The Bodnariu case is not unique in Norway. The family Avramescu Cruz has seen their two children taken away into care, and although they have won the case in court, the parents have not got any children back a year after the court’s ruling, digi24.ro informs.
Romanian Andreea Avramescu Cruz and her husband, Roberto Cruz, a Norwegian citizen, are deaf and mute and have two boys, aged 6 and 5 years respectively. In 2014, the Norwegian authorities took the two children away and then placed them in different families.
According to the official version, it all started one day at the kindergarten, when the children said they had been beaten by their parents. Currently, the parents can see their children once a month for three hours, under the strict supervision of social workers.
The parents have taken the case to court and won in January 2015, but the authorities have not returned the children to the natural family until now. One pretext would be that during the period when they were separated from their parents, the two children have not continued to learn the sign language with which they had been accustomed before, in order to communicate with their parents.
“I’m glad to see my children and they are happy too, but they do not speak through signs anymore, but through an interpreter. The children are separated, live with two different families, they keep asking me when they can return home. It’s hard. After we leave, the lady who takes care of them told me that the children cry because they love us. They also miss each other,” said the mother.
At the same time, there is a second file opened against the parents, in which they are accused of violence against children. In October 2015, the judges have ruled in the first instance. According to Bogdan Avramescu, Andreea Avramescu Cruz’s brother living in Bucharest, the spouses were sentenced to five months in prison and a fine of 3,000 kroner each. The file will be tried further.
Official information available to the Romanian authorities show that, in seven families in which at least one spouse is Romanian, children were separated from their biological parents, the minors being taken away for different reasons by Norwegian Child Welfare authorities (Barnevernet), digi24.ro reports.
In total, we are talking of 16 minors in the records of the Foreign Ministry in Bucharest. Another 10 children from six families have gone through similar experiences in the past five years, and in the meantime the cases have been closed, but not necessarily in favour of the Romanian parents.