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IN LOVING MEMORY

Valentina G. Sisikin 1917- 1999




CHILDREN LEFT TO DIE

PREPARING A HOME FOR RUSSIA'S 500,000 HOMELESS CHILDREN

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The Sunday Times (UK) February 21 1999
'Imperfect' children left to die
by Mark Franchetti Moscow
 
IN THE "lying room" of Orphanage No 12 near Moscow, two bleak rows of metal cots are filled with children who cannot walk. With no prospect of recovery, they are left to waste away. For many of the 40 boys and girls, the lying room is the final stop before burial in an unmarked grave. Without hope: 600,000 children are in care - 'lying rooms' They have no mothers or fathers to kiss them good night: their parents abandoned them rather than face the stigma of bringing up an "imperfect" child in a society that abhorred disability in Soviet times and is little different today. Nor are the children's teeth brushed in the morning: even their bodies are washed only once a week, and the stench is as stifling as the system that condemns them to subhuman conditions. Some never leave their beds. Most are severely malnourished. All suffer from excruciating sores. Dima, a 10-year-old boy who looks half his age, is so frail that he cannot muster the strength to cry. His frightened eyes, set in a gaunt, emaciated face, are turned to the ceiling. His right arm, a stick of bone covered with dry skin, dangles to the floor. In the next bed Tanya, 6, is bound in a filthy cloth sack to restrain her and tied to a bed rail. Her face is covered with scabs and she howls, rocking back and forth incessantly. I offer futile words of comfort, placing a hand gently on her head, which is shaved as a precaution against lice. She grimaces, baring her few, rotten teeth, and lets out a piercing shriek. Further along, desperate cries emanate from beneath the tattered blanket of a small boy with no name. The blanket is pulled back to reveal a skeletal figure in a large cloth nappy, soaked with urine. Next to a box of brightly coloured balls that no child here is strong enough to use, a girl of 15 who weighs perhaps 50lb is propped on her side with her face to a metal bowl of watery porridge. She spills it onto her sheets as she struggles to feed herself. Most of the other children are force-fed while lying on their backs. Adjacent to the lying room stands a bare chamber with boarded-up windows. According to orphanage staff, this is where children are put if they are restless. They are routinely given sedatives without medical supervision.
 
Restraints are common. Some are tied to a bench, lying semi-naked in the fetal position, motionless. Others are left in pools of excrement, banging their heads against the floor. As we enter, a small group scrambles towards us, thin hands stretched out. One girl wraps her arms tightly around my legs. "Papa," she wails relentlessly. These are some of the 600,000 children who have been abandoned, isolated and condemned in Russia. The 140 confined to Orphanage No 12, north of Moscow, are aged between four and 18 and suffer varying degrees of disability. Those with Down's syndrome and cerebral palsy are placed here with children who have relatively minor problems such as a club foot or cleft palate that would be routinely corrected by surgery in the West. Some have been sent away because of a simple speech impediment. From the outside, the peeling yellow single-story building and snow-covered playground give every impression of normality. A suspicious nurse who opened the door took my gifts of fresh fruit and other food but said that she had strict instructions not to let outsiders see the children. Overworked and paid only ?9.50 a month, however, she soon relented. It was clear that the staff had long since lost the will to conceal the horrors within. As I entered the lying room, I found myself retching and pulled my sweater up over my nose. The smell - a mixture of urine, excrement and disease - seizes the throat and grips it for hours. I had imagined talking to the children, stroking them and making them smile. But I could hardly bring myself to lift the covers on the small beds for fear of what I would find underneath. Kate Hunt, the author of a report on Russian children's homes for Human Rights Watch, the pressure group, said images from some of the institutions she had visited flashed into her mind long afterwards. "It's a shocking indictment of the state's unwillingness to look after its children," she said. "I have been to orphanages in Romania and to refugee camps around the world, but this was worse. There is no excuse for the level of depravity. It's outrageous." In 1997, the last year for which Human Rights Watch could find figures, 24 children at Orphanage No 12 died. Sources there said the mortality rate had risen every year since 1992. The root of such tragedy seems to lie in the Soviet Union's prejudice against handicaps. Eight years after it was dissolved, the parents of disabled children still come under pressure from doctors to institutionalize them at birth. They are told that otherwise they will be treated as social pariahs. Those who hand over their children often inadvertently sign a death warrant. Once they are locked up, disabled children are three times as likely to die prematurely as they would be if they were living at home. In 1992 Russia signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, supposedly conferring on its children the protection of international law. Earlier this year President Boris Yeltsin's government reported that despite financial difficulties, Russia adhered to most of the convention's requirements. Yeltsin himself promised to take up the plight of Russia's abandoned children. "I am very worried about those children in whose eyes we see alarm, fear and sometimes even despair," he said in a grave radio address. "An end should be put to this. I want to state a warning: everything that concerns children is a presidential priority . . . "Russian people were always responsive to the pain and suffering of children, the whole community would come to their assistance. Why have we become so indifferent?" That was in October 1997 and little has changed since. According to Human Rights Watch, Russia's state-run orphanages violate 20 of the convention's first 41 articles. Two weeks ago a UN commission examining Russia's report held its first preliminary meeting. It is expected to issue its response later this year. "Abandoned children in Russia are condemned to a life without a future, especially if they suffer from a disability, no matter how minor," said Sergei Koloskov of Russia's Down's Syndrome Association. The father of a girl with Down's syndrome, Koloskov was one of the first Russians to defy the system by refusing to yield to pressure to put her in an orphanage. He has since dedicated himself to exposing the cruelty of such institutions. "The problem lies not just in the appalling state of these orphanages. It also lies in Russian society and in its prejudice. These kids are looked down upon as second-class citizens. They are seen as barely human," he said. "We have saved more than 100. We took them out of 'lying rooms' where they were wasting away. Within six months we saw a miraculous recovery. Kids who lay motionless now play, smile and eat. Many have learnt to talk properly." Koloskov is being helped by the London-based Down's Syndrome Association UK, which has launched a Russia appeal for his work. "The real tragedy," he said, "is that all they need is love and proper care." Adoption is becoming easier in Russia: the government has set up a database with the names of thousands of abandoned children. Under Russian law, foreigners are allowed to adopt children only if no Russian wants them. In 1996, 3,300 Russian children were adopted by foreigners, mostly Americans. Not all abandoned children in Russia are held in conditions as severe as those of Orphanage No 12. Some for children without "disabilities" have received large donations from the West. Human Rights Watch, however, found countless examples of "cruel, inhuman degradation". In some cases children were beaten and locked for days in a freezing room without food to punish them for trying to run away. The organization has also catalogued incidents in which orphanage staff pushed the head of one child into a lavatory and squeezed the testicles of others while interrogating them about misdeeds. Orphanage directors often order punishments to be carried out by older children. On my return to Moscow from Orphanage No 12, I sat numbly for a while, sipping coffee in a hamburger restaurant, surrounded by dozens of Russian children in brightly colored snowsuits. This was how Katya, a six-year old girl confined to her bed a few miles away, could have looked. Katya is bright, articulate and has two healthy parents. She is paralyzed in both legs, however, and so she has been abandoned to the state. She recently joined the other children in the lying room and is unlikely ever to leave it. For more information, contact the Down's Syndrome Association UK on 0181 682 4001 or Sergei Koloskov at the Down's Syndrome Association (Moscow) on 00 7095 925 6476; e-mail: ads@rmt.ru Palms Children of Russia: Palms Bayshore Building, Penthouse Suite #408, 6421 Lake Washington Boluevard Northeast, Kirkland, State of Washington, United States of America 98033-6876; phone: 1-425-828-6774 or 1-425-827-5528

email: Palms@PeterPalms.com

THERE ARE SOME AT WORK AT CORRECTING THIS OUTRAGE

From: MiraMedUSA@aol.com (Juliette Engel)
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 1999 Subject: Re: 3062-"Children Left To Die"

We are so sick of these horror stories about the 600,000 Russian orphans who are either "beaten and tortured" (Human Rights Watch) or "left to die." We have been working on the ground with Russian orphanages for 5 years and also work directly with the Russian Orphanage Association, which works with about 80 baby orphanages. All over the world, including the US, you can find children being beaten and tortured and left to die. And these kind of abuses should be exposed.

But what about the tens of thousands of Russian orphanage workers who show up for work and love and care for these kids without getting paid for 6 months or more and the hundreds of thousands of kids who are NOT being beaten or left to die--but need help? Where is the press coverage, the editorials, the voices for change on these issues?

Keeping pressure on the government NOT to continue to cut services (food, etc.) to these orphanages; making it easier to send humanitarian aid and working to make sure when these kids are turned out at 17 they are educated and trained enough to get a decent job instead of being the number one source of recruits for the mafia and sex traffickers is the real work that needs doing--but this is too dull for the media.

The so-called "extensive report" that Human Rights Watch did is a disgrace. They spent less than 30 days in Russia, spoke to less than 25 people, visited 15 or so orphanages in one small area of this enormous country and published a 200 plus page tirade that got enormous press coverage but didn't help improve humanitarian aid delivery, pay workers or increase orphanage budgets that have been slashed 30% this year. Things ARE very tough in Russia for kids--there's a million of them on the streets and 600,000 in institutions. But sensationalist reporting too often just cause a knee-jerk reaction--like Americans sending checks to these orphanages (which of course cannot be cashed since there are no banks to cash them!). What is needed is a lot more thoughtful reporting and information about what can be done to improve the situation. For more information, please contact MiraMed Institute.

COMMENT: I know Dr. Engel and consider her to be a reliable person of great integrity. Dr. Peter J. van de Waal-Palms

For Personal use Only

Russian Kids' Dilemma: Street life or neglect at Home

Children line up with adults for food at a makeshift soup kitchen in Moscow, The economic Downturns and chaos of the eight years since the Soviet Union's collapse have brought long standing child neglect out from behind closed doors

By Judith Ingram - Associated Press Moscow - bath-time is over and 20 girls face one another in two silent lines along opposite walls of a corridor. Half are combing their hair.' The others watch; their heads were shaved for lice as soon as they arrived at the juvenile detention center.

This is a crossroads for Russia's high risk children - between tough life on the street, the stifling existence in state run institutions and the violence and neglect some fled at home. The kids are in for everything from begging to homicide. From here, some will be sent to prison, others to orphanages, and many, right back to their families - only to run away again. Many families have weathered Russia's rocky transition from communism, raising bright, healthy and motivated children in spite of the social upheaval. But others have proven unable to cope, flooding state institutions -and the streets of Russian cities with neglected children. "I don't want to go home. I don't want to go back on the streets, either,' protests Julia, a sullen 15-year-old in black patent-leather pumps who was arrested after she ran away from her family and spent three months working as a prostitute. "What am I supposed to do, go straight to the. cemetery and dig myself a grave?'

Child neglect rises to surface The economic slumps and legal chaos of the eight years since the Soviet collapse have brought long-standing problems of child neglect out into the open. Ragged children trudge through Moscow's subway trains, carrying hand-lettered signs with appeals for money. Kids in thin, jackets and torn boots huddle over steam vents on the wintry streets, sniffing glue, drinking vodka, killing time.

Juvenile crime in Moscow doubles between 1990 and 1993, then fell back. Over the past year it's been rising again and the crimes are becoming more violent and discriminate, said Tatyana Maximova, director of The Juvenile Crime Prevention division of the city police department. "In the old days, if we had five killings a year by juveniles, it was considered an emergency. Last year we had 48" Maximova said.

Most of the young criminals come from poor families. They've ended up in the same bind as their parents: Their mandatory eight grades of education have given them no skills and no chance of finding a job.

The post-Soviet law on education has allowed parents to keep, their children out of school, in exchange for a promise, to teach them at home. "Children 11, 12 years old end up on the streets, washing wind- shields. They have papers saying they're studying at home,, but who is there to teach-them?" said Maximova, the juvenile cop.

Children flock to streets

And so they join the army of street children, many of whom who ended up homeless when their parents sold apartments and houses. Marginalized families - the poor, the mentally ill, alcoholics - were the first targets of crooked real estate speculators in the early 1990s, when their free housing suddenly became a valuable commodity.

Oleg Zykov, a psychiatrist who heads the No to Alcoholism and Drugs Abuse foundation estimates there are about 15,000 street children in Moscow alone. The number of children surrendered to state custody by families has also skyrocketed, doubling over the past five years to some 113,000 annually, according to Human Rights Watch.

Kids In custody More and more youngsters are ending up in state custody only after spending time on the streets.

"Earlier it was easier, a lot of children were coming from their homes,' said Natalya Kuryshova, the deputy director of the Saltykov children's home, a 140-bed orphanage in a cheerfully decorated brick building just east of Moscow. "Now we, have children who know what vagrancy means, who've felt real hunger, who've been taught to steal, who've used toxic substances.- The latest economic crisis, which exploded in August, has exacerbated the problem. Prices have soared, already paltry state, child-support payments are almost worthless and opportunities for even the occasional job that kept many families going for years have shrunk. Free lunch programs have been cut back in many schools. The number of mothers and fathers stripped of parental rights because of child abuse has grown. In Moscow alone, those rights were taken from 428 parents in 1995, 832 in 1997 and more than 1,000 in 1998, said Deputy Mayor Valery Shantsev.

Some of those children will be placed with relatives. Others will enter the state system, where they're marked for life, often with, incorrect diagnoses of mental and physical problems that haunt them into their adult years.