DNA tests proved the Bulgarian Roma couple officials were investigating earlier this week are the biological parents of the blonde girl found in a Greek Roma Gypsy settlement over a week ago, Reuters reported.
"DNA analysis proved that Sasha Ruseva is the biological mother of the girl named Maria," Interior Ministry Chief Commissioner Svetlozar Lazarov told Reuters. "It also showed Atanas Rusev as the biological father."
The case has caught global attention, first for the discrimination of Roma Gypsies, and now for their seemingly excruciating plight.
Bulgarian prosecutors are now investigating if Sasha Ruseva, 35, was given money for the child. She continues to decline any exchange of money occurred, but admits she left the seven-month-old baby behind with the Greek couple at the Roma camp, where she was working as an olive-picker in 2009, because she could not afford to care for the child, Reuters reported.
After the child was found during a raid of the Greek Roma settlement and was taken from the couple who proved to not be the biological parents, the couple was charged with child abduction, even though they also claim the child was given to them buy a "destitute mother," according to Reuters. The couple is still being detained.
The Bulgarian couple, who are parents of nine children aged between two and 20, live in a shack with mud floors and an unfinished roof in the town of Nikolaevo, Reuters reported. The couple's house is located in a Roma ghetto with no paved roads filled with small children wearing no shoes and shabby clothes.
"We all live in one room, my husband, I and all the kids," Ruseva told reporters on Thursday, according to Reuters. "Life is so hard. We have no jobs and we have no money, I'd like to have my child back if they say she is mine. We have no money to take care of the kids but..."
The couple insisted despite their poverty they would not sell their children.
Milena Dyankova, a state agency official for Child Protection, said the couple lives on social benefits and child support, stating both are "long-term unemployed," Reuters reported. Chief commissioner Lazarov did not comment on the return of Maria to her Bulgarian parents. According to Reuters, local authorities are willing to place Maria in a foster home.
"At a later stage, we will take measures to protect the child and perhaps she will be placed in a foster family," Diana Kaneva, head of the agency for social assistance in the area, told Reuters.
Bulgarian authorities continue to claim infants have been sold in Greece, where Bulgarian mothers allegedly go to give birth and sell their babies. According to the national commission against people-trafficking, 38 women were identified as victims of such trafficking in 2012, Reuters reported.
