14 DAY TRIAL // Admittedly, teenagers can sometimes be quite difficult to deal with. Then again, having them shipped to another continent until they see the error of their ways, come around and apologize is never the right thing to do. Or so regular folks think.
Unfortunately for Sofia Petrova, her mother, Russian-born US citizen Natalia Roberts, does not see things quite like this. On the contrary, it was 3 years ago that Natalia Roberts sent her daughter to Siberia and pretty much abandoned her there.
The beginning of Sofia Petrova's ordeal
When she was merely 15 years old, the girl's mother told her that she was to fly to Siberia and spend some time with her biological father. The thing is that, almost as soon as she landed in Novosibirsk, the girl learned that her mom had no intention to let her come back to the US.
On the contrary, Natalia Roberts, who is now married to a US citizen named Jim, told her that she was to remain in Siberia for an indefinite period of time. Apparently, the woman decided to send the girl to this remote corner of the world to punish her.
As detailed by Oddity Central, Natalia Roberts wanted the girl to suffer for having run away from home. She also wanted to punish the 15-year-old for having skipped a few classes and for having stolen money from her family.
Being born in Siberia and having a Russian passport, Sofia Petrovna was told that she could not return to the US without her mother's consent. Hence, she was forced to remain in Siberia and share a house with her biological father.
Definitely not the best dad in the world
Not too long after being reunited with her father, Sofia Petrova learned the hard way that he was not the most pleasant person in the world. On the contrary, the man turned out to like booze a wee too much, and got into the habit of beating her.
The 15-year-old was forced to take a job at a local hostel in an attempt to make ends meet, and even asked her help at a local children's center when things at home got too difficult to handle. All the while, she kept pleading with her family in the US to take her back.
“I want to come home. To come back to you. I ask you one more time, please take me back. Please find it in your heart to forgive my mistakes that I made as a preteen. You are the only family that I have. I need you,” the girl wrote in a letter to her mother and her husband.
An unlikely savior
When she finally wrapped her head around the idea that her family in the US was determined not to allow her to come back home, the teenager asked some of her friends for help locating her mother's ex-boyfriend, a man named Farid Soulimani.
The man was deeply touched by the girl's story and arranged for her to fly to his family in Morocco. Here, he met with her and the two spent several weeks together. Eventually, Sofia Petrova, now 18, decided to leave her father in Siberia and move to Morocco.
The girl currently lives in the city of Casablanca, and efforts are being made to get all her paperwork in order so that she will never have to return either to Siberia. What's more, the girls says that she wishes to take Farid Soulimani's name.
Not because she's looking to get attention but because she wants to open up about her struggles, the girls is thinking about writing her book documenting her life. “There are many things I never shared and many secrets that I kept. All of this is going to be included in my book,” she said in an interview.
“It goes into details about my relationship with my mom, biological father, and men that have been in my life. People know my story, but they only know a little part of it,” 18-year-old Sofia Petrova went on to detail.
The girls says that, once she comes of age and can travel freely, she will be able to travel back to the US and be reunited with her sister. She claims that she no longer wants anything to do with her mother.