Spania's story Abandoned Romanian baby symbolizes quandary ove

BUCHAREST, Romania -- Spania Bancuta has been alive for three months, and alone almost as long -- ever since her mother dropped her off at a children's hospital in Bucharest and never came back.

But it may be a while before the Gypsy girl with placid dark eyes can leave her steel crib in Room 5.

Like thousands of other children, Spania isn't eligible for adoption abroad because of a temporary ban imposed by the Romanian government that has outraged Western couples trying to adopt, and prompted concerns from aid workers that kids are being condemned to stay in orphanages.

"The longer they delay the foreign adoption law, the more serious it is for the children," said Sister Mary Rose Christy, a Roman Catholic nun from Burlingame, Calif., who works in Romania. "That's who is being hurt: the children."

Romania ordered the ban in June 2001 after the European Union claimed the impoverished Balkan country had become a marketplace for children and would have a harder time winning membership in the prosperous 15-nation bloc.

The ban put the EU at odds with the United States, which sided with American, Israeli, Spanish and French couples trying to adopt. While the United States agreed that the system didn't always protect the rights of children, U.S. Ambassador Michael Guest said his government's interest was to place the children in loving families.

Mob involvement

Baroness Emma Nicholson, the British EU official pushing Romania to toughen its laws, says Romania is vulnerable to mobsters preying on children. Americans would never allow their children to be exported the way Romania does, she says, and "should afford the same respect to Romanian families as their own."

With the collapse of communism in eastern Europe the plight of abandoned children grew worse, nowhere more so than in Romania. Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu had outlawed abortion and birth control, and families who couldn't feed their children handed them off to the state.

The ghastly images emerging of starving and bereft children in state institutions shocked the world, and humanitarian agencies poured in.

With international aid, the system is slowly improving. Facilities at orphanages are better and the ratio of caretakers to children is better. The number of children in state orphanages has fallen dramatically from the 100,000 in Ceausescu's time.

About 43,000 children now live in state institutions, compared with 57,000 last year. An additional 41,000 are living in foster families or relatives, government statistics show.

Children like Spania have almost no hope of being adopted in Romania, a country where prejudice against the Gypsy, or Roma, minority runs deep.

Spania came to the abandoned babies' ward at the Caraiman Childrens' Hospital with syphilis, which has abated with treatment. Welfare workers promise she will be moved soon.

Georgeta Ciobanu, a social worker, is trying to find Spania's parents, to see if they really want to give up the child for good. Meanwhile she visits her whenever she can, cuddling the little girl in her butter-colored blanket.

"She likes to be held," Ciobanu said.

About 43,000 children now live in state institutions, compared with 57,000 last year. An additional 41,000 are living in foster families or relatives, government statistics show.

The total number of domestic and foreign adoptions fell from 4,254 in 2000 to 2,795 last year; there had been 1,060 through August this year. But up to 3,500 children eligible for adoption abroad have been left in limbo since the ban was imposed.

Some exceptions were made for children whose paperwork was in process, but the ban stunned couples like John Murrow and his wife Amanda, from Six Mile, S.C.

The Murrows had heard about a little Gypsy girl they've named Samantha from a friend working with street children in Romania. The aid worker found neighborhood kids in the village of Bahnea, 200 miles northwest of the capital, playing catch with what he thought was a doll. It turned out to be a 3-month-old girl.

Rescued near death, she is now 15 months old and with a foster family. The Murrows are sending aid and want to adopt the child.

"I believe in God's time we will adopt her," John Murrow said. "It feels like she is part of us already. She just hasn't joined us yet.

Children like Samantha and Spania also have almost no hope of being adopted in Romania, a country where prejudice against the Gypsy, or Roma, minority runs deep.

Spania came to the abandoned babies' ward at the Caraiman Childrens' Hospital with syphilis, which has abated with treatment. Welfare workers promise she will be moved soon.

Georgeta Ciobanu, a social worker, is trying to find Spania's parents, to see if they really want to give up the child for good. Meanwhile she visits her whenever she can, cuddling the little girl in her butter-colored blanket.

"She likes to be held," Ciobanu said.

Child-care advocates say the legal delays are devastating for the children. Sister Christy says that by the time a child is 7 years old, much of his or her development has taken place and been stunted by orphanage life.

"The basic thing you don't get in an institution is love," she said. "Those children never have a feeling of security and it affects their whole life."

Take Alexandru Soare. He's only 9, yet savvy enough to approach any prospective adopter with suspicion.

"I would make them show me identification," Alexandru said.

"So they wouldn't steal me," he added.

Besides his age, there's another complication -- he has a brother and sister and they come as a package, having stuck together ever since their mother dumped them at an orphanage eight years ago and told them she wanted nothing more to do with them.

Even so, Alexandru, his 14-year-old brother Mihai, and their sister, Mirela, aged 16, still hope for a miracle.

"I think there are people with a good heart," said Mirela. "I wouldn't mind being adopted into such a family."

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EDITOR'S NOTE -- Associated Press Correspondent Alexandru Alexe in Bucharest contributed to this report.

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On the Net:

The Romanian National Authority for Child Protection and Adoption at http://www.copii.ro/eindex.htm

Prochild, a federation of U.S. and Romanian nonprofit groups working to improve child care at http://www.prochild.ro