The Grim Face of Russia’s Orphanages

Thousands of children confined to orphanages across Russia suffer “appalling levels of abuse and neglect” that constitute a violation of their human rights, the organization Human Rights Watch charged Wednesday.

In a detailed report, the group documented how children in some orphanages were kept in bare, dark rooms without stimulation, tied to furniture to restrain them, cruelly punished and deprived of toys and books.

The organization called on Russia to put an end to the Soviet-style system of warehousing unwanted and disabled children out of sight of society and depriving them of their fundamental human rights.

“Thousands of children in a sprawling maze of state-run orphanages have been subjected to appalling levels of abuse and neglect that stunt their development and relegate them to a social underclass,” Kathleen Hunt, the author of the report, said at a news conference here.

The New York-based organization estimates that at least 30,000 children locked in orphanages for the severely disabled are confined in violation of U.N. covenants and international law spelling out the rights of children.

An additional 170,000 abandoned children who are considered “normal” live in institutions where they can be subjected to “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment,” including beatings and sexual abuse, the report found.

“Russian children in orphanages are deprived of basic human rights at every stage of their life--from the most fundamental right to survival and development to their rights to humane treatment, health, education and full enjoyment of civil rights,” the report concluded.

The government could dramatically improve the lives of the children in its care by rejecting the philosophy that severely disabled children cannot be educated and should be taken from their parents and confined for life, the organization said.

Human Rights Watch charged that the grim conditions of Russia’s orphanages are well known to top government officials.

“Human Rights Watch finds it all the more deplorable that the shocking treatment we documented this year still persists in state institutions with the knowledge of officials at the highest levels,” Hunt said. “Orphanage officials and the bureaucrats overseeing them should be held accountable for these unconscionable policies.”

Of the 200,000 children institutionalized in Russia, 95% have at least one living parent. In most cases, the parents have given their offspring to the state because they are unable to care for them or because the children are disabled.

Because of the stigma attached to physically or mentally disabled children and their families, Russian doctors routinely persuade parents to give up disabled children at birth and send them to orphanages.

From infancy, children in institutions for the severely disabled are confined to bed, and some are never taught to walk or talk. They live in barren dorms with no pictures on the wall, have no toys of their own and rarely receive affection from adults. Many are denied operations that could improve their condition.

At age 4, an official determination is made as to whether the children are “oligophrenic”--mentally retarded. Doctors are notorious for making incorrect diagnoses, but once a child is designated as oligophrenic, it is almost impossible to reverse the decision.

As the children grow older, they are sometimes confined to dark rooms all day with nothing to occupy them. Many of the children are heavily sedated. Problem children are sometimes put in makeshift straitjackets or tied to furniture to immobilize them.

“Abandoned infants, toddlers and older children with disabilities are languishing in interminable idleness, deprived of touch, sound, visual stimulation and love,” Hunt said.

Human Rights Watch said major improvements could be made in Russia’s orphanages without increasing expenditures, and it made dozens of recommendations to the government and international organizations.

Among the recommendations were:

* End the practice of encouraging parents to institutionalize disabled infants.

* Begin the development of a foster care program to take the place of orphanages;

* Halt the early diagnosis of oligophrenia.

* Establish an independent commission to investigate orphanages, with full access to the institutions and the ability to receive confidential complaints from children and staff members.

* Undertake a public education program to dispel Russians’ deep-rooted prejudice against disabled and abandoned children.

* Ensure that all children in state custody be provided with necessary medical care.

“We often hear that in Russia, the laws don’t work, that the state has collapsed and that what can we expect from such lawlessness,” said Rachel Denber, Human Rights Watch deputy director. “The thing is, as long as children are in institutions, there will always be agencies and bureaucrats who answer for them. And to that degree, the state does exist and must see to it that the law is upheld to protect Russia’s most vulnerable population.”