Missing Children

From Jurnalul National Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005

Missing Children

According to official sources, there are over 300 children who are officially missing in Romania. Perhaps they ran away from home, were kidnapped, or lost. In most cases, nothing has come to light about their case for many months.

To resolve these missing child cases, the police are supposed to be guided by an internal ordinance (1060/2000). This guide says that after 48 hours from the disappearance of the child, the police should begin the search for the child, although, in these cases photographs of the children were not released or publicized by the police in order to save face (original author's note--?!). The child name is to be sent to the border police after 20 days.

Our newspaper began a campaign for these children on the 5th of September, by launching a website (http://copiidisparuti.jurnalul.ro) After two days, the first child was found: Patrick Laurenciu Badea, 12 years old, from Ramnicu-Sarat, who disappeared on the 12th of June. He was found in an orphanage in Timisoara. He was recognized by workers from CPS who compared their data base with names on the website.

At the beginning of November, Jurnalul National published an open letter to Prime Minister Tariceanu, Minister of the Interior Vasile Blaga, and the Inspector General of the Romanian Police, Dan Fatuloiu, asking for their involvement in resolving this problem. This appeal was posted on the internet on our website and over 1,200 Romanians signed this appeal. On the 3rd of November, the police announced that they would begin to work on a new methodology to resolve the cases of missing children.

At the same time, our newspaper published an incredible story of Manalau Andrei, a child who disappeared and was found after 8 years. On the 4th of September, 1997, when he disappeared from his home in the village of Puscasi, Vaslui County, he was 7 years old. After two years of searching, his parents believed him to be dead and lost all hope. With the help of Jurnalul National and CPS from Sector V in Bucharest, Andrei was found. For eight years he had been sequestered under a different identity in an orphanage (Ciresarii II) in Bucharest. Our campaign will continue. We will publish the photographs of those children who are missing. Finding these children depends on all of us.