Message highlights plight of homeless children

NARVA - At an orphanage it the eastern Estonian city of Narva there is a 9-year-old boy who provided sexual services in exchange for candy. Children who have been involved in prostitution often come to the orphanage. Most are street children whose parents, if they have any, no longer care about them.

Narva administration's division for social issues last week received an anonymous e-mail stating that Narva City Orphanage cultivated sexual violence. The city administration asked the orphanage's employers to present written explanatory notes regarding the matter.

According to Lidiya Synkova, the director of the orphanage, the accusations are groundless. However, she said that many children come to the orphanage in a terrible state.

"Sometimes mentally disabled children come to the institution, and one boy was ready for anything for his favorite type of candy," she said.

She added that the boy, who sometimes lived on the street as his parents were deprived of parenting rights, began to ask the other boys to touch his genitals. This was quickly spotted by the supervisors of the orphanage, and now a psychologist is working with the boy.

Synkova said the quality of the work with the children should be assessed by a specialist and not an anonymous critic. She said the bad publicity that has resulted from the case has created more problems for the orphanage.

"The information has spread quickly, and now the children from the orphanage are afraid to go to school because other kids are making fun of them," said Synkova.

Natalya Skvortsova, the orphanage's psychologist, said the boy suffered from a serious mental disease, a genetic disability. "He can't adequately estimate reality and it is practically impossible to change him," she said.

Skvortsova said the boy regularly used to get into garbage containers on his way back from school and tell the other children about the things he found there. After a lot of work the psychologist weaned him of that habit.

The boy will be moving to the orphanage soon to live there.

The recent visit of a 13-year-old pregnant girl was not a surprise for the orphanage as it is often visited by street children and young prostitutes. "They are often drug addicts aged 12 to 17. We are always trying to help them," said Synkova.

It has been suggested that the anonymous e-mail may have been caused by competition between the orphanage, which is owned by the state, and the private, non-profit organization Home for a Child, which also helps street children. The competition is for guardian families who would take care of the children. But the NGO's administration rejects any connection with the message.

Danish charitable foundations have offered support in solving the many social problems in Narva, but they intend to cooperate only with the city municipality and avoid dealing with NGOs.

The number of street children is not decreasing, according to the city's social department. Sometimes drug addicts, alcoholics and people living in abject poverty live in the same state hostels as stable families, according to Tamara Buldygerova, the department's head.

"A possible way out would be setting apart hostels for ordinary and asocial people," she said.

The city court annually receives about 1,500 legal cases regarding eviction for not paying the rent. Due to the generally difficult economic situation in the region, the number of people unable to pay for heating and other communal services is rising.