Children's camp - Journal of the Decree
The cradles and homes that housed abandoned children have moved from communism to democracy without the transition meaning a change in institutionalization practices. Long after 1989, the protection system continued to function as a camp. The current child protection framework was built on its ruins. We set out, in the Journal of the Decree, to understand this founding heritage. | Photo: Mike Abrahams
"In the village, they call me the one from the hospital ," says ZI, a teenager institutionalized in a home-hospital in Romania, in an interview conducted twenty years ago.
His testimony and the testimonies of other young people with destinies broken by the child protection system inherited from communism are recorded in a 2002 study, "Child Abuse in Social Protection Institutions in Romania", conducted by the Institute for the Protection of Mother and Child (IOMC ). The Jurnalul Decretului team is in possession of this document
ZI's life, reported dryly in several papers included in his medical record, began with his abandonment in the dystrophic ward of a hospital in the summer of 1983. And continued with a series of random transfers to communist state "protection" institutions. .
Romania was going through the Golden Age - but it was going through, especially, the era of Decree 770 which had banned in 1966, almost completely, abortions on demand. Against the background of the decree, an entire system of child protection had been developed. But protection was just a joke. Ceausescuism needed the abandoned to live at birth and that's it - otherwise, their lives didn't matter to anyone.
From the hospital, ZI was moved to a cradle on November 22, 1983. He was less than five months old.
All that remained of his first three years of life, spent in the cradle, was medical information: the vaccines he received, a measurement of his body size, the childhood diseases he went through. No one recorded anything about the relationship with the parents or the child's behavior. No one recorded a line about the psychic evolution of the one taken into protection by Ceausescu Romania.
ZI was just a body that had to be kept alive in order to tick the birth indicators desired by the regime. More than a hundred thousand minors, housed in appalling conditions in the cradles and hospital dormitories of the state, were in this situation in 1989.
Romania, at the dawn of democracy, did not know what to do with them. So he continued to hold them captive in the same camp system.
Baby-boom
The birth rate doubled in Romania in 1967, amid the adoption of anti-abortion legislation. But this statistic also has a downside.
Forced to give birth to children they did not want or simply could not support, thousands of mothers abandoned them in maternity hospitals or hospitals. From there they ended up in swings, institutions where children up to 3 years old were housed.
The existing infrastructure at that time could not cope with thousands of abandoned babies, so it had to be expanded. The baby boom of 1967 led to a rethinking of the entire system of "protection" of the child in Romania, writes the researcher Luciana Jinga in the volume "The pronatalist policy of the Ceausescu regime".
In 1967, for example, there were 33 swings in the country , with a capacity of 4,451 seats, covering only 50% of what was needed at that time.
Law 3 of 1970 reorganized the entire child protection system. Sir, if you can't raise your child, leave him in the care of the state, without any sanctions. We take care of him, sums up the philosophy of Bogdan Simion, president of the Federation of Non-Governmental Organizations for Children (FONPC).
The law provided for the operation of several types of "protection" institutions, depending on the age of the child, but also on the disabilities he had, called "deficiencies".
The system was practically divided into three, explains Bogdan Simion.
he system was practically divided into three, explains Bogdan Simion.
Ministry of Health
The Ministry of Health took care of the swings, where the children aged 0 to 3 were. "The staff was strictly medical. There was no question of emotional stimulation. The cradle of St. Mary of Iasi had 500 seats. "
Ministry of Education
Ministry of Labour
The 1970 law also introduced the term "irrecoverable" for children who, according to the communist authorities, could no longer be integrated into society. In the decades that followed, both in communism and in democracy after the 1989 Revolution, this term became synonymous with a slow death sentence. Nobody knows if the victims of the last half century number in the thousands or tens of thousands, because Romania has never been able to take stock.
The winter that does not pass
In hospital dormitories, the mortality rate was huge. At the home in Cighid, Bihor County, for example, where an average of 100 children were hospitalized, in 1988 there were 54 deaths. There were 52 deaths in 1989, according to data collected by researcher Luciana Jinga.
"Among the causes: burning of the lungs with lethal consequences. According to Cighid staff, cases of frost were under this diagnosis. There was no heating at Cighid. As a result, they died simply frozen in the winter. "
Cold was a major problem in many of these child welfare institutions.
"Numerous control notes (of the Ministry of Health, no.) Mention the totally unsuitable temperatures for the children's communities", writes Jinga.
At the orphanage in Oinacu, Giurgiu County, in March, the temperature in the building was 10 degrees Celsius, lower than outside.
In the cradle from Suceava the thermometers did not show more than 8 degrees.
The negative record was at the swing in Boto?ani in the winter of 1988, namely 6 degrees.
Sent to a hospital home
In 1986, at the age of three, ZI was moved from the cradle to a home-hospital, an institution for children with severe disabilities, considered "irrecoverable deficiencies" for society.
According to the institutional route created by the communist state for children in the protection system, ZI had nothing to look for there, because he had only a slight disability. In the language of that time, it was "recoverable", so it should have been placed in another type of institution.
There were even two recommendations of psychiatrists, made ten years apart, in 1986 and 1996, for the boy to be transferred to a special kindergarten, then to a special vocational school, "care" institutions where children received a minimum education.
Both recommendations were ignored. ZI remained in the hospital dormitory, a kind of last institutional stop in the protection system. The children were just disposable bodies there.
The "irrecoverable deficiencies" were left to die.
The Gr?dinari home-hospital where, in February 1990, four nurses, a nurse and a cook cared for 96 children and 25 adults. | Photo: Mike Abrahams
But even in the other places of the child protection system in Romania, the abandoned ones did not necessarily end up living. The protection facilities that housed them shifted from communism to democracy without the transition meaning a change in institutionalization practices. Long after 1989, the system continued to function as a camp. And the current child protection framework has been built on its ruins.
We set out, in the Journal of the Decree, to understand this founding heritage. First of all, to get answers we have to go back in time. In Romania of Nicolae Ceau?escu.
Medical solutions
to social problems
With the new demographic policy inaugurated by the era of the decree, the Romanian state became obsessed with statistics: increasing the birth rate and decreasing the infant mortality rate were the magic formulas of communist heaven.
"Children born under normal weight were not taken into parental care. Doctors feared an even higher increase in infant mortality, and the ideology was that the state is increasing them, "says researcher Mariela Neagu, author of the book" Voices from the Silent Cradles ", built on the testimonies of 40 young people in the child protection system from Romania.
Pediatricians, along with municipal people's council officials, had come to play a key role in placing children in institutions, sometimes against the will of their parents.
Doctors were punished if a child they cared for died outside a hospital. As a result, there is a tendency to inappropriately send a child to a hospital or institution
, shows a 1991 IOMC study on the causes of institutionalization in swings and dystrophic wards.
This medical model was preserved in the 1990s. "Doctors are no longer being persecuted for the death of an infant they were caring for, but they still have considerable power in making decisions about the need for institutionalization. There is a tendency to look for medical solutions to social problems because there are no alternatives ", states the same study.
Look in hospitals for years
In February 1988, the newborn ward of Col?ea Hospital in Bucharest could no longer cope with the new hospitalizations. The reason was not a spectacular increase in the birth rate, but "the large number of social cases not transferred to the cradles," writes Luciana Jinga.
"Social cases not transferred to the cradle" were children abandoned in maternity wards who remained in hospitals for months, sometimes years, although they did not have a medical problem.
The austerity policy of the 1980s meant, among other things, a drastic reduction in investment in the child protection system. The "protection" institutions had become overcrowded.
Prolonged hospital stays of abandoned children, some without any medical problems, continued in the early 90's. “For example, the Ploie?ti maternity hospital had about 56 beds where the children were hospitalized immediately after birth. In the years '92 -'93, out of 56 places, 50 were occupied by abandoned children. And these children stayed in the maternity ward for a very long time ", says Bogdan Simion.
A maternity hospital in Bucharest, February 1990 | Photo: Mike Abrahams
Children abandoned in hospitals or maternity wards, who were not transferred to swings or dormitories, became the category most prone to illness by contracting various infections "due to prolonged hospital stay." At the same time, they became foci of infection for other patients, especially for newborns, writes Jinga.
"Ceausescu, on the old model of health, invented the dystrophy departments. They were for newborns weighing less than 2.5-3 thousand grams at birth. They were fed a type of milk to reach their normal weight. I also saw children hospitalized there in the '90s just because they no longer had seats in the swings ", adds Simion.
"They are not held in their arms
when they are fed"
Both the swings and the dystrophic wards, where babies and young children were kept, were organized "like hospital wards, with rows of beds in a large room," describes the '91 study on the causes of institutionalization.
"Children are left alone for a long time and are rarely taken out of cots. The walls are white, the beds are white and the staff is dressed in white. Babies are depicted and therefore cannot move freely. Children are not usually given toys or other household items for fear of exposure to infections, ”the document notes.
"It is not surprising that many children adapt to the lack of sensory stimulation by engaging in self-stimulation (rocking, jumping in the crib, shaking their head, etc.). They are not held in their arms when fed. They are given a bottle of powdered milk with a large orifice nipple. Those who can hold their bottle, the others are propped up by a pillow (blanket) from the crib. The crying children are not taken in their arms and calm ”, it is also shown in the respective study.
There were insufficient staff in all these child protection institutions.
"A friend who grew up in the system told me that the staff's concern was that they be clean, eaten, good and that, and that they did this by any means," says Mariela Neagu.
One method of control was through older children who beat the younger ones, took their food, abused them emotionally or sexually. Andi, one of the young people interviewed by Neagu, says that "the educators gave two or three cigarettes to the big ones, so that they [the big boys] would keep us quiet, and they wouldn't have to worry ".
A huge but invisible world
Although hospitalized in a hospital dormitory in the late 1980s, ZI was among those who managed to survive. However, he did not have access to any form of education, cognitive stimulation or any kind of emotional connection.
She just learned to cut hair from a nurse. In the early 2000s, he hoped to buy a mains-powered cassette player and a barber chair, and he was satisfied that he had been allowed to own personal belongings for the past two years.
And the testimonies from Mariela Neagu's book show that many children in institutions did not have personal belongings, not even in the '90s. "The children had clothes and toys, but no object was good individually."
About the living conditions of the tens of thousands of children who arrived in the “protection” institutions of the state, after the implementation of Decree 770, nothing has been known for several decades.
The system of protection was an invisible world to the majority of the population. Although it was a huge world.
In 1991, there were about 700 institutions for children, including 112 institutions for children aged 0 to 3 years: swings and dystrophic departments, says the 1991 study on the causes of institutionalization.
In total, there were about 125,000 children abandoned in various institutions of "protection" in 1989, writes Luciana Jinga. In April 1993, there were 158,078 institutionalized children, states researcher Gail Kligman in the volume "Duplicate Policy".
Home-hospital in Gr?dinari, February 1990 | Photo: Mike Abrahams
In the reports made by the foreign press in 1990, which put the first spotlight on this opaque universe in Romania, the institutions were presented as orphanages. In reality, the vast majority of children were not orphans, their parents lived. This presentation of them as "orphans" was a useful narrative for the adoption market, explains researcher Mariela Neagu.
Neagu worked at the Delegation of the European Commission in Romania between 1997 and 2006, being responsible for coordinating EU funds for the reform of the child protection sector. Between 2007 and 2009, he headed the National Authority for Child Protection and Adoption.
Officially, only 4.2% of the children in the cradles were considered "abandoned" in 1988. This included children abandoned in hospitals or later entrusted to an institution, which the parents were not interested in at all. The vast majority of children ended up in institutions for "social causes".
"Having too many children, a child born out of wedlock or a disabled child seem to be serious reasons for institutionalization. Few children are truly abandoned, although many more are labeled as such, ”says the 1991 study on the causes of institutionalization in swings or dystrophic wards.
How the system reform begins
Starting with 1990, more and more foreigners started coming to Romania to adopt children. They came in groups, often, and went through orphanages and maternity wards to see the children, writes Gail Kligman. Many, if not most of the adopted children, were obtained through private networks.
Foreigners would rather resort to these networks than go through the bureaucratic process. These networks included lawyers, doctors, translators, judges, staff from hospitals and centers and even consular employees, writes Kligman.
Mariela Neagu believes that the existence of this "children's market" was one of the main reasons why the reform of the child protection system began so hard after the revolution.
The main concern of the employees was not “what happens to the children in the orphanages, but how to bring more children, to put them in the system, to give them up for adoption. Anyway, this mentality lets me get to America and it will be fine ".
In March 1997, the program for the reform of the child protection system began. The fundamental principle underlying it was decentralization.
The child protection departments are then developed at county level, and they take over the swings and orphanages with all the material and professional base from the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Education, explains Bogdan Simion.
The process of closing the institutions - mammoth, however, met with resistance from employees.
Simion tells how the children's swing in Pucioasa, Dâmbovi?a County, closed. "There were 78 children and about 70 staff. The County Council made an offer to those who worked there to become foster carers, attend classes, be accredited and then take children from the cradle. Only three or four opted for such a thing. The rest said they had never seen anything like it, how to close a swing? ”
Collapsing
Some of the young people interviewed by Mariela Neagu said that the transfer of responsibility from the central to the local led to major supply problems.
The situation was a disaster, at least for our home. At the county level, the auctions were rigged, there was not enough food, there were not enough clothes and many children had to work on the black market for food. At one point, the ladies in the kitchen brought food from home
, tells in the book Ciprian, a 28-year-old man raised in the child protection system.
In 1999, the reform attempted by the Romanian state led to the financial collapse of the recently decentralized system. There was a lack of food, insufficient staff, and international adoption was favored over other safeguards.
In the same year, writes Neagu, the European Council conditioned the opening of negotiations for Romania's accession to the EU by the Romanian authorities' financial commitment to the child protection system: to cover basic costs and undertake structural reforms in this sector.
Reforms, however, have been long overdue.
The beating of social parents
CA, a 13-year-old girl housed in a family-type placement center (the establishment of which was part of the deinstitutionalization process), said she did not like it there because employees at the center, called "social parents," beat them. children from anything, "with a stick that I keep hidden behind a kitchen buffet."
The girl's story appears in the research "Child abuse in social protection institutions in Romania", published in 2002.
-What is the reason I'm beating you?
- Because we don't do the job the way they want and as long as they want We don't have a little free time. When they see us sitting, they start screaming as long as their mouths hold.
Asked what still displeases her in the center, CA said that she does not like the fact that the boy of the "social parents" sleeps in her room. "He tried to rape my girlfriend, but he didn't succeed. The parents beat their child, but did not take any action regarding his sleep, he is still sleeping in our room. Everyone in management knows this, including the director. I don't feel at ease, not even in my room. I have to be careful when I get dressed so that it doesn't come over me ", the little girl said.
It has been two decades since the testimonies of ZI and CA remained stuck between the covers of the 2002 IOMC study. We do not know what happened to them after they left the child protection system. But we know what happened to Ciprian B?lan, who went through a home-hospital in Galati County.
The building of the former protection institution is in ruins today. Only the registers containing the daily reports, left behind in the drawers of the ghost building, still remind that some irrecoverable people once lived and died there . But Ciprian survived.
In the next episode, at the Journal of the Decree, we go to this dormitory-hospital.
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