Teenager removed from Russian woman's family in Finland - Astakhov
MOSCOW. Feb 2 (Interfax) - Russian Children's Rights Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov has reported the removal of a teenager from a Russian woman's family in Finland.
"Finnish juvenile authorities have removed a child again, from the family of Russian citizen Marina. This time they took away Ivan, a 16-year-old teenager, who was immediately assigned to an orphanage, 200 kilometers away from his family's home," Astakhov wrote on Instagram.
He said the teenager's mother had turned to him and the Russian authorities for help.
"We are looking into the details of this incident, which happened in Finland, on January 29. We will definitely help the fellow citizen. The boy has double citizenship, and, to us, he is also a citizen of Russia," Astakhov said.
The office of the children's ombudsman told Interfax that the teenager was no longer suspected of drinking alcohol after a row with his girlfriend.
"In his mother's opinion, Ivan, who never drank alcohol before, thus decided to relieve stress after splitting up with his girlfriend, and was caught in the act by the school's curator-psychologist whose assistance he sought himself the following day," Astakhov's information policy advisor Renat Abdeyev said.
According to Astakhov's office, the young man, who is very much into sports and maintains an active lifestyle, had been dating the Finnish girl for nearly a year and felt depressed after their break-up. Although his mother tried to help him in every possible way, and the young man was seeing a psychologist, the Finnish social services deemed that "the family was not looking after the child properly" and removed Ivan from the family on January 29.
Ivan's parents have complained about the actions of the Finnish social workers: they claim that no child removal order was produced and no formal explanations given as to why their child was being taken from them.
The mother of the young man has only Russian citizenship, her husband and children - 16-year-old Ivan and a nine-year-old daughter - have dual nationality, both Finnish and Russian. The family has lived in Finland for 17 years, all members are fluent Finnish speakers, not conflict-prone, and not experiencing financial difficulties, the ombudsman's office said.
There were previous cases of Russian children being taken by Finnish social services. The last such case was reported in the fall of 2015 when a boy was taken from a mixed Finnish-Russian family after talking at his school about being punished at home.
