The mysterious blonde girl named only as Maria at the center of a scandal has been safely returned to her biological parents. DNA tests have confirmed that a Bulgarian Roma couple are the parents of Maria, the girl taken by police in central Greece last week from the Roma settlement where she was living, the Associated Press reports.
Genetic profiles of Sasha Ruseva, 35, and her husband, Atanas, matched that of Maria, Interior Ministry official Svetlozar Lazarov said Friday.
Maria is the daughter of the Bulgarian Roma woman who said they had to give up the girl because they were so poor they did not have enough money to take care of her. The couple have 10 children.
Maria has been in a charity's care since authorities raided a Roma settlement in Greece last week and found she was not related to the Greek Roma couple she was living with. This couple had been raising her as their own after being given her by Maria's biological parents.
The Rusevs and their other children live in a dilapidated, mud-floored house outside the remote Bulgarian village of Nikolaevo, 280 kilometers (175 miles) east of the capital, Sofia, according to the report.
Ruseva has said she was not completely certain that Maria was her child but that she resembled some of her other nine children - also blond, fair-skinned and light-eyed.
Maria's discovery initially spurred a widespread global search for her parents, fears of possible child trafficking and interest from authorities dealing with missing children cases in Poland, France, the United States and elsewhere.
The discovery is a vindication to many Roma after the high-profile case provoked prejudiced allegations of child-snatching.
