solve problems arising from the bombardment of Lebanon and the war in Iraq…

I don’t know if I’d want to adopt a Greek baby since the mothers here smoke and don’t seem to know the dangers of smoking while pregnant.

I’d probably stick with the more savy north-American continent if I ever wanted to adopt.

COMMENT DELETED BY DD

I’ve seen in some T.V. serials coming from the U.S.A. (Judging Amy or something like that) of mothers who actually use drugs while pregnant, not to mention stories of mothers who used Metamphetamine, and their babies have problems with their hemorrhoids right now, as I have read somewhere else. You are right, you should stick to the North American babies…

Sorry Diva. I should have clarified. Mr. Petros is right about a certain population of America using drugs while pregnant, but I wasn’t talking about the criminal underbelly and riffraff of America, I was talking about the decent, middle to upper middle class folks.

In Greece unfortunately, it is not only the lower-class riffraff that smoke while pregnant but apparently the upper-class and educated ones as well. That is the sad thing I should have clarified.

But, yes you are right, the issue is illegal adoption and I should not have deviated from the main post.

Hi, I came across your blog via Bint Alshamsa’s; she mentioned you in one of her posts.

I’m in shock about these events. Seriously, what is wrong with people? And these poor children — what kind of environment has fostered such a thing as illegal adoption?

I’m sorry; I’m too disgusted to say something insightful. :S

Here is another side of the story, the alleged abductor’s - it is incredible:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1977951,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=11

well in fact the story is so crazy and it seems that the Guardian may have done a beautification job

here it looks as if she were doing suhc things before:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2-2006590185,00.html

yest another version:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=424450&in_page_id=1879

and another:
http://newpaper.asia1.com.sg/news/story/0,4136,120001,00.html

and another:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/coventry_warwickshire/6197329.stm

terrible to hear this.

I am not surprised by the baby selling/illegal adoptions in Greece that are still going on. As an illegally adopted child from the 1950’s, I see the Greeks haven’t changed one bit! They cover their heads in sand by allowing this to continue. The selling of babies in the 1950’s & 1960’s was sactioned by the orphanages, Greek Orthodox Church and the Greek government, all in the name of the almight drachma.

Is anyone out there who is an adoptee as myself and would be interested in filing a class action suit for what we Greek children have lost?