Romania: Authorities investigate abuse at care homes

Thirty-three years after revelations about the horrific conditions in orphanages in Communist Romania shocked the world, care homes in Romania are back in the headlines. This time, the victims are elderly people and people with mental disabilities.

Six months ago, investigative journalists from the Romanian online portal Centrul de Investigatii Media and Buletin de Bucuresti uncovered a business model they say has allowed the people in charge to enrich themselves at the expense of elderly and vulnerable people.

According to the journalists, one private company has been given large sums of public money to look after elderly people in need of care. However, the money has not been used to fund their care, but to line the pockets of those running the company's homes, said journalist Ovidiu Vanghele, who together with his colleague Bianca Albu uncovered the abuse and mistreatment.

Their reports did not initially illicit much of a reaction until the state attorney's office confirmed the accusations last week.

The official allegations against these homes paint a picture of appalling abuse: A systematic lack of care that has caused deaths, exploitation of care home residents who were forced to work, mistreatment, violence, a permanent shortage of essential medication and an inadequate supply of food that has seen some residents die of starvation.

Neighbors complained to authorities

Neighbors repeatedly informed state-run institutions about the situation, reporting that residents often stood naked and filthy at the fences of the care homes in the depths of winter begging for food or money. One neighbor said people who had been kept in the basement of one care home had dug a tunnel in an attempt to escape the hellish conditions.

Files from Romania's Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism also show that residents' pensions were seized and their property transferred to those running the home.

It has been reported that more than 100 people were rescued from three care homes and taken to health institutions to receive medical care.

These conditions are certainly not unique in Romania, Vanghele told DW. Ten years ago, he discovered an illegally run center for people with mental disabilities.

Vanghele stressed there are good mechanisms in place to regulate the social care system in Romania, including decentralization and care in the community instead of care in homes far away from the residents' community, as was the case in days gone by.

However, he said, the rules were bent, leading to a "crazy privatization boom." Unscrupulous companies founded countless, profit-oriented centers that only provided social care and services on paper, he said.

Investigation linked to high-profile politicians

The people now being investigated by the state attorney's office have direct links to members of Romania's ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD). Vanghele and Albu have claimed that an entire network of people protected those running the homes in question from checks and inquiries.

The two journalists said relatives and prior staff members of former Family Minister Gabriela Firea are involved in the scandal. Firea, vice president of the PSD and the former mayor of Bucharest, resigned her position on July 14.

Firea is married to Florentin Pandele, who for many years has been mayor of Voluntari, a town on the outskirts of Bucharest where some of the homes are located. Her brother is head of the authority that supervises the local social services. Both Firea and Pandele claim to have known nothing about what was happening at the homes.

Vanghele said in the case of these homes, the influence of some politicians led to a kind of paralysis of the institutions. He is convinced they must have noticed that things were not as they should be.

"According to the documents we studied, there were dozens of inspections that only resulted in a few official fines. Service providers hid their tracks with papers, with fictitious contracts for medical examinations or care services," said Vanghele. "In Romania, when people find out that the head of an institution is close to the mayor, the supervisory authorities leave him alone."

'A national disgrace'

Marcel Ciolacu, Romania's new prime minister and PSD leader, was president of the Chamber of Deputies when the first revelations appeared in the media in early 2023. He has claimed to have only heard about the whole scandal once the authorities began their investigations.

However, representatives of Romania's press monitoring center told DW that the matter has been included in all daily reports sent to the responsible state institutions and the most important political players ever since the first revelations were published earlier this year.

Ciolacu has since fired the heads of several institutions in the social system that report to the Labor Ministry for negligence in office. On Thursday morning, the prime minister announced that Labor Minister Marius Budai had resigned, and observers in Bucharest expect further resignations to follow.

Romanians will go the polls several times next year to vote in European, parliamentary, presidential and local elections. The current scandal has caused massive damage to the ruling PSD's "social" image.

Speaking to reporters at the NATO summit in Vilnius earlier this week, Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said "the 'horror homes,' as they are known, are a national disgrace." He has called for all those involved to be punished.

"I hope that those who are in a position to take political measures, will have the courage to do so," he said.

Abuse reminiscent of Romania's orphanage scandal

The developing scandal has resurfaced memories of the appalling conditions in Romanian orphanages that came to light in the early 1990s after the fall of the Communist Ceausescu regime.

It's estimated that at least one-fifth of the 100,000 children in these orphanages died as a result of abuse, poor hygiene and lack of medical care. Most of those who survived grew up with severe physical and mental disabilities.

The images that spread around the world were truly shocking: some showed malnourished, poorly dressed children who had been kept in freezing conditions and were unable to speak properly. Others showed children who bore the marks of appalling physical violence lying on rusty beds with dirty old mattresses and bars, to which the children were regularly tied to stop them from banging their heads against the walls.

There are, however, no official statistics on these homes from the time before 1989. The Communist regime swept the truth under the rug because of the damage it would have done to the image it wanted to portray of Romania as a socialist workers' paradise.

This article was adapted from the German by Aingeal Flanagan.

July 15, 2023: This article was updated with the news of the resignation of Family Minister Gabriela Firea