Second Roma abduction investigation risks ‘moral panic’

Officers in Dublin are trying to establish whether a young blonde girl found living with a Roma family was snatched. That case follows the recent high-profile arrests of a couple in Greece, who were charged with kidnapping a mystery girl known as Maria.

But there are fears that the reporting of the two cases will reinforce stereotypes and, according to author Katharine Quarmby, suggesting the two prove a trend would be akin to suggesting “all white men of a certain age should be demonised” because of Jimmy Savile.

Gardai said that a seven-year-old girl was taken from a house in South County Dublin on Monday and was placed with the Health and Safety Executive, and that officers are trying to establish her parentage.

The couple, who were not reported to have been arrested, claim she was born to them in 2006, according to the Irish Sunday World.

What we can see is the moral panic spinning out of control around child abduction in Roma communities. Katharine Quarmby, author

Following the discovery of the mystery girl Maria in Greece 16 October, Costas Yiannopoulos, the director of the Greek charity the Smile of the Child – which is now caring for her – was among those to claim that child trafficking within Roma communities across Europe was common.

He told the New York Times that Maria’s case “opened a Pandora’s box about what’s happening with the Roma and the exploitation of children in Greece but also in Europe”.

And he was quoted by the Daily Mail as claiming that there is a “baby-trade conducted by Gypsies between Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and England”.

Unhelpful stereotypes

But others believe that such claims, at this stage in the investigations, only reinforce unhelpful stereotypes and could heighten anti-Roma tensions.

“What we can see is the moral panic spinning out of control around child abduction in Roma communities,” said Katharine Quarmby, who has written on the hostilities facing Roman and gypsy communities.

“It is demonising not only the Roma in Greece, but will affect the communities here, including gypsies. It is playing into the view of gypsies and Roma as child stealers.

“You can have one suspected case that leads to the headlines that we have seen. People are speculating about massive abduction rings for begging.”

Ms Quarmby, who wrote No Place to Call Home: Inside the Real Lives of Gypsies and Travellers, added that the guilt of the Greek Roma family was yet to be established. She said it is impossible to speculate about a large-scale “problem with [Roma] families across Europe snatching children” based on a small number of cases.

“It would be like saying that because of Jimmy Savile, all white men of a certain age should be demonised as likely to commit acts of paedophilia.”

In its evidence to the Leveson inquiry, the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain said it believed that the police were prone to delivering press briefings to “pander to the media’s need for moral panics”.

And the movement accused the media of engaging in a “constant public lynching of the gypsy, Roma and traveller communities”. The evidence quoted former deputy chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality Hugh Harris, who said in 1998: “Though travellers are not a large group in Britain, their treatment in the media is appalling.”

It cited Operation Golf, a Metropolitan police investigation into allegations of widespread criminality among the Roma community in London. Police believed that an organised network was “responsible for trafficking into England and Wales large numbers of victims, being Romanian Roma children, where they are then used to commit crimes such as begging, theft and other offences”.

In its evidence, the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain wrote: “The Met Police claimed that 1,000 Roma children had been trafficked and forced to commit street crime in the UK. As a result of this £1.5m European operation… 130 Roma were arrested in the UK.

“Of these, only 12 were charged with an offence and eight were convicted of benefit fraud and related offences. The ‘trafficked’ children were with their parents, of whom none were convicted of trafficking. Met Police press releases built an illusion that child trafficking was common among Roma.”