Criminal case against seasonal foster parents of Vika Maroz goes to Italian court :: Charter'97 :: News

Law-enforcers in Italy have sent to court a criminal case against an Italian couple who kept a Belarusian orphan girl hidden for almost three weeks in September 2006, the Agenzia Giornalistica Italia news agency reported the previous week.

The seasonal foster parents of the girl, Alessandro Giusto and his wife, Maria Grazia Bornacin, refused to send Vika Maroz to the boarding school for children with serious speech disorders in Vileyka, Minsk region, saying that the child had been physically abused there.

Parents of the Italian couple, as well as the head of a convent where the girl was found also are to answer charges in the case that was opened following a complaint by the Belarusian embassy in Rome.

According to the Italian news agency, the defense team wants to summon Vika as a witness.

Italian police found the child in the convent in an Alpine village near the French border where she was looked after by the mothers of the temporary foster parents. After spending a month in a foster home in Barysaw, she was placed with her brother`s foster parents.

The Belarusian authorities issued an official protest after the Italian couple sent the Belarusian girl into hiding, denouncing the move as a deliberate abduction.