Foster home turns youngsters against falsely-accused parents

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Telegraph
By Tony Paterson in Berlin
(Filed: 13/03/2005)

Sonia H will never forget the afternoon, more than 11 years ago, when a state prosecutor accompanied by a phalanx of police and social workers appeared on her front doorstep and took away her four-year-old daughter and her sons aged seven and eight.

"The children screamed and clung on to me, they kept asking, 'What are they going to do with us?'," she recalled last week. "Their father tried to calm them down. He led them to the police car and told them, 'Don't worry we'll come and pick you up later'."

Her husband was never able to keep his promise. Six years ago, Germany's child welfare authorities grudgingly allowed Mrs H to take back her two boys, after she won a protracted legal battle to regain their custody from a foster home. She has not, however, set eyes on her daughter, now 15, since that fateful afternoon in December 1993.

Mrs H's last letter to her was returned unopened with the words "Leave me alone you child f*****", scrawled over the envelope. "All I know is that my daughter hates me," Mrs H said last week.

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