Abandoned Not Without Hope

Kaeti Barrett

Fair221J

Richard Simon

Project #1 Revision

March 6th, 2018

                                        Abandoned Not Without Hope

         In 1990 millions of Americans dimmed the lights in their living rooms, turned on their televisions and watched as Barbara Walters and her 20/20 camera men travelled to Romania and exposed the horrific conditions of Romania's orphanages. She showed America a third world country which hid thousands of abandoned orphans in institutions with conditions she could only describe “as horrific as Nazi Concentration Camps.”

        In filthy rooms with the stench of urine, were dozens of cribs lined in rows with metal bars, many with rust on them. Left alone in their cribs, children as many as 5 to a crib, laid in urinated-waste stained cribs, yelling and screaming, with black eyes and/or cuts. Some laying in straitjackets, rocking back and forth. Babies would hit their head with such impact it would knock them out, and even left some permanently brain damaged with physical scars. In another room, some children were able to pick the paint off the walls and eat it because they were starving. Some had their hands tied to crib bars, preventing them from falling out since the bars were so low. Behind a padlocked door in the meal room with darker walls, it showed naked children as young as 4 to the age of 13 sitting on concrete floors fighting over a bowl of gruel while in the same room others that were finished sat on plastic toilets. In another room, children lied beaten, tethered or chained to radiators because they got in trouble for moving around or and annoying the nurses. Children's legs jutted up or out in distorted angles due to lack of physical activity; they used their hands to scoot across the wet floor covered in puddles of urine and waste. Flies all around in every room landed on children's frail angelic faces and their bruised scrawny bodies as they laid there vegetating until they died. Due to these conditions and neglect from the nurses, psychological effects began to take a toll. Romanian orphans such as myself suffered cognitive/developmental delays, and anxiety issues with attachment problems, that have lasted throughout my life.

            Born with the name Irina Posteuca at 3 pounds, 5 ounces, I was left in a run-down hospital. Like most babies, I was sent to Bucharest, Romania's capital. There, I lived in one of Romania's most inhumane orphanages with conditions that nobody in the outside world was ever to see. Inside the dark, eerily vibed, dungeon-style structure there were dilapidated hallways with no heat. In an “institutionalized-white” colored room with dirt, and bugs on the walls, an aroma was produced that was so repulsive it’s impossible to describe, but could make you nauseous. The sounds of babies and toddlers wailing for food or to be held, and the impact of the heads hitting the bars from us rocking back and forth to soothe still haunt me if I think about it. Left alone, my little-emaciated body laid crying for I did not know why I was there. I had very little interaction, touch or attention with nurses except to be given a bottle, (supposedly I was supposed to be able to hold it) to be punished, or for the many blood tests. They were either to test if I were infected with diseases or for a blood transfusion. According to Romania's dictator, blood transfusions would make us stronger and able to work harder when fully grown. The irony of this is that the needles being used were spreading the diseases because they were not cleaned properly and were used multiple times.

            Americans wondered why there were so many children abandoned in Romanian orphanages. In 1965, Romania's dictator Nicolae Ceausescu announced that he wanted a country that was "as busy as worker bees." He wanted a country like China.  At the time of his election, Romania had a declining birth rate and one of the highest rates of abortions in Eastern Europe. As Romania's dictator, in 1966 he instituted some radical policies and laws: restricting divorce and lowering the marriage age to 15. Next Ceausescu outlawed birth control and created decree number 770, banning abortions. It was also known as, "The Childless Tax law." Perhaps the most extreme measure was in 1985 he had an army of gynecologists who would enter schools and workplaces, investigating non-pregnant women and miscarriages. People there dubbed them, The Menstrual Police.”  

            Ceausescu ordered that every woman when they reached the appropriate age were required to have at least 5 children. He'd reward the ones who gave him 10 or more. If they didn't, they would be taxed or thrown in jail. As the birthrates soared and the economy sank, the Romanians suffered from food shortages because Ceausescu was exporting the country’s agricultural products. Therefore most families couldn't afford to take care of them, but especially when the child had disabilities. They turned them over to the government with the government's promise that their children would have a better life if they were put in institutions and if they eventually were able to afford the children they could get them back .The combination of being underfunded and understaffed caused the children to be neglected, and even worse, abused. Dr. Barbara Bascom is a child Pediatrician who sold her home in Maryland and went to Romania to treat orphans there for a few years. In an article Hope for Hopeless that was published in People’s magazine in 1991 she said,

        "Children that are neglected and left not nurtured or without basic human touch even                 show signs of developmental delays and extreme anxiety and attachment issues                         especially while relating to caregivers or important people in their lives. It's because the                 fact these children are treated in the most undignified and inhumane way on top of that                 gives them no successful way of adapting to healthy development or formulating normal                 healthy relationships."

        Cognitive ability and psychological well-being correlate directly with the amount of attention and nurturing children receive when they are young, according to recent research that includes studies of Romanian institutions. Everything from brain size to intellectual prowess to the ability to form emotional bonds to staying focused on a job is improved when children receive attention, are held and read to. If infants don't have that nurturing and emotional bond at by the age of three the effects can be everlasting. Romanian orphans were explicitly at risk and had been studied for many years as well as evidence that institutionalization in early childhood can alter a child's brain and behavior in the long run.

            At this time a Canadian researcher, Dr. Elinor Ames, from Simon Fraser University, went to Romania at this time and started a research study because she wanted to understand the negative impact institutions have on young children. She started the 12-year Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) study, which followed 136 infants and children who had been abandoned in Romanian institutions. “With the kids age range 6months to 3 years they were split up into two groups. Half put into a foster care home, while the others were assigned to 'care as usual' or continued institutional care. They found many profound problems among the children who had been born into neglect. In a Journal by Kirsten Weir titled, Cognitive recovery in socially deprived young children: the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, in 2014, Weir says,

        "Institutionalized children had delays in cognitive function, motor development, and                 language. They showed deficits in socio-emotional behaviors and experienced more                 psychiatric disorders. Whereas for kids who were moved into foster care, the picture was                 brighter. These children showed improvements in language, IQ, and social-emotional                 functioning. They were able to form secure attachment relationships with their caregivers                 and made dramatic gains in their ability to express emotions. In fact, when kids were                 moved into foster care before their second birthdays, by age eight their brains' electrical                 activity looked no different from that of healthy grown kids."

            For me, I've had developmental delays throughout my life, but when I was younger they were more severe. In talking with my mother, I learned about a lot of things I had forgotten."  When I asked her what psychological issues with regarding cognitive and developmental delays were, she smiled and said, "Where do I start?" She told me, "in the orphanage you were only given a bottle of hot milk and was thus unable to swallow foods. At 17 months you couldn't do anything but suck from a bottle. As you progressed into your 2nd year, you still had trouble swallowing solid foods. You couldn't hold yourself up, crawl and didn't even know how to play with a toy. It was a cat who taught you how to grasp the concept of play. When he would push the ball, you'd push it in a different direction, and he'd get it and you'd both play. One toy we bought you could press different buttons, and a tune would play or a different sound. You just stared at it, but when the cat would hit buttons, then you would. The language barrier was very hard for you, sounding out words, breaking them apart. It was challenging for you to learn concepts as you grew."  I remember back when I was in grade school things would come so much more quickly to other kids than it would to me. I had ADHD which many of Romanian children do and it made it hard to focus. Not only this, but then other medical issues had an impact. I was an excellent reader, but understanding what I read was always very frustrating because I couldn't remember. Today it still takes many times being said something for it really to sink in, depending on what the topic is.