The 32-year-old mother of two children, who were found to have cigarette burns when she took them to the General Hospital Larissa last Saturday, as one minors was having respiratory problems. The accused also has a third child in Cyprus, where parental responsibility had been taken away. She had the child with a man who she now declares “made my life hell”.

It was 9 years ago when the now 32-year-old woman gave birth to the baby girl in Cyprus. Today, “(the child) is with her sister and brother-in-law. After the welfare office removed her as an incompetent mother and said she was neglecting the baby and not taking care of it,” according to the father, who has also been stripped of parental rights.

Speaking to MEGA, the father claimed that the child was falling from his ex-partner’s hands with his head: “on the couch, whenever she was on the couch, the baby would fall down with her head. And I heard the thump while I was sleeping, and I was running and picking the baby up from underneath. I’d wake her up and she’d say, ‘Hey, you dropped the baby’ when she was feeding it.”

The little girl “was sick, he didn’t take her to the hospital to see what was wrong with her. She had gastroenteritis and then dehydration because she wasn’t eating, she wasn’t drinking water.”

The two met in 2015, had a relationship and moved in together. “I was working in a 5-star hotel, trying to build my life and one beautiful day it all came crashing down,” she said. The couple divorced when the child was 1.5 years old and married the man who had the last two children, according to MEGA. “At that time she had given birth to the first baby she had with (…) and she was with them and (the first child),” she said.

The father went to the 32-year-old’s house to see his daughter: “I saw the baby, I didn’t like the colour. She had weakness, so I saw it and I told my mother-in-law that she should go to the hospital, something is wrong with her, something is wrong.”

The child was taken to Paphos hospital with gastroenteritis and severe dehydration. The picture of neglect led doctors to alert social services. “The doctors know more or less if you are taking care of the baby or not. When the baby got sick and went to the hospital, the doctors contacted the welfare office and said she was neglecting the baby and not taking care of him,” according to the father.

The move to Greece

Social services removed custody from the 32-year-old, who moved with her second husband and their child to Greece. Two months later she had her second child but due to her husband’s abuse she left home. “She told me that her husband was beating her and breaking bottles on her head and she went bleeding, she got welfare. I don’t know what moves they made at the time and they locked her up in the facility with the children. And I said to her, “With the house here, how do you make ends meet if you don’t work?” She told me that the priest gave her the house and the priest and the welfare helped her with her expenses,” a friend of the 32-year-old woman told MEGA.

“I told her ‘your child was in a bad way, she needed medicine, you are looking at them calling welfare, do you have something to fear? She replied “I don’t want these things myself, I want my peace of mind”. I asked her why she was afraid and she wouldn’t answer me,” he added.

Doctors found signs of neglect in the 5 and 6-year-olds and cigarette burns.