Beauty queen sold for golden earrings by gypsies reunited with family

15 July 2014 - 16:34 By Times LIVE
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A 20-year-old beauty queen has been reunited with her birth parents 16 years after she was kidnapped and sold to gypsies for a pair of golden earrings.

Olga Romanovich, who’s name was changed to Maria Preyda when she was adopted lived a happy life but always wanted to know where she really came from.

She was only four years old when gypsies abducted her after persuading her mother Tamara to go and buy cigarettes in a shop in Moldova. She was then sold to another gypsy near Soroki, on the Ukrainian border in exchange for a pair of golden earrings, reported Mail Online.

She was recently reunited with her biological parents in Beralus after Interpol helped her to track them down.

Romanovich, who won a beauty contest before she returned to Belarus said she was given a happy, normal childhood by her adopted family, but said a part of her always felt ‘tormented’ about wanting to find her birth family.

“I never talked about it with anyone, it was all hidden inside me. All my life I wanted to know my parents and their relatives,” she said. She was spurred on by her grandmother who told suggested tracking down her relatives.

She is looking forward to meeting her three biological brothers.

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