There are about 80,000 children in Romanian orphanages . . . including these twin girls who will never know their sister

By Shelley Emling

Palm Beach Post-Cox Newspapers

Monday, July 25, 2005

BOTOSANI, Romania — Richard and Karen Springer of West Palm Beach were on top of the world seven years ago when they were allowed to bring their adopted daughter, Gabriella, home from Romania.

Six days shy of her first birthday, Gabriella had lacked so much stimulation in a Romanian orphanage that she was unable to maneuver her fingers well enough to pick up a Cheerio.

But under the Springers' care, she has blossomed into an inquisitive squirt of energy who, like any 8-year-old, loves to play with dolls and pepper her parents with scientific questions they find tough to answer.

In December 2002, the Springers got word from their adoption agency that Gabriella's natural parents had had twin girls — news that put the family over the moon.

"Those girls were only 18 months old at the time, and we started doing everything we could to adopt them," said Richard Springer, 55. "The girls' father was in Italy doing construction work, and the court wanted us to fly him back to Romania so he could confirm he didn't want the girls.

"We flew him back, and the father confirmed he didn't want them, and the adoption was being finalized."

Or, so he thought. Last year, a letter arrived out of the blue from the Romanian government. It said the adoption process was being terminated as part of the country's preparations to join the European Union.

Gabriella had been playing with twin dolls to practice being a big sister. The Springers had even built an addition on the back of their house.

"We were absolutely in shock," Richard Springer said. "We didn't know what to do. We're still hoping the government will allow this to go forward."

But the chances of the twins ever being brought to the United States are slim.

In an urgent bid to join the European Union by 2007, the Romanian government implemented a ban on international adoptions last January as part of new child-welfare legislation. The government, with the EU's prodding, hopes to encourage Romanians to adopt Romanian orphans — or at least sign up to be foster parents.

Rarely has the prospect of EU integration packed such an emotional wallop for a population's youngest members — or on American families.

Across the country, smaller "placement centers" have replaced many of the gargantuan impersonal orphanages that delivered notoriety to Communist Romania some 15 years ago.

Government acts

In response to criticism that orphans were being raised in uninspiring institutions, the Romanian government has mandated that no child under age 2 can be placed in one.

But the ban has left the Springers and at least 200 other American couples — as well as some 1,500 European and Israeli couples — mourning the families they might have had.

All were in the throes of the adoption process when the ban took effect.

Tim and Nitza Rosario of Boca Raton have been trying for 2 1/2 years to bring the daughter they think of as their own — now 4 — home from Romania.

The Rosarios habitually replay a video of her; photographs of the girl adorn their home.

"She's with a foster family, but no one there will adopt a child who is 4, so we just have to have great faith that we'll be able to bring her home someday," Nitza Rosario said.

EU officials allege that Romanian orphans were winding up in the human organ trade or in the hands of pedophiles due to profound corruption in Romania's adoption system.

Baroness Emma Nicholson, a member of the European Parliament who until recently acted as the EU observer on Romania, argues that Americans should adopt the 750,000 or so unwanted children in their own country.

"We are no longer going to give up our children because we are developed economies in Europe, and we can find our own solutions for children who are in trouble," she said. But the economic situation of the vast majority of Romanian families isn't in any mood to oblige.

Most important is the vast number of orphans who continue to live with little hope of finding parents.

A new UNICEF survey carried out in more than 150 medical institutions found that around 4,000 newborn babies were abandoned in Romanian maternity hospitals immediately after delivery in 2004 — or 1.8 percent of all newborns. UNICEF estimates that about 80,000 children are currently in the state's care.

"The abandonment situation has not improved in the last 10 or 20 or 30 years," said Pierre Poupard, head of the UNICEF office in Bucharest. But Poupard argues that adoption should be encouraged only as a last resort. "It's just not good for any child to be rejected by his or her family and then spirited away somewhere."

Others disagree, citing a laundry list of reasons as to why international adoptions should be allowed.

"Romanians only want to adopt young, healthy babies, and they certainly don't want to adopt gypsy children," said Ani Manea, who until recently ran a home for abandoned babies in Galati, Romania, adding that "foster families want kids at least 6 months old, so any younger than that have to be kept in hospitals."

The traditionally discriminated-against gypsy — or Roma — people make up 10 percent of the population but account for 60 to 70 percent of abandoned children.

Another problem, said Manea, is that Romanian foster families often keep children until they are 18 but won't consider adoption because the families don't want to lose out on a government subsidy that often generates twice as much income as the average wage of about $220 a month.

Ready to go

At a small home for abandoned children in Botosani, an eight-hour drive north of Bucharest, at least one-third of the 15 orphans in residence had received all the necessary approvals to be adopted by American couples when the ban was finalized.

The potential of what could have been a life-changing move is not lost on the children.

The orphans, between the ages of 2 and 7, greet the arrival of any and all strangers as a rare and spectacular miracle.

They scream. They jump up and down. They tug at ears and peer under skirts. The older ones are so fascinated by watches they take turns grabbing a visitor's arm to press it against their cheeks.

Ancuta Constantinescu is one irrepressible whirl of energy who needs no encouragement to show off where she sleeps.

The knobby-kneed 6-year-old bounds up the stairs to the barren bedroom she's shared for four years with a mishmash of other kids.

She hoists herself over a railing and into a crib — her bed. A beach towel serves as her blanket. There's not a pillow in sight. The room is enlivened only by a few worn stuffed animals and a broken See-'N-Say on an otherwise empty shelf.

Anytime a visitor tries to leave the room, she yells "No, no, no." It's the only English word she knows.

Under Romania's new child-welfare legislation, the home should have no more than 12 children — although the director can't imagine throwing three children out onto the streets.

Proponents of the law argue that it keeps families together by forcing the government to seek biological family members who would be willing to care for the child. If that doesn't work, foster families are found and paid a subsidy of about $250 a month to care for an abandoned child. The subsidy jumps to more than $400 if a child is labeled "special needs."

"We don't have abandoned children anymore here in Romania," said Cristiana Ionescu, an attorney and children's advocate in Bucharest. She said that Romanian families have been charged with caring for their own children — or the community is obligated to do so. "The new law is good because we had much corruption before."

But even some government officials admit there are weaknesses to the new legislation.

"Many women aged 40 to 50 want to be foster parents simply because they can't find other jobs," said Hagiu Danut-Mirel, vice director of the government office that facilitates adoptions and foster care in Galati, east of Bucharest. "Another problem is that most Romanian families only want newborns that are girls with blond hair and blue eyes."

Doina Ivas, a talkative, energetic woman in Botosani, has cared for 12 foster children over the past several years — 10 of whom have been adopted by American couples and two by French couples.

For the past three years, she's cared for Sabina, a 7-year-old gypsy girl with a learning disability who obviously won't be adopted internationally due to the ban. But she's also not likely to be adopted domestically, either.

As a toddler in an orphanage, Sabina refused to make eye contact — only now is she learning to say a few words.

"If there hadn't been this ban on adoptions, Sabina would be in the United States right now," Ivas said. "But no one here is going to adopt a girl like her. And we're not going to adopt her because if we did, we'd lose the (foster-care) money we're getting now."

Dictator's legacy

Passage of the child-welfare legislation — and even the ban on international adoptions — is all part of Romania's continuing battle against the legacy of the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was ousted from power and killed on Christmas Day 1989. His government had tried to swell the country's population by banning contraception and abortions for all women until they each bore five children. During his time in power, there were massive electricity outages, and food was scarce.

It has been 15 years since news reports of some 130,000 orphans living in often squalid conditions shocked the world. Graphic images of children who had received almost no stimuli — not to mention food — became a catalyst for humanitarian action.

A cavalry of American families swooped in and scooped up thousands of Romanian children to take home and call their own — some 2,600 children received visas to be adopted by Americans in 1991 alone.

To be sure, many well-meaning programs for children have cropped up and have gained traction across Romania since that time. At an SOS Children's Village in Bucharest set up by an Austria-based charity, some 85 children have been divided into groups of seven or eight, each living in a separate house with their own so-called SOS mother.

Although the conditions are clean, personal belongings and sometimes even attention are rare.

But the SOS mother in one house, Manuela Patriche, says she thinks of the seven children under her care as her own.

"A few call me by my first name, but others call me Mom and the youngest calls me Mommy," says Patriche, who has no biological children. She receives five days off every month — during which time an SOS "aunt" comes to stay with the children.

When faced with a wide range of options, whether it be an SOS home or a foster family, many orphans themselves insist that adoption — even international adoption — is the best solution for an abandoned child.