Romania requests data on child abused by Spanish adoptive parents

Alecs Iancu

Bucharest Daily News

The Romanian Office for Adoptions (ORA) will contact Spanish authorities to clarify the situation of a child adopted from Romania in 2001 who ended up in a coma in hospital after he was beaten by his adoptive parents, the head of the office said.

State secretary Theodora Bertzi said this is not the first time the boy needed medical assistance following mistreatment by his adoptive parents.

However, in spite of the situation, the child was not taken into the custody of Spanish social services, which were in charge of monitoring the adopted child.

"The second post-adoption report sent to Romanian authorities shows that the boy was found with bruises and that he was even hospitalized, requiring recovery treatment and his adoptive mother said at the time that he had fallen out of his bed," Bertzi said.

The state secretary added that Spain only sent two post-adoption reports, instead of four.

The event comes as Romania's legislation on inter-country adoptions, enforced at the beginning of last year, is under fire by several countries whose citizens want to adopt Romanian orphans, including the United States and Spain.

The legislation was enforced following criticism of previous laws by the European Parliament's former rapporteur, Emma Nicholson.

When the new law was enforced, more than a thousand adoption requests remained blocked and several European Parliament members recently asked that a solution is found so that these cases are resolved.

Bertzi has defended the legislation, saying it was developed in accordance to EU standards. She also said that Romania has had a problem keeping track of adopted children because the countries in which they were adopted did not submit reports on the children's situation.

According to the state secretary, the Spanish family who adopted the boy was declared able to adopt by the Spanish authorities. The social inquiry prior to the approval to adopt showed that the future adoptive mother had been submitted to psychiatric treatment when she was 12, but did not require any additional tests, Bertzi said.

"The adopters wanted to have a child less than one year of age, white and without any physical or mental problems," she added.

The boy, which is currently about seven years old, was declared fit for adoption in February 2000 and was entrusted to the Spanish couple in June the following year. He was about two years at the time.

According to the law, after the child is adopted he becomes a citizen of the country his adoptive parents live in. Thus, his protection is the duty of the social services in that country.

"How many times should he have been admitted (to a hospital) before authorities realized that he must be taken out of that family," said Bertzi, adding that Spanish authorities are to blame for the situation because they did not react sooner.