The Shameful Chronology
of Abandonment
INTRODUCTION: The standard of living for Romanian orphans is still grave despite vast improvements since their conditions were leaked to the West after the fall of the Communist government in 1989.
Under Nicolae Ceauşescu, both abortion and contraception were forbidden, leading to a rise in birth rates.This resulted in many children being abandoned and these were joined in the orphanages by disabled and mentally ill people. Together these vulnerable groups were subjected to institutionalised neglect and abuse, including physical and sexual abuse and use of drugs to control behaviour.
Orphanages lacked both medicines and washing facilities, and children were subject to sexual and physical abuse.
The conditions in orphanages had declined after 1982, as a result of Ceauşescu's decision to seize much of the country's economic output in order to repay its foreign debt.
As the realities of life in Romanian orphanages emerged after December 1989, the reaction outside Romania was of shock at the plight of the orphans, and numerous charities were established. Numerous fund-raising activities have been conducted by various parties, such as the 1990 album Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal, which was compiled by George and Olivia Harrison for AIDS-infected orphans.
In 2006, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was criticised for a joke in which he said there were so many orphans "over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages."
In September 2005, Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Romania, stated "Romania has profoundly reformed [from top to bottom] its child protection system and has evolved from one of the worst systems in Europe to one of the best."
In an accession report published prior to November 2005, European Union observers were positive regarding the situation of the child care system in Romania. [1]
What has changed for Romania's orphans and disabled people since Romania entered the EU? How much have the conditions in the Romanian state institutions improved since Romania has signed the 'Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' [2] and since it has received hundreds of millions of Euro to improve its orphanages and institutions?
Let's first have a little retrospective - let's start with Dictator Ceaucescu's introduction of 'Decree 770' [3] - and then come back to today to see what REALLY has changed.
Under Nicolae Ceauşescu, both abortion and contraception were forbidden, leading to a rise in birth rates.This resulted in many children being abandoned and these were joined in the orphanages by disabled and mentally ill people. Together these vulnerable groups were subjected to institutionalised neglect and abuse, including physical and sexual abuse and use of drugs to control behaviour.
Orphanages lacked both medicines and washing facilities, and children were subject to sexual and physical abuse.
The conditions in orphanages had declined after 1982, as a result of Ceauşescu's decision to seize much of the country's economic output in order to repay its foreign debt.
As the realities of life in Romanian orphanages emerged after December 1989, the reaction outside Romania was of shock at the plight of the orphans, and numerous charities were established. Numerous fund-raising activities have been conducted by various parties, such as the 1990 album Nobody's Child: Romanian Angel Appeal, which was compiled by George and Olivia Harrison for AIDS-infected orphans.
In 2006, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was criticised for a joke in which he said there were so many orphans "over there you feel they breed them just to put in orphanages."
In September 2005, Emma Nicholson, Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, the European Parliament's rapporteur for Romania, stated "Romania has profoundly reformed [from top to bottom] its child protection system and has evolved from one of the worst systems in Europe to one of the best."
In an accession report published prior to November 2005, European Union observers were positive regarding the situation of the child care system in Romania. [1]
What has changed for Romania's orphans and disabled people since Romania entered the EU? How much have the conditions in the Romanian state institutions improved since Romania has signed the 'Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities' [2] and since it has received hundreds of millions of Euro to improve its orphanages and institutions?
Let's first have a little retrospective - let's start with Dictator Ceaucescu's introduction of 'Decree 770' [3] - and then come back to today to see what REALLY has changed.
Ceaucescu's Decree 770
In 1966, the regime of Nicolae Ceauşescu decreed a ban on all forms of contraception and abortion with the aim of increasing Romania's population. Ceaucescu issued Decree 770, a program covering all fertile women unless they were over forty or were already taking care of four children.
Before 1966, the Romanian abortion policy was one of the most liberal in Europe. Because the availability of less drastic contraceptive methods was poor, abortion was the most common means of family planning.
Through a combination of modernization of the Romanian community, the high participation of women in the labor market and a low standard of living, the number of births significantly decreased since the 1950s, reaching its lowest value in 1966. However, the leaders saw the decreasing number of births mainly as a result of the decree issued in 1957 that legalized abortion.
To counter this sharp decline of the population, the Communist Party decided that the Romanian population should be increased from 23 to 30 million inhabitants. In 1967 (1966 according to some sources), decree 770 was authorized by Ceaușescu. This decree included roughly the following: abortion and family planning was virtually declared illegal, and really only allowed for:
To enforce the decree, society was strictly controlled. Contraceptives disappeared from the shelves and all women were forced to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist. Any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. Secret police kept their eye on operations in hospitals closely.
Sex education was refocused primarily on the benefits of motherhood, and on the satisfaction of being a heroic mother who gives her homeland many children.
The direct consequence of the decree was a huge baby boom. Between 1966 and 1967 the number of births increased by almost 100%, and the number of children per woman increased from 1.9 to 3.7. Hastily, thousands of nursery schools were built, and the new generation was forced to participate in sports and cultural activities. The generation born in 1967 and 1968 was the largest in Romanian history.
In the seventies, birth rates declined again. Economic pressure on families remained, and people began to seek ways to circumvent the decree. Wealthier women were able to obtain contraceptives illegally, or bribed doctors to give diagnoses which made abortion possible. Especially among the less educated and poorer women there were many unwanted pregnancies. These women could only utilize primitive methods of abortion, which led to infection, sterility or even their own death. The mortality among pregnant women became the highest of Europe during the reign of Ceaușescu. While the child-bed mortality rate kept declining over the years in neighboring countries, in Romania it increased to more than ten times of that of its neighbors.
Many children born in this period became malnourished, were severely physically handicapped, or ended up in care under grievous conditions, which led to a rise in child mortality [3].
At the age of three years the children were medically examined. Disabled and orphaned children were in huge numbers brought into homes like Cighid or psychiatric hospitals, where they lived under inhumane conditions. Many children died within a few weeks because of hunger, frostbite or diseases.
Before 1966, the Romanian abortion policy was one of the most liberal in Europe. Because the availability of less drastic contraceptive methods was poor, abortion was the most common means of family planning.
Through a combination of modernization of the Romanian community, the high participation of women in the labor market and a low standard of living, the number of births significantly decreased since the 1950s, reaching its lowest value in 1966. However, the leaders saw the decreasing number of births mainly as a result of the decree issued in 1957 that legalized abortion.
To counter this sharp decline of the population, the Communist Party decided that the Romanian population should be increased from 23 to 30 million inhabitants. In 1967 (1966 according to some sources), decree 770 was authorized by Ceaușescu. This decree included roughly the following: abortion and family planning was virtually declared illegal, and really only allowed for:
- women over 40 (later raised to 45)
- women who had already borne four children (later raised to five)
- women whose life would be threatened by carrying to term, due to medical complications
- women who were pregnant through rape or incest
To enforce the decree, society was strictly controlled. Contraceptives disappeared from the shelves and all women were forced to be monitored monthly by a gynecologist. Any detected pregnancies were followed until birth. Secret police kept their eye on operations in hospitals closely.
Sex education was refocused primarily on the benefits of motherhood, and on the satisfaction of being a heroic mother who gives her homeland many children.
The direct consequence of the decree was a huge baby boom. Between 1966 and 1967 the number of births increased by almost 100%, and the number of children per woman increased from 1.9 to 3.7. Hastily, thousands of nursery schools were built, and the new generation was forced to participate in sports and cultural activities. The generation born in 1967 and 1968 was the largest in Romanian history.
In the seventies, birth rates declined again. Economic pressure on families remained, and people began to seek ways to circumvent the decree. Wealthier women were able to obtain contraceptives illegally, or bribed doctors to give diagnoses which made abortion possible. Especially among the less educated and poorer women there were many unwanted pregnancies. These women could only utilize primitive methods of abortion, which led to infection, sterility or even their own death. The mortality among pregnant women became the highest of Europe during the reign of Ceaușescu. While the child-bed mortality rate kept declining over the years in neighboring countries, in Romania it increased to more than ten times of that of its neighbors.
Many children born in this period became malnourished, were severely physically handicapped, or ended up in care under grievous conditions, which led to a rise in child mortality [3].
At the age of three years the children were medically examined. Disabled and orphaned children were in huge numbers brought into homes like Cighid or psychiatric hospitals, where they lived under inhumane conditions. Many children died within a few weeks because of hunger, frostbite or diseases.
|
|
By 1969, the country had a million babies more than the previous average. Thousands of kindergartens were built overnight. Children had to participate in sports and cultural activities.
Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them. Many children born during this period, were not planned and therefore unwanted by their parents.
Many deaths were caused by the mere fact that women, including wives of secret Romanian agents, famous TV presenters and actresses, had to undergo illegal abortions. Many women were jailed for having them. Many children born during this period, were not planned and therefore unwanted by their parents.
1989
The children's home Cighid, near the Hungarian border, was discovered in spring 1990 by western reporters. The pictures of sick and malnourished children were published in many newspapers and were shown on many TV stations around the world. Observers described the sight of Cighid with terms like "Child Gulags" or "the Romanian Euthanasia Program".
1990
2006
2010
My glimpse of hell and the pitiful children who have been betrayed
by Angela Levin for 'The Telegraph'
In 1990 the horror of Romania’s orphanages was revealed to the world. So why, after millions of EU funds have been poured into the country to eradicate such institutions, do thousands of vulnerable youngsters remain incarcerated? Angela Levin reports.
15 November 2010 - It is not often that you get a glimpse of hell but a version of it exists down an unmade road in Bistrita, northern Romania. There stands a place that would be unfit for animals, let alone humans, but it is the only home known to 35 inmates, ranging in age from a few weeks to early adulthood. All have some degree of physical or mental disability. The building has a small room where 10 so-called “babies” – including a pallid five-year-old and a malnourished and blind seven-year-old – sleep and spend every waking hour. It was lunchtime when we visited and the empty-eyed children were either being given a bottle or fed mashed potato in watery milk by elderly female carers.
I asked Anne Marie, the director of the orphanage, where the seven-year-old slept as the room only had small cots. “In the corner cot,” she pointed with a shrug. “He can’t stretch out but that is all we have.” In her forties, she seemed to run the place with breathtaking complacency and little sign of relating to the children in her care. Most disturbing of all was the unsettling quiet. Babies, whose cries always go unanswered, soon fall silent. As they grow older, they rock back and forth, later they self-harm and become very aggressive.
So I could only begin to imagine what had happened to Florin, a 17-year-old boy abandoned at birth, who Anne Marie told me was so aggressive that he was kept in a room on his own. When I saw him, he was lying apathetically on an old sofa and looking at me with the eyes of a frightened animal.
“All he understands is: “Stay here now!” Anne Marie told us, before pointing out some tiles in the bathroom he had allegedly smashed. My blood ran cold as she continued. “I don’t have strong enough medicine to keep him calm, so I am trying to move him to an old-age home that does.” Florin is given nothing to do and has no one to whom he can talk.
In another room, on an upper floor, there were about 10 shrunken forms in their beds; it was hard to tell their ages, but Anne Marie said they ranged from nine to 26 years old. It was 2pm on a gloriously sunny autumn day, but they were lying inert under grubby blankets, some tied to the bedstead with filthy tape. There were no wheelchairs or a lift; none of them had ever been outside; and the stench of urine and faeces was overwhelming.
How can such a place still exist more than 20 years after the horror of Romania’s orphanages and institutions was exposed to the world? They were supposed to have been closed down long ago. Stefan Darabus, country director of the charity Hope and Homes for Children (HHC), who accompanied on my visit last month and acted as translator, was as shocked and angry as I was.
“It will be the next one I close,” he promised. HHC is a charity founded in 1994 by Colonel Mark Cook, former commander of the British UN contingent in Croatia, and his wife Caroline, with the aim of removing children from institutional care and into family life. Stefan and colleagues are working their way around the country shutting these unspeakable places, but it is a slow process, not least because where do you put such betrayed and damaged children?
It is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions for so many that, during President Nicolae Ceausescu’s 25-year reign of terror, poverty-stricken parents were encouraged to hand over their children to the care of the state. He wanted to boost the population, with the aim of creating a “Citizen’s Army”. Contraception and abortion were banned, and women were told that having a large family was a patriotic duty. The result was that parents had more children than they could afford to feed. There was no real alternative than to place these unwanted babies in an institution.
Ceausescu’s regime fell following a bloody uprising in December 1989, and he and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day after a two-hour trial. It was only in the months following the revolution that appalling institutions, such as the one in Bistrita – run by untrained staff and short of food, medicine, heating fuel and compassion – were discovered and provoked outrage internationally. About 170,000 babies and children, most of them healthy but including the physically and mentally handicapped whose existence Ceausescu denied, had been crammed into around 700 “orphanages” – although the majority of children had parents who were alive.
When Romania began discussions to join the EU in the early Nineties, a key requirement was that these institutions be closed down, and the Romanian government agreed to do so.
In 2000, I visited Romania to report on what progress had been made. It was a traumatic trip and deeply disturbing to see the numbers of neglected, malnourished children with illnesses, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and Aids. But I believed the assurances of the Romanian government that it aimed to have all state children’s homes closed within 10 years. By the time Romania joined the EU in 2007, I assumed that it was close to achieving this goal. What I found last month was that although some progress has been made – 450 institutions containing about 160,000 inmates have been shut down – Romania has still not eradicated its shameful past. The institution in Bistrita is one of 256 in which more than 10,800 children still languish.
The harsh reality is that shutting down an institution costs about £100,000. The EU has contributed around £36 million so far. Today, about 20 per cent of the cost is born by local councils and 80 per cent by the charity, HHC. It is also a lengthy process, taking a minimum of 18 months for suitable homes to be found for each child, with access to trained social workers and psychologists to help them work towards some sort of normal life.
In addition, efforts are made to trace the birth family of each child to see if they want to be involved; some families still have no idea where their children were taken or if they are still alive. About 35 per cent of children return to the parental home permanently. Children may also be placed in “small family homes” – a halfway house between an institution and foster care. Others, with support, are taken in by families. Adoption is a complex legal process, but there are about 14,500 foster carers currently looking after about 26,500 children. International adoptions were halted in 2007 for fear it was leading to trafficking and abuse (Between 600 and 700 children found homes in the UK).
There is also the challenging task of re-educating Romanians about the care of children and the value of family life. During my visit, I met Viorica, a neatly dressed mother of two teenage children in her early fifties, who was director of a Dickensian-type institution in Sighet for 120 babies until 2003. She was desperate to show me that change is possible although it wasn’t easy for her to talk about the past.
“I ran the institution like a hospital even though the babies weren’t necessarily ill,” she said. “They were fed and they slept. They never went outside. They had no toys, no opportunity to socialise or play. By the time they were three and ready to move to another institution, they couldn’t walk, talk or eat solid food. I had no interest in their psychological development and, for reasons I still don’t understand, I somehow totally disassociated the children in the institution from my own or others I knew outside.
“I was so convinced I was right that initially I fought against its closure because I genuinely couldn’t see an alternative. But the people from HHC argued with me over a two-year period about how children need families and love, and I gradually came to realise what a terrible place I had been running.”
For the past seven years, Viorica has been in charge of a mother-and-baby unit that helps mothers look after their children, an emergency centre for children who have been abused, a day-care centre for children whose mothers work, and four small family homes.
''All the time I try to make amends for what went before. I cuddle and love the children. I am so happy that the babies in my care now develop in the way they should.
“But I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself,” she added quietly, her face full of pain. “I constantly feel sad as well as guilty that I didn’t try to change the system much earlier.”
As for changing the attitude of the 21 million population at large, HHC has so far helped 1,500 “at risk” families, with between two and seven children, to stay together, offering support and help with childcare. It is an important but small inroad and an impossible task for any single charity to do on its own. The Romanian government should be ashamed that it is not, as it promised, making childcare a priority.
Andreea, a young mother whom the charity is currently supporting, lives in a tiny, concrete hut in the countryside with her two sons Petru, two, and four-month-old Stefan. Just 19, she is beautiful and perhaps, in another life she could have been a model. Instead, abandoned by her boyfriend, she lives in poverty. Her rented hut has no running water – she has to rely on a neighbour for supplies– and an outside lavatory. Inside, the ceiling is covered with cardboard and the bare concrete walls with strips of carpet that add colour but little insulation. There is a small log fire for warmth and basic cooking and one bed which she shares with her sons. The little boys were clean, bright-eyed and obviously loved. “I want my sons to stay with me,” she whispered, as she cuddled them close, “but I need help.”
“We will make sure she has enough wood for the winter and food for herself and her sons,” Stefan told me. “But we are worried she is too isolated. Her mother wants nothing to do with her because she had children out of wedlock, so we are trying to find other family members she could move closer to. The point is even if they are very poor, they are all together as a family.”
I looked at the sweet, smiling faces of Andreea’s sons and thought of the sad, dead-eyed youngsters I had seen in Bistrita and knew that no one could doubt what he said was true.
*Some names have been changed
Tragic case of mistaken identity
Many of the children I saw during my stay had a heart-rending story; but fate seems to have treated 28-year-old Sergio, a gentle, handsome, young man, desperately unfairly.
His mother abandoned him at birth because she couldn’t afford to feed him. He languished in hospital uncared for and unloved for two years until his parents unexpectedly turned up to claim him. But because of staff negligence and the lack of proper records, they were given another baby with the same first name. Sergio stayed in the hospital until he was four and was then moved to an institution of about 200 children. “It was grim,” he says. “But I wanted to be educated and worked hard at school.”
His birth mother brought up the other child along with her five children but, over the years, felt increasingly that he didn’t belong to her. She became so distraught about her relationship with her “son” that she hanged herself. The child grew up to be a criminal and is now in jail.
Despite his difficult upbringing, Sergio has always been positive and wanted something out of life. Statistically, about 40 per cent of children who leave institutions when they are 18 end up begging or turning to prostitution, but Sergio took a four-year degree in Catholic theology at a local university, funded by a full scholarship.
In his second year, he managed to trace his birth father who, he smiles, “looks just like me”.
“He told me about my mother, and I am so sorry I never met her.” The young man remains in touch with his father and siblings. His story does not yet have a happy ending as after his degree, fate struck again.
“Unfortunately,” he explains, “my ID has the same number as the child who was given to my parents by mistake. I couldn’t get work as employers thought I was a criminal.” Two years on, lawyers are still trying to sort out his case.
His personal life, however, is more stable. “I have a girlfriend who was in the institution with me and after four years together we have decided to get married sometime next year.
“But,” he sighs, “social and professional integration are very difficult when you’ve spent your life in an institution, and the risk of being a total failure is high. I have no money and live in a hostel but my girlfriend, who is studying to be a psychologist and also works in McDonald’s, is helping me financially.”
Learning to be part of the family
On my last visit to Romania in 2000, I came across Carmilia, a dark-eyed, five-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother, Ion, in a small family unit with eight other children. They had come from an institution and, when they arrived two years earlier, neither could speak or walk. Carmilia wasn’t toilet-trained, couldn’t hold a spoon or sit in a chair and was terrified of grass and running water. She would sit rocking back and forth in the way that seriously disturbed children do and was violent to anyone who approached her. She was utterly unaware of Ion, then an underdeveloped sickly baby. It took months of patient therapy to explain what a “family” was and that they were brother and sister. By the time I first met her, she had just began to hug him and proudly did so in front of me. She was such a sweet child that I had often wondered what had happened to her. Luckily, Carmilia could be traced and I went to see her.
She and Ion, now 15 and 14, currently live in another family unit in a quiet village an hour away from the northern town of Baia Mare. Both teenagers were waiting in the front garden when I arrived. “Good afternoon,” Carmilia smiled. “I have learnt a little English. Please come in.” She is small for her age, but there was an effervescent quality about her that was still captivating, while Ion remained more withdrawn.
The care worker in charge told me that Carmilia works hard at school and it is hoped she will be able to find a job and cope with a family of her own.
I asked if we could take photographs of them. They stood cheek to cheek, and she hugged him tight. I explained that the picture would be published in a newspaper and seen by hundreds of thousands of people. She beamed, but Ion suddenly looked crestfallen.
“Will I be seen by all those people, too?” he finally asked. He had no idea what a photograph was or indeed a newspaper. [4]
15 November 2010 - It is not often that you get a glimpse of hell but a version of it exists down an unmade road in Bistrita, northern Romania. There stands a place that would be unfit for animals, let alone humans, but it is the only home known to 35 inmates, ranging in age from a few weeks to early adulthood. All have some degree of physical or mental disability. The building has a small room where 10 so-called “babies” – including a pallid five-year-old and a malnourished and blind seven-year-old – sleep and spend every waking hour. It was lunchtime when we visited and the empty-eyed children were either being given a bottle or fed mashed potato in watery milk by elderly female carers.
I asked Anne Marie, the director of the orphanage, where the seven-year-old slept as the room only had small cots. “In the corner cot,” she pointed with a shrug. “He can’t stretch out but that is all we have.” In her forties, she seemed to run the place with breathtaking complacency and little sign of relating to the children in her care. Most disturbing of all was the unsettling quiet. Babies, whose cries always go unanswered, soon fall silent. As they grow older, they rock back and forth, later they self-harm and become very aggressive.
So I could only begin to imagine what had happened to Florin, a 17-year-old boy abandoned at birth, who Anne Marie told me was so aggressive that he was kept in a room on his own. When I saw him, he was lying apathetically on an old sofa and looking at me with the eyes of a frightened animal.
“All he understands is: “Stay here now!” Anne Marie told us, before pointing out some tiles in the bathroom he had allegedly smashed. My blood ran cold as she continued. “I don’t have strong enough medicine to keep him calm, so I am trying to move him to an old-age home that does.” Florin is given nothing to do and has no one to whom he can talk.
In another room, on an upper floor, there were about 10 shrunken forms in their beds; it was hard to tell their ages, but Anne Marie said they ranged from nine to 26 years old. It was 2pm on a gloriously sunny autumn day, but they were lying inert under grubby blankets, some tied to the bedstead with filthy tape. There were no wheelchairs or a lift; none of them had ever been outside; and the stench of urine and faeces was overwhelming.
How can such a place still exist more than 20 years after the horror of Romania’s orphanages and institutions was exposed to the world? They were supposed to have been closed down long ago. Stefan Darabus, country director of the charity Hope and Homes for Children (HHC), who accompanied on my visit last month and acted as translator, was as shocked and angry as I was.
“It will be the next one I close,” he promised. HHC is a charity founded in 1994 by Colonel Mark Cook, former commander of the British UN contingent in Croatia, and his wife Caroline, with the aim of removing children from institutional care and into family life. Stefan and colleagues are working their way around the country shutting these unspeakable places, but it is a slow process, not least because where do you put such betrayed and damaged children?
It is a tragedy of unspeakable proportions for so many that, during President Nicolae Ceausescu’s 25-year reign of terror, poverty-stricken parents were encouraged to hand over their children to the care of the state. He wanted to boost the population, with the aim of creating a “Citizen’s Army”. Contraception and abortion were banned, and women were told that having a large family was a patriotic duty. The result was that parents had more children than they could afford to feed. There was no real alternative than to place these unwanted babies in an institution.
Ceausescu’s regime fell following a bloody uprising in December 1989, and he and his wife Elena were executed on Christmas Day after a two-hour trial. It was only in the months following the revolution that appalling institutions, such as the one in Bistrita – run by untrained staff and short of food, medicine, heating fuel and compassion – were discovered and provoked outrage internationally. About 170,000 babies and children, most of them healthy but including the physically and mentally handicapped whose existence Ceausescu denied, had been crammed into around 700 “orphanages” – although the majority of children had parents who were alive.
When Romania began discussions to join the EU in the early Nineties, a key requirement was that these institutions be closed down, and the Romanian government agreed to do so.
In 2000, I visited Romania to report on what progress had been made. It was a traumatic trip and deeply disturbing to see the numbers of neglected, malnourished children with illnesses, such as tuberculosis, hepatitis and Aids. But I believed the assurances of the Romanian government that it aimed to have all state children’s homes closed within 10 years. By the time Romania joined the EU in 2007, I assumed that it was close to achieving this goal. What I found last month was that although some progress has been made – 450 institutions containing about 160,000 inmates have been shut down – Romania has still not eradicated its shameful past. The institution in Bistrita is one of 256 in which more than 10,800 children still languish.
The harsh reality is that shutting down an institution costs about £100,000. The EU has contributed around £36 million so far. Today, about 20 per cent of the cost is born by local councils and 80 per cent by the charity, HHC. It is also a lengthy process, taking a minimum of 18 months for suitable homes to be found for each child, with access to trained social workers and psychologists to help them work towards some sort of normal life.
In addition, efforts are made to trace the birth family of each child to see if they want to be involved; some families still have no idea where their children were taken or if they are still alive. About 35 per cent of children return to the parental home permanently. Children may also be placed in “small family homes” – a halfway house between an institution and foster care. Others, with support, are taken in by families. Adoption is a complex legal process, but there are about 14,500 foster carers currently looking after about 26,500 children. International adoptions were halted in 2007 for fear it was leading to trafficking and abuse (Between 600 and 700 children found homes in the UK).
There is also the challenging task of re-educating Romanians about the care of children and the value of family life. During my visit, I met Viorica, a neatly dressed mother of two teenage children in her early fifties, who was director of a Dickensian-type institution in Sighet for 120 babies until 2003. She was desperate to show me that change is possible although it wasn’t easy for her to talk about the past.
“I ran the institution like a hospital even though the babies weren’t necessarily ill,” she said. “They were fed and they slept. They never went outside. They had no toys, no opportunity to socialise or play. By the time they were three and ready to move to another institution, they couldn’t walk, talk or eat solid food. I had no interest in their psychological development and, for reasons I still don’t understand, I somehow totally disassociated the children in the institution from my own or others I knew outside.
“I was so convinced I was right that initially I fought against its closure because I genuinely couldn’t see an alternative. But the people from HHC argued with me over a two-year period about how children need families and love, and I gradually came to realise what a terrible place I had been running.”
For the past seven years, Viorica has been in charge of a mother-and-baby unit that helps mothers look after their children, an emergency centre for children who have been abused, a day-care centre for children whose mothers work, and four small family homes.
''All the time I try to make amends for what went before. I cuddle and love the children. I am so happy that the babies in my care now develop in the way they should.
“But I don’t know if I can ever forgive myself,” she added quietly, her face full of pain. “I constantly feel sad as well as guilty that I didn’t try to change the system much earlier.”
As for changing the attitude of the 21 million population at large, HHC has so far helped 1,500 “at risk” families, with between two and seven children, to stay together, offering support and help with childcare. It is an important but small inroad and an impossible task for any single charity to do on its own. The Romanian government should be ashamed that it is not, as it promised, making childcare a priority.
Andreea, a young mother whom the charity is currently supporting, lives in a tiny, concrete hut in the countryside with her two sons Petru, two, and four-month-old Stefan. Just 19, she is beautiful and perhaps, in another life she could have been a model. Instead, abandoned by her boyfriend, she lives in poverty. Her rented hut has no running water – she has to rely on a neighbour for supplies– and an outside lavatory. Inside, the ceiling is covered with cardboard and the bare concrete walls with strips of carpet that add colour but little insulation. There is a small log fire for warmth and basic cooking and one bed which she shares with her sons. The little boys were clean, bright-eyed and obviously loved. “I want my sons to stay with me,” she whispered, as she cuddled them close, “but I need help.”
“We will make sure she has enough wood for the winter and food for herself and her sons,” Stefan told me. “But we are worried she is too isolated. Her mother wants nothing to do with her because she had children out of wedlock, so we are trying to find other family members she could move closer to. The point is even if they are very poor, they are all together as a family.”
I looked at the sweet, smiling faces of Andreea’s sons and thought of the sad, dead-eyed youngsters I had seen in Bistrita and knew that no one could doubt what he said was true.
*Some names have been changed
Tragic case of mistaken identity
Many of the children I saw during my stay had a heart-rending story; but fate seems to have treated 28-year-old Sergio, a gentle, handsome, young man, desperately unfairly.
His mother abandoned him at birth because she couldn’t afford to feed him. He languished in hospital uncared for and unloved for two years until his parents unexpectedly turned up to claim him. But because of staff negligence and the lack of proper records, they were given another baby with the same first name. Sergio stayed in the hospital until he was four and was then moved to an institution of about 200 children. “It was grim,” he says. “But I wanted to be educated and worked hard at school.”
His birth mother brought up the other child along with her five children but, over the years, felt increasingly that he didn’t belong to her. She became so distraught about her relationship with her “son” that she hanged herself. The child grew up to be a criminal and is now in jail.
Despite his difficult upbringing, Sergio has always been positive and wanted something out of life. Statistically, about 40 per cent of children who leave institutions when they are 18 end up begging or turning to prostitution, but Sergio took a four-year degree in Catholic theology at a local university, funded by a full scholarship.
In his second year, he managed to trace his birth father who, he smiles, “looks just like me”.
“He told me about my mother, and I am so sorry I never met her.” The young man remains in touch with his father and siblings. His story does not yet have a happy ending as after his degree, fate struck again.
“Unfortunately,” he explains, “my ID has the same number as the child who was given to my parents by mistake. I couldn’t get work as employers thought I was a criminal.” Two years on, lawyers are still trying to sort out his case.
His personal life, however, is more stable. “I have a girlfriend who was in the institution with me and after four years together we have decided to get married sometime next year.
“But,” he sighs, “social and professional integration are very difficult when you’ve spent your life in an institution, and the risk of being a total failure is high. I have no money and live in a hostel but my girlfriend, who is studying to be a psychologist and also works in McDonald’s, is helping me financially.”
Learning to be part of the family
On my last visit to Romania in 2000, I came across Carmilia, a dark-eyed, five-year-old girl and her four-year-old brother, Ion, in a small family unit with eight other children. They had come from an institution and, when they arrived two years earlier, neither could speak or walk. Carmilia wasn’t toilet-trained, couldn’t hold a spoon or sit in a chair and was terrified of grass and running water. She would sit rocking back and forth in the way that seriously disturbed children do and was violent to anyone who approached her. She was utterly unaware of Ion, then an underdeveloped sickly baby. It took months of patient therapy to explain what a “family” was and that they were brother and sister. By the time I first met her, she had just began to hug him and proudly did so in front of me. She was such a sweet child that I had often wondered what had happened to her. Luckily, Carmilia could be traced and I went to see her.
She and Ion, now 15 and 14, currently live in another family unit in a quiet village an hour away from the northern town of Baia Mare. Both teenagers were waiting in the front garden when I arrived. “Good afternoon,” Carmilia smiled. “I have learnt a little English. Please come in.” She is small for her age, but there was an effervescent quality about her that was still captivating, while Ion remained more withdrawn.
The care worker in charge told me that Carmilia works hard at school and it is hoped she will be able to find a job and cope with a family of her own.
I asked if we could take photographs of them. They stood cheek to cheek, and she hugged him tight. I explained that the picture would be published in a newspaper and seen by hundreds of thousands of people. She beamed, but Ion suddenly looked crestfallen.
“Will I be seen by all those people, too?” he finally asked. He had no idea what a photograph was or indeed a newspaper. [4]
2012
The appalling situation of Romania’s institutionalized children:
From Ceausescu to today
by Diana Toma for WSWS.org
23 May 2012 - In 1990 the feature pages of US and European newspapers and magazineswere full of photos depicting the appalling conditions prevailing for orphaned and disabled children in Romania. The many articles devoted to this theme denounced the conditions in children’s homes in the country and predicted, or at least hoped for, improvements with the introduction of a free-market system.
Recent figures reveal that, in the wake of the latest economic crisis, the slight improvements in care of children, often carried out by private charitable agencies during recent years, are being reversed.
In Romania, cases of the inhumane treatment of children left abandoned in hospitals or simply thrown in the trash by their own parents are becoming increasingly frequent. The latest UNICEF study places Romania first among European countries regarding the abandonment of children. The number of children abandoned by their parents grew last year. Statistics show that almost 950 children were abandoned in maternity hospitals, an increase of 180 compared to 2010. Poverty, with all that comes with it—unemployment, decline in real incomes, decrease in purchasing power, lack of adequate housing, etc.—is a major cause of child desertion in the country.
An explosion in the number of children deserted by their parents started in the last decades of the Stalinist regime headed by Nicolae Ceausescu. In 1967, he passed a decree banning abortions. In the following decades an estimated 2 million unwanted children were born due to the withdrawal of the mother’s right to choose an abortion and access to contraception.
As the birth rate boomed, thousands of children were abandoned in the country’s orphanages. It is estimated that Romanian orphanages housed more than 100,000 children at the beginning of 1990. Due to the lack of adequate care, the rate of mortality among these children became the highest in Europe.
In recent years a number of articles in the international press have sought to imply that the situation in Romania’s orphanages has improved. In fact, the conditions currently prevailing in the country’s orphanages are best described as hellish, evoking the types of negligence of children that characterized early capitalism. Many years after the nightmarish images shown all over the world after the “revolution”, similar images are again being transmitted in the international press.
In 2010, Daily Telegraph reporter Angela Levin described the situation of orphaned children in Romania. Near Bistrita, she witnessed a kind of hell: “There is a place there that would be inappropriate even for animals, but it is the only shelter for 35 patients, ranging from few weeks to young adults. All suffer from physical or mental disabilities. The treatment to which they are subjected ‘takes your breath away’, is inhuman: children are restrained to their miserable beds, no one cares about their crying, while the stench of urine and faeces is overwhelming. There are no wheelchairs, elevators, or other facilities for patients with locomotive disabilities.”
In 1989, over 100,000 children were abandoned and crowded in 700 orphanages. The closing of these orphanages and finding a solution to the problem of abandoned children was one of the conditions laid down to Romania for membership of the European Union. The investigations by the British reporter showed that this demand is far from being achieved. The article raises the whereabouts of the 36 million pounds from European funds that were pumped into Romania to facilitate the closure of these orphanages.
In 2012, the situation remains deplorable. A report by HCC Romania was released in April this year. It showed that there are still more than 20,000 children in Romania’s orphanages. From the total of 159 placement centres, half of the children of school age are not enrolled in the educational system. The main reasons described by the directors of the centres are severe medical problems, deficiencies that prevent these children attending school, but also issues such as the lack of a known identity of the children or the absence of free places in kindergartens. A quarter of the investigated centres do not provide anything resembling the type of care necessary for these children.
Thirteen years ago, sociologist Charles Nelson commenced a study demonstrating what happens to the brains of those raised in orphanages. Along with colleagues at Harvard University, Nelson studied 136 children placed in an orphanage in Bucharest. Although his report did not name the centre, his descriptions shocked the West: “Children are raised in an Spartan environment, where they are forced to stare for hours at a white wall, they are obliged to observe a very strict schedule and the lack of affection shown by those who take care of them is really shocking”, he wrote. “Their behaviour shows severe deficiencies … and communicative problems.”
The recommendations made by HCC Romania report are, in this context, even more important. The report concluded that the state needs to pay special attention to the integration of these children into society. “The young people coming out of this system represent a very vulnerable category. The implementation of development programs and social services is badly needed: housing, employment, counselling and emotional support could partially mitigate the shock of independent lives, for which these young people are not at all prepared.”
In fact, Romania is currently struggling with huge deficits in its social service system and an unprecedented political chaos that only serves to make the future of these children more perilous. Official employment, which gravely underestimates the true extent of the problem, now stands at 7.5 percent, or 735,000, with an additional 29,000 losing their jobs in the month of March. These are the figures recently made public by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
Under conditions of a dysfunctional society, its weakest members are the hardest hit. Most of the stipulated social protections are inoperative. Laws adopted are not applied, the number of employees of state institutions are diminishing every year, and many of the state partnerships with private agencies only exist on paper.
In 2010—as part of the measures to reduce public spending—the government headed by Emil Boc cut 20 percent of the funding to feed the children living in state institutions. There is also a stop in place for new foster parents. This means that many small children refused admission to institutions end up in hospitals.
The consequences are dramatic. The number of children who try to commit suicide or flee from these placement centres is increasing. Statistics indicate that three out of every ten children try through various ways to escape the life they lead in orphanage homes.
As if this situation were not troubling enough, Gabriela Alexandrescu, president of Save the Children in Romania, told the press last Tuesday: “The rate of premature births—which is a major risk for infant mortality—is 9 percent in Romania, double that of other EU states. This makes Romania the country with most infant deaths in the EU.”
In addition to poverty, poor infrastructure and lack of information, the emigration of medical personnel seeking better prospects abroad is one of the main reasons for this development, Save the Children announced in Bucharest [5].
Recent figures reveal that, in the wake of the latest economic crisis, the slight improvements in care of children, often carried out by private charitable agencies during recent years, are being reversed.
In Romania, cases of the inhumane treatment of children left abandoned in hospitals or simply thrown in the trash by their own parents are becoming increasingly frequent. The latest UNICEF study places Romania first among European countries regarding the abandonment of children. The number of children abandoned by their parents grew last year. Statistics show that almost 950 children were abandoned in maternity hospitals, an increase of 180 compared to 2010. Poverty, with all that comes with it—unemployment, decline in real incomes, decrease in purchasing power, lack of adequate housing, etc.—is a major cause of child desertion in the country.
An explosion in the number of children deserted by their parents started in the last decades of the Stalinist regime headed by Nicolae Ceausescu. In 1967, he passed a decree banning abortions. In the following decades an estimated 2 million unwanted children were born due to the withdrawal of the mother’s right to choose an abortion and access to contraception.
As the birth rate boomed, thousands of children were abandoned in the country’s orphanages. It is estimated that Romanian orphanages housed more than 100,000 children at the beginning of 1990. Due to the lack of adequate care, the rate of mortality among these children became the highest in Europe.
In recent years a number of articles in the international press have sought to imply that the situation in Romania’s orphanages has improved. In fact, the conditions currently prevailing in the country’s orphanages are best described as hellish, evoking the types of negligence of children that characterized early capitalism. Many years after the nightmarish images shown all over the world after the “revolution”, similar images are again being transmitted in the international press.
In 2010, Daily Telegraph reporter Angela Levin described the situation of orphaned children in Romania. Near Bistrita, she witnessed a kind of hell: “There is a place there that would be inappropriate even for animals, but it is the only shelter for 35 patients, ranging from few weeks to young adults. All suffer from physical or mental disabilities. The treatment to which they are subjected ‘takes your breath away’, is inhuman: children are restrained to their miserable beds, no one cares about their crying, while the stench of urine and faeces is overwhelming. There are no wheelchairs, elevators, or other facilities for patients with locomotive disabilities.”
In 1989, over 100,000 children were abandoned and crowded in 700 orphanages. The closing of these orphanages and finding a solution to the problem of abandoned children was one of the conditions laid down to Romania for membership of the European Union. The investigations by the British reporter showed that this demand is far from being achieved. The article raises the whereabouts of the 36 million pounds from European funds that were pumped into Romania to facilitate the closure of these orphanages.
In 2012, the situation remains deplorable. A report by HCC Romania was released in April this year. It showed that there are still more than 20,000 children in Romania’s orphanages. From the total of 159 placement centres, half of the children of school age are not enrolled in the educational system. The main reasons described by the directors of the centres are severe medical problems, deficiencies that prevent these children attending school, but also issues such as the lack of a known identity of the children or the absence of free places in kindergartens. A quarter of the investigated centres do not provide anything resembling the type of care necessary for these children.
Thirteen years ago, sociologist Charles Nelson commenced a study demonstrating what happens to the brains of those raised in orphanages. Along with colleagues at Harvard University, Nelson studied 136 children placed in an orphanage in Bucharest. Although his report did not name the centre, his descriptions shocked the West: “Children are raised in an Spartan environment, where they are forced to stare for hours at a white wall, they are obliged to observe a very strict schedule and the lack of affection shown by those who take care of them is really shocking”, he wrote. “Their behaviour shows severe deficiencies … and communicative problems.”
The recommendations made by HCC Romania report are, in this context, even more important. The report concluded that the state needs to pay special attention to the integration of these children into society. “The young people coming out of this system represent a very vulnerable category. The implementation of development programs and social services is badly needed: housing, employment, counselling and emotional support could partially mitigate the shock of independent lives, for which these young people are not at all prepared.”
In fact, Romania is currently struggling with huge deficits in its social service system and an unprecedented political chaos that only serves to make the future of these children more perilous. Official employment, which gravely underestimates the true extent of the problem, now stands at 7.5 percent, or 735,000, with an additional 29,000 losing their jobs in the month of March. These are the figures recently made public by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
Under conditions of a dysfunctional society, its weakest members are the hardest hit. Most of the stipulated social protections are inoperative. Laws adopted are not applied, the number of employees of state institutions are diminishing every year, and many of the state partnerships with private agencies only exist on paper.
In 2010—as part of the measures to reduce public spending—the government headed by Emil Boc cut 20 percent of the funding to feed the children living in state institutions. There is also a stop in place for new foster parents. This means that many small children refused admission to institutions end up in hospitals.
The consequences are dramatic. The number of children who try to commit suicide or flee from these placement centres is increasing. Statistics indicate that three out of every ten children try through various ways to escape the life they lead in orphanage homes.
As if this situation were not troubling enough, Gabriela Alexandrescu, president of Save the Children in Romania, told the press last Tuesday: “The rate of premature births—which is a major risk for infant mortality—is 9 percent in Romania, double that of other EU states. This makes Romania the country with most infant deaths in the EU.”
In addition to poverty, poor infrastructure and lack of information, the emigration of medical personnel seeking better prospects abroad is one of the main reasons for this development, Save the Children announced in Bucharest [5].
2013
Text taken from youtube [8]: In the hospitals in Romania there are hundreds of children abandoned by their parents. Healthy babies, who shouldn't be there, completely forgotten by the state.
They are victims of illegalities and inequalities in a country that seems to have no respect for anything anymore... Because of the lack in personnel, the hospitals abandon these babies even though they earn money because of them!
The Child Protection Organisation ignores them as well, even though it is their responsibility to save them!
Because of this situation, these babies are deprived of their fundamental right of having a family and are being left in their hospital beds. With wounds because of the swaddling clothes, the feeding bottles they are trying to use alone and a huge need of love and affection.
The Emergency Hospital in Constanta, Romania:
The empty and unguarded corridors are echoing the heartbreaking cries of abandoned babies...It's 6 o'clock in the evening and the visiting program has finished a long time ago. Without being stopped by somebody, we managed to get inside of one of the hospital rooms with a hidden camera.
The children are alone... They sit in the dark. And they are crying... Because nobody cares about them...
When we turn on the lights in the room, all the crying suddenly stops. And on the babies faces we can see little smiles... It's the happiness of not being alone anymore.
They are nobody's children... just a few of those 750 babies abandoned in the hospitals in Romania... And their number will grow larger as we go deeper into the winter.
750 children who start their lives in this way, ALONE In their little beds to which rarely someone comes near. They are learning form an early age to be happy with any kind little gesture.
The stories of these children are all different...
They are victims of illegalities and inequalities in a country that seems to have no respect for anything anymore... Because of the lack in personnel, the hospitals abandon these babies even though they earn money because of them!
The Child Protection Organisation ignores them as well, even though it is their responsibility to save them!
Because of this situation, these babies are deprived of their fundamental right of having a family and are being left in their hospital beds. With wounds because of the swaddling clothes, the feeding bottles they are trying to use alone and a huge need of love and affection.
The Emergency Hospital in Constanta, Romania:
The empty and unguarded corridors are echoing the heartbreaking cries of abandoned babies...It's 6 o'clock in the evening and the visiting program has finished a long time ago. Without being stopped by somebody, we managed to get inside of one of the hospital rooms with a hidden camera.
The children are alone... They sit in the dark. And they are crying... Because nobody cares about them...
When we turn on the lights in the room, all the crying suddenly stops. And on the babies faces we can see little smiles... It's the happiness of not being alone anymore.
They are nobody's children... just a few of those 750 babies abandoned in the hospitals in Romania... And their number will grow larger as we go deeper into the winter.
750 children who start their lives in this way, ALONE In their little beds to which rarely someone comes near. They are learning form an early age to be happy with any kind little gesture.
The stories of these children are all different...
2013
2014
Europe's hidden shame
an undercover investigation by Al Jazeera
17 April 2014 - An undercover investigation reveals disturbing evidence about the abuse of disabled people in Romania.
Romania has been a member of the European Union since 2007. It says it’s committed to the care of some of its most vulnerable citizens – disabled people.
But People & Power has uncovered highly disturbing evidence about systematic abuse in the country’s state institutions.
How do the state authorities explain this – and why has the EU spent millions of Euros refurbishing and modernizing state centres for the disabled?
By Sarah Spiller - I’d been warned what to expect, but nothing prepared me.
In a residential centre for disabled people, 10 women were sharing a squalid room reeking of urine. Two residents began crying. They said they’d been "punished" by staff, beaten because they’d refused to have their heads shaved.
I’d come to Romania in winter, 2013, to learn more about the supposed progress the country has made when it came to the treatment of some of its most vulnerable citizens -- the thousands of disabled people in residential state care.
Since Romania joined the EU in 2007, the country has ratified a key United Nations treaty affirming the rights of people with disabilities. It’s announced a "national strategy" to promote the rights and dignity of all disabled people. And the Romanian constitution has stipulated that the disabled should have "special protection".
But what I was seeing seemed utterly at odds with these public declarations.
Nearly 25 years since the downfall of Communism here, for some in this country’s notorious institutions, time has appeared to have stood still.
Undercover
We returned to Romania, undercover, in the spring. One of our first meetings, on the outskirts of Romania’s capital Bucharest. A contact wanted to show us images of life inside Romanian institutions. We were shown film, taken secretly inside centres all around the country, over the last two years.
The footage was deeply disturbing.
At an institution in central Romania for over 200 adults, disabled residents lay seemingly motionless in over-crowded rooms. Down one corridor, was a room known as an "isolator," a place where apparently the most ill people were placed.
A man was asked if people had died there.
“Many,” he replied. “That’s how it is.”
Then there were the allegations of assault. At a centre for "recuperation and rehabilitation", disabled residents were too afraid to speak inside. But outside, they complained of violence and abuse -- and they pleaded for help.
"They sedate us and shave our heads," cried one resident. "The staff beat us. It's very bad in here. Please help me -- please."
Back in the city centre, down a quiet side street, we visited a charity that’s been monitoring conditions inside Romania’s institutions for the disabled since 2003.
Georgiana Pascu of the Centre for Legal Resources told us that human rights violations had got worse in the 10 years they’d been visiting state centres.
"These abuses will continue," she told us. "This is our perspective at 10 years monitoring these institutions. They will not stop."
The evidence we were gathering suggested serious failings in state institutions for disabled people.
Then we discovered what appeared to be a new initiative on the part of state authorities: A plan to enlist theprivate sector to look after disabled people.
A document on the Internet outlined how residents at a state institution in Bucharest would be transferred to a private centre in the countryside. Further research suggested state officials were prepared to pay around 600 Euros, per person, per month, for people’s care there.
On the Internet, too, was a promotional film for the private institution, the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza Foundation". It offered comfortable, modern facilities and good care for residents.
When we visited this place undercover, the reality could not have been more different.
The centre for over 50 disabled people was in an isolated village in the county of Buzau.
At first sight, the place seemed clean, clinical even. But behind the barred windows of an "orange pavilion" we found young people sedated and distressed.
On either side of a corridor were locked doors. Behind one door were six youngsters in three beds. Their heads had been shaved, and their jumpers tied at the sleeves. Some seemed thin and malnourished.
"They are people with disabilities," a staff member informed us. "At the doctor’s recommendation, they’re tied up for periods of time. They suffer from autism. They eat from the bin."
She gestured to one young woman sitting rocking on a bed. "If you want to see, we can untie her. She will go straight to the bin and eat everything she finds."
We saw another locked door. Staff said this was a "seclusion room", and at first they denied there was anybody in there. But when they turned the key, inside was a young man. He was concealed under the covers and appeared to be shaking. He’d had an epileptic seizure. He’d apparently been locked in without any medical supervision.
A hidden report
This was a private centre – but what, we wondered, did the authorities know about conditions inside their own state institutions?
Quite a lot, we discovered.
In fact, the authorities here had carried out inspections into scores of centres for "rehabilitation and recuperation" last summer.
Their findings: disabled residents were not fed or clothed adequately. Staff didn’t respect guidelines to protect vulnerable people from abuse and neglect. In numerous institutions, there were few activities and therapies.
But this report was kept quiet. It didn’t appear on the government’s website. It was only when the charity the Centre for Legal Resources found out about these inspections that the report came to light.
Even then, we discovered that for some, months after the inspectors' visits, little had improved.
Inspectors found some of the worst conditions in the centre outside Bucharest, where 10 women shared one room. Weeks after the government’s findings, a disabled man was seen wandering half-naked in the grounds. When we visited undercover, residents were continuing to live in overcrowded conditions – and complaining of assault.
Armed with the government report and with our evidence from institutions all over the country, we went to Romania’s ministry of labour, responsible for people with disabilities. What did it make of the suggestion that the abuse of disabled people in this country had got worse over the past decade – since Romania joined the EU?
The ministry's Sec. of State Codrin Scutaru told us he was "outraged". He made a flurry of promises. He would find out more about what was happening. He'd publish the government report.
Then Sec. Scutaru suddenly came up with a new policy on the spot: He’d send government inspectors into institutions for disabled people, all over Romania, to gather complaints.
"This idea came to me today," he told us. "By talking to you. Thanks to you. You gave me the idea today."
But whilst all this seemed positive, welcome even, walking away from the labour ministry and past EU flags proudly fluttering over official buildings, we had one more question about Romania's care for the disabled that went beyond this EU member state.
EU millions
Since 2007, when Romania joined the EU, the country has received millions of Euros in EU aid to help people with disabilities live independently in their communities.
So how well has that money been spent?
We visited a think-tank in Bucharest that’s carried out painstaking research into where EU funds have gone. It’s discovered that nearly 30 million Euros that could have been spent on helping disabled people live independent lives, has instead been spent on renovating over 50 state institutions for people with disabilities.
"What EU money could have done was to try and give people a chance to live in the community," said Elena Tudose from the Institute for Public Policy. "Romania has used the money in the very opposite sense. We've used the money for changing the windows, painting the walls."
Of even more concern were reports we'd heard that some of the EU money may have gone into institutions where there were allegations of abuse. We'd heard about one such centre in the county of Giurgiu called Tantava, modernized using EU aid of over half a million Euros.
Romania not alone
Dr. Cerasela Predescu’s charity, Pro-Act, helps disabled people move out of institutions to live independent lives in the community. She took us to one of the charity's community houses in Giurgiu.
Over home-made cakes, we met former residents of Tantava who told us their lives have been transformed since they left the state centre. They were able to look for work, to enjoy the most basic freedoms, and to look towards the future. With considerable courage, they also told us about the Tantava centre, and the violence and abuse they said disabled residents suffered, even as money poured in from Brussels.
"People were left to be tied up. To be beaten or injected, or medicated, claiming the doctor said so," one former resident said. "I want all institutions, all centres, closed."
"We can’t shut our eyes, knowing that people are not respected," Dr. Predescu told us. "The fact is they put money into Tantava and other institutions like Tantava. As long as they do that, nothing changes."
'Rome not built in a day'
During our research, we'd discovered that Romania wasn't the only member state to have used millions of Euros in EU funding to renovate state institutions for the disabled.
A disability charity in the UK has uncovered evidence suggesting that around 150 million Euros in EU funding has been spent on modernizing state institutions for disabled people in Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia.
Given EU policy about disabled people living independent lives, had something gone wrong?
At an EU office looking out on the Brussels skyline, European Commissioner Johannes Hahn considered the question: "To be honest," he said, 'Rome was also not built in one day.'
When it came to money given to member states for the disabled, the EU said it has had to improve living conditions first.
"It’s apparently not possible to resolve the problem so fast that all the people can be getting out of institutions." In the future, he said, they will impose tougher conditions about how EU funding is used.
But was the commissioner concerned that EU money has gone into institutions in Romania, where there may have been human rights abuses?
His department, he said, was not aware of this. If there was evidence he said he would certainly follow up on it.
We gave the commissioner a list of over 50 state institutions that received EU money. Would he look into whether there had been human rights abuses at these centres for disabled people?
He said he would.
A few days later an EU official got in touch with us. They'd asked the Romanian authorities to look into conditions inside the EU-funded Tantava institution.
Then, a week before our programme was due to air, an EU official appeared on Romanian TV and said that in the future, EU funds would be put into helping disabled people live independently, rather than renovating Romanian state institutions.
Back in Romania, there appeared to be movement, too.
Local inspectors had visited the private centre in the county of Buzau – the place where young disabled people had been tied up behind locked doors. Sec. Scutaru emailed us with their findings. Officials had found no "specific procedure" for the restraint and isolation of residents.
And more news from an official in Bucharest. Disabled youngsters at this private home were to be moved again. To another Romanian state institution. [6]
Romania has been a member of the European Union since 2007. It says it’s committed to the care of some of its most vulnerable citizens – disabled people.
But People & Power has uncovered highly disturbing evidence about systematic abuse in the country’s state institutions.
How do the state authorities explain this – and why has the EU spent millions of Euros refurbishing and modernizing state centres for the disabled?
By Sarah Spiller - I’d been warned what to expect, but nothing prepared me.
In a residential centre for disabled people, 10 women were sharing a squalid room reeking of urine. Two residents began crying. They said they’d been "punished" by staff, beaten because they’d refused to have their heads shaved.
I’d come to Romania in winter, 2013, to learn more about the supposed progress the country has made when it came to the treatment of some of its most vulnerable citizens -- the thousands of disabled people in residential state care.
Since Romania joined the EU in 2007, the country has ratified a key United Nations treaty affirming the rights of people with disabilities. It’s announced a "national strategy" to promote the rights and dignity of all disabled people. And the Romanian constitution has stipulated that the disabled should have "special protection".
But what I was seeing seemed utterly at odds with these public declarations.
Nearly 25 years since the downfall of Communism here, for some in this country’s notorious institutions, time has appeared to have stood still.
Undercover
We returned to Romania, undercover, in the spring. One of our first meetings, on the outskirts of Romania’s capital Bucharest. A contact wanted to show us images of life inside Romanian institutions. We were shown film, taken secretly inside centres all around the country, over the last two years.
The footage was deeply disturbing.
At an institution in central Romania for over 200 adults, disabled residents lay seemingly motionless in over-crowded rooms. Down one corridor, was a room known as an "isolator," a place where apparently the most ill people were placed.
A man was asked if people had died there.
“Many,” he replied. “That’s how it is.”
Then there were the allegations of assault. At a centre for "recuperation and rehabilitation", disabled residents were too afraid to speak inside. But outside, they complained of violence and abuse -- and they pleaded for help.
"They sedate us and shave our heads," cried one resident. "The staff beat us. It's very bad in here. Please help me -- please."
Back in the city centre, down a quiet side street, we visited a charity that’s been monitoring conditions inside Romania’s institutions for the disabled since 2003.
Georgiana Pascu of the Centre for Legal Resources told us that human rights violations had got worse in the 10 years they’d been visiting state centres.
"These abuses will continue," she told us. "This is our perspective at 10 years monitoring these institutions. They will not stop."
The evidence we were gathering suggested serious failings in state institutions for disabled people.
Then we discovered what appeared to be a new initiative on the part of state authorities: A plan to enlist theprivate sector to look after disabled people.
A document on the Internet outlined how residents at a state institution in Bucharest would be transferred to a private centre in the countryside. Further research suggested state officials were prepared to pay around 600 Euros, per person, per month, for people’s care there.
On the Internet, too, was a promotional film for the private institution, the "Alexandru Ioan Cuza Foundation". It offered comfortable, modern facilities and good care for residents.
When we visited this place undercover, the reality could not have been more different.
The centre for over 50 disabled people was in an isolated village in the county of Buzau.
At first sight, the place seemed clean, clinical even. But behind the barred windows of an "orange pavilion" we found young people sedated and distressed.
On either side of a corridor were locked doors. Behind one door were six youngsters in three beds. Their heads had been shaved, and their jumpers tied at the sleeves. Some seemed thin and malnourished.
"They are people with disabilities," a staff member informed us. "At the doctor’s recommendation, they’re tied up for periods of time. They suffer from autism. They eat from the bin."
She gestured to one young woman sitting rocking on a bed. "If you want to see, we can untie her. She will go straight to the bin and eat everything she finds."
We saw another locked door. Staff said this was a "seclusion room", and at first they denied there was anybody in there. But when they turned the key, inside was a young man. He was concealed under the covers and appeared to be shaking. He’d had an epileptic seizure. He’d apparently been locked in without any medical supervision.
A hidden report
This was a private centre – but what, we wondered, did the authorities know about conditions inside their own state institutions?
Quite a lot, we discovered.
In fact, the authorities here had carried out inspections into scores of centres for "rehabilitation and recuperation" last summer.
Their findings: disabled residents were not fed or clothed adequately. Staff didn’t respect guidelines to protect vulnerable people from abuse and neglect. In numerous institutions, there were few activities and therapies.
But this report was kept quiet. It didn’t appear on the government’s website. It was only when the charity the Centre for Legal Resources found out about these inspections that the report came to light.
Even then, we discovered that for some, months after the inspectors' visits, little had improved.
Inspectors found some of the worst conditions in the centre outside Bucharest, where 10 women shared one room. Weeks after the government’s findings, a disabled man was seen wandering half-naked in the grounds. When we visited undercover, residents were continuing to live in overcrowded conditions – and complaining of assault.
Armed with the government report and with our evidence from institutions all over the country, we went to Romania’s ministry of labour, responsible for people with disabilities. What did it make of the suggestion that the abuse of disabled people in this country had got worse over the past decade – since Romania joined the EU?
The ministry's Sec. of State Codrin Scutaru told us he was "outraged". He made a flurry of promises. He would find out more about what was happening. He'd publish the government report.
Then Sec. Scutaru suddenly came up with a new policy on the spot: He’d send government inspectors into institutions for disabled people, all over Romania, to gather complaints.
"This idea came to me today," he told us. "By talking to you. Thanks to you. You gave me the idea today."
But whilst all this seemed positive, welcome even, walking away from the labour ministry and past EU flags proudly fluttering over official buildings, we had one more question about Romania's care for the disabled that went beyond this EU member state.
EU millions
Since 2007, when Romania joined the EU, the country has received millions of Euros in EU aid to help people with disabilities live independently in their communities.
So how well has that money been spent?
We visited a think-tank in Bucharest that’s carried out painstaking research into where EU funds have gone. It’s discovered that nearly 30 million Euros that could have been spent on helping disabled people live independent lives, has instead been spent on renovating over 50 state institutions for people with disabilities.
"What EU money could have done was to try and give people a chance to live in the community," said Elena Tudose from the Institute for Public Policy. "Romania has used the money in the very opposite sense. We've used the money for changing the windows, painting the walls."
Of even more concern were reports we'd heard that some of the EU money may have gone into institutions where there were allegations of abuse. We'd heard about one such centre in the county of Giurgiu called Tantava, modernized using EU aid of over half a million Euros.
Romania not alone
Dr. Cerasela Predescu’s charity, Pro-Act, helps disabled people move out of institutions to live independent lives in the community. She took us to one of the charity's community houses in Giurgiu.
Over home-made cakes, we met former residents of Tantava who told us their lives have been transformed since they left the state centre. They were able to look for work, to enjoy the most basic freedoms, and to look towards the future. With considerable courage, they also told us about the Tantava centre, and the violence and abuse they said disabled residents suffered, even as money poured in from Brussels.
"People were left to be tied up. To be beaten or injected, or medicated, claiming the doctor said so," one former resident said. "I want all institutions, all centres, closed."
"We can’t shut our eyes, knowing that people are not respected," Dr. Predescu told us. "The fact is they put money into Tantava and other institutions like Tantava. As long as they do that, nothing changes."
'Rome not built in a day'
During our research, we'd discovered that Romania wasn't the only member state to have used millions of Euros in EU funding to renovate state institutions for the disabled.
A disability charity in the UK has uncovered evidence suggesting that around 150 million Euros in EU funding has been spent on modernizing state institutions for disabled people in Romania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Lithuania, and Slovakia.
Given EU policy about disabled people living independent lives, had something gone wrong?
At an EU office looking out on the Brussels skyline, European Commissioner Johannes Hahn considered the question: "To be honest," he said, 'Rome was also not built in one day.'
When it came to money given to member states for the disabled, the EU said it has had to improve living conditions first.
"It’s apparently not possible to resolve the problem so fast that all the people can be getting out of institutions." In the future, he said, they will impose tougher conditions about how EU funding is used.
But was the commissioner concerned that EU money has gone into institutions in Romania, where there may have been human rights abuses?
His department, he said, was not aware of this. If there was evidence he said he would certainly follow up on it.
We gave the commissioner a list of over 50 state institutions that received EU money. Would he look into whether there had been human rights abuses at these centres for disabled people?
He said he would.
A few days later an EU official got in touch with us. They'd asked the Romanian authorities to look into conditions inside the EU-funded Tantava institution.
Then, a week before our programme was due to air, an EU official appeared on Romanian TV and said that in the future, EU funds would be put into helping disabled people live independently, rather than renovating Romanian state institutions.
Back in Romania, there appeared to be movement, too.
Local inspectors had visited the private centre in the county of Buzau – the place where young disabled people had been tied up behind locked doors. Sec. Scutaru emailed us with their findings. Officials had found no "specific procedure" for the restraint and isolation of residents.
And more news from an official in Bucharest. Disabled youngsters at this private home were to be moved again. To another Romanian state institution. [6]
According to the Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC) [7] over 30,000 people with disabilities, including people with intellectual disabilities and people with mental health issues, are still warehoused in Romanian institutions. When one person dies in an institution, another fills their bed, often for the rest of their lives too. Placement in these institutions still means lifelong segregation for them, with very little hope of ever being able to regain their freedom, or even to challenge their detention. The spotlight has increasingly been turned to the appalling conditions in these institutions due to a number of recent and highly-publicised scandals including:
- Preventable deaths from pneumonia of a number of young people with disabilities segregated in an institution in Bucharest. Romanian television broadcast the disgusting conditions in May 2013 showing residents tied to their beds, being shouted at and beaten, being force-fed and being kept in the dark day and night.
- The death of 18-year old Valentin Câmpeanu who was killed by the Romanian government. He had HIV and learning disabilities. In 2004 he died in an unheated cleaning cupboard of a government-run hospital, malnourished and with nurses refusing to care for him, ignorantly thinking that they could catch HIV from touch. The Centre for Legal Resources in Bucharest, in conjunction with Interights, have taken Mr Câmpeanu's case to the European Court of Human Rights, because the Romanian justice system has failed to hold anyone accountable for his death. Read our Executive Director’s account of the case here, including MDAC's role in submitting a third party intervention.
It’s a scandal that thousands of people are warehoused in institutions, representing a gross and systematic violation of international human rights law. It’s a scandal that their segregation and abuse is being funded by the European Commission. Over 8 million Euro of European taxpayers’ money has been funding the Romanian government’s policy of locking up people with intellectual disabilities and mental health issues alone. Once inside, the key is effectively thrown away: no-one leaves unless they die there.
The Institute for Public Policy in Bucharest has estimated that over 24 million Euro in European Structural Funds has been spent on all institutions for people with a range of physical and mental disabilities in the country, affecting up to 18,000 adults.
MDAC has started a petition to the EU because the European Commission's funding breaches international law
Segregating people with disabilities from society, stripping them of the right to make decisions, denying them the right to vote: this is nothing short of apartheid. Under international law, governments MUST take real steps to move people with disabilities out of institutions, and into the community with access to support services. The “right to live in the community” is guaranteed by Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The EU ratified the Convention in 2010. This means it MUST comply with its provisions - including in the way it channels funding to European governments. Romania ratified the CRPD just over a month later, in early 2011.
So much for official UN documents. On the ground in Romania, there is endemic segregation, violence and abuse in institutions:
- Tantava Institution – received €500,000 from EU Structural Funds. TV and newspapers broke the story in 2007 of staff-on-patient sexual abuse, beatings and allegations that staff were making the residents to carry out forced labour for their own benefit.
- Techirghiol Institution – received over €450,000 from EU Structural Funds. In 2000, the institution’s director and some staff were sentenced to imprisonment for fraud, having used money allocated for ‘renovation’ for their own benefit. Conditions in the institution were uninhabitable. Bedrooms without heating, residents forced to use dangerously broken furniture, and forced to breath in damp risking their health.
- Bilteni Institution – received almost €135,000 from EU Structural Funds. Even the Romanian government’s own Agency for Social Inspection found residents were forced to endure e a daily lack of dignity. Despite the lovely European funds, there were not even any doors or cubicles on the toilets!
Key players
European Union
- Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for Regional Policy, is responsible for the Regional Development Fund. He has made decisions to fund human rights abuses
- Jose Manual Barosso, is President of the European Commission and has failed to hold Commissioner Hahn to account
Government of Romania
- Codrin Scutaru, State Secretary at the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy holds responsibility for Romania's disability policy. The Romanian government has also failed to establish an Independent inspectorate, and it is now incumbent on the new State Secretary to reverse the policy of segragting people with disabilities.
Please SIGN THIS VERY IMPORTANT PETITION by clicking here!
'Romania's abandoned children'
The Study
Via the Washington Post, watch the story of Izidor Ruckel, adopted from a Romanian orphanage and profiled as a child on American television, who now works to change the system to which he was victim—and learn from Dr. Charles Nelson about the long-term effects of the neurological deprivations suffered by similar children:
The implications of early experience for children’s brain development, behavior, and psychological functioning have long absorbed caregivers, researchers, and clinicians. The 1989 fall of Romania’s Ceausescu regime left approximately 170,000 children in 700 overcrowded, impoverished institutions across Romania, and prompted the most comprehensive study to date on the effects of institutionalization on children’s wellbeing. Romania’s Abandoned Children, the authoritative account of this landmark study, documents the devastating toll paid by children who are deprived of responsive care, social interaction, stimulation, and psychological comfort.
Launched in 2000, the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) was a rigorously controlled investigation of foster care as an alternative to institutionalization. Researchers included 136 abandoned infants and toddlers in the study and randomly assigned half of them to foster care created specifically for the project. The other half stayed in Romanian institutions, where conditions remained substandard. Over a twelve-year span, both groups were assessed for physical growth, cognitive functioning, brain development, and social behavior. Data from a third group of children raised by their birth families were collected for comparison.
The study found that the institutionalized children were severely impaired in IQ and manifested a variety of social and emotional disorders, as well as changes in brain development. However, the earlier an institutionalized child was placed into foster care, the better the recovery. Combining scientific, historical, and personal narratives in a gripping, often heartbreaking, account, Romania’s Abandoned Children highlights the urgency of efforts to help the millions of parentless children living in institutions throughout the world. [9]
Launched in 2000, the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) was a rigorously controlled investigation of foster care as an alternative to institutionalization. Researchers included 136 abandoned infants and toddlers in the study and randomly assigned half of them to foster care created specifically for the project. The other half stayed in Romanian institutions, where conditions remained substandard. Over a twelve-year span, both groups were assessed for physical growth, cognitive functioning, brain development, and social behavior. Data from a third group of children raised by their birth families were collected for comparison.
The study found that the institutionalized children were severely impaired in IQ and manifested a variety of social and emotional disorders, as well as changes in brain development. However, the earlier an institutionalized child was placed into foster care, the better the recovery. Combining scientific, historical, and personal narratives in a gripping, often heartbreaking, account, Romania’s Abandoned Children highlights the urgency of efforts to help the millions of parentless children living in institutions throughout the world. [9]
The Sewer People of Bucharest
When Ceausescu fell there were tens of thousands of children in orphanages and in state 'care' in Romania. But in 1990 a series of reports revealed what a nightmarish misnomer that was. Scenes of neglect and cruelty on our televisions, reminiscent of the concentration camps.
So what happened to those children?
Some moved into the tunnels underneath Bucharest. They moved into a parallel world - an underworld. Into a living hell where drug addiction is rife. The entrance to this underworld is a hole in the pavement on a traffic island in front of the station. By late afternoon they start to wake up, clambering up out of the ground like the undead.
Deep under the streets of Bucharest - in Europe, in the 21st century - there is a network of tunnels and sewers that is home to hundreds of men, women and children. The adults were 'sewer children' of the fall of Communism and never left. Some had children of their own.
Here, everyone is HIV-positive and a quarter have TB, yet they are left to rot in the darkness, huddling against heating pipes and snorting glue to stay warm.
When Channel 4 News' Paraic O'Brien, Jim Wickens & Radu Ciorniciuc visited the 'Sewer People' for the documentary that you can watch in the next video, they wrote:
"On our hands & knees we pothole down into the darkness and a parallel universe.
It's the heat that hits you first. These old tunnels were part of Ceausescu grand design to centrally heat the city. Then the smell, a metallic paint called Aurolac, snorted by the addicts from small black bags. Next up the music.
The whole place is wired with electricity, there's a stereo system pumping out dance music. If they had a club night in Hell it would feel like this. We're in the first chamber; they call it The Office. You try not to gawp.
Out of the corner of your eye, a woman with a syringe between her legs; a little boy stares at you with the Aurolac bag at his mouth, pumping slowly, like a black heart. Everyone here is HIV positive, a quarter have TB.
They're all on their way to 'the counter'. The man behind the counter is called 'Bruce Lee' after his street fighting days.
Half naked, his arms and legs are covered in thick chains and padlocks, his leather waistcoat covered in key rings, broaches and medals. His arms and stomach, a patchwork of tattoos and scarring from a lifetime of self-harm.
He points to a tattoo on his inner thigh, it reads: 'Bruce Lee, King of the Sewers'. He asks us whether we've brought anything for the kittens.
Two kittens are passed along to the counter. He opens a tin of sardines for them, they wolf them down on the drug counter in front of the queue of addicts.
For the equivalent of 50p he sells bags of a metallic paint called Aurolac. A synthetic drug similar to methadone is also on offer and injected.
On the cabinet where he keeps the drugs there's photo of the little boy we met outside, Nico.
'He's my child, I adopted him off the streets. He had many problems, drugs, you name it,' he says. 'I banned him from using syringes, only Aurolac. But I did that too late.' "
So what happened to those children?
Some moved into the tunnels underneath Bucharest. They moved into a parallel world - an underworld. Into a living hell where drug addiction is rife. The entrance to this underworld is a hole in the pavement on a traffic island in front of the station. By late afternoon they start to wake up, clambering up out of the ground like the undead.
Deep under the streets of Bucharest - in Europe, in the 21st century - there is a network of tunnels and sewers that is home to hundreds of men, women and children. The adults were 'sewer children' of the fall of Communism and never left. Some had children of their own.
Here, everyone is HIV-positive and a quarter have TB, yet they are left to rot in the darkness, huddling against heating pipes and snorting glue to stay warm.
When Channel 4 News' Paraic O'Brien, Jim Wickens & Radu Ciorniciuc visited the 'Sewer People' for the documentary that you can watch in the next video, they wrote:
"On our hands & knees we pothole down into the darkness and a parallel universe.
It's the heat that hits you first. These old tunnels were part of Ceausescu grand design to centrally heat the city. Then the smell, a metallic paint called Aurolac, snorted by the addicts from small black bags. Next up the music.
The whole place is wired with electricity, there's a stereo system pumping out dance music. If they had a club night in Hell it would feel like this. We're in the first chamber; they call it The Office. You try not to gawp.
Out of the corner of your eye, a woman with a syringe between her legs; a little boy stares at you with the Aurolac bag at his mouth, pumping slowly, like a black heart. Everyone here is HIV positive, a quarter have TB.
They're all on their way to 'the counter'. The man behind the counter is called 'Bruce Lee' after his street fighting days.
Half naked, his arms and legs are covered in thick chains and padlocks, his leather waistcoat covered in key rings, broaches and medals. His arms and stomach, a patchwork of tattoos and scarring from a lifetime of self-harm.
He points to a tattoo on his inner thigh, it reads: 'Bruce Lee, King of the Sewers'. He asks us whether we've brought anything for the kittens.
Two kittens are passed along to the counter. He opens a tin of sardines for them, they wolf them down on the drug counter in front of the queue of addicts.
For the equivalent of 50p he sells bags of a metallic paint called Aurolac. A synthetic drug similar to methadone is also on offer and injected.
On the cabinet where he keeps the drugs there's photo of the little boy we met outside, Nico.
'He's my child, I adopted him off the streets. He had many problems, drugs, you name it,' he says. 'I banned him from using syringes, only Aurolac. But I did that too late.' "
The abandoned dogs
Approximately 5 million puppies are born in Romania in rural areas every year, some of them being killed by their owners and the others being abandoned in the streets and the woods.
The street dogs of Romania are hated, poisoned, beaten, stabbed, shot, run over by cars, burned, and dumped in pits to starve to death. Hundreds of thousands of innocent dogs are condemned to death every year, their only crime is being born.
It is being said that the stray problem in Romania began in the late 1980s. Before the communist regime of Dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, most Romanians worked on farms with their companion animals. But Ceausescu’s policies changed agricultural Romania into an urban society complete with overcrowding and food shortages. When communism took hold, many rural families were forced to work in urban areas and weren't allowed to take their pets with them into the apartments where they lived. Thousands of dogs were left to fend for themselves in the countryside. Since Ceausescu's execution in 1989, the dog population has gown into the millions.
However... fact is that Romanian still abandon dogs... they throw them on the streets like smashed beer cans. No-one is compelled to neuter their dogs, but most dogs are allowed to roam freely and to mate as they wish, resulting in millions of unwanted puppies that are then simply being abandoned, if not killed.
A law has been in place to formally prohibit the killing of strays since 2008. But the law only prevented large scale killings, such as those seen when strays were killed en masse in the streets. In 2001 the then-mayor of Bucharest launched a campaign that led to the extermination of at least 144,000 stray dogs in the capital alone, spending almost 9 million Euro.
However, a few years later the streets were again littered with live and dead dogs. It was impossible to drive from the Hungarian border to Romania without seeing scores of stray dogs foraging for food and without seeing several dead bodies on the road.
Following the death of the 4-year-old boy Ionut Anghel, on September 2, 2013 allegedly killed by dogs [10], a law was voted in the Parliament on 10th September, which the Romanian Constitutional Court ruled "constitutional" on 25th of September, and that sentences ANY dog on the street be removed, and after 14 days, if not claimed, adopted or perished before, to be 'slaughtered'.
Although it was proven that the grandmother could not account for the whereabouts of the two grandchildren (a 4- and a 6-year old) for about one hour in a public area (Tei Park) she has never been charged for child neglect but instead she made several appearances in mass-media (TV shows and newspapers). This is in contrast to charges that several Romanian parents or guardians faced in the past for lesser incidences of child neglect. Laws relating to the neglect of minor children are currently present in Romanian law books. It is therefore very strange that the grandmother of the now deceased child remains free of any charges of negligence.
The mass media used the case of this child to deliberately appeal to the emotions of people to get them to eventually believe that the mass killings are justifiable based on myth that no one is safe from attacks by stray dogs especially the children. This represents skillful psychological manipulation by the mass media to get people to come to a conclusion that matches the violent intention (mass killings) of those associated with these killings. At this time, several manipulation procedures and techniques were used intensively by the mass media, the ultimate goal being the tainting of public opinion.
On 25th of September, 2013 Constitutional Court judge Petre Lăzăroiu, suggested that "the mass killing of stray dogs in Romania could traumatize the population"... then the entire place ruled to cull all dogs. And that the eradication of Romania's homeless animals - although it had been ruled unconstitutional in January 2012 - was now 'constitutional'.
On that day, the Romanian Constitutional Court had an opportunity to define whether Romania is a country worthy of being called civilized or whether it should be consigned to popular perception of a country unworthy of being considered anything other than barbaric, mismanaged, corrupt and dangerous. They choose the latter.
And the entire world was both shocked and outraged.
On 25th of September, 2013 the future of an entire country; the fate of many hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of innocent homeless dogs, was determined by the abuse of power of a handful of individuals.
The implementation of Romania's 'eradication program' ("eradication" was the word that they themselves had used during the debate in the parliament) has produced worldwide condemnation and a perception that Romania is a country which introduces medieval practices and governs in a draconian mode. The Romanian government has brought shame to Romania as a whole - the implementation of their 'Slaughter Law' has very negatively affected Romania's image politically and on so many other levels.
The Romanian "Slaughter Law" has polarized Romania's society and made it dangerously divisive, now having a society divided into two groups, namely aggressors of the dogs, and defenders of the dogs.
It is being said that the stray problem in Romania began in the late 1980s. Before the communist regime of Dictator Nicolai Ceausescu, most Romanians worked on farms with their companion animals. But Ceausescu’s policies changed agricultural Romania into an urban society complete with overcrowding and food shortages. When communism took hold, many rural families were forced to work in urban areas and weren't allowed to take their pets with them into the apartments where they lived. Thousands of dogs were left to fend for themselves in the countryside. Since Ceausescu's execution in 1989, the dog population has gown into the millions.
However... fact is that Romanian still abandon dogs... they throw them on the streets like smashed beer cans. No-one is compelled to neuter their dogs, but most dogs are allowed to roam freely and to mate as they wish, resulting in millions of unwanted puppies that are then simply being abandoned, if not killed.
A law has been in place to formally prohibit the killing of strays since 2008. But the law only prevented large scale killings, such as those seen when strays were killed en masse in the streets. In 2001 the then-mayor of Bucharest launched a campaign that led to the extermination of at least 144,000 stray dogs in the capital alone, spending almost 9 million Euro.
However, a few years later the streets were again littered with live and dead dogs. It was impossible to drive from the Hungarian border to Romania without seeing scores of stray dogs foraging for food and without seeing several dead bodies on the road.
Following the death of the 4-year-old boy Ionut Anghel, on September 2, 2013 allegedly killed by dogs [10], a law was voted in the Parliament on 10th September, which the Romanian Constitutional Court ruled "constitutional" on 25th of September, and that sentences ANY dog on the street be removed, and after 14 days, if not claimed, adopted or perished before, to be 'slaughtered'.
Although it was proven that the grandmother could not account for the whereabouts of the two grandchildren (a 4- and a 6-year old) for about one hour in a public area (Tei Park) she has never been charged for child neglect but instead she made several appearances in mass-media (TV shows and newspapers). This is in contrast to charges that several Romanian parents or guardians faced in the past for lesser incidences of child neglect. Laws relating to the neglect of minor children are currently present in Romanian law books. It is therefore very strange that the grandmother of the now deceased child remains free of any charges of negligence.
The mass media used the case of this child to deliberately appeal to the emotions of people to get them to eventually believe that the mass killings are justifiable based on myth that no one is safe from attacks by stray dogs especially the children. This represents skillful psychological manipulation by the mass media to get people to come to a conclusion that matches the violent intention (mass killings) of those associated with these killings. At this time, several manipulation procedures and techniques were used intensively by the mass media, the ultimate goal being the tainting of public opinion.
On 25th of September, 2013 Constitutional Court judge Petre Lăzăroiu, suggested that "the mass killing of stray dogs in Romania could traumatize the population"... then the entire place ruled to cull all dogs. And that the eradication of Romania's homeless animals - although it had been ruled unconstitutional in January 2012 - was now 'constitutional'.
On that day, the Romanian Constitutional Court had an opportunity to define whether Romania is a country worthy of being called civilized or whether it should be consigned to popular perception of a country unworthy of being considered anything other than barbaric, mismanaged, corrupt and dangerous. They choose the latter.
And the entire world was both shocked and outraged.
On 25th of September, 2013 the future of an entire country; the fate of many hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions of innocent homeless dogs, was determined by the abuse of power of a handful of individuals.
The implementation of Romania's 'eradication program' ("eradication" was the word that they themselves had used during the debate in the parliament) has produced worldwide condemnation and a perception that Romania is a country which introduces medieval practices and governs in a draconian mode. The Romanian government has brought shame to Romania as a whole - the implementation of their 'Slaughter Law' has very negatively affected Romania's image politically and on so many other levels.
The Romanian "Slaughter Law" has polarized Romania's society and made it dangerously divisive, now having a society divided into two groups, namely aggressors of the dogs, and defenders of the dogs.
The Romanian Outcasts
Orphans and Dogs
Can it be that long after freedom limiting, socially restrictive political forces have been removed from a land, that identification of a narrow central commonality is possible? A centrality which is both morally obscene and destructive to the psychological drives of the individuals who readily accept and proliferate such actions throughout society?
The viewer who observes Romanian society across ALL its domains, slowly sees the emergence of this commonality. The word ‘ABANDONED‘ is woven into the fabric of Romanian society.
The orphanages... full of the abandoned... children... babies. Discarded... unwanted!
Individuals who are emotionally broken even before they begin their lives and must invoke the powerful self-healing which the human mind can exercise so beautifully. But never perfectly... effects will remain... whether this be self-doubt... or anger. The balance has been tilted.
The mentally handicapped... THROWN AWAY. Discarded. Integration into society being desirable but seldom enacted as institutionalization brings benefits to those who preside over such places. Significant EU funding pours into these institutions, but with limited monitoring. Abuse of residents is widespread.
Romania has a problem with stray animals. Too many. Too many abandoned. The answer? The government reduce the status of the animals to ‘aggression worthy’ and by doing so encourage the practice of aggression against the readily available animal victim.
None in isolation... all are connected.
In the next pictures: the grotesque poisoning of the animal ‘friends’ of the residents of a hospice for the mentally handicapped in Tantava. In an institution where significant abuse of the residents has taken place, their animal friends, perhaps their only friends , were destroyed horrifically with anti-freeze poisoning. They stood shaking with helplessness... with hopelessness as they watched their friends final death throes as their intestines liquefied.
What hope? What humanity?
The viewer who observes Romanian society across ALL its domains, slowly sees the emergence of this commonality. The word ‘ABANDONED‘ is woven into the fabric of Romanian society.
The orphanages... full of the abandoned... children... babies. Discarded... unwanted!
Individuals who are emotionally broken even before they begin their lives and must invoke the powerful self-healing which the human mind can exercise so beautifully. But never perfectly... effects will remain... whether this be self-doubt... or anger. The balance has been tilted.
The mentally handicapped... THROWN AWAY. Discarded. Integration into society being desirable but seldom enacted as institutionalization brings benefits to those who preside over such places. Significant EU funding pours into these institutions, but with limited monitoring. Abuse of residents is widespread.
Romania has a problem with stray animals. Too many. Too many abandoned. The answer? The government reduce the status of the animals to ‘aggression worthy’ and by doing so encourage the practice of aggression against the readily available animal victim.
None in isolation... all are connected.
In the next pictures: the grotesque poisoning of the animal ‘friends’ of the residents of a hospice for the mentally handicapped in Tantava. In an institution where significant abuse of the residents has taken place, their animal friends, perhaps their only friends , were destroyed horrifically with anti-freeze poisoning. They stood shaking with helplessness... with hopelessness as they watched their friends final death throes as their intestines liquefied.
What hope? What humanity?
|
|
The orphaned children in Valcea where their animal friends who used to live in the orphanage grounds, were, amidst screams and shrieks of anguish from the kids, taken from them to be killed in the local slaughterhouse shelter in compliance with the Romanian ‘Slaughter Law’ which seeks to ‘eradicate’ every stray animal, including all those in future who will continue to be abandoned.
Of course they will be abandoned. That’s the way it is in Romania. Have a problem... abandon it.
Of course they will be abandoned. That’s the way it is in Romania. Have a problem... abandon it.
Translation of Tibi's letter:
My name is Coroiag Tiberiu Rafael, I live in Ramnicu Valcea orphanage and I love dogs. Many times the dogs who lived in the yard of the orphanage, dogs who were our play mates everyday, were beaten and tortured by dogcatchers and us, the kids, were screaming to them to not take them and we suffered a lot and now we still miss our dogs. Now we have only one dog. I wish to have a dog to care for, to feed him and to play with him. Love... Tibi |
Translation of Adrian's letter:
My name is Mladin Ion Adrian and I'm 14 years old. I love a lot our tutor Mr. Mihai, he likes dogs and he went with us every time to the dog shelter to recuperate our dogs. We brought the dogs back to the orphanage but the Madam Director was calling the dogcatchers again. We were crying every time the dogs were tortured by them but we were helpless. Now the yard is empty and we don't have with who to play and who to love. I wish a dog to feed and to care for... |
For the children and the animals, we - who live in countries where regard for both animals and children is part of our heritage - decided to save the lives of these animals! These kids needed to believe that there is some good in their world... some love and compassion.
But our pleas fell on empty ears... empty hearts. The Director of the orphanage initially agreed, but later reneged on an agreement to allow the dogs to live in the orphanage grounds, fearing complaints from local neighbors. No-one, it seemed, wanted these animals and no-one considered the feelings of the children.
But hope came like a light in the night. A local rescue group took the animals to safety from where new homes were sought. Out from the glow of compassion shining from Western Europe, many hands reached out into the darkness of Romania and carried these animals away to new homes... new security... new love!
Not only had the children seen their friends rescued from certain death but they had seen with unbelieving eyes that other societies were different from theirs and in other places people felt the same as them... they cared!
As they watched their friends leave for a new life of security and love, the children wept openly... no more the tears of pain and sadness... but tears of joy.
But does it permeate only the populations? A government has responsibility to care for the health and security of its people and is responsible to enforce its constitution, ensuring that human rights are respected. Patently this is not enacted.
The stray animal issue, instead of an aggression promoting strategy an alternative awaits. By neutering the animals there would be no more on the streets and no more to abandon. But a Romanian Government gives limited consideration to such options and prefers to hide behind well practised smokescreens of apparent activity which, when the smoke is blown away, are found simply to be hollow and cosmetic. They simply abandon the people for whom they claim responsibility.
And the ‘mighty’ power of Europe? The authority which determines the essentials of European society but, when confronted with a country whose departure from European - indeed humane - standards, simply throws money in the general direction of the problem, before hiding under the covers whilst muttering the words in muffled tones ‘No Competence... No Competence'
It would appear the Romanian penchant for practicing abandonment, is also exhibited by those who really should know better... who can do better... and to preserve any respect for the European Union’s capabilities in respecting human and animal life... MUST do better!
The stray animal issue, instead of an aggression promoting strategy an alternative awaits. By neutering the animals there would be no more on the streets and no more to abandon. But a Romanian Government gives limited consideration to such options and prefers to hide behind well practised smokescreens of apparent activity which, when the smoke is blown away, are found simply to be hollow and cosmetic. They simply abandon the people for whom they claim responsibility.
And the ‘mighty’ power of Europe? The authority which determines the essentials of European society but, when confronted with a country whose departure from European - indeed humane - standards, simply throws money in the general direction of the problem, before hiding under the covers whilst muttering the words in muffled tones ‘No Competence... No Competence'
It would appear the Romanian penchant for practicing abandonment, is also exhibited by those who really should know better... who can do better... and to preserve any respect for the European Union’s capabilities in respecting human and animal life... MUST do better!
Canine Therapy
Training Romanian Strays to Help Children
“A girl came to us who was sexually abused and she wouldn't talk about it – but she came to the dog and talked to the dog about what happened – not caring that the adult was listening, but the relationship was with the dog and the dog was her confidant. A lot of issues of sexuality and identity you can address with a dog and through a dog – and stray dogs can be as beneficial to society as breed dogs.”, says Victor Chitic, a psychotherapist living in Bucharest.
See how Romanian stray dogs can be trained to help abandoned and disabled children learn, integrate and empathise in the next, short documentary by Michael Bird.
See how Romanian stray dogs can be trained to help abandoned and disabled children learn, integrate and empathise in the next, short documentary by Michael Bird.
Sources & references
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans
2. http://www.coe.int/t/e/social_cohesion/soc-sp/text_LoucaidesE.pdf
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/romania/8128644/My-glimpse-of-hell-and-the-pitiful-children-who-have-been-betrayed.html
5. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/05/roma-m23.html
6 http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2014/04/europe-hidden-shame-2014414124139195247.html
7. http://mdac.info/en/content/european-commission-funding-disability-segregation-and-abuse-breaches-international-law
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8kAB5ho6I0
9. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724709
10. http://theinvisiblerapeofeurope.weebly.com/romanian-mass-media---ethics-professionalism-and-political-constraints.html
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanian_orphans
2. http://www.coe.int/t/e/social_cohesion/soc-sp/text_LoucaidesE.pdf
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770
4. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/romania/8128644/My-glimpse-of-hell-and-the-pitiful-children-who-have-been-betrayed.html
5. http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/05/roma-m23.html
6 http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2014/04/europe-hidden-shame-2014414124139195247.html
7. http://mdac.info/en/content/european-commission-funding-disability-segregation-and-abuse-breaches-international-law
8. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8kAB5ho6I0
9. http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724709
10. http://theinvisiblerapeofeurope.weebly.com/romanian-mass-media---ethics-professionalism-and-political-constraints.html
