[23 October 2009]
Reform is coming too slowly to institutions for adults with intellectual and mental health disabilities in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, where chronic neglect, filthy conditions, and the use of physical restraints and high-dosage drugs to control behaviour remain routine.
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By Yana Buhrer Tavanier in Sofia, Goren Chiflik, Svilengrad, Radovets, Oborishte, Belgrade, Kulina, Churug, Bucharest, Mocrea and Gura Vaii
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Someone is screaming.
Someone is screaming her head off in what seems a desolate part of the yard. There is a fence surrounding some shacks and, with each step taken towards it, the shrieks get louder. Ten more steps and there’s a gate in the fence. Another ten and all hell is let loose.
There is the screaming woman – barefoot, skinny and dressed in rags.
There is another woman, unable to walk, rolling on the ground outside. She is literally covered in flies – fifty, perhaps a hundred flies on her face, filthy clothes, bare feet, hands and the two chunks of bread she’s holding.
There is also a girl, who dips her dry bread in the dirty puddle in front of the outside toilets. And then eats it.
No-one pays attention.
It is lunchtime in Goren Chiflik, an institution in a remote village in eastern Bulgaria, housing 90 women with intellectual and mental health disabilities. It was renovated recently, but the place of horrors, the shacks for the “most disabled” residents, was left untouched. It is well hidden; so well hidden, in fact, that the head of the regional directorate for social protection says she has never seen it, despite having paid numerous visits to the institution. The 30 women here are not allowed to eat with the others. Instead, they are given their food behind the fence that is usually locked, effectively turning it into a cage.
BULGARIA, Goren Chiflik
Liliana is one of these in danger. I find her in the old stables, covered in flies. She is paralysed, crouched like a grasshopper, the skin on her legs yellowish-blue. Liliana, even though she is as big as her pillow, is 62. She looks malnourished, her face too pale, her body strikingly thin.
This investigation, mostly conducted undercover in institutions for adults with intellectual and mental health disabilities in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia, uncovered evidence of human rights abuses, inhuman and degrading treatment and appalling neglect. It showed that reform in this field remains patchy and slow, and too often leaves the most vulnerable behind.
Bulgaria and Romania, both EU members since 2007, and Serbia, which seeks the same status, have a grim track record when it comes to institutional care. This investigation suggests that they are still failing to meet international standards. Inadequate policies result in underfunding and a failure to recruit qualified, motivated staff. Residents are not being treated so much as controlled. Many are gradually destroyed by constant exposure to harmful, high-dosage medication. People do not leave their beds for years. Children are being kept tied down for most of the time. Living conditions are appalling beyond imagination. And the process of deinstitutionalization is as phlegmatic, that death still is the only reliable way out.
Two out of three governments showed no readiness to talk about policy. The recently elected Bulgarian government was the only one ready to answer questions – but in writing. Much is at stake for these counties if they do not improve things. The European Commission has said it may suspend payments under the European Social Fund in case of serious irregularities in Bulgarian and Romanian institutions. As for Serbia, many important voices insist that the EU must demand a better human rights track record from future candidate countries. However, in practice, Brussels has been turning a blind eye to such abuses for years.
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This is the introduction to Yana Buhrer Tavanier's harrowing documentary story about life in the institutions for some of our society's most vulnerable and fragile members.
To read the full-length investigation, click here.
To view the photo gallery from Yana's investigation, click here.
To access the whole site dedicated to the investigation, Dumping Grounds for People, click here.
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