Mother Cries At News Of Twin's Death Mar 24 2004
By Sandra Murphy
THE tragic Romanian baby twins who were adopted by Portadown couple Gwen and
Geoffrey Briggs were adopted without their mother's knowledge or consent, a
documentary revealed last night.
A BBC Spotlight investigation tracked down David and Samuel Filipache's mother
in a Romanian village. She claims her sons were not orphans as is commonly
believed.
Mrs Filipache told reporters she believed the children were in a home in
Slobozia, about an hour's drive from her village, and was unaware the twins had
left the country.
The twins were adopted in 2000 but less than four months after arriving in Co
Armagh, David died in the care of his adoptive parents.
The child's mother had no knowledge of the baby's death until the programme
makers informed her.
Weeks after his death his brother Samuel was brought to hospital with a
fractured skull after Geoffrey Briggs punched the child for refusing to take
some medicine.
A distraught Mrs Filipache said she believed David should be buried in his
homeland of Romania.
Briggs was jailed for grievous bodily harm for the assault on Samuel but no one
has ever faced charges over David.
The programme revealed that Briggs, a former missionary, paid $24,000 for the
adoption process.
The Filipache family, who have seven other children, live in a village several
hours away from Bucharest in grinding poverty.
Local child protection authorities took the twins into care due to the living
conditions of the family at the time.
They were unable to specify what help had been offered to the Roma gypsy family
to help them keep the twins.
Under Romanian law of the time international adoption was supposed to be the
last resort for children who were taken into care after other possibilities,
such as reintegration into the family, fostering or domestic adoption, were
exhausted.
Although the adoption consent for the Filipache twins was signed only a week
after an emergency care order was enforced, officials stress the process was
entirely legal and that the paperwork was signed in the presence of a public
notary.
However, Mrs Filipache, who the authorities acknowledge is barely literate,
claims she thought she was signing a form to renounce any family allowance from
the government for the twins.
"They never told me anything, and they wouldn't tell me for fear I might send
them to jail. They made me sign something, but God knows what I signed," she
said.