Domnesti Boys Home
After the revolution and collapse of communism in Romania, AMURT decided to open a small family-style children’s home to provide an alternative to the massive institutional state children’s home.
During Communism, there was a state policy to encourage population growth that outlawed all forms of birth control and gave incentives for women to have many children. However, due to poverty, every year 10,000 children were being abandoned by their parents, to state children’s homes, which were severely understaffed and grossly negligent of the basic developmental needs of children. In many ways, such state children’s homes resembled concentration camps of children. Babies’ wrists were tied to their cots so they didn’t crawl away. One of the eerie experiences of visitors to the “baby units” where hundreds of babies were kept in iron cribs was the strange silence. The babies had learned not to cry, as crying never brought relief from the constant hunger, burning pain from wet diapers, and psychological deprivation lack of human contact.
Recently, one of our teenagers was sharing his memories from the years he spent in the state home, Buftea, before he came to the AMURT home. He told me that if he and the other boys were to shave their heads, you could see all of the scars from when they used to get beaten with sticks on the head. One of the punishments was to hold their hand in the doorway and then crush the door on their fingers. When they first arrived in the AMURT house, they had never really had a proper bath, and were covered in lice, and full of sores and skin disease. In the home they would line up the children and using scalding hot water just quickly rub each one a bit superficially without really bathing them fully. It is hard to imagine, looking at the charming, shining, healthy young boy before me that he has survived such an unspeakable nightmare when only a small innocent child.
Yet the deeper scars are those that come from the utter lack of human attention that these children received in the formative early months and years of development, when normally the mother is completely attuned to every subtle mood and expression of her baby. One of the earliest lessons in life is that the baby learns that the world is safe and dependable as her needs are regularly met. Children that lack this security and love suffer throughout their lives from many challenges ranging in severity from learning disabilities and delays in development to sociopathologies and psychosis in more extreme cases.
Our 10 boys from AMURT Domnesti arrived having already survived 5-8 of their most formative years in such conditions, and all of them still carry many challenges from those early traumas.
Now our boys are adolescents and young adults quickly approaching adulthood and independence. Our youngest, Gabby, is 15 years old, and the oldest, Traian is already 23. Especially considering the abusive situation that they have survived, we are very proud of how well they are doing, and how much they have managed to overcome in the supportive and loving atmosphere of our AMURT home.
Johnny was the first to “leave the nest” and is now working in construction and renovations, and living with his girlfriend’s family. Stefan and Cornel have recently moved to our “Integration project” of apartments owned by AMURT in Bucharest to provide them with a transitional home once they have left the Domnesti home, to help them on their way to full autonomy. Salaries in Romania are still very small compared to the cost of living. Average salaries are only about 200 euros. Even those with university degrees are not paid much more – often only about 300 Euros a month.
On such small salaries, it is very difficult to survive, especially if one must pay rent. In the transitional apartments however, the boys only have to pay for the utilities and a small monthly maintenance fee, and in this way can learn how to manage their own finances and have a positive experience of independence. Both are now employed. Stefan has a job at a waiter at a fancy restaurant, and has a serious girlfriend who he hopes to marry in a few years. Cornel is working in a furniture factory and working on getting his driver’s license. He and his brother Johnny are breakdancers, and toured with a popular Romanian rock band when they were in highschool. He also spent some time in Tunisia working as a professional dancer. His ambition is to be a dance instructor and to continue performing. Mircea is working unloading merchandise in a warehouse, and still living in Domnesti as he has some challenges that make it harder for him to integrate in society. Traian, our oldest boy, has a mental disability, and thus is also unable to integrate autonomously into society and will most likely remain in our care long term, but he helps in the house and also attends a special supervised carpentry workshop for special needs young adults.
George is in his last year of highschool and planning to look for work abroad or to get professional training as a cook. He is very talented with photoshop and loves to make photo collages. Razvan has had training in jewelry making and is finishing his highschool degree. He is also an excellent painter and artist, and has painted several murals for the AMURTEL kindergartens. Bogdan made it into university and is now in his third year. He is very talented with computers and well loved by his teachers and classmates. Last year one of his teachers gave him a gift of a laptop. Cristi and Gabby are both studying in highschool.
