‘I’m no criminal,’ says mother of girl found in camp
SOFIA, Bulgaria — The biological mother of Maria, the little blond girl found living in a Roma settlement in Greece earlier this month, tearfully denied selling her daughter and insisted she gave her up in the belief the child would have a better life.
Sasha Ruseva, 35, the impoverished Bulgarian woman who was identified as Maria’s mother by DNA testing, said Sunday that she had given up her child to a woman who approached her in the street, not the Roma couple she was later discovered living with.
“I met a blond lady one day and we started talking and she told me, ‘why don’t you leave this kid to me, I don’t have kids and I have a comfortable place and the kid can live better with me than the way you live,’” Ruseva claimed during an appearance with her husband Atanas, 38, and three of their children, on TV7, a private Bulgarian television station.
She claimed that leaving her daughter in Greece, where she and her husband had been working picking olives, had been a mistake and that she would do anything to get her back.
“I had to return to Bulgaria to take care of my other children when my eldest daughter, who was caring for them, got married,” Ruseva said.
“But we had no money and then I had another two children. I want Maria back. I am her mother, how could I not want her. I do not care what they say. I want Maria back with me,” she shouted through tears.
“I am not a criminal,” she insisted adding that she was terrified of going to jail.