Child care centres – inquiries and searches. 21 prosecuted. Employees abuse children or give them psychotropic drugs

Prosecutors with the Bucharest Prosecutor’s Office conducted 19 raids on Thursday in a file of ill-treatment of minors, abuse of office and embezzlement, one of the searches taking place at an orphanage in District 1, judicial sources say.

The same sources said that the public institution is the placement centre ‘Sfânta Maria’ in District 1, Bucharest.

“The prosecution aims at the fraudulent operation of the system of special protection for children in institutions during 2014 – 2016 (due to a denunciation filed in November 2015), in a centre in Bucharest,” reads a press release issued by the Prosecutor’s Office upon the Bucharest Court.

Prosecutors informed in Thursday afternoon that 21 suspects are prosecuted in this file. They are charged with child maltreatment, abuse of office and embezzlement. Investigators accuse that the suspects, employed at the child care centre in Bucharest, were constantly seizing food and other products bought from the District 1 local budget, but also goods and money obtained from sponsorships or donations.

“When trips or camps or other leisure activities are organized for the institutionalized children in the centre, the funds and the transport are used by the employees, who send their relatives in these trips free of any charge,” said the prosecutors, adding that the centre’s employees suspected of that are educators, drivers, administrator or nurse.

Investigators also say that only certain children benefit of these leisure activities, mainly the children favored by the educators, while some girls are sent back to their families or allowed to “escape” from the centre on purpose to cut the number of children who are actually attending these activities.

Braşov: Treatment with powerful drugs for mental illness

A journalistic investigation has revealed that several children receive psychiatric medication, although they don’t need it, at a centre for children in Brasov County (central Romania), tvr.ro reports.

The Director of Child Protection Braşov says that some of them take this treatment for many years and it’s a way to calm them down.

In Dacia centre live 28 children. None of them has any physical or mental disability. A journalistic investigation published by tolo.ro reveals they are receiving powerful drugs which made the children drowsy and have unpleasant side effects.

The Director of Child Protection Brasov says that these children have behaviour disorders and are under psychiatric treatment for many years.

Police self-mandated on the situation at the Placement Centre Dacia. Checks are being conducted by the Brasov Prefecture as well. Sources say government checks are also expected.