Romania's forgotten orphans supported by UK charity

Bianca, Ionut and Alex now live in their own home, named after a Coventry priest, thanks to the charity

It's been more than 30 years since images of emaciated children, abandoned in Romanian orphanages, horrified the world.

In 1989 a revolution, triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall, led to the overthrow and execution of the country's communist leader Nicolai Ceausescu.

His policy of forcing women to bear at least five children caused the placement of more than 150,000 children into squalid state-run institutions.

Now the country finds itself engulfed in another scandal, involving criminal groups starving and exploiting elderly and disabled people in adult care homes.

One charity worker who has travelled to the country for almost 30 years says more needs to be done to help the country's most vulnerable.

Jane Williams, trustee of UK-based Christian charity Share, said orphans discovered in the homes were physically and psychologically deprived, with many not having any human contact. Some were left with permanent brain damage.

In a number of cases, she said, only babies in cots near the doors of orphanages had any regular human communication.

Thousands of children were discovered in orphanages following the fall of Ceausescu

The Coventry-based charity has sent about 200 volunteer occupational and speech and language therapists since 2009 to work at a centre in Sibiu, Transylvania, and will again be taking a group this week.

"Over the years we've worked closely with these children and got to know them, but when they get to 18 they have to leave there and go to an adult institution," she explained.

"And the adult institutions are absolutely vile.

"There should be more publicity about them, we don't hear anything about what's happened to all these children after they left the orphanages."

An investigation and raid on more than 30 adult care homes last month by the country's anti-organised crime prosecutors found gangs had been exploiting vulnerable people through inhumane or degrading treatment.

About 100 people were found beaten, unfed and lacking medication, the prosecutors said, describing "torture-like" conditions in the homes, prompting people to take to the streets in protest.

The scandal has forced the resignation of two government ministers with the country's president, Klaus Iohannis, calling it "a national embarrassment".

A woman protesting over the care scandal holds a placard which reads: "Everyone knew, but they let them suffer and die"

Mrs Williams, 76, said she had first visited the country in 1994 with husband Martin through their links with Coventry Cathedral, setting up an associated Cross of Nails Centre in 1996.

Community of the Cross of Nails is a worldwide network of hundreds of churches and charities promoting reconciliation.

A health visitor at the time, rising to become head of children, young people and family services at South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust, she helped start what is thought to be Romania's first ever parenting and ante-natal classes.

"When I first went into the maternity hospital there I thought it was a mental health ward because the mothers weren't allowed to wear their own clothes," she said.

[The mothers] used to walk along the dark, dismal corridors holding on to the walls and they all looked pretty alone," she said.

"And if they were from the Roma population they would have their babies taken straight off them and into the nursery."

The Roma community is an ethnic group that has been persecuted and discriminated against in Romania and other parts of Europe.

"Abortion was was not allowed and contraception was illegal, and women had to be examined by gynaecological police. It was pretty grim back then," she said.

Jane Williams (centre) with the residents and volunteers at Jim's House

Initially about 12 babies every month were abandoned after birth.

"That's a lot of babies that were going straight from the hospital into an orphanage, and that was even five years after the revolution," she said.

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In 2009 the charity set up the Bianca Project - named after one baby with brain damage Mrs Williams would see on every visit.

"One year I went to see her but she wasn't at home with her parents and I heard that she had been taken into care," she said, before eventually finding her at a centre for children with complex needs, Speranta.

Mrs Williams said she had worked with the director of the centre on a scheme providing support from newly qualified occupational therapists from Coventry University during the summer holidays.

It was later expanded to also include speech and language therapists.

But, she said, a lot of the affected orphans remained forgotten in the many adult institutions across the country.

The last time Mrs Williams visited an adult institution, just outside Sibiu, there was an area in the middle of it where people were put in "cages" because of issues with violence, she said.

The therapy volunteers had been working with three children from Speranta - Bianca, Alex and Ionut - for about 10 years, she said, "and we could not bear the thought of them going into an adult institution because we had got to know them, we'd taken them out, we had socialised them".

Jane Williams pictured with Bianca in 2015

A generous donation from a priest at the cathedral, the late Reverend Jim Tysoe, meant the charity was able to set up the three young adults in their own home - Jim's House.

They are cared for there by another UK charity, Love Light Romania.

"We moved them to Jim's House in October 2019 and they are amazing," said Mrs Williams.

"They've lived in an institution all of their lives but never had their own clothes to wear, their own personal belongings, nothing was theirs. It's wonderful to see them so happy," she said.

"Bianca even has her own job at a local chocolate factory twice a week. When she moved she said she felt like a proper person, she had never felt like that before."

Coventry's Share charity has sent about 200 volunteers to work at a centre in Sibiu since 2009

Raising funds is a continual struggle, she said, as the charity has to find £2,000 a month for the three young people.

"I can't bear the thought of what will happen to these children if we can't find the money to pay for them every month," she said.

Romania has been forgotten, she added.

"If you go to any of the big cities in Romania, like Bucharest or Brasov, you would not see what is happening outside of cities and not see underneath the surface and realise how difficult things are.

"There's a Hilton in Sibiu, but five miles up the road from there are people living in very poor conditions without access to mains water or sewerage.

"And this is today, in Europe, in a country that is in the EU," she added.

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