[size=55:mgvhr2w8]novinite 20 September 2010

Bulgaria to investigate hundreds of children deaths in orphanages

Bulgaria's Prosecutor's Office was investigating 166 cases of deaths in children homes over the past decade following a joint probe by prosecutors and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee that uncovered 238 deaths over the period, Prosecutor-General Boris Velchev said on September 20.

"
In these cases there is enough to suspect criminal negligence to avoid the deaths. The pre-trial investigations now being started are against unknown perpetrators,"
Velchev said, as quoted by Dnevnik daily.

Charges to be pressed could include negligent manslaughter, bodily harm, sexual harassment, mismanagement and corruption, he said. The check showed that several homes for disabled children tied the children down, which is a form of abuse, and found instances in which medication was used to control the children instead as therapy.

Although the sweeping investigation would not solve the problem, it could improve prevention, Velchev said.

"
What we can do is dispense retribution and strengthen prevention. We've uncovered troubling things. I cannot imagine that in 10 years, 238 citizens from the most vulnerable part of the society have passed away in this way,"
Velchev said.

Margarita Ilieva, head of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee legal programme, said: "
These children died not of their disabilities, but of things that no one should experience. We are talking about facilities with drastically poor hygiene;
31 of the children died of hunger."


"
We do not need retribution and someone going to jail. We need prevention,"
she said.

Bulgarian Orphanages Shockingly Claim 240 Lives in 10 Years

Malnutrition, cold, and deplorable living conditions have claimed the lives of 236 Bulgarian orphans in the past 10 years.

This shocking figure has been revealed through an inspection of the Bulgarian Prosecutor's Office and the Bulgarian Helsinki Committed, a NGO, whose results were presented on Monday.

In some of the cases, the cause of the death is unknown. Chief Prosecutor Boris Velchev said his institution has started the investigation of 166 of the deaths.

According to the inspection results, most of the orphans died as a result of systematic malnutrition, pneumonia, and other diseases. Most of the kids died in the orphanages rather than in hospitals, which is taken to show that they did not receive the proper medical treatment.

"
I cannot fathom how we allowed the deaths of 236 Bulgarian citizens from this most vulnerable group in the last ten years. In 80% of the cases nobody even cared to notify the police or the prosecutor's office so that the deaths can be investigated,"
Vlechev declared.

The inspection has discovered that orphans were tied or were given sedatives in order to be controlled more easily in at least 8 of the orphanages.

"
We must take urgent measures to make sure there are no more physical injuries or chemical and physical immobilizing of the orphans,"
said lawyer Aneta Genova from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.

The State Agency for Child Protection has pointed out that its role is to monitor the situation together with the prosecutors while it is up to the local authorities and the respective mayors to make sure that the kids in the orphanages are healthy and well fed.

In addition to the 166 deaths, the prosecutors will be investigating 27 cases of physical and sexual violence. They vowed to inspect the existing orphanages again next year.

The Bulgarian government has recently announced a program to shut down all orphanages and find care and accommodation for orphans with host families or with social institutions of a new type that are located in the cities rather than in faraway and almost uninhabited villages.

[size=55:1un1u74v]Standart 21 September 2010

Thirty-One Children Die out of Starvation
Bulgaria's Prosecutor General sends prosecutors to orphanages

Starvation has caused the death of 31 children and this happened not in Somalia or Haiti but in Bulgaria. Another 207 kids also died in orphanages in Bulgaria in the past 10 years. The shocking truth about the homes for abandoned handicapped children in Bulgaria was voiced by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC).
"
It is a nasty lie that these children die because of their illness. Some 75% of these case could have been healed and helped,"
Margarita Ilieva from the BHC is explicit.
So far, 166 investigations have been initiated on death cases with children and another 27 cases on bodily injuries, Bulgaria Prosecutor General Boris Velchev stated.
There are orphanages where kids were bound. There are a lot of cases for sexual harassment on children. A leading place in the black list of notorious orphanages is the home in the village of Krushari. Fifty-six kids died there since 2000.

[size=55:2wlzq7bd]Euobserver.com 22 September 2010

Bulgarian Prosecutors Look into Deaths of 238 Children in Care

Six-year old Maria weighed seven kilogrammes. She died in a hospital elevator in the Bulgarian Black Sea port of Varna in June 2008. Officials rushed her there from a home for disabled children in the nearby village of Rudnik. This happened a year and a half after her country joined the EU.

More than three years into EU membership, the situation in these institutions has only slightly improved, says Yana Buhrer Tavanier from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee (BHC), the country's main human rights group.

A joint fact-finding mission of the BHC and the office of Prosecutor General Boris Velchev from last March to June found that a total of 238 children have died over the past decade in the country's 25 such homes – most of them squalid, under-funded places hidden from the public eye in the remotest provincial backwoods. "
At least three-fourths of those deaths were preventable,"
a BHC report wrapping up the mission said, referring to 187 cases. It said in the remaining 51 fatalities, death was inevitable due to terminal diseases or grave complications.

Fifty-seven deaths were recorded during the last three years alone, Ms Tavanier said. She accused all governments over the monitored period of lacking any policy to protect disabled children.

"
We should be ashamed that children die of hunger in the 21st century,"
Mr Velchev told journalists in Sofia on Monday. "
We can and must look for justice here."
He joined efforts with the BHC after they sued him last year for what they saw as his office's failure to properly address the death cases.

Prosecutors inconclusively investigated homes for disabled children after a 2007 BBC documentary revealed appalling suffering in one of them – in the village of Mogilino – eventually forcing its closure.

But dozens of similar houses of pain remain, Ms Tavanier said. The mentally and physically disabled children's asylum in the north-eastern Bulgarian village of Krushari has the worst mortality record for the last 10 years with a total of 56 deaths, the BHC report said.

"
All officials responsible for those homes during the past decade – ministers of social policies, mayors and heads of the State Agency on Child Protection - must finally face trial on charges of culpable negligence,"
Ms Tavanier added.

Mr Velchev said prosecutors were already working on 166 such child death and maltreatment cases, 27 of which involved sexual abuse and violence. Home officials failed to report 90 percent of the inmate deaths to the police, he added.

Angel, a five year-old boy from the Mogilino home died of acute coronary failure in 2001 because he was never treated, the mission report said. BHC officials said they identified the victims by their Christian names only for ethical reasons.

Children with broken legs were held between seven and 10 days without any treatment in another asylum in the north-western village of Gomotartsi, the report said. Among them was Verginia, who for weeks had to endure unbearable pain each of the three times she broke her thigh. Home officials treated her with flavin packs instead of taking her to hospital in the district town of Vidin, just 15km to the south.

Seven children from a home for the mentally sick in the eastern village of Medven were systematically "
immobilised,"
or tied up, the report said. It said one of them was tied up for 15 hours a day from March 2009 until March 2010.

Annual government spending per disabled asylum child in Bulgaria is slightly less than the equivalent of €3,600 or less than €10 a day, the daily Trud reported citing the State Agency on Child Protection. It said €1.25 of the daily allowance was allocated for food. This money could be slightly increased by contributions from the cash-strapped local budgets.

FACTS

Deaths and causes in Bulgaria's disabled children's homes 2000 – 2010

Total death toll : 238

Starvation (systematic malnutrition) : 31

Inadequate care : 84

Infections, poor hygiene : 13

Incidents (freezing, drowning, asphyxiation) : 6

Pneumonia : 36

Violence : 2

Unidentified causes : 15

Terminal illnesses or fatal complications: 51


Corrected at 15.45 Brussels time on 22 September 2010. Added figure of 51 deaths not being deemed premature due to negligence but probably caused by terminal illnesses

[size=55:1fo9u4lo]New York times 05 October 2010

Unlikely Allies in Bulgaria Reveal Fatal Mental Health Neglect




An unusual investigation that brought together prosecutors and human rights lawyers has revealed a grisly picture of neglect at Bulgarian state homes for mentally disabled children: 238 deaths since 2000.

More than three-fourths of the deaths were found to have been avoidable: 84 from physical deterioration caused by neglect;
36 from exposure to cold or long-term immobility;
31 from malnutrition;
13 from infections caused by poor hygiene;
6 from accidents;
15 were unexplained.

While experts are shocked by the high death rates — the current number of residents in such institutions is 1,296 — the cases appear much like those in similar state care institutions across Eastern Europe since Communism imploded 20 years ago.

But the investigation is different in that the abuses were uncovered by an unusual team: prosecutors working alongside human rights lawyers from the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee, an international human rights organization based in Sofia. The effort represents a strategic break from the familiar pattern of advocates’ naming and shaming governments for appalling standards of care for their societies’ most vulnerable citizens.

Evidence was collected to identify those guilty of crimes and build legal cases to send them to prison.

“It’s about ending impunity,” said Margarita Ilieva, legal director at the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee. “This will instill a fear of criminal liability, and that will change the behavior of the executive branch of government.”

Last month, the Bulgarian prosecutor general announced criminal investigations into 166 of the deaths and 30 more cases of abuse of children still living in the homes. More than 80 percent of the deaths in the homes were not reported to authorities — as required by law — and the bodies were buried without autopsies.

Several legal experts working in the region said they could recall no case of anyone ever going to jail for crimes in state institutions for the mentally disabled.

“It’s allowed to happen because these people don’t count as people,” said Judith Klein, director of the Open Society Mental Heath Initiative in Budapest. “If they did, it would be outrageous and unheard of.”

The Bulgarian prosecutor general, Boris Velchev, said at a news conference where the report was issued last month that his ambition was not to solve the problem but to bring to justice those responsible for the crimes and to exercise prevention.

Advocates say the collaboration represents a new and potentially powerful approach to an old problem. But there is still widespread skepticism about whether any cases will reach court.

“It’s a strategy not without risk,” said Oliver Lewis, executive director of the Mental Disability Advocacy Center, a nongovernmental organization in Budapest that finances part of the work of the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee.

Whether it could work in other countries depends on the independence of the prosecutor, he said.

“The benefits are that the prosecutors have access which the nongovernmental organizations don’t have, while the NGOs have expertise which the prosecutors don’t,” Mr. Lewis said in a telephone interview. “In this context, it works and really is innovative. We have learned a lot of things that we wouldn’t know otherwise about the quantity of mistreatment and the neglect of children.”

The collaboration follows 10 years of conflict between the prosecutor’s office and human rights advocates who have regularly sued the state for failing to protect a wide range of human rights. The current prosecutor general was facing a discrimination lawsuit brought by the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee for not trying crimes committed against the mentally disabled when he decided to change tactics.

The deputy prosecutor general, Galina Toneva, said in an interview, “We as a society have to work together in the same direction and to help each other instead of confronting each other.” Asked whether opening the investigations was simply a public relations move on the part of the prosecutor, Ms. Toneva pointed out that the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee was participating alongside prosecutors in the criminal investigations. Lawyers from the group have also been appointed as special legal representatives for the living children should the abuse cases reach a courtroom.

“It’s a guarantee that the prosecutor won’t do anything secret,” Ms. Toneva said.

Researchers say the culprit is the entire system. They say popular explanations about the causes of the high death rates are myths created to deflect blame from politicians: the severity of the children’s mental disabilities or malicious caregivers are commonly mentioned.

According to Slavka Kukova, a human rights researcher who took part in some of the inspections, few of the workers in Bulgarian state homes receive training in providing the care that the children need. And there has never been oversight.

“These village caregivers have been doing their jobs in the same way for 20 years,” Ms. Kukova said. “No one in the system has ever cared whether they do it in the right way or not.”

At the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy, which oversees the state homes, Deputy Minister Valentina Simeonova said that the system had failed and that everyone was responsible.

“The government policy toward these children has been criminal,” Ms. Simeonova said in an interview in her office in the Stalin-era ministry building. She added that she supported criminal prosecutions of officials “at the highest levels.”

“There has been no improvement in the quality of care for these children all these years,” she said. “There has only been improvement in the conditions of the facilities.”

The timing of the findings and criminal investigations coincides with the government’s plan to close all state institutions for children within 15 years. Human rights campaigners have pushed for years to shut the institutions and place the children in community-based homes with individual care.

While nongovernmental organizations are working with the government and support the plan, there is broad skepticism about how much will be carried out how soon. Ms. Simeonova notes that the first stage — closing all homes for children with mental disabilities within three years — has funding, personnel and a deadline.

The financing comes from two European Union funds: €20 million, or about $27 million, to build facilities and €23 million for training the caregivers.

The Communist-era state built homes deep in the countryside for the mentally ill to keep them far from public view. Nadya Shabani, head of the state child protection agency, said society also bore responsibility for rejecting people with mental disabilities. “For 50 years, these children have been intentionally hidden from us,” she said. “We have to change our attitudes as well.”

Admin wrote:

The Communist-era state built homes deep in the countryside for the mentally ill to keep them far from public view. Nadya Shabani, head of the state child protection agency, said society also bore responsibility for rejecting people with mental disabilities. “For 50 years, these children have been intentionally hidden from us,” she said. “We have to change our attitudes as well.”

Its a bit late for the children who are not here anymore but lets hope they keep to their word and do whats right, to be honest the Bulgarians from this point of view make me sick and I don't mean all of them but I do believe that the majority would rather not deal with it and leave all these children to die

This sad episode in Bulgaria is a long standing one,the main reason is poverty and the lack of suitable care,a lot of money from the EU needs to be given to BG to sort out this mess,proper childcare training and medical treatment needs vast improvement right across the spectrum in BG when the BG goverment shut down the institutions that had been so advertised on BBC where do you think the problem went,it went to another home for children was it any better the answer is no.

Sickening. I hope they find all the individuals who allowed these things to happen and lock them up for a very, very long time. Unfortunately, nothing will probably be resolved as criminal behavior has generally gone unpunished in the last decades.

Totally agree with you guys it is totally sickening and unreal. Just thinking that the children are still suffering and we can do nothing to help is just heartbreaking I also find it very difficult to understand the concept of the way the children with disabilities are hidden away, it's like, out of sight out of mind. When we first asked about a disability orphanage we were totally shocked by the response from a Bulgarian friend - She said 'but these children have mental problems why do you want to help them' She only said how things are in Bulgaria. So as much as I want to believe that things will change, I certainly have huge doubts with these kind of attitudes. The BG government needs to get a better grip on all the orphanages and institutions but again this will take time and of course time is what most of these children do not have

Oddy

oddball wrote:

Totally agree with you guys it is totally sickening and unreal. Just thinking that the children are still suffering and we can do nothing to help is just heartbreaking I also find it very difficult to understand the concept of the way the children with disabilities are hidden away, it's like, out of sight out of mind. When we first asked about a disability orphanage we were totally shocked by the response from a Bulgarian friend - She said 'but these children have mental problems why do you want to help them' She only said how things are in Bulgaria. So as much as I want to believe that things will change, I certainly have huge doubts with these kind of attitudes. The BG government needs to get a better grip on all the orphanages and institutions but again this will take time and of course time is what most of these children do not have

Oddy

I have to agree with you - it is absolutely appalling. However, if anyone stands any chance of doing anything about it - it is you two

Regards, George

I'd like to ad that apathy by the government and the Europien officials caused this tragedy, It's a pity that an organization like Amnesty International does not directly intervene, when children are starved or abused, it's a form of torture, we keep on talking about terrorism, but these orphans feel terrorized daily, but never make international headlines and cannot survive.

Can the European Union impose sanctions on Bulgaria,if they find Bulgaria is abusing children in orphanages? I don't mean just on Bulgaria,I mean on any country that abuses children? or maybe the European Union doesn't care.

Eastern block countries, like Bulgaria, that have suffered political problems do not have the infrastructure to care for orphans, let alone mentally disabled children! the parents are not equipped emotionally or financially to care for their disabled children, especially in the absence of adequate support and educational services. I do think we need to care about the world's children, so let's do our best to make a difference

How can any loving human treat children in such an horrific way, were we not brought up to value all children? and when one has worked with mentally disabled children they would know that they are truly gifts from God!

sarah

We need to take better care of the world's children. It's heartrending to see and hear of brutality against our most innocent and defenseless