ANTI-TRAFFICKING BEST PRACTICES: IMPROVING

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 BUCHAREST 000047

SIPDIS

SENSITIVE
SIPDIS

STATE FOR EUR/NCE - AARON JENSEN
STATE FOR G/TIP - MEGAN HALL
STATE FOR S/CRS
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FOR OPDAT AND OJP
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE FOR FBI OFFICE OF VICTIM ASSISTANCE

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KJUS PREL SOCI RO
SUBJECT: ANTI-TRAFFICKING BEST PRACTICES: IMPROVING
VICTIM/WITNESS COORDINATION


1. (SBU) Summary: In continuing efforts to work with the
Romanian Government on Trafficking in Persons issues, one
"best practice" established by Embassy BucharestQs
Department of Justice office (RLA) has been the creation of
a victim/witness coordination program. The Romanian
National Anti-Trafficking Agency (ANAT) has enthusiastically
adopted this program and has now begun implementing it nationwide.
Successful prosecutions for
trafficking in Romania are heavily contingent on obtaining
the cooperation of victims, and in the past, the Romanian
legal system did little to facilitate the testimony of
witnesses in legal proceedings. Cases against traffickers
were frequently dropped for lack of testimony or evidence.
With the establishment of ANAT in December 2005, RLA found
a partner within the Romanian government that was willing
to work to improve the coordination between the Romanian
legal system and victims and witnesses and to ensure that
they remained willing to testify in court over the long
haul. Embassy RLA and ANAT held the first training seminar
in November 2006 and have scheduled three follow-up
seminars for 2007. This is the first in a series of
cables on "best practices" derived from Embassy Bucharest's
efforts to work against Trafficking in Persons with the
cooperation of the Romanian National Anti-Trafficking
Agency (ANAT),other branches of the GOR, anti-TIP NGOs and
other organizations. End Summary.

How TIP Traffickers Can Go Unpunished in Romania
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2. (SBU) In November 2004, a senior Romanian prosecutor
responsible for investigating organized crime reported that
prosecutors lost contact with 40 percent of all TIP victims
after their first interview. As a result, although
Romanian law enforcement institutions continued to improve
their ability to investigate TIP offenses, this progress
was not necessarily reflected in the statistics for
successful prosecution of TIP offenders. Other
complicating factors affecting the rate of success in TIP
cases included the length of time that cases take to reach
a final verdict (which requires the exhaustion of all
appellate remedies) and imprecise statistics on the number
of cases where prosecutors determined that the victim was
either unavailable or insufficiently reliable to proceed
with the case. However, the most significant challenge in
the prosecution of TIP cases was to maintain the
cooperation of victims throughout the lengthy trial
process. Advice from internationally produced manuals such
as the UNDP Best Practices Manual on TIP assumes the
existence of adequate shelters for TIP victims, with TIP
victims generally considered to be the responsibility of
law enforcement until they are placed in a shelter. In
practice, the overwhelming majority of identified TIP
victims in Romania have chosen not to accept shelter
services. State-sponsored TIP shelters in Romania assisted
fewer than forty-five adult victims between the enactment
of legislation mandating their creation in 2001 and January
of 2006. By contrast, in 2005 alone, the Ministry of
Interior reported identifying 1,491 adult women who were
victims of TIP offenses.


3. (SBU) The low rate of usage of TIP shelters in Romania
does not appear to be related to the quality of the
facilities or the adequacy of their services. Although the
quality of state sponsored TIP shelters in Romania is
mixed, newly built shelters with state-of-the-art
facilities have not been substantially more successful at
attracting victims than shelters with more modest
accommodations. Although NGO shelters with a focus on
long-term rehabilitation continue to attract young victims,
adult victims do not appear to be attracted to the
short-term, emergency services for which most state
shelters are tailored. There may be practical reasons for
this stemming from RomaniaQs role as a source country.
Victims returning to Romania as part of a formal
repatriation process are likely to have already spent time
in a shelter in their country of destination. They may not
be interested in continuing or repeating that experience
following their return to Romania. Victims who return to
Romania on their own volition are likely to have already
located a place to stay by the time that they are
identified as victims through follow-up investigations by
law enforcement. They thus may see little benefit in
disrupting their status quo arrangement for the short-term

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benefits of an emergency shelter. Regardless of the
reasons, shelters have not proven an effective strategy for
maintaining the cooperation of TIP victims in Romania.


4. (SBU) Since most TIP victims are not under GOR or NGO
protection while legal proceedings are underway, another
option would be sustained contact by the prosecutor or
continuing legal assistance through court-appointed
counsel. In practice, however, this is not a sustainable
solution. Prosecutors in Romania are dissuaded by their
role as independent magistrates from identifying themselves
with victims in cases. Once an investigation is complete,
the investigating prosecutor has no further role in the
case. A separate prosecutor appears at trial to serve as a
liaison between the court and the prosecutors office. This
prosecutor is a procedural expert who typically has no
contact with the victim and little direct role in calling
and questioning witnesses. As a result, victims frequently
receive no direct advice or encouragement about their
testimony from prosecutors. Court appointed counsel have
an equally limited role in encouraging victims to maintain
their cooperation throughout the trial. In practice, the
appointment of counsel is for a limited period, often just
for a specific interview or court appearance. In the
majority of cases there is no continuity of counsel from
appearance to appearance and no ongoing representation
between appearances.


5. (SBU) During the time that the legal proceedings take
place, TIP victims are vulnerable to a number of pressures
that discourage them from testifying, including pressure
from family and friends who are either ambivalent toward
the criminal justice system or openly hostile toward it.
In some cases defendants offer bribes in exchange for the
victims' changing their testimony or employ threats of
retaliation if victims persist in testifying. Victims
often lack a sophisticated understanding of the criminal
justice system, including the processes involved in the
investigation and trial. A victim who persists in
testifying is likely to encounter a crowded courtroom with
few familiar faces. Neither the prosecutor who
investigated the case nor the law enforcement officer who
initially interviewed the victim will be present. Cases
are often subject to delay, which can be sought by
defendants for tactical reasons. Thus, a victimQs initial
resolve to testify can be broken down through an increasing
sense that the system does not have their interests at
heart.

Getting Victims to Testify, Keeping them in Court
-------------- --------------


6. (SBU) In response to these circumstances, Embassy
Bucharest RLA has encouraged the development of a system
for coordinating contacts between victims and the courts.
Coordinators in this system have four responsibilities:
(1) to maintain updated contact information for the victim
and to provide the victim with information about the status
of the case; (2) to provide the victim with general
information about the court system in order to demystify
the trial process and make it less intimidating; (3) to
provide the victim with logistical assistance in getting to
court; and (4) to provide the victim with information about
services available regionally. RLA advocacy for this
system stemmed from an assessment conducted by U.S.
victimsQ specialists in 2004. This was followed by a study
tour of state and federal victim/witness programs in the
U.S. by a team of Romanian justice officials representing
prosecutors, judges, law enforcement, and the Ministry of
Justice. The RLA has continued to reinforce the theme of
victim/witness coordination through a number of additional
programs that gave rise to a discussion of the TIP
phenomenon or of victimsQ issues generally. These have
included judicial symposiums and specialized workshops on
pretrial services, supervised release, and victim impact
statements. RLA efforts culminated in the inclusion of
victim/witness coordination in the National
Anti-Trafficking Strategy in the summer of 2006 and a
decision by ANAT in September to adopt the initiative as
one of its priorities.


7. (SBU) ANAT was created by a Government Decision in
December of 2005. It was created as a "coordinating
agency" under the authority of the Romanian Interior

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Ministry. Its responsibilities include coordinating the
fight against TIP; coordinating the collection of data on
the TIP phenomenon; and monitoring resources available to
TIP victims. ANATQs President, Dan Licsandru, was
appointed in March of 2006, with the agency becoming
operational in May. Licsandru had previously served as the
Chief of International Coordination for the National
Anti-Drug Agency, and visited the U.S. as a participant in
the Department's International Visitors Program. ANAT
oversaw the creation of a new National Anti-TIP Strategy,
which gave rise to discussions with the Embassy RLA about
the potential benefits of improving victim/witness
coordination. Following Licsandru's decision in September
2006 to adopt the project, Licsandru designated Diana
Tudorache--a psychologist who previously worked with IOM in
Kosovo--to manage the program.


8. (SBU) In November 2006, Embassy RLA sponsored the
first of a series of programs on victim/witness
coordination, featuring Heather Cartwright, the chief of
the victim/witness coordination unit at the U.S. AttorneyQs
Office for the District of Washington. Cartwright
participated in the initial assessment of victim
coordination issues in TIP cases in February 2004,
returning in November to participate in a seminar in Galati
to promote the new unit's development by ANAT. The seminar
was attended by 70 justice officials from territorial
offices in Eastern Romania between Constanta and Botosani.
The seminar included participation from Traian Gherasim, a
Senior Judge in the Criminal Section of the High Court of
Cassation and Justice. Judge Gherasim was a participant in
the RLA-sponsored study tour on victim/witness coordination
in September 2004. The seminars were concluded with three
sub-regional breakout groups that discussed specific
measures for implementing victim/witness coordination in
the regions of Constanta, Bacau, and Iasi.


9. (SBU) COMMENT: From all reports, the program in Galati
was welcomed by ANAT staff, especially those individuals
who were designated as victim/witness coordinators. This
is buttressed by the fact that Embassy has fielded numerous
requests from prosecutors and organized crime officers in
Galati, Iasi, Timisoara, and Craiova in securing the
assistance of ANAT victim/witness coordination services.
Given that this concept is relatively novel to Romania, the
program may encounter bureaucratic obstacles that will need
to be overcome. However, Embassy RLA anticipates that
these obstacles are manageable and, in the end, the
training will lead to more successfully prosecuted TIP
cases. Three additional training seminars in different
regions of Romania are planned for fiscal year 2007 and
readouts from these seminars will be reported Septel. End
Comment.

TAPLIN