Defamation of a nation by Chris Rogers

Defamation of a nation by Chris Rogers
By Brian Douglas

Citizens of the US via their TV screens in the last days have viewed a documentary film by the British Journalist Chris Rogers and afterwards have seen a separate interview with him. At the same time United Kingdom readers of the daily Tabloid newspaper the Daily Mail have read a full article by this journalist and like their US counterparts will have been left in a state of sheer shock and disgust at the country of Romania and its people.

In the news article Chris Rogers purchases a young 14 year old girl in Iasi, the second largest city in Romania to transport her to the UK to work in a brothel. He purchases the girl outside a petrol station for 800 euro and claims this is one of many transported to the UK every year and that Romania has the highest number of trafficked persons in Europe today. Rogers claims to have literally saved the girls life in effect by taking her to a charity run center were she received the social help she was badly in need of. A real hero is Chris Rogers by all accounts, who risked his life amongst the dangerous traffickers of Iasi who control these young underage girls!

NOW READ THE TRUTH.

Chris Rogers is no hero, nor did he save any girls life.

He is a well known journalist that is part of a well organised and apparently well-financed group that continues to do all it can to show Romania in a bad light and as a country that cannot look after its children in the vague and naive hope that the country will re open intercountry adoptions so that the real trade in children can start again.

If we look back to autumn 2006 in the final months before Romania joined the EU there was huge outside pressure on the country to drop its ban on intercountry adoptions and in this time Chris Rogers again as in the Iasi case claimed to have purchased a child, this time at the poor village of Hoghilag near Sibui in the center of Romania. ( See:
Romania's image soiled for 200 Euros)

The Hoghilag case turned out to be completely false as in the film footage only Rogers side was heard in English and no Romanian was spoken nor heard! No child was sold for any amount to Rogers. What did happen was that he offered to repair a families dwelling and then on the pretence of this had film footage taken in with their children, which he then via the production crew cleverly had the Romanian dubbed so low it could not be heard and his own story of purchasing a child added loudly over the top!

Rogers is also known for several other false articles made over a fair period of time about Romania and its people.
Now lets explain the TRUE facts of the latest production by Chris Rogers and I disclose this information so that the US and UK people do get a chance to learn the truth about this case, as told in the
Romanian newspapers.

In Iasi Rogers pulled up at a petrol station named Peco in Silvestru Street in the Podul de Piatra area of Iasi. He spoke to a group of prostitutes and one named Monica Ghinga agreed to go with Rogers and his friends in the car for sex and so a sum of 800 euro was paid. Monica was not a minor of 14 years old or even 16 as Rogers claims, but is a 25 year old woman and known prostitute who got various fines for this from the Police. She did not agree to go to the UK at all and this is pure fabrication on Rogers' part as she merely thought she was going to have group sex. When in Rogers car she became concerned as the journey took her out of Iasi. Rogers claims he cared for her safety and took her to a charity run center for trafficked victims, but failed to add he drove her 400 km away to the city of Pitesti in the south of Romania, far away from Iasi in the North East!

Why one asks did he not take this woman to a center close by in Iasi or to the Police themselves if he had such clear film evidence? The answer is that he wanted a story he could fabricate to speak of trafficking of people. I will add that these fabrications of reality do not help the authorities neither in Romania, nor across Europe to resolve true trafficking cases. Romania we know does like all countries have cases of people trafficking, but is not the top country in the region for this offence, as both the Republic of Moldova and the Ukraine have far higher cases of trafficking, not to mention central Russia itself!

The real purpose of this reportage is again to show that Romania is a nation of non carers, but this is far from the truth as Romanian families are actually very close knit and though often poor provide the best they can for their children as I have seen in the last 14 years that I have lived in Iasi City doing voluntary work in education and child care.

The American
Adoption Policy Centerreadily took up this story to claim that this sort of trafficking is the result of the closure of intercountry adoptions (Rogers' voice over said the child was a runaway from children's homes).

When intercountry adoptions were banned by Romania millions of Euros were lost as the trade stopped. Children who had been transported to the US and Europe for adoption without a thought for their feelings and often sent alone to a parent they had never met suffered untold trauma, but the unscrupulous agencies that intermediated never cared about this, only wanting the highest price they could get from the foreign family and this was often up to 30.000 euro per child! No wonder they are upset, but lets be straight about this as the Children do have rights and Romania gave the children its rights back by stopping this illegal trade masked as intercountry adoptions.

If Chris Rogers really cared about children he would portray the reality rather than fiction.
posted by Brian Douglas at 9:24 PM