Romanian kids freed for Western adoptions

Michela Wrong
Chicago Sun-Times

7 January 1990

BUCHAREST, Romania Hundreds of abandoned children, trapped in Romania on the orders of the former president, Nicolae Ceausescu, are preparing for new lives in the West following the lifting of a freeze on overseas adoptions.

The decision, one of many pushed through by the ruling National Salvation Front since the Dec. 22 revolution, means Romania could rival Brazil, Sri Lanka or Mexico as a source of hope for childless Western couples.

A U.S. Embassy official said that with the bureaucratic problems out of the way, she expected to be swamped with new adoption applications from American couples moved by the press coverage of the overthrow of Ceausescu.

"The new government has given its permission and the problem has been cleared up," said an Italian Embassy official.

Children, who range from infants to teenagers, have been adopted by couples in the United States, France, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and Britain.

They could not join their new families because Ceausescu, anxious not to see Romania's population fall, cracked down on such adoptions in 1988, paralyzing an already clumsy procedure.

But the front, which took power when Ceausescu was overthrown and executed, says it has no objections to letting the children leave.

Italy, with 100 adopted children stuck in Romania, and France, with 83, were worst hit by the bureaucratic freeze.

A planeload of anxious adoptive French parents flew Saturday to Bucharest and returned to Paris with 61 children, some of them adopted up to five years ago.

Philippe Chabin's daughter, Roxanna, opened presents from her new French cousins after rushing into the arms of her adopted father, who had staged two hunger strikes to try to pressure the Romanian government into letting her go.

"We will adopt other children," he said. "But not in Romania."

In his drive to increase the population of 23 million, Ceausescu banned contraception and outlawed abortion.

The birthrate failed to rise as women resorted to backstreet abortions and traditional methods of contraception. But many children born to single mothers and destitute families soon filled Romanian orphanages.

Many of these children were recruited to the hated Securitate secret police, a crack force loyal to Ceausescu but now reduced to a handful of snipers fighting for their lives.

But the luckier children could look forward to better living standards abroad, as childless Western families whose adoption requests had been turned down at home looked to the nearest European country with an excess of orphans.

"On the one hand, the children are very lucky," said French journalist Alberte Robert, who was 39 when she adopted a Romanian girl, Nina. "On the other hand, they have major psychological problems. Parents are never told this because officials are afraid it will scare them off."