Two days ago there was a closed court case in K's country that matters personally to me. On April 18, 2013 a judge decided if the old director of K's orphanage will be re-instated in her position, or if the case will be pushed on to a higher court.
This director had held her position at K's orphanage for 23 years. As we spoke with our adoption lawyer, Toni, over supper on our second to last night in K's country, she expressed her amazement that this woman had managed to retain her position not only through the fall of Communism, but also through a number of major political shifts since the fall of Communism. Apparently, her position, like so many other governmental positions, is one that a new ruling power would replace with one of "their" people. Somehow she managed to weather through this, apparently to great personal benefit to herself. Toni had a significant role in this director's removal from her position a little over a year ago. The conditions in K's orphanage and the situation with the director made national headlines. (I mention this specifically because it is evidence to the fact that, although these conditions may not be as scarce as we want them to be, they are NOT the accepted norm in K's country.) Following are excerpts from a translation of the articles that came out at the time this went public.
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Excerpts from [the first article]
(on the photo at the left bottom, unidentified child from the sixth floor; on the photo at the top right, Veronica now; on the photo at the bottom right, Veronica before)
18 children died over a year and a half
Babies and young children are being left hungry for days, lie in urine without having their diapers changed for twenty-four hours, due to which most of them are severely ill. Over a year and a half, 18 children have died, as evidenced by a Report of the CPA. This provoked an inspection by the Minister of Health Dessislava Atanassova. Yesterday she commented that she left there crying.
At the moment, 154 children live in the institution. After the inspection, Ms. Atanassova found out that, obviously, the personnel had known about her visit, as the children were all dressed up nicely, the sheets were changed and the toys were new. The stench of urine, however, made a huge impression.
“While I walked through the rooms and watched the children, I cried. After that, I got mad and was greatly upset that they were doing wrong things,” the health minister said. She made a hint that probably serious financial misuses had been done in the institution, as any accountability was lacking.
VERONICA AFTER LEAVING THE ORPHANAGE
4 kilograms and 850 grams. That’s how much the 9 year old Veronica weighed on November 14, 2011. That was her last day in Home For Medical and Social Care for Children in Pleven which terrified the health minister and CPA. She couldn’t pull up to a sitting or standing position and only was lying down. Today, 5 months later, in the USA, in Pennsylvania, she is already weighing 12 kilograms and has a chance for life.
This can clearly be seen from two photographs. The first was taken in the home for medical and social care last year, and the second is in the home of her new American family....
The Chance
The chance for a new life for Veronica came last November. ... Veronica was taken to Tokuda Hospital to be stabilized for two days…they took off by a plane to the USA…from the airport…she was placed in the Children’s [Hospital] in Philadelphia.
Thorough tests were done and they established that the child was with severe anemia due to the malnutrition, as well as advanced osteoporosis, and bones that had been broken in the past, together with lack of Vitamin D. All this together with severe mental and physical lagging behind.
After only 4 months Veronica is already different.
So that you can imagine the difference, I will tell you that in [the orphanage] she couldn’t sit up [properly]. She didn’t talk, only cried or, more correctly, was moaning. Now you can see her at the picture that she sits up. Soon she will be up besides a walker. She is still with a feeding tube but she eats normal food and very recently she said her first word “mamma.” All this after only 4 months, ...
Treatment
After the admittance of Veronica in Tokuda, from the hospital they were so shocked that they decided to visit the orphanage in Pleven. The specialists chose another 8 children to be admitted in the hospital.
“We found out that the children need attention and decided that we would go and see them. We coordinated the idea with the CPA and went,” Prof. Marusia Lilova, Chief of the Pediatric Clinic at Tokuda Hospital, said for the Telegraph. Then several children were taken for treatment to Tokuda. To a question whether it was established that the children were malnourished, Prof. Lilova stated that she didn’t want to comment.
The rest
154 children totally are being raised in the orphanage in Pleven. 98 of them are with severe disabilities and most of them don’t move from their cribs...
Excerpts from [an article the following day]
(Photos: Top: at 11 years old Vesselina looks like a 3 month old baby; the teenager Plamenka looks like an infant
Bottom: Veronica 6 months ago and now as Katie Musser)
“Holocaust” That is how the chief of Dreams Foundation, Antonia Vladimirova, summarizes the care for the abandoned sick children ... And “Auschwitz” is the name she has given to the Home for Medical and Social Care for Children (HMSCC) in Pleven. On Friday, the institution entered the media with a label “Mogilino-2″ after the health minister Dessisslava Atanassova visited it suddenly and 16 year old children weighing 9 kilograms and eating from bottles met her.
Boriss Veltchev starts dealing with the child skeletons in Pleven
Prosecutors in Mogilino-2
Malnutrition, osteoporosis and broken bones shock the Tokuda doctors
For Antonia Vladimirova, the Pleven Auschwitz turned into her cause on August 15, 2011. Then the head of the Dreams Foundation went into the orphanage as a lawful representative of the Americans Joseph and Susanna Musser, who wanted to adopt the 9 year old Veronica. The little girl was on the 6th floor, where actually the severest cases are placed. From the very door, the stench that hit us was unbearable, Vladimirova recalls.
Stink of faeces, urine, acetone and pus
In the rooms of the children, the windows are not opened. The little ones [cribs] are stuffed 8 in a [room] 4 meters by 3 meters. They are not showered, the diapers are soaked and they lie in their vomit. The children are prisoners in their cribs. They move only when their diapers are changed once each 24 hours, Antonia adds. From the orphanage they explained to her that this happens once a day as the diapers are expensive and they can’t afford to change the children more often. They pick up the child under the armpit, lift him/her in the air, and throw him/her on the board for change of the diapers. Several lightning, rough movements follow, without any cleaning or treatment of the rashes and the wounds from the soaked diapers. The child again is lifted in the same way and thrown in the crib, Antonia continues her terrifying story.
Antonia, however, is shocked with something else–the feeding of the children. The little ones receive
a beer bottle with a nipple on the top,
with an opening of 1 cm. And as they are in lying position, without being set upright at least a little, they receive the nipple and start choking and the liquid pours down, explains Vladimirova. The children who can feed themselves, receive a mess-tin of soup with crumbled bread mixed with a spoon of [broth?] without meat. The children are fed [in a matter of seconds] and then everything is taken away, goes on Antonia.
Thanks to the Musser family, Veronica is saved from Auschwitz. Today she lives in Pennsylvania and her name is Katerina Hope Musser. After being picked up from the orphanage, the 9 year old miss went to the capital hospital Tokuda, and the doctors there slipped into a shock at the little one’s weight of 4,850 kg. 5 months later Veronica, already Katerina Hope, is 12 kg.
From August till now, 18 more children from the ill-famous orphanage in Pleven are at different stages of adoption procedure by families from the USA. Two of them are the 11 year old Vesselina (weight at the moment 5,650 kg and height 76 cm), and almost 16 year old Plamenka (weight 8,600 kg and height 88 cm) who eats from a bottle. Both of them, as well as 6 other children from the orphanage, were treated in Tokuda. In all eight children, besides malnutrition and osteoporosis, old, already healed broken bones, were established. Vesselina even has displacements of vertebrae, recalls Antonia. And continues on to say that after only 10 days in the hospital the little patients gained 2 kilograms each.
The doors are closed for new little ones
174 people take care of 165 children; sanctions are at hand
The Agency for Social Support stops the placement of children from the whole country in the orphanage ... The personnel are 174 people, but only 1/3 of them remain on each shift. All of the children should be no older than 3 years of age. However, for a long time, no one has taken measures for the older children to be moved to other specialized institutions. Among them are children with disabilities who have not been requested for adoption or foster care.
External specialists in nutrition and intensive interaction shall be appointed in the orphanage. For each child a specific plan shall be developed, according to his/her own needs, explained Kalin Kamenov. They will train the personnel how to take care of the children. Experts will work with the children with disabilities in the orphanage, so that they receive individual care and medical help.
For the end of April, a competition for appointment of a new director of the orphanage has been planned. Four months ago, the long-standing director Irzhina Kostova was fired after the signal of CPA. By this moment, the orphanage has been under a temporarily appointed director. Most probably there will be more disciplinary sanctions, stipulates Kamenov. We hope that the new management shall implement quality reorganization in the operation of the orphanage, he declared.
Yesterday, for the Standard, the health minister Dessislava Atanassova revealed that, since documents for donations and reports for food products are lacking, the investigators had sealed the storage premises.
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(I've copied this from a blog of a family who has and is adopting from K's orphanage, and has also become a friend of mine over the years as I finally publish this post in 2017 - http://theblessingofverity.com/2012/04/going-public-in-bulgaria/.)
K is one of the children with a "severe disability" who has lived his life on the sixth floor. He still lives on the sixth floor, but my one visit up there was NOT like what was described above. One of the first changes that the new director made was the installation of cameras. She has also been working at systematically firing old staff who ought not to be working with these children, and hiring replacements who are really caring for the children as children. But from our conversation with the director during our week there, it is an uphill battle.
The case against the old director that resulted in her removal from her position at the end of 2011 was essentially a technicality, and significantly misses the nature of the neglect and abuse these children have suffered under her care. As follows:
“The former director was dismissed by the now-former minister of health in December 2011. The stated motives for her dismissal were to a large degree formal – and only the tip of the iceberg! – 1. That she had not appointed a general practitioner to each child in the institution; 2. That the children had not undergone annual dental check ups; and 3. That the children did not have individualized activity plans for their development and treatment. From the three stated violations, the court upheld only the second one and acknowledged that the institution did indeed not have a dentist appointed on its staff.
The position which a local non-governmental organization,..., sent to the minister of healthcare, the chair of the State Child Protection Agency and the media stated the non-governmental organization’s concern that the motives for which the former director was dismissed in December 2011 were “inadequate,” and reiterated the findings of the state agencies that had established a large number of deaths, gross neglect, and undernourishment. It stressed that that the situation of the children was not due to their ‘disabilities’, as we have been told too many times, but due to lack of proper care, and the growth spurts that the children experienced during the first months after finding their families is proof of that.
The statement further reiterated the findings of the non-governmental organization and Toni Vladimirova’s signal to the authorities from January 2012 with findings of feeding the children with beer bottles with huge openings leading to frequent chokings, the bad quality food they received, the feeding in the cribs, lack of rehabilitation, etc. etc. It also reiterated the findings of the child protection agency that gave the first push for the director’s dismissal back in December 2011. Finally, the statement appeals to the authorities that should the director be reinstated, they should reconsider the possibility for her to continue to hold her position, as her return would constitute a serious risk for the health and life of the children placed there."
(http://theblessingofverity.com/2012/12/more-to-the-story/)
I look at these photos of the boy who, even though not legally our son (yet!) is still our son in our hearts already, and am struck by how utterly voiceless he is. Not just because he himself can not talk (because part of learning to talk is being spoken to!!!) but because since he was surrendered to the care of this institution, there has been NO ONE who cares how he is treated.
And I see the changes that have come in K since the new director has made changes. He went from an eight year old boy weighing 22 pounds...
...to an 8.5 year old boy weighing 27 pounds. (Knowing what we know about him now, we're guessing from that smile that his Baba is in the room with him as this picture was taken!)
He looked SO MUCH better when we got these updated photos in January. But those 4T pajamas are deceiving. Even with a five-pounds-in-six-months gain in weight (that's almost a 25% gain!) he's still a VERY small fellow. If he's dressed for that photo anything like the way they dressed him the week we saw him, there are two or more layers of clothes underneath those footie pajamas. That's not "boy" you're seeing there - it's mostly added bulk.
But as I re-read that last sentence, I also have to say that there's plenty of "boy" in there. Somehow he has survived through some pretty severe obstacles, and we are SO excited to see who is he once he's got time to invest in something other than living through another hour.
I dreamed last night that he was home. I don't remember any details, but it is the first time that I remember dreaming about him. And I remember that it was good to have him home. Looking forward to having him home!
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