Yaroslava Naida arrived in the UK as an underweight six-year-old who had lost her parents, was covered in lice, suffered from night tremors and wet the bed.
During time spent with Anna Beattie, the Chernobyl orphan underwent a life-changing experience and returned to the Ukraine on the mend.
But the now 14-year-old has been left “broken” as it looks like she will be denied an emotional reunion with the loving family in Fife after the “bungling” Home Office did not communicate its U-turn on a crucial visa decision.
Officials had claimed she may be a flight risk from Cupar before, Whitehall sources insisted, changing their minds on Friday. That would have been enough for her to board her plane to Scotland onSunday, but Yaroslava’s grandmother only received a phone call with the news at 5pm on Tuesday half an hour after The Courier was told of the decision.
Her Christmas presents now sit in a pile underneath the family tree with her festive dreams dashed.
Yaroslava formed a close bond with Anna and her three children when they helped her transform from a “tiny and frightened, bedraggled six-year-old” with physical and psychologicalproblems to a healthy, happy andconfident child.
Anna said: “The last thing anyonehad heard was the refusal letter on December 11. Neither Yaroslava nor I had been told anything.
“I Skyped her at 5pm to ask if she had heard anything about the visa and she said they were on the phone to her grandmother as we spoke.
“It’s just like they are playing with a little girl’s emotions. She’s not coped very well. She was very, very excited then upset, she was broken. Now she’s in a state of disbelief.”
North East Fife MP Stephen Gethins has now written to Home SecretaryTheresa May to ask her to personally intervene. His office phoned the immigration hotline for MPs on two occasions last Monday and Wednesday but as confusion reigned, staff were told by the same civil servants the visa had only been approved on Tuesday.
He said: “The family bookednon-refundable flights, which they have now missed out on because of Home Office bungling.
“This is an outrageous way to treat people who are trying to do the right thing by others who are less well off than themselves at Christmas time.”
A Home Office spokeswoman said: “It is the responsibility of applicants, or their legal guardians, to provide thecorrect information or evidence toshow they meet the requirements of the immigration rules.”From ‘bedraggled’ to happy and healthyYaroslava formed a close bond with Anna when the single mother took the orphan in as a volunteer host for the Crook for Chernobyl charity.
Despite having three children of her own, Anna provided clothes and toys for the then six-year-old, allowing her to return to the Ukraine more confident, smiling and a lot healthier.
Anita Atkinson, a magistrate from County Durham who was also involved in Crook for Chernobyl, has backed Anna with a letter of support, despite admitting she initially thought the Fife resident drew “the short straw”.
She said: “A tiny and frightened bedraggled little girl who did not fully appreciate where she was or why.
“Yaroslava did not speak any English and, it was quickly discovered, had numerous physical and psychological ailments. She arrived with the clothes she stood up in and very little else.
“The rest of the volunteers, including my family, as well as the organisers from the charity, watched in wonder as Anna took all of this in her stride, despite being a single mother at the time with three children of her own.
“She took Yaroslava and tenderly transformed that little girl. She put on weight, her physical ailments were addressed and the process of solving her psychological needs begun.
“Anna kept in contact with Yaroslava and continued the ‘therapy’ that changed that little girl into a confident, happy and healthy young lady. The transformation was not much short of a miracle.”