Barnardo's in pounds 400m lawsuit over children sent to be farm

Independent, The (London),  Jun 19, 2002  by Sam Greenhill

U.S. study of Romanian children faces European challenge By Barry James Published: June 6, 2002 PARIS:— A study of institutionalized children in Romania by three U.S. universities and supported by the MacArthur Foundation is threatened with closure because of opposition by the European Parliament's primary supporter of Romania's bid to join the European Union. The project seeks to determine whether children living in institutions are deprived of stimuli that are needed for their normal development. The U.S. researchers insist that it meets the highest medical and ethical criteria, but the European deputy, Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne, questions it on both legal and moral grounds. It does not directly benefit the 210 children involved, she says, and it perpetuates the stereotype of Romania as a country that mistreats children in institutions and trafficks them for adoption abroad. Because data and videotapes obtained in Bucharest are sent to the United States for analysis, Nicholson says, the project violates the EU's rules on data protection. This is important, she says, when there is so much evidence of pedophilia on the Internet. Although she does not suggest that the project is involved in anything underhanded, she expresses concern about the apparent lack of data security in the United States and the possibility that the video images could leak out. The children are videotaped while at play and while carrying out tasks that are standard in child psychology, according to Sebastian Koga, project manager of the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, which is supported by Tulane university and the Universities of Minnesota and Maryland. The four-year-old study, now at the midway point, separates the children into three groups of 70 each, one living with their natural parents, one with foster families and the other in institutions. He said the results would published in peer-reviewed journals. "The study demonstrates that there are certain critical or sensitive periods during brain development, then government policies should be guided by those periods," Koga said. But now, he said, the criticism may force the Romanian government to close the project. Nicholson said that it was obvious that children do better in foster or adoptive families and that there already was a wealth of research to support this. Even the Romanian government recognizes the fact, she said, and is working hard to close large institutions as soon as resources permit, and place children either into small groups or with families. In fact, Nicholson said, there are now more children in institutions in the United States than in Romania, and she suggested that the reason the project went to Romania was because the universities were able to exploit lax government regulations (since tightened up to come closer to EU standards) and because it wanted to carry out experiments that would not be tolerated at home, including one that scans the brain waves of children by placing a cotton cap wired with electrodes on their heads. Koga said that this procedure was completely harmless, and that if the children fret about it, "we give up." The dispute blew up recently at a news conference dealing with the achievements of children who have been raised in institutions. Nicholson condemned exploitation of the system without mentioning the U.S. project by name, but Romanian newspapers quickly tracked it down. "It caught us totally off guard," said Charles Zeanah of Tulane University, principal investigator for the project, which he said was "strictly scientific and humanitarian." Contrary to what Nicholson alleged, he said there were not enough children in large institutions in the United States to be able to carry out a corresponding study there. The experiments in Bucharest were approved by the Ministry of Health, he said. According to Koga, "what has happened in Romania has been a completely unwarranted scandal which has dragged the good name of the MacArthur Foundation through the newspapers with allegations of child abuse, exploitation for the purposes of adoption and tales of children being locked in dark rooms for experiments. This is damaging the reputation of three very prestigious universities." Nicholson is unrepentant. She said she never made the remark attributed to her in one Romanian newspaper that the project was designed to test children for adoption. Nevertheless, the research being carried out in Bucharest, she said, could be used in research to find out why children adopted abroad sometimes fail to adapt to life in a new family and country. Nicholson said that had the project promised the children scholarships, "we might have been prepared to bite the bullet" and accept it. But not only were the children getting nothing, she said, but the 70 institutionalized participants were being disadvantaged by having to remain in a home during the four-year program rather than being placed with foster families. Furthermore, she said the program was housed in luxury "worthy of an international bank," while the other side of the wall hundreds of children languished in one of the worst and most impoverished institutions in Romania, one that the government would close if it had the resources.

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Nancy Adams, the US Trade Representative’s (USTR), er, representative in Brussels, leaves for Geneva in July. She’ll become senior counsellor for technical assistance and market access at the USTR mission to the World Trade Organisation. Replacing her is Christopher Wilson, who arrives from the USTR’s Latin American office in August.

Also, Larry Wohlers, the EU Mission’s long-time public affairs counsellor, leaves in July for a Moscow posting. He’ll spend a year in Washington first, brushing up his Russian. Taking over from him will be Anne Barbaro, currently at the US embassy in Madrid. Press officer Ed Kemp assumed most of the day-to-day spokesman duties from Wohlers and will continue in that role.

And finally, ‘institutional officer’ Rob Faucher, who’s usually seen spying around the press bar at Councils and summits, is headed for Suriname at the end of June. “I refuse to serve in any country that doesn’t border France,” he joked. Suriname borders French Guiana in South America.

Replacing him is Rick Holzapple, a former National Security Council aide from Washington who’s spent the last year at the European Commission, working in DGs Relex and Enlargement.

Robert Hull has been appointed director of consultative work at the European Economic and Social Committee. He takes over from Diarmid McLaughlin, who is retiring.

Verheugen rules out Romanian adoption help

THE European Commission has ruled out mediating for couples trying to adopt children from Romanian orphanages.

EUROPEAN VOICEBy DAVID CRONIN 5/29/02, 5:00 PM CET Updated 4/12/14, 7:59 AM CET

About 35 million euro in EU funding has already been allocated to help replace the old-style orphanages associated with the Ceaucescu era. But enlargement chief Günter Verheugen said: "The Commission has neither the competence nor the intention to deal with individual cases."

The German commissioner was replying to a query by Spanish centre-right MEP Encarnación Redondo Jiménez, who asked what the EU's executive could do to overcome the moratorium on adoptions imposed by the Romanian authorities in June 2001.

Written Testimony To the International Relations Committee,
United States House of Representatives, Hearing on International Adoptions,

May 22, 2002

Submitted by Dr Kek Galabru, LICADHO President

The founder of the Prometeo Association does not stop in the fight against pedophilia.

Guest of Costanzo's broadcast he tells the drama of the children of Bucharest and the Romanian government meets urgently.

"I saw children growling in orphanages"

Those in Bergamo who followed him in his meetings on the children of Bucharest and on pedophilia are used to his strong and blunt sentences, contained with difficulty, just enough for the message to arrive. And yesterday afternoon even the viewers of Buona Domenica had to leave the fun of the festive afternoon for a moment to receive the "punch in the stomach" that Massimiliano Frassi, founder of the Prometheus Association against pedophilia in Bergamo, launched through the cameras. Guest of Maurizio Costanzo, for the second time, after the one at the Maurizio Costanzo Show, he described in a way so real as to seem surreal, the images he saw years ago in Bucharest and last time only 15 days ago. To Costanzo's statement: “Before Romania can enter Europe it would have to deal with 50. 000 children living in the sewers of Bucharest ”he urged“ Italy then has to deal with its primacy of sex tourists ”. An outlet for the charter flights that in his meetings he said also depart from Bergamo for Bucharest, for Thailand and for other countries where it is easy to find a desperate child to turn into a lover. And often in AIDS patients. “At the Bucharest station I saw an eight-year-old girl with some street educators approaching, they loaded her into the car and raped her. When we approached to take her away they told us "Go ahead, tomorrow other children will be taken away and no one knows what will happen to them". Then Frassi brought the cold to the television studio accustomed to welcoming serious stories, yes, but above all entertainment and serenity. "I've seen children in orphanages growl, left in their excrements, ”he said, his eyes shining, but above all full of anger. Those who in Bergamo who follow him know, due to the obstacles he had when he sought a seat for his association, those of a sense of powerlessness compared to the numerous cases of pedophilia that have been reported to him. And perhaps even when the attention rises to become tension on some stories, and then falls when the moment passes. “Those children remain there waiting for someone to take them away - continues the president of Prometeo - if they can resist. And if they are lucky to find someone to welcome them. " Just as it happened for six boys that Costanzo hosted yesterday, who on the documents are 17 or 18 years old, but who in the faces, in the body still as children and in the ability to express themselves much less. They were adopted by Italian families from Ravenna or Taranto. They resumed living, eating after having fed on cockroaches for a long time, having forgotten how to eat, how to feed, both their body and their emotions. Together with a doctor, Costanzo and Frassi have undertaken the commitment to follow them, to re-educate them in nutrition, including the emotional one. The next appointment is between two Sundays.

Others, however, did not make it, they weren't so lucky. "I saw them, I saw kids kissing you good night by opening the lid of a manhole - continues Frassi - underneath is their house". In the photos that are broadcast and that were taken in Bucharest, those houses can be seen: “Here it is, what you see in the garbage is not a garbage bag, but a child. He sleeps in the sewers, which are real sewers. I went down too, I saw their "rooms", but the children are still safe there. It turns out that I am no longer. " Frassi lived all this and even if only for a few minutes many other people through his words, which convey the same emotion, anger pity and bewilderment also in the book he wrote "Children from the sewers of Bucharest" - a journey into the last circle of violated childhood ". On the cover one of them, breathing glue from a bag. So for a few minutes you forget everything. All.

ISRAEL: ISRAELI COUPLES BARRED FROM ADOPTING BABIES DUE TO MID-EAST SITUATION.(from Russia and Ukraine)(Brief Article)

IPR Strategic Business Information Database | April 22, 2002 | Copyright

A number of Eastern European countries including Russia and Ukraine no longer permit international adoptions to Israel because they fear for the children's safety, according to an Israeli daily. Nehama Tal, the Israeli government's national inspector for international adoptions, recently went to Russia, however failed to change its policy regarding Israel. "It's never been this difficult to do an international adoption, since the authority for international adoptions was founded," Tal ...