MOSCOW, October 1 - RAPSI. A Finnish social service has taken away four children from Russian citizen Anastasia Zavgorodnyaya living in Vantaa, Finland, on the suspicion of child abuse.

"The children were taken away because Veronica, 6, said in school that her father had spanked her," Finnish human rights activist Johan Backman told RIA Novosti on Saturday. He said the girl's teacher had phoned social services to report that the children were allegedly being beaten.

Three weeks ago, Zavgorodnyaya's three children- Veronica, plus her 2-year-old twins - were sent to an children's home. Last Friday, Zavgorodnyaya's newborn daughter, who was only week old, was taken away as well.

After the new law came into effect in Finland in mid 2008 stating that children should be taken from their families in advance of dealing with the situation, many cases of this kind have arisen. Russian-Finnish families such as the Rantalas, the Salonens and the Putknonens, for example, also found themselves in similar circumstances.

Salonen's case was one of the first public scandals to break out over Russian-Finnish children.

Rimma Salonen brought her son Anton back to Russia, after which he was taken back to Finland in the trunk of a diplomat's car three years ago by his father Paavo Salonen and diplomat Simo Pietilainen, who have escaped criminal liability in Finland. Salonen was deprived of her parental rights by a Finnish court and received a suspended sentence for abducting her son after her divorce with Paavo. The Russian Foreign Ministry and Children's Rights Commissioner Pavel Astakhov spared no effort to help Salonen or her son, whose Russian citizenship has not been recognized by Finish authorities.

Paavo Salonen has taken Russia and Astakhov to the European Court of Human Rights to force them to stop commenting on the Anton's case.
Anton is currently living in Finland with his 70-year old father, who is his sole guardian.

When commenting on the situation, Russian childrens ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said that the system of taking children away from their families for their own protection may be risky.

"The Finnish system of child protection does not offer any alternative to crises in families. Taking away children is a dangerous legal precedent," Astakhov tweeted.

Astakhov believes that the ethnicity of Zavgorodnyaya and her husband, who is Sudanese, was a major factor behind the Finnish social services' decision to take their children away from them.