‘It doesn’t matter who gave birth to whom, but in Montenegro, secrets go to the grave’

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A married couple of intellectuals from the capital of Montenegro had three daughters. The husband's brother had two children. But while their sister struggled for years to obtain the joy of parenthood, it didn't work. This couple visited all the clinics, and listened to all the advice, in vain.

Her younger brother, a distinguished intellectual, asked his wife to make a sacrifice together - to give one of their daughters to his sister to raise. The choice fell on the middle one.

More than three decades later, the people who, BIRN's interlocutors claim, raised this little girl with incredible love, are no longer alive.

That girl is now a grown woman and knows the truth. "She called them 'mom' and 'dad' while they were alive. They raised her with the greatest love. They educated her and looked after her. It wasn't a secret, everyone knew," Marko, a relative of the families, told BIRN.

Marko is not his real name.

This is just one example of giving children to blood relatives. But such family secrets are usually hidden in a country like Montenegro. Sometimes they go even to the grave.

"It doesn't matter who gave birth to whom. Everything exists in Montenegro that exists anywhere on the globe. Montenegro is not unique in that such phenomena occur," a professor of sociology at the Faculty of Philosophy in Nikšić, Dr Biljana Maslovarić, told BIRN.

She cited an example known to everyone, the famous actress Claudia Cardinale, a big star of the 1960s and 1970s, whose family raised her son as her younger brother of. Until he was eight years old, he thought the actress was his sister

Fear of disrupting family foundations

During BIRN's research, more than ten interviewees confirmed that...