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Helsinki court justifies social service’s decision to take children from Russian mother

According to reports, Zavgorodnayaya’s elder daughter Veronika said that her father had “slapped her on the rear” at school

MOSCOW, October 16 (Itar-Tass) —— The judge of the Helsinki administrative court has justified the decision of the Finnish social service to take a newborn child form Russia’s citizen Anastasia Zavgorodnayaya, Finnish human rights activist Johan Backman told Itar-Tass.

According to Backman, the court refused to return Zavgorodnayaya’s children on the ground that the father “may slap a child on the rear.” No charges were brought against Zavgorodnayaya, he noted.

According to reports, Zavgorodnayaya’s elder daughter Veronika said that her father had “slapped her on the rear” at school but the girl, Backman notes, speaks the Finnish language poorly. Anastasia and her husband are sure that is was all about the language barrier – Veronika does not speak Finnish well enough to understand what is going on, he stressed.

Meanwhile, the head of the guardianship agency of the city of Vantaa, where the family lives, told local media that the administration was going to ultimately take all the children from Zavgorodnayaya.

The local social service took four children away from Zavgorodnyaya, who is living in the Finnish town of Vantaa with her husband, a Finnish citizen of the Sudanese origin, in September after their six-year old daughter complained at school that her father had slapped her on the rear. The schoolteacher reported the incident to the social service which took the elder girl and the twins (two-year old) away from their mother. Later, they also took away the baby which was barely ten days old.