The foster parent of a seven-year-old girl who was illegally abducted by her birth mother and taken out of the country is worried about the child who she has been caring for as her own for over six years.
“We are so worried. We want to make sure she is all right and that she has everything she needs. She suffers from asthma… All her things – her clothes, her toys – are still here at our home.
“I might not be her birth mother but I worry like any other mother,” the foster parent said.
It has been three weeks since the child has not returned home after what was to be a weekend with her biological mother – who was granted unsupervised access to the girl who was under the protection of a care order.
Last week, the Family Ministry said that the girl’s foster mother had contacted the Directorate for Alternative Care after the biological mother had failed to return the girl home.
Social workers alerted the police after they visited the birth mother’s home and found the door locked. Later that day, the police informed the directorate that the mother had been traced to a European country. The police contacted Europol to help with the case.
The foster mother explained that the girl had been living with her and her family since she was six months old. There was always contact with the birth mother and the two women had a good relationship. Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the girl stopped meeting her birth mother physically for a while but they maintained regular contact via Facebook messenger.
Some weeks ago, there was a board meeting and it was decided that the girl would be given unsupervised access to her birth mother over the weekends – something the girl looked forward to.
“She called me ‘mama’ and her birth mother ‘mummy’. That Friday, her birth mother came for her as she always did.
“The girl was about to start school the following Monday, so I gave her mother money and asked her to buy the school uniform over the weekend. On Friday evening, we spoke on Messenger and, on Saturday morning, the girl called again, all excited and showed me her new school shoes,” the foster parent said.
“She was really looking forward to school. Then, on Saturday afternoon, all went quiet. She usually calls so, when she did not, I did but the phone seemed off. I thought it might be the battery. But when the situation remained the same on Sunday, I got worried and raised the alarm,” she added.
The foster mother contacted social services who alerted the police. It later emerged that the girl was taken out of the country illegally.
“She did not have a passport. In fact, we had wanted to take her aboard but her father, who is still in Malta, never allowed it,” the foster mother said.
Names are not being published to protect the identity of the child.