October 12, 2003 -- The 12-year-old bride stormed from a church yelling, "Leave me alone!" Though she later returned to be married, her cries are echoing across Europe and sparking a national debate about Romania's tolerance of arranged marriages between Gypsy minors. After pressure from a European Union envoy and human rights activists, Ana Maria Cioaba and her 15-year-old groom, Birita Mihai, are back in their parents' homes and have been told to return to school. But many here say it will take years to end a custom steeped in centuries of Gypsy tradition.

"Even if we acted correctly, what is happening in the Gypsy communities won't change from one year to another, let alone from one day to another," said Emil Boc, a Romanian lawmaker.

Ana Maria's father, Florin Cioaba, who calls himself the "king of all Gypsies," took pains to make his daughter's Sept. 27 wedding a lavish affair in the media spotlight. He donned a golden crown and waved a golden scepter. He invited Gypsy musicians from Austria, ordered a dozen suckling pigs and dressed his youngest daughter in a $4,000 lacy, pearl-encrusted gown from Italy.

The family openly talked about how Ana Maria would stop going to school once she was married. That may have been why, at one point during the ceremony, she stormed out of the church before 400 astonished guests. She tearfully returned a few minutes later and was duly married off, but her bridesmaids shouted "Out with Birita!" during the feast. It was embarrassing for the bride's father, who insists his daughter merely left to use the toilet.

The ensuing uproar over the wedding -- which was never legal because it was only in a church -- prompted Romanian authorities to press for a medical test to determine whether the bride was still a virgin. She has refused. Authorities also ordered the teenage couple separated and all intimate relations between them halted until they are old enough to be legally married. The young groom remains formally under investigation on suspicion of having sex with a minor. If he is charged and convicted, he could be sent to a rehabilitation center.

Though the legal age for marriage in Romania is 18 - 16 if the couple has parental consent -- the country generally tolerates the tradition of arranged child weddings among Roma, as Gypsies also are known. The practice has died out in other parts of Eastern Europe, but continues in neighboring Bulgaria and in Hungary, where nuptials between preteen Gypsies remain "quite common," said Ilan Onodi, a journalist at a radio station that caters to Hungary's Roma.

Romanian commentators have mocked authorities for turning a blind eye to the practice, only to react promptly when the EU envoy to Romania, Baroness Emma Nicholson, protested. Romania hopes to join the EU in 2007. "How much madness, hypocrisy and cowardice can you have in one place?" the influential Evenimentul Zilei said in an editorial. "Who in Romania cared that until now there were Gypsies aged 10-12 getting married?"

Gypsy rights activist Gelu Duminica said no reliable statistics exist for the number of arranged marriages between Gypsy children each year, but estimates run into the dozens. Duminica urged the government to support the integration of Gypsies into Romanian society. Discrimination against them is widespread at a social and professional level. "We need coherent support from the government _ educational programs to explain what the European norms are," he said. According to a recent World Bank study, 80 percent of Gypsies live below the poverty line, and two in three don't have regular employment. Many work on the black market.

Official figures say more than 550,000 Roma live in Romania, but the real number is believed to be more than 1 million. Romania has a population of 22 million. Not all Gypsies arrange marriages between their children, and Gypsy lawmaker Madalin Voicu called the marriage "barbarous." Many Romanians seemed to want to let the tradition continue while making young Gypsy couples wait until they can legally consummate the marriage.

The ancient practice of arranged marriages was deemed necessary to safeguard the ethnic group in the 19th century, when Gypsies were slaves in Romania, Duminica said. To protect the young women from being abused by the local boyars, or noblemen, Gypsies would marry their young women off when they were barely into puberty.

Ana Maria and Birita were engaged five years ago. As is customary, they did not date or spend much time together.

"If it was illegal, why didn't Romanian authorities intervene earlier to stop the wedding?" said Doru Viorel Ursu, the couple's godfather at the wedding.

"They should be allowed to get married in a religious ceremony when they want," said Radu Adrian Pop, a 37-year-old architect. "But they should not consummate the marriage before they are legally allowed to."

-- Edited and excerpted from the article by Alison Mutler, Associated Press Writer, online at Napa News