A Refined Auschwitz

A Refined Auschwitz

07 Iunie 2006 de Adriana Oprea Popescu

A parent that treats his child badly could have his child taken away, according to the law. For years in a row, the children with disabilities in the special institutions in Romania are bereaved of their elementary constitutional rights: the right to medical care, to education, to a decent life. The state, the custodian of these children, is above the law.

The Jurnalul National reporters visited 15 special institutions and didn’t find the Auscwitz described in the MDRI report. The wounds are hidden and much deeper. Self-sufficiency and indolence could prove lethal in time.

THE CHILDREN-PILE

The situation we met in the visited institutions could be generalized for the entire country. The heroic measures taken by the authorities when the media shows irregularities in certain places have the same effect as aspirin does when used to treat sepsis. The pus gathering goes from one part of the system to the other. The mammoth orphanages have been disaffected (a good part in the eyes of the EU), but the children in them have been moved to areas that didn’t get in the way of the Brussels investigation. They got to the special boarding schools.

Most of the centers visited by the Jurnalul National reporters hosted children with severe disabilities as well as healthy children. Coming from separated families, raised in the orphanages and affected by the prolonged institutionalization, the “kind of normal” children, as the director of the centers describe them, stay in the same room as the self-mutilating children day and night.

The special schools are part of the professional schools where “the child at least learns about a job”. The fact that they don’t learn a thing about every day life is no one’s business. The institutions that host the institutionalized minors form a Procust bed in which souls, minds and destinies get together…

“THE INSPECTION”

In many of these centers, representatives of the Directorates for the Child Protection have accompanied the Jurnalul National reporters - because we are not allowed to get inside these institutions without the approval of the local authorities. Every time, we announced our visit 24 hours before the visit. We have seen an amazing reaction! In Cotesti, the children were wearing new clothes and were playing in the yard of the center. In Maicanesti, the halls were being perfumed, in Mihalceni the children had picked the grass off and got inside to clean as well; there were new clothes and new soaps in the bathrooms at Movila… We are the World Champions at hushing up. Someone told us that, in the past, at the St. Ecaterina center, when there used to be even 500 children, the personnel was moving so fast that, when they heard “inspection”, they could bathe and change the clothes of all the children in less than two hours…

ETIQUETTES

Under the propagandistic name of “recovery and rehabilitation”, the centers in which the children with disabilities in Romania live their lives are the umbrella of the former communist orphanages. The bodies of the unhappy children that got here all balance in the same rhythm and have the same old and grayish clothes. How can one talk about recovery in a center that didn’t hire no psychologist, no kinetic-therapist, no speech therapist, no educator with a diploma? What is the meaning of the word “rehabilitation” for these children? Rehabilitation after what or because of which conviction? The only changes in their lives brought by the Revolution 17 years ago: gipsy songs and soap operas.

Every day comes with the same barrack schedule, the same exemplary mobilization at every inspection in the center. The children have learned to hide and to be part of the system. From time to time, they have the courage to shout. “Lady, please take me away from here! Take me somewhere, at number, but take me away from here!” Bratu Florin is 14 years old and is one of the institutionalized children in Maicanesti (Vrancea). His tears are as big as the peas. His head, with almost no hair, shows many tracks of the past. He is small, and the pants with the fly open and with a rope instead of belt are falling down. He throws his arms around his body and asks me: “Lady, why do people have to suffer?”. His greatest regret is that his mom won’t take him back home. He only welcomes his brother, who is in the same institution. Bratu’s mother is not treated in any way, even though she suffers deeply from destroying souls. Every child has a similar tragic story. However, they are not the ones we will talk about today. We will look at the ones responsible for their lives.

ILLEGAL

By far, the most serious situation is at the Services Complex for the Severely Handicapped Children No. 8 in Buzau, where we met six children under the age of two with no severe handicap, who are held here illegally due to lack of maternal nurses - a disability of the Romanian child protection system. Some of the babies suffer from a heart disease and have to gain weight for the surgery. Another has his members growing disproportional in comparison to his body, and the third has a hole in the palate, one has liquid accumulated in his scrotum, two suffer from moderate neuro-psychiatric retard. Due to the institutionalization, their state will get more serious. The information we have show the situation in Braila is not a singular case!
Law no. 272/2004 forbids the institutionalization of these children. However, the laws that any Romanian citizen has to know and obey by are optional for the authorities.

Order no. 27/2004, published in the Official Gazette released on the 8th of June 2004 is another decree that’s being mocked of. It regulates the simplest compulsory standards for the residential child protection for the children with disabilities. It says that “every child benefits from a personalized service plan and from a specific intervention program (…) Every child benefits from quality services of habilitation/rehabilitation under the care of a trained personnel: physiotherapy, kinetic-therapy and massage; speech therapy etc.” Most of the special centers don’t even have one person trained in this field, nor a general practitioner.

OFFICIALLY

“The children in SRD have access to telephone and to other communication means, the Order no. 27 also shows (…) Taking into account the age of the children, their growing up status and type disabilities and/or handicap, the children have to be encouraged to start up a group of representation called the Children’s Council, the opinions of which will be listened and regarded at periodically or every time this is necessary for taking the decisions regarding the children in SRD”. The democratic principles are real utopia as compared to the real life in the centers. Furthermore… “the unit gives the children the opportunity of taking part in the choosing of daily supplies and menus. (…) The meals are well administered, organized in spaces with family-like atmosphere and are an opportunity for the children to socialize. (…) Every child can have a little snack if he asks to. SRD organizes festive meals at least for the birthdays of the children and, in this case, the respective child’s preferences have to be taken into consideration. The meal can be served with the family or with other people close to the child in an intimate space inside SRD or outside it”. “Happy Birthday” is a very rare song in Mihalceni or in Maicanesti (Vrancea).

UNIFORM

The same Order says: “The children are encouraged to express their tastes regarding the clothes, the shoes and their personal image and are supported in doing that. (…) It is forbidden any kind of uniform by buying identical products for all the children in SRD or in a group.” Without exception, in all the 15 centers visited by the Jurnalul National reporters, all the children, boys and girls, had their haircut short, and they are all dressed in the same way, with the same kind of rags. “SRD has to ensure the needed support for each child, including the necessary material resources for him to have access, to integrate and to attend regularly the recommended education unit”. SRD also “has to ensure at least one week of camping during the vacations of a school year. This has to take place outside SRD and has to be accompanied by at least 4 more trips.”

WC

“Each child has his own space in a bedroom. There can be at most 4 children of the same sex in one bedroom.” Actually, the bedrooms have 10 or 14 beds. In Cotesti, the children sleep in pairs and boys and girls share the same room. “In the bedroom, there has to be minimum surface of 6 square meters per child and 8 square meters per child in the case of the ones with locomotive disabilities.” In fact, every child has approximately three-square meters (the mattress and the space between the beds); the ones with locomotive disabilities occupy even less space on the ground…

“Children are encouraged to decorate their rooms in accordance to their preferences”. The only decorations we saw in the bedrooms in the centers are ads for food or pictures with little babies from the magazines.

“SRD guarantees a WC booth and a sink for every four children at most. There are enough bathrooms and/or showers, which are organized depending on the sex: a bathroom/shower for maximum 6 children”. In real life, in Mihalceni, the 54 girls have eight showers and five Turkish WCs. The 46 children in Cotesti have four sinks and two normal WCs.

According to the Order no. 27/2004, the minimum ratio between adults (caretaking personnel) and the children in SRD should be 1:4 for the children between seven and 12 years old and 1:6 for the ones with ages over 13. In all the centers we visited, the number of the ones that really take care of the children is insufficient, not trained as it should and it is no way near the minimum allowed limit.

Translated by Sorin Balan