ROMANIAN ADOPTIONS CHIEF REMAINS INFLEXIBLE, AS

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 04 BUCHAREST 000769

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

STATE FOR EUR/NCE BILL SILKWORTH AND CA/OCS CHRISTOPHER
LAMORA

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: CASC PREL PGOV PHUM RO
SUBJECT: ROMANIAN ADOPTIONS CHIEF REMAINS INFLEXIBLE, AS
NEW REPORT HIGHLIGHTS POOR CONDITIONS IN INSTITUTIONS


1. (SBU) Summary: On May 3, Consul General, and the AID
Director called on Theodora Bertzi, Secretary of State of the
Romanian Office for Adoptions (ROA). The purpose was to
present our formal reaction to the March 29 GOR report on the
files of Romanian orphans and abandoned children on whose
behalf foreigners had filed adoption petitions before the
January 1, 2005 ban on inter-country adoptions. After
lengthy discussion, we confirmed Bertzi has no intention of
revisiting the ban, explaining the Working Group's
conclusions, or credibly explaining the gap between the
ideals expressed in the law and the tens of thousands of
Romanian children who lack permanent families. Meanwhile,
news reports about the May 9 release of a U.S. NGO report
condemning Romania's handling of orphans and abandoned
children with disabilities have rocked Bucharest, with some
Romanian media condemning the Romanian government for its
inaction. A May 10 announcement by the Prime Minister's
office that an investigation of these new allegations will be
carried out by the High Level Working Group for Romanian
Children, which is led by international adoption foe and
Member of European Parliament Emma Nicholson, does not
suggest any change of thinking yet in government circles.
End summary.


CG to Adoptions Chief: Your Report is Unacceptable
-------------- --------------

2. (U) CG opened the May 3 meeting by telling Bertzi the USG
found the Working Group (WG)'s report unacceptable and
lacking credibility, since the WG, in its non-transparent
process, had found not one of the 1,100 children in the
pending cases eligible for intercountry adoption. CG
reported we would present her government with a formal
request to individually review a substantial number of the
pending cases filed by Americans.


3. (U) Bertzi rejected the possibility of conducting a full
second review of the pending cases, saying she did not have
the staff for it. She stated with confidence that she had
the backing of Romania's President, Traian Basescu, and Prime
Minister, Calin Popescu-Tariceanu, as well as "all the
European ambassadors who told her the ban was correct and she
should hold the line." She did allow that the Romanian
Office of Adoptions (ROA) could possibly monitor regularly
scheduled quarterly reports from local authorities on the
situation of orphans and abandoned children, and could
respond by letter to our questions about individual cases. CG
replied we more likely would seek direct review of individual
files of the pending cases.


4. (U) Bertzi argued that we misunderstood the results of the
Working Group review. Family situations have changed over
the years. Some of the children were never legally adoptable
and still are not. Some children were subject to multiple
petitions. Some families seeking one child petitioned for
multiple children. Many children were matched with potential
adopters by photographs. The Group did not have new criteria
for evaluating the cases, but analyzed children's real
situations. If children were in stable situations the Group
could not move them.


5. (U) Bertzi asserted that it was no longer possible to talk
in terms of 1,100 cases because so many pending cases were
clearly resolved by domestic solutions. Among the 415 listed
in the report as being in "substitute families," and the
other 83 listed as "placed in the protection system," none
are legally adoptable, even for domestic purposes. If any of
those children were eventually found "adoptable," and whether
inter-country adoption (ICA) was an option would depend on
what the law was at that time. Some of the children in the
state protection system live better than other children
living in poor families, Bertzi claimed.


6. (U) She argued that the new law was not retroactive, but
did give birth families the right for a reconsideration of
their earlier loss of parental rights. She said the new law
is better in many ways, allowing authorities new powers to
intervene in cases of abuse or neglect. But in the past,
some parents had been pressured or induced to give up their
children, or lost rights after six months of no contact under
the old law. Sometimes a child was reported "abandoned"
despite receiving parental visits, after intermediaries
bribed child center workers to omit official reporting of the
visits.


7. (SBU) The new law requires that parents formally
relinquish their rights before a court. Child law courts are

BUCHAREST 00000769 002 OF 004


needed as soon as possible. AID Director offered to seek
funding to help the GOR establish the children's courts it
needed, to help improve the process of clarifying the legal
situation of children potentially needing adoption, if the
GOR were to commit to including ICA in its options for
addressing the needs of children. Bertzi showed no interest
in the proposal.


8. (U) Bertzi said the ROA has sent eleven past cases of
inter-country adoptions to the courts for investigation and
possible criminal findings. Three involve children being
swapped for others named in petitions. Some involve adoption
foundations operating in Romania, which had matched the same
children to multiple foreign families.


Bertzi's Delusion: "Our System is a Model"
--------------

9. (U) Bertzi said she had proposed during meetings in
Brussels that there be common rules for ICA throughout
Europe, which would be needed before Romania should resume
ICA. The domestic adoption process, itself, needs to be
cleaned up and protected against corruption before the law on
ICA can be revisited. The law will always be strict regarding
ICA, since this is the EU vision, she claimed. Bertzi said
her vision would be for eventual very limited ICA in which
children would be raised in a culture close to their own.
She allowed as she was not a specialist in the field but
speculated child welfare experts could be consulted as to the
relative benefit to children of being raised in their own
culture and a foreign one. CG and AID Director countered
that no experts were needed, since all Bertzi needed to do
was ask the children themselves whether they would rather be
in an orphanage or group home in their home culture, or in a
family abroad. Further, global harmonization of European
adoption norms could last a full generation. Bertzi had no
response on either point.


10. (U) After AID Director challenged Bertzi's public
statements promoting Romania's child welfare policies as a
model for the region, Bertzi said she considered the system a
model in terms of "how fast it has developed, not that it is
perfect." Much support is needed to properly apply the new,
more rigorous law, she said, including better methodology and
tools at the local level for evaluating potential adopting
families and matching them with children. The ROA has
created tools for doing this, with help from UNICEF and a
Belgian consultant, she said.


11. (U) Bertzi observed that the UN Convention on Children's
Rights is interpreted differently in the U.S. and the EU. CG
and AID Director pointed out that UNICEF headquarters has
made clear it interprets the UNCCR as endorsing ICA in
certain cases, and finding ICA preferable to domestic
institutional care.


Keeping the Door Closed on International Adoptions
-------------- --------------

11. (SBU) Bertzi said she was glad to have achieved a common
approach to ICA among the ROA, President Traian Basescu and
Prime Minister Calin Popescu-Tariceanu. She said it was
"beyond her" if either of them had indicated in anyway that
there could be any flexibility in applying or changing the
law.


12. (U) Bertzi asserted "politics has no place in a sensitive
issue like adoptions." CG replied that Bertzi herself has
tried to close the issue on political grounds regardless of
the true situation of children needing adoption. AID
Director pointed out that Bertzi had stated in December 2005,
months before the final report, that no case would be
considered for ICA. Bertzi replied that, at the time, the
Working Group already had reviewed all the cases. CG replied
that this meant the GOR had misrepresented the status of the
review, telling this Embassy in December and January that the
review was still underway.


Schaaf/Baiban case
--------------

13. (SBU) CG repeated the urgent request which we had raised
with both the President's and Prime Minister's office that
the GOR stop all action in processing the domestic adoption
of Valentina Baiban, a young girl on whose behalf U.S.
citizens Allyson and Michael Schaaf of New Hampshire had
filed an adoption petition in 2002. CG expressed our strong

BUCHAREST 00000769 003 OF 004


concern that the domestic adoption appeared to have been
hastily arranged, then rapidly expedited, to coincide with Ms
Schaaf's testimony against the ban to the European Parliament
in Brussels on April 25. According to Bertzi's own email of
April 26 to the Embassy, after four years of no Romanian
families expressing interest in the girl, between March 27
and late April a Romanian family was suddenly found, visits
arranged, a psychological match determined and a file
deposited with the court to seek the girl's adoption. The
group home where the girl had lived for four years reports
she was removed to live with the Romanian adoptive family on
Easter Monday -- a national holiday on which all normal
activity ceases.


14. (SBU) Bertzi protested that our suspicions were "no more
than science fiction" and that she was not the kind of person
that would arrange such a thing. Bertzi said she understood
the Schaafs had never visited the child and had registered to
adopt her when she was only seven months old while the
previous Romanian Committee for Adoptions (RCA) only
considered ICA for children over three. AID Director pointed
out that the RCA criteria were not public at the time.
Bertzi said she understood the case was emotional, given that
the home where the girl was living was named for another
child the Schaaf's adopted who died young. When CG corrected
her -- the house is named for the late adopted daughter of an
associate of the Schaaf's -- Bertzi was momentarily shaken.
She claimed not to have known anything about the child's
situation until the Romanian ambassador to the EU called her
in preparing for his own meeting with Schaaf and U.S.
Representative Jeb Bradley of New Hampshire. She insisted she
made her first call to the Gorj County authorities then, and
learned of the girl's placement with a Romanian family. She
claimed the girl had been shown to two families in her home
county, and finally matched with a couple from another
county. CG pointed out that in her April 26 email, Bertzi
had stated that prior to March 27, no match had been found
for the child. CG stated that the sequence of events Bertzi
described was hard to believe.


Trying to Cut Out Foreign NGOs?
--------------

15. (U) CG and AID Director protested the letter Bertzi dated
March 14 and sent to all county level Departments for
Protection of Children and Social Welfare prohibiting contact
between foreigners and orphans or abandoned children in
Romania, except foreigners related to the children or who had
adopted siblings of the children. CG and AID Director told
Bertzi that the letter was being interpreted by foreign and
Romanian NGOs and local officials as necessitating a complete
ban on contact by foreigners with the children, including the
many foreign NGOs who are licensed by the GOR and provide
critical child care in under-served areas, and the many
foreigners who visit Romania to volunteer in institutions.
Bertzi retorted that "any such interpretation of the letter
is abusive." She argued that, by referring to Article 4 of
the Hague Convention in its fifth paragraph, the letter
"clearly" was limited to prohibiting contact between the
children and foreign families visiting Romania specifically
to find children to adopt. She rejected the suggestion she
send a clarification of the directive to the field.


16. (SBU) Comment. As she has in previous meetings and press
interviews, Bertzi pointed to formal law or ideals rather
than discussing current realities. Family courts "should" be
set up since under the new law only a court may abrogate the
rights of negligent parents and declare orphans or abandoned
children "adoptable." In fact, only one such court exists,
so children whose parents neither exercise parental
responsibilities nor actively give up their parental rights
are trapped in permanent limbo, living in foster or
institutional care. Bertzi tried to misrepresent our
position of seeking inter-country adoption for a limited
number of pending cases as advocacy for wholesale resumption
of the corrupt and abusive adoption system of the 1990's.
She changed the subject whenever confronted by inconvenient
evidence of the deterioration of conditions for Romanian
orphans and abandoned children under the new law. She
retreated into blaming the Romanian Department for the
Protection of Children's Rights for inaction, or claiming she
could only control processes that follow court findings of
adoptability.


17. (SBU) Comment Continued. The meeting with Bertzi preceded
the May 8 release of a report by Mental Disability Rights
International on the plight of some disabled orphans in

BUCHAREST 00000769 004 OF 004


Romanian institutions. The high level of international
attention accorded the report -- and GOR concern that it
could impact a pending decision in Brussels on Romania's EU
accession date -- contributed to the establishment by PM
Tariceanu of a task force to investigate institutions that
deal with disabled children. However, the task force is to
be coordinated by the High Level Working Group, which is led
by MEP and former European Parliament Rapporteur for Romania
Emma Nicholson, a vehement opponent of international
adoptions. The High Level Group also includes Bertzi and
other officials responsible for the current flawed system.
In the words of one Embassy contact, the investigation will
be "a classic case of the fox guarding the hen house and will
not produce the fundamental changes in approach that will be
necessary to protect the thousands of Romania's orphaned and
abandoned children who are living today in sub-standard
conditions. End Comment.
TAUBMAN