"Harry Potter" author getting involved with child welfare in Eastern Europe

AP Interview:

"Harry Potter" author getting

involved with child welfare in Eastern Europe

By ALISON MUTLER

Associated Press Writer

01-26-2006 17:00

BUCHAREST , Romania (AP) _ When "Harry Potter"

author J.K. Rowling saw a newspaper photo of a child

in a caged bed in the Czech Republic almost two years

ago, her initial instinct was to turn the page.

"I was pregnant ... and vulnerable in the way that

a pregnant woman is to those kind of issues regarding

children," Rowling said. "It was an awful image and I

almost didn't want to let it into my head."

But Rowling forced herself to look. And that

experience persuaded the 40-year-old British writer _

whose Harry Potter books have sold more than 300

million copies worldwide _ to use her fame to help

children in need in the Czech Republic, Romania and

elsewhere.

"The next second I thought 'well you just need to

read this article and if it's as bad as it looks, you

have to do something about it' and that's why I am

doing it," she said in an interview with the

Associated Press at the British Council in Bucharest .

Rowling wrote to the Czech government in July 2004

complaining about the practice of restraining children

in caged beds in the country's psychiatric facilities,

which spurred the government to restrict their use.

Rowling's interest in child welfare in the region

did not stop there. She became a trustee in January of

a new Bucharest-based foundation called the Children's

High Level Group, which raises money for children in

need and promotes childcare reforms in Romania .

" Romania is a model for other countries hoping to

reform ... Romania was the state that acknowledged

there was a problem and set out to do something about

it," said Rowling, dressed in a duck-egg blue suit and

brown suede boots.

Romanian orphanages first came to world's

attention after the 1989 downfall of communist

dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. In an effort to boost

Romania 's population of 23 million, Ceausescu banned

birth control and abortion, which led to thousands of

infants being left in state institutions.

Following his execution, televised pictures of

malnourished orphans living in squalor, many suffering

from AIDS, were broadcast around the world.

There are about 32,000 children in Romanian state

institutions, two-thirds of them teenagers, down from

more than 100,000 when Ceausescu was ousted. The

country has closed large institutions in recent years,

placing children in foster care and extended families.

Rowling was in Bucharest for two days this week,

meeting some of the country's institutionalized

children. She was guest of honor at a celebrity gala

held at Ceausescu's former palace which raised more

than ?170,000 (US$209,000) for the foundation.

Rowling, who shuns the trappings of celebrity and

has three children aged 1, 3 and 12, said fame has one

great advantage: "You can parlay that kind of interest

in you personally into awareness of issues you'd like

to raise," she said.

Before focusing on the plight of children, Rowling

worked with programs to fight multiple sclerosis, the

disease that killed her mother, and charities for

one-parent families, having been a single mother.

"With this issue it was something that really

shocked and touched me," she said.

She has words of praise for reforms carried out by

Romania in child welfare, although work still needs to

be done.

"The image that the world had ... ten years ago of

Romanian orphanages ... is not an accurate picture of

the overall state of institutionalized children in

Romania anymore. So by launching the group here we are

trying to ... establish the progress that is

possible."

Rowling recalls with tears in her eyes how an

institutionalized boy on Wednesday gave her paintings

that had won him first prize in a talent competition.

The boy said he met his birth mother last year _ but

that she died three months later.

In a hushed voice, she also tells of six abandoned

babies she saw the day before in a maternity hospital.

"I have a baby at home and again that is something

that touches you," she said. "It's shocking although I

understand the reasons these children have been

abandoned are not the simple reasons that many people

in Western Europe may assume. This is a complex social

issue and it will need complex social solutions."