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Viewing cable 06BUCHAREST769, ROMANIAN ADOPTIONS CHIEF REMAINS INFLEXIBLE, AS

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Reference ID Created Released Classification Origin
06BUCHAREST769 2006-05-11 15:39 2011-08-25 00:00 UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY Embassy Bucharest
VZCZCXRO1455
PP RUEHAG RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN RUEHLZ
RUEHROV RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHBM #0769/01 1311539
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 111539Z MAY 06
FM AMEMBASSY BUCHAREST
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 4368
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHTV/AMEMBASSY TEL AVIV 2192
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