Governments, faith-based groups and churches, aid agencies and
volunteer tourists, who donate cash and goods to orphanages or build and
refurbish children's homes and other institutions, may be inadvertently
funding human trafficking.
Poor and disabled children, locked away and out of sight from
families and their communities, are sitting ducks for traffickers and
pedophiles. And nefarious staff are often the beneficiaries of perverse
transactions where captive children are the commodity.
My organization, Disability Rights International (DRI), recently released a report
-- "No Way Home: The Exploitation and Abuse of Children in Ukraine's
Orphanages" -- following a three year investigation of the plight of
children living in institutional care.
DRI found that children are at risk of being trafficked for sex,
labor, pornography and organs in a country that is a known hub for human
trafficking.
Some 82,000 children are said to live in these facilities, although
no one seems to know for sure. Some Ukrainian activists put the number
closer to 200,000.
The 2014 U.S. State Department's Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP)
stated that, "Children in orphanages and crisis centers continue to be
particularly vulnerable to trafficking within Ukraine."
Inside orphanages, DRI found rampant sexual violence, abuse and rape
were commonplace. Children are often recruited directly from orphanages
for sex and labor according anti-trafficking organizations in Ukraine.
"There's huge sexual abuse within the orphanages... So this is a push
factor that gets children involved in sexual exploitation, even before
they grow up. They're already used to sexual abuse," said a Ukraine
counter-trafficking expert.
Producers of child pornography go directly to orphanages to seek out
their prey. And institutionalized children with disabilities are
particularly susceptible to becoming trafficked for their organs. One
grandmother of a newborn with Down Syndrome was told by doctors that
they could sell the baby for organs and get money.
Maria- - who grew up in an orphanage in Odessa -- fled at the age of 15, when she feared for her life.
"Children would go into the woods behind the building and disappear,"
she told DRI. "Every year 10 to 12 children went missing. We thought it
was rapists and murderers. Some children were found dead but nothing
was done. The staff never asked 'why'?"
In notorious orphanage number five, a "sauna/massage parlor" was run
out of the basement of the facility where the children were bought and
sold for sex. The operation was shut down in 2012 but the orphanage
remains open, with many of the victims still living there.
Condemned to a life of isolation and neglect, children with
disabilities are transferred to adult psychiatric facilities or nursing
homes when they are about 16 years old, where they will stay until they
die. But those with little or no disabilities "graduate" and are
ill-equipped to face life on their own. They are particularly vulnerable
to be trafficked right off the street and often there are traffickers
waiting for them outside the orphanage doors when they leave.
DRI interviewed former orphanage residents, many living on the
streets and in sewers in Odessa and Kiev. They spoke of the sexual and
physical violence, beatings and forced labor they had been subjected to
as children living in orphanages.
"I was raped and then I raped other boys who were younger. I don't want to talk about it," said one orphan graduate.
"My friend in the orphanage was raped, but the police never came. I
meet many orphans on the street who have escaped orphanages because the
staff scare them," said another.
Orphan graduates complained of having to work in the fields, up to 12
hours a day, on orphanage-owned farms. Some said they were beaten if
they refused to do assigned work and others were sent home with staff to
cook and clean in their homes -- all without pay.
The revenue stream generated from isolated orphans even extends to
so-called volun-tourism and orphan vacations - highly suspect and
unregulated programs whereby well-intentioned westerners pay to
volunteer in orphanages for a few weeks or take a child into their home
for a vacation from the orphanage.
Unencumbered access to already emotionally frail children further
exposes them to traffickers and pedophiles. DRI interviewed one U.S.
family who paid $2,900 to host two, young Ukrainian orphan girls,
without any home visit or background check.
There is a myriad of social science and children's rights research
documenting the many dangers and consequences of raising children in
orphanages and institutions around the world. And the human trafficking
of children living in orphanages is not just a Ukraine problem, but a
global one.
No donor would ever intentionally help support such a heinous crime. But
until the flow of money is diverted to assist vulnerable families --
rather than funding orphanages -- that is exactly what is being done.
Around 07:00 a.m. a Mercedes crossed the Ukraine-Polish border. On
board were a husband and wife - both German citizens - two young
children and an 5-day old infant girl.
The husband told authorities that he was father of the newborn child,
the mother of whom is Ukrainian. He presented a certificate of birth
and a notarized letter by the infant's mother allowing him to take the
infant abroad. Ukrainian Border Service agents were suspicious and began
checking their database. Oleh Slobodyan, Deputy Head of Ukrainian Border Guard Service:"The
border guards were suspicious because the German couple had never
travelled to Ukraine and the mother of the infant had never travelled to
Europe. So they never could have met in person."
Ivan Galkin, Border Guard Service press officer: "No
proof was provided that the husband was, in fact, the father of the
infant. So, the incident is tantamount to the illegal transportation of a
child abroad. We have already notified the police."
Those apprehended told a different version of events after being questioned: Detained woman:"We wanted another child, and
why not? Oksana promised that this was possible. She discussed this with
the mother of the infant, about giving her away, and said that she
already had a daughter and was not able to care for two children." Detained man: "I found from the agency
that she is the real legal mother and decided to adopt the infant. To do
a deed and raise her. But it turned that I was led astray by the
documents. I didn't kidnap any child and had not intention to do so. I
just wanted to do a good deed."
It is now known that the infant was born a Lviv maternity ward. And a
certificate of birth was isssued. The detained individuals said that
they paid USD 150 dollars to a middleman and hryvnia 10,000 to the
infant's mother. Police are looking for them.
The infant's mother is from Zarkarpattia region, but lived in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, police have opened a criminal investigation. The
investigators assume that the couple was transporting the infant abroad
to give to another family. The German couple are being questioned and
infant girl has been in temporary custody.
An Alabama family caught up in the turmoil in Ukraine as it adopted four children there has finally been reunited in the United States, reports WGCL, the CBS station in Atlanta.
Lisa
Bundy and the last of the children to get approval to leave the
country, Nastia, returned to the United States on Friday. After three
weeks apart, the family met at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta
International Airport.
"It is really great to get all of us
together," said her husband, David, a photographer. "I can't express how
happy I am now. I don't think it hit me yet."
The couple, of
Montgomery, decided a year ago that they wanted to adopt the children,
Nastia, Karina, Max and Alla. When they arrived in Kiev in November,
they were not overly concerned by the protests in Independence Square, a
half a mile from where they were staying.
The Bundy family on a walk in Kiev on Feb. 21, 2013.
David Bundy
But
as situation grew violent, the newly formed family of six hunkered down
inside their small apartment waiting for the paperwork to go through,
Mike Paluska of WGCL reports. "You could hear everything, the
bombs, the Molotov cocktails, the gun fire," Lisa Bundy said. "We went
out one time, and apparently there were snipers and we didn't know it
until we got back to the apartment."
The
family got the final documents approved for Karina, Max and Alla, all
siblings, on Feb. 23. Lisa Bundy remained with Nastia when the others
departed until the last child could leave too.
"With the
things going on politically in Ukraine, now with Crimea and with Russia
it is very worrisome, David Bundy said. "I didn't know if the
government was going to be disrupted to the point where we wouldn't get
the things we needed to get done to complete the adoption."
Said Lisa Bundy: "God bless America. I am happy to be a mom, finally."
It’s hard enough for a child to lose a
parent under any circumstances, but when children become orphans in a
war zone, their future becomes even more uncertain.
That’s why one
family in Lyme is trying to help children caught in conflict in Ukraine.
Dianna and Douglas Hampton-Dowson turned to social media and created a GoFundMe page to raise nearly $8,000 to host three Ukrainian orphans for three weeks.
Dima, Anya and Dasha are 14, 12 and 7
years old but they have already known profound loss in their young
lives. The siblings are growing up in a government-run orphanage in
Mariupol, Ukraine. It’s unclear exactly how their mother died, and no
relatives have stepped forward to care for them.
“They’ve been in
terrible situations,” Dianna explained. “The shelter they were staying
in was actually bombed at one point, and they were in the shelter when
that happened.”
With two young children of their own,
Dianna and Douglas aren’t sure if they can commit to adoption just yet,
but thought the Frontier Horizon travel program was one way to make a
difference.
“Just to be able to take them away from that even for a short period of time was very important to us,” said Dianna.
The children arrived in time for
Christmas; the Hampton-Downsons treated them to the American version of
the holiday but also recreated a traditional Ukrainian Christmas
celebration. They toured the submarine base in Groton, visited New York
City and went horseback riding at a nearby farm.
A smartphone
translation app helped the adults overcome the language barrier, but
Douglas says the children didn’t need it with each other.
In a yellow, concrete dorm building for refugee children located just
outside the city center, there's a room at the end of a long, dark
hallway. A group of children, ages 7 to 16, huddle in the doorway,
peering in at its exotic content: a pool table. Inside, children wield
cues, slapping balls wildly across the green felt table, betting candy
bars on the outcome of the games.
For these refugee children, pool
is an unknown -- but welcome -- distraction from painful memories of
their lives before they landed in Germany, leaving behind homes in the
war-torn states of Syria, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sudan. The game has
become a way to pass the time amid hours of sitting in stairwells and
playing on their phones or lying on their beds in their rooms waiting
for the next meal.
But that lone diversion is slated to disappear.
The pool table was set to be removed to make space for more children --
a minor accommodation that speaks to the crisis sweeping Europe. As a
torrent of refugees reaches its shores, there remains variations of the
same basic question: What should they do with all these young people?
“We just don’t have the capacity to look after them all.”
Last year, 24,000 unaccompanied minors -- children
traveling without a parent -- applied for asylum in the European Union.
This year, the numbers are likely to be much higher, according to a
recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development. Estimates by international aid organizations suggested that
between 4 and 7 percent of the approximately 700,000 asylum
applications made in 2015 came from unaccompanied minors. So many have
arrived on the shores of Greece that the international aid organization
Save the Children told International Business Times that they have no
way of tracking them all.
This home in Munich is already at full
capacity. The children have to eat in shifts, share rooms with more than
10 others and take turns on bicycles in the basement. Public services
are also limited: A couple of volunteer teachers and a single doctor
serve the 95 children who reside there.
Aside from the occasional
group activity or German class, the teenagers largely are left to fend
for themselves. And while the accommodation is clean and residents are
given three meals a day, children go missing “almost on a daily basis,”
Eva Ramsauer, the home’s psychologist, said.
“We just don’t have the capacity to look after them all.”
