More than 8000 calls from people around the world for appears to be a missing four-year-old girl found in a Gypsy camp in Greece from people wanting her to return to her legitimate family.
“At least eight calls have some information that can be used by the police for further investigation,” said Panagiotis Pardalis, spokesman for the group Smile of the Child. Four of those calls came from the US, he told CNN.
The blonde, blue-eyed girl is thought to have been abducted after she was found in squalid conditions with a couple and 13 other children at a camp near Farsala in central Greece. DNA testing on the girl and the couple posing as her parents showed they were not related.
Mr Pardalis said the girl, called “Maria”, is “at peace” and is doing “much better” than when she was found.
Her discovery has raised hopes for families of missing children.
The sister of a child who went missing in Greece more than 20 years ago said she wanted her own DNA to be tested against Maria’s on the off chance the girl is related to her missing brother. Sheffield boy Ben Needham was 21 months old when he went missing on Greek holiday island Kos in 1991.His sister Leighanna Needham, 20, never met Ben but says the discovery of Maria is welcome news for her family’s fight for answers. “It’s given us great hope,” she told Sky News.
“Obviously, it’s been a strong belief of myself and all my family that Ben was taken by Gypsies for child trafficking or illegal adoptions and this case just shows that they can be found.
“Maria was found after a police officer attending the camp noticed she bore no likeness to her supposed family and investigated further. The couple she was living with at the camp, a 39-year-old man and 40-year-old woman, have been taken into custody and charged with child abduction. Needham says DNA technology could help find her long-lost brother.
“I think that would be a brilliant thing to get our DNA out there, even if it’s not actually Ben but any siblings or any children maybe of Ben [that are found] then that could hopefully lead us to him,” she said.
The discovery has also buoyed the hopes of Madeleine McCann’s parents. Madeleine vanished from a holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal, in 2007, when she was three. Clarence Mitchell, a spokesman for parents Kate and Gerry McCann, said Maria had renewed their hope that Madeleine would also be found.
Source: CNN / Sky News / The Age