Romania’s Child : 100,000 Are Orphans; Americans Long to Adopt Some

Carol Mardock’s list of contacts grows, almost by the day. A new name at the U.S. Department of State. A name at the U.S. Embassy in Romania. A name at a Romanian church in Orange County. A name of another international adoption agency. A name of another adoption attorney.

But somehow the list is never long enough, and the contacts--thus far--never powerful enough.

On a hot August day, Mardock lounged by the pool at a friend’s Brea home, watching three of her five children splash about. She was half a world away from the still-faceless, still-elusive child she fervently wants to make her sixth.

“You worry: What if you spend $1,200 on a home study (for an adoption)? What if you get all of the paper work done, everything seems to be in order, you buy two round-trip tickets to Romania--then you get over there, and for some reason they won’t let you bring back a child?” Mardock asked. “It’s so frustrating. Nothing is certain.”

Carol and Bob Mardock, a pastor at Brea-Olinda Friends Church, are among hundreds of U.S. couples who long to adopt a Romanian orphan.

They have read the tragic stories, they have seen the heartbreaking news footage. Many have been trying to adopt for years--no easy feat, whatever the child’s nationality. And now their passion has been fired by additional incentive: They want to rescue one of Romania’s forsaken children.

Some 100,000 children and adolescents live in Romanian institutions that provide minimal care--physically, nutritionally and emotionally.

The harsh 25-year regime of Nicolae Ceausescu is largely responsible for their plight. In an effort to increase the Romanian population, he heavily fined couples who produced fewer than five children. The dictator, executed after December’s revolution, also made contraception virtually unavailable.

As a result, many people in the impoverished country--where even such basic necessities as food staples and soap are scarce--have relinquished unaffordable children to the state’s care.

Although French citizens have been adopting Romanian children for years, it was not until Ceausescu’s fall that Americans en masse learned of the orphans.

“Since January, we have received as many as 400 calls a week regarding Romanian orphans,” State Department spokesman Charles S. Smith said.

Despite the multitude of children who need parents--and the multitude of Americans clamoring to fill that role for them--adoption is not so simple as jetting to Romania and plucking a child from his bleak surroundings.

On June 11, the new Romanian government temporarily froze all international adoptions to reorganize the procedure. The freeze was recently lifted, but success stories remain few and far between. Only about 35 U.S. families have adopted Romanian children since the revolution, Smith said.

“In a country run by a Communist government for so many years, of course there is a lot of red tape,” said Downey lawyer Alexandru A. Cristea, a native of Romania who has been providing adoption information from the International Institute of Los Angeles in the last few months. “You can become so frustrated that you just give up.”

While the revised law--which transfers approval of adoptions from the presidential office to district courts--eventually could prove more expedient, Smith warned that its benefits may be slow in coming.

“It will do nothing to sweep out the backlog of adoption requests,” he said. “We are waiting for the law to become a reality before we encourage people to run over to Romania and pursue an adoption.”

But Mardock will not be deterred. “You’d think that the Romanian government would welcome all these people who want to give their orphans homes,” the Chino Hills woman said.

She and her husband already have adopted one child, 5-year-old Marcie, born in Korea. They were inspired to adopt again by a “20/20” news program in April that featured a Bucharest orphanage.

ABC-TV received more than 15,000 letters and telephone calls in response to the broadcast, said Janice Tomlin, who produced the segment.

“I was overwhelmed by the number of people desperate to adopt,” she said. The show focused on Jessica Scott, 4, one of the lucky few who made it out of a cold orphanage and into a warm family.

Jessica does not seem like a child who has spent the bulk of her short life deprived of love and care. The gregarious brunette skips cheerfully about her elegant Camarillo home as if this is all she has ever known: frilly clothes, “Little Mermaid” on video, a sunny back yard, pancakes for breakfast and adoring parents.

But just seven months ago, she was trapped in the cruel maze of Ceausescu’s government. Her parents, Ilona and Toby Scott, have been calling her their own since they fell in love with the unresponsive but otherwise healthy 9-month-old baby at a Romanian orphanage.

It took three years and thousands of letters--to every U.S. and Romanian official they could imagine--before the Scotts pried their daughter from the jowls of the bureaucracy.

Romanian officials “never told us why things were or were not done--it was constant psychological harassment,” said Ilona Scott, 43, who was born in the Soviet Union and grew up in Romania. “They would tell us that we’d have her by Christmas, and then Christmas would come and go and still no Jessica.”

Finally, the Scotts quit putting gifts for Jessica under their Christmas trees. They didn’t redecorate the nursery for a “big girl.” They considered giving up.

Then came the revolution. “We had hope again, because suddenly we were not dealing with an insane person any more,” she said. Within weeks, on Feb. 1, the couple brought Jessica to the United States.

The Scotts were ahead of the game, since most Americans did not start trying to adopt Romanian children until after the revolution. “I knew that a lot of people in France were adopting from Romania, and I got the idea, why not me?” said Scott, an architect. Her U.S.-born husband has two grown children from a previous marriage.

Jessica picked up English quickly, though she can still revert to Romanian on command. She is an affectionate, bright, vivacious child. If she has scars, they are not readily apparent.

“There are 60 children to every one caretaker at the orphanage she was in,” said Toby Scott, 46, a stockbroker. “The babies are put in long rows of cribs; the caretaker walks down one aisle and sticks bottles in the babies’ mouths, and then walks up another aisle and removes bottles. There’s almost no one-on-one contact.”

The little girl never talks about her former life. “I think she’s blocked it,” her mother said. “Fortunately, she’s a happy-natured child.”

Some remnants of her unsupervised upbringing persist, however. “In nursery school, when they say it’s quiet time, she gets up and wanders around,” her father said. “It’s not that she’s being bad; she just doesn’t understand.”

Couples adopting an orphan from a foreign country should prepare themselves for a child likely to suffer some degree of maladjustment, said therapist Sharon Kaplan, executive director of Parenting Resources, a counseling firm based in Tustin and Dana Point that specializes in adoption issues.

“It isn’t just a matter of bringing a child over and loving him and everything will be fine,” she said. “Many children adopted from overseas have not been nourished emotionally or physically. Families need to be aware that they may have a great deal of catching up to do with these children.”

Discipline can be a problem for a child who has not learned to trust and respect adults. “Children coming out of institutions often have difficulty taking direction,” Kaplan said. “The risk of permanent damage grows with every month that the child is not in a nurturing environment. Even toddlers can do some serious acting out in their adolesence.”

Furthermore, Kaplan said, children adopted from foreign countries must acclimate to an unfamiliar culture as well as to their families: “Everything changes--the language, the smells, the food. That’s a major loss.”

And the parents too will have to adapt. “You may find yourself parenting a child who is very different from you but still wonderful,” Kaplan said.

When conducting a “home study” of prospective adoptive parents, Hemlata Momaya ascertains that the couple’s interest is not rooted in pity. “I tell people, don’t adopt because you feel sorry for the child; someday you may not feel sorry for him any more. Adopt because you want to adopt,” Momaya said.

Momaya operates Bal Jagat Children’s World, an international adoption agency in Chatsworth. In recent months, she has received inquiries about Romanian orphans and has completed three home studies for clients planning trips to the country. A financial and psychological profile of prospective adoptive parents is required by both the Romanian and the U.S. governments.

One reason Americans have enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to adopt Romanian orphans is that the children would assimilate into Caucasian families. “Americans want white children,” Momaya remarked.

Adopting a child from a foreign country has become increasingly difficult. “Both Korea and India have frozen international adoptions, and Brazil has slowed down,” she said.

Romania’s forgotten children have spawned a movement among the Southern Californians who cannot forget them:

The Scotts have fielded about 400 telephone calls since their appearance on “20/20.” Toby Scott writes a newsletter that he constantly updates for his mailing list.

Cristea, the Downey lawyer, provides free counseling for people wishing to adopt from Romania, directing them to the proper agencies and explaining step by step the somewhat complex procedure.

Santa Monica resident Orson Mozes, whose half-brother lives in Romania, recently formed the Romanian Club ((213) 393-2856) to help people who want to adopt. He plans to escort couples to Romania next fall.

Carol Mardock has spread to others her dream of adopting an orphan; now she and a clique of friends keep one another posted on the latest news about Romanian adoptions.

“When Carol sees pictures of these beautiful children who don’t have anyone to love them, it rips her apart,” her husband said. “She says, ‘Why can’t I have them all?’ ”