Authorities indifferent to the fate of minors; protocol more important to them

In an ugly three-story building on the quay beyond Elektrozavod bridge I found the Christian girls' shelter, "Island of Hope."   I admit that the word "shelter" earlier sounded in a minor key.

After I passed the threshold I found myself in a narrow corridor with a stairway leading upward. A strong elderly gentleman hastened to meet me, Nikolai Ivanovich, the head of the shelter, the teacher, and the custodian all in one person.  As it turned out, the "staff" of the shelter comprised several persons:  a day teacher, a cook who is a refugee from Tashkent living with her thirteen-year-old son, a refugee from Baku (a former pianist) who also has a son, along with five orphan girls and two boys.  These are all residents of the "island."

It was time for supper.  The residents were setting the table, laughing, and rushing.  They didn't look like abandoned or orphaned children. In the dining room everyone sat at one long table.   Before eating they prayed the "Our Father" and "Hail Virgin Mother of God." Nikolai Ivanovich showed me around the household and described the living conditions:  "Here's the kitchen.  Of course, nothing special for equipment and a cement floor.  We don't have refrigerators. But it doesn't matter. Do we have a menu? Here: today, for example, for breakfast, porridge, yogurt, bread and butter.  For lunch, vegetable soup, fish, potatoes, gravy, and tomato juice. Supper, potatoes and canned meat.  Would you like to see the girls' rooms?"

Behind the tall doors which led from the dining room there were bedrooms for three or four residents.  The rooms are small, a shelf and beds, but cozy, with many pictures, handmade dolls and patchwork quilt. The first impression is that the shelter doesn't have much money.  They do not live lavishly although they have all they need:  standard food, clothing, books, washing machine, and three computers.  The lower part of the building already has been renovated along with a spacious room on the second floor, all done by their own efforts.

How the shelter was created

The idea for the creation of the Island of Hope shelter arose after the first soup kitchen for indigent and homeless, which was opened by the Christian Democratic Union in February 1991, began to be visited by hungry, unsupervised children.  "By our count," says the well known rights defender, Alexander Ogorodnikov, who spent nine years in the camps and exile, "in Moscow alos there were about 60,000 unsupervised children."  These are the so-called social children, who live on the streets even though their parents are alive. Some have parents who are alcoholics who have traded down their apartments and become drifters; others are victims of violence in apparently well-fixed families; still others have run away from home for adventure or as a result of unresolved conflicts with relatives. Such children are taken in by distribution centers but by law they cannot stay there more than a month.  During that time state services try to find the parents of the minor. A bitter cycle develops:  again they leave the "beloved" papa and mama and they go to the train station or the street and soon they show up again behind the barbed wire of the center on Altufiev Highway.

Sad Stories

Who can help in this situation?  Perhaps the shelters, of which Moscow has eleven?  One of the last of the private ones is Island of Hope of the Christian Democratic Union.  "Our shelter is a temporary refuge, a kind of social and spiritual first aid stateion for girls," says Alexander Ogorodnikov.  "Why specifically a girls' shelter?  Girls are particularly vulnerable.  If young boys descend to the jungle, they survive, but girls are broken and they become street-walkers for a piece of bread.  If a girl spends more than six months on the street, some irreversable processes happen within her.  She already has had trouble adapting to normal life in a family. In exceptional cases we also take in young boys; after all you don't throw a child who has come out the door.

In the time of the shelter's existence, since April 1995, around 200 children have passed through Island of Hope, many of whom were able to return to their own families or even to get new parents.

Originally the children were found at railway stations. Once they settled into the shelter, the children drew in their own friends.  A "grapevine" began functioning and information about the shelter spread on its own.  Children arrive at the "island" by various routes.  Once a ninety-three-year-old drifter arrived with a small boy whom he requested to be able to leave.  The grandfather visited the grandson to see that he was happy and then he wandered away somewhere.  Thirteen-year-old Anya showed up within the walls of the shelter on the advice of her mother's frield from the Salvation Army.  She had originally lived with her parents in Kursk and then her parents split up.  The mother works as a nurse.  "She'd come home angry, yell at me," the girl recalls, " and entertained johns.  She's dress up, put on make-up, and disappear.  I hate her; she's a stranger to me.  None of my relatives loves me."  At eleven the girl came to Moscow with her mother, who up to now is living here in a rented apartment.  She refuses to return to her mother. When such rejection of what would seem to be one's closest person?  But the mother's principal profession is one of the oldest.  Where do you hide if the mother you hate wants to seize you and "accustom" you to her life, which she has the right to do by law?

Another unhappy story.  Katya, 11, tiny, like a chicken, describes how her father learned about the shelter and brought her himself.  I ask, where's the mother.  He answers softly that she's roaring drunk.  Originally they lived in Moscow in a one-room apartment.  The father worked in the meat factory and mother in a child care center. Both drank.  To get money they swapped the apartment for a shack in the country.  One night the building caught fire.  The girl managed to get out. For a time they lived with a grandmother in Biriulevo, but the father's sister threw them out and the father and daughter wound up on the street.  They lived in hallways and attics until work as a dockworker turned up in the store where the father still lives (in the hallway).  The girl loves him and every weekend goes all the way across the city in order to see him. In all her eleven years Katya has never gone to school; now she has begun first grade in the charity society "Civic Cooperation."  Other residents also study there as day students.

A pert, well-developed girl (she seems to be about 13), Liuba ran away from her family at the age of twelve.  "Mama drank a lot and I have four brother who also drank and beat me."  She arrived in Moscow from the city of Korablino in hopes of finding a cousin.  She did not find the cousin and began living in the train station in a heat duct.  She earned food however she could. A friend brought her to the shelter.

Children arrive at Island of Hope dirty,  lice-ridden, frightened, and bitter at the whole world. The first step they put them in the "oven" for sanitation.  The subsequent process of adjustment of the small person to the complex world of the shelter proceeds on its own. The child is left alone, but lovingly watched after from the side.  Care, kindness, and sensitivity, which are important, all constitute the "rehabilitation class" for return to normal human interrelationships.

Unfortunately, there is not psychologist or attorney or professional teacher here.  But the adults manage quite well.  The girls get into a regular rhythm of life and get involved in their joint business, work in the kitchen, cleaning.  Volunteers teach the children knitting and sewing and homemaking.  An elderly teacher arrives to teach English.  The somewhat older girls "master the basics" of clerical work and the computer.  The process of education goes on unobtrusively.

Large and small problems of the shelter

Things are pleasant and calm here for the children, but the shelter, that is, its director, has a multitude of day-to-day problems that are not easy to resolve.  The resolved problems include the financial ones.  The world is not without good people;  both our fellow countrymen and foreign charitable organizations--the societies of Santo Ginio in Rome and the Russian Aid Fund in Paris-- help the shelter.  Ogorodnikov is well known in the West.  Island of Hope frequently has received designated philanthropic grants; recently a woman banker contributed 15 thousand for community expenses.

The problems of food, clothing, and entertainment for the children are solved by "touching up" directors of grocery warehouses, stores, circuses, etc.  "Seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened for you," says the gospel.  Few refuse.

In the same way the matter of medical services and treatment of the children is solved on the level of personal contacts .  They go to a nearby clinic not officially but by agreement.  After all, the children are not registered at their present residence, although, as is known, "the existence or absence of registration is not a basis for exercise of citizens' right, nor a hinderance."

Will "Island of Hope" remain as the last public shelter in Moscow?

The most painful problem for the shelter and its administration is housing.  A life and deal struggle is going on for the building where Island of Hope is located and that means for the very possibility of its existence.  "All of our concerns are first of all for the building," Andrew Teplov, an attorney who conducts the case for the shelter, says; "we got a too tasty morsel."  Actually, in 1995 the KhDS received an ancient stand-alone structure for the Christian girls' shelter "Island of Hope."  By decree of the government of Moscow, a residence from the second quarter of the eighteenth century at 2 Popov Passage, containing 879 square meters, was allocated on a long-term lease.  According to the decree the union was required, within two years, to conduct repair and restoration work and to conclude an agreement with the Administration for State Supervision of the Preservation and Use of Monuments of History and Culture of the City of Moscow regarding use of the monument.  However conflict broke out specifically because the local authorities in a period of almost two years did not take even the first step, transfor of the building from the account of municipal structures to the accound of the Administration for Preservation and Use of Monuments.  So they tell Ogorodnikov that there is no lease agreement, the shelter still is not registered, and there is no basis for its occupying the building.

During its brief existence, the Island of Hope has been subjected to twelve raids by policemen who tried, by pressure and threats, to force the residents to give compromising evidence against its administration.  According to Revolt Pimenov, chairman of the St. Petersburg division of KhDS:  "On 30 March 1996 the shelter was stormed by OMON troops because one of the residents did not want to be returned to the special reception center; the children surrounded the girl and didn't let them take her, as a sign of their support."  The rights defender Sergei Kovalev got into the case and held conversations with the administration of the Moscow department  of internal affairs.  There began inspections on the part of preservationist offices and law enforcement agencies. The prefect of the eastern district, Ulianov, often tried to put an end to the activity of the shelter by his own decrees, even though legally he did not have such rights.

The building was renovated and reasons for closing the shelter diminished.  But the police did not abandon the attempt to destroy Island of Hope and to put its director into prison.

In February 1997 the Moscos procurator instigated a criminal case against Ogorodnikov on the basis of article 330 of the criminal code of the Russian federation, "Self-Administration."  He was accused of illegal seizure of a building (!).  Within the bounds of the criminal case a search was conducted and all documents and seals were confiscated without an inventory; any compromising item interested the authorities.  But they did not manage to find anything special.  From the girls (under threat of removal to the special reception center!) they unsuccessfully tried to extract testimony about sexual solicitation by Ogorodnikov.  The residents of the shelter, two reporters from Express-Khronika and Alexander Ioilevich himself were arrested on the fictitious accusation of "disobedience to authorities."

The criminal case was terminated in July 1997 just as suddenly as it had been begun, and the incidents of illegality in the actions of the police officers were admitted by the procurator general of the Russian federation in reply to an inquiry from State Duma deputy Sheinis.

In May and August 1997 new attacks on the shelter ensued.  Some document was fabricated according to which the present head of KhDS was removed from his post by decision of an "extraordinary emergency conference."  However the individuals Frolov and Zotov--the new president of KhDS and president of the political council (although by the charter of KhDS such a post is not provided for)--were unknown to members of this organization.  On the basis of this "decision" the unknown persons tried to take control of "property of the party," that is, the building.

The May and August events evoked an unprecedented resolution of the Europarliament in defense of Island of Hope, in which was expressed "profound concern that the municipal authorities of Moscow had undertaken attempts to close the shelter, citing rules that were, in essence, phenomena of the soviet regime and thereby deprive children of any aid and support."

Some frightful statistics

Russia lacks a law about shelters.  But the law on public associations says that they have the right to conduct "publicly useful programs" and local agencies of government should cooperate with them.  Among the priority tasks is the resolution of problems of unsupervised children and orphans.

The charitable activity of the Christian Democratic Union always have been inadequately supported by the powers that be.  Upon the decision  of a bureaucrat "to vacate or not to vacate" now depends the fate, perhaps, of the last public shelter in Moscow.    Island of Hope has been subjected to persecution by the authorities.  Why?

Russia has long been suffocating under the unresolved "children's" problem. Various data show that the country has from a half million to three million homeless chldren and 573,000 orphans, and every year these numbers are growing.

According to the state report "On the state of affairs in the Russian federation in 1996," every year about 50,000 children run away from home to escaped parental abuse, and of them 25,000 are found while 20,000 escape from orphanages.

The orphanage system is disintegrating before our eyes.  It is possible from its sad results to judge the irresponsibility of the state before little citizens who have been wronged by fate and are socially defenseless. Solitary and homeless graduates of orphanages at sixteen years of age are thrust into adult life unprepared and absolutely helpless.  As a result 40 percent of them become hopeless drunks or drug addicts, ten percent commit suicide, and only ten percent somehow manage to get themselves together.

In signing in 1990 the UN convention on the rights of the child of 1989, Russia took upon itself certain obligations for creating mechanisms for implementing this convention. However now the underage citizen of the Russian federation whose rights are violated in the family or institution has nowhere to complain.

Children's homes and institutions are practically closed institutions and the life of their residents as a whole depends on the personal qualities of the teachers and directors.  The state is unable to protect its own sons and daughters from possible violence withint these institutions (incidents of cruel and sometimes even sadistic relations with children in institutions continually appear on the pages of the newspapers).

The state has interfered with the Island of Hope shelter and has done so for a long time and with refined legal technicalities.  The latest events demonstrate this in full.  On 30 June 1998 the government of Moscow adopted a regular decree No. 500 "Concerning cancelation of the decree of the government of Moscow of 24 January 1995, No. 67, 'Concerning transfer on lease to the Christian Democratic Union of Russia of the monument of architecture on Popov Passage." It is necessary to say that the cancelled decree was not fulfilled because of overt sabotage and the lease agreement for the shelter building was not concluded.

Resolution No. 500 affirms that "KhDSR itself refused to use the given premises."  According to Ogorodnikov, this claim is a lie.  KhDSR did not receive a lease despite appeal to the arbitration court on the basis of nonfulfillment by the government of Moscow of decree No. 67.  Besides this, decree No. 500 was based on a claim that KhDSR has not carried out the reconstruction of the transferred premises.  That accusation is unjust since KhDSR did not have the right to conduct thorough repair work before the conclusion of the lease agreement and receipt of blueprints.

Alexander Ogorodnikov considers that since before the issuance of decree No. 67 KhDSR had a lease agreement for the building until 2002, which was purchased for the enormous sum of 300,000 dollars that had been contributed to the "Christian Mercy" charitable society, upon the recognition that the decree had become ineffective the lease agreement was restored.  The suit of Alexander Ogorodnikov claims:  "In adopting resolution No. 500 on 30 June 1998 the government of Moscow in violation of the requirements of article 310 of the civil code of the RF has made a unilateral refusal to fulfill its obligation to transfer the indicated building to the Christian Democratic Union of Russia which the government of Moscow had assumed on 24 January 1995 in accordance with its decree No. 67 . . . . Decree No. 500 violated the legal right of plaintif to engage in charitable activity."

The director of the shelter has asked to court to invalidate resolution No. 500.  Whether the suit will be satisfied will become known only on 15 October at the next session of the court. It is expected that the court will be attended by the prefect of the eastern district, Ulianov, representative of the Sokolniki municipal region, representative of the "Strelets" holding company (to which Moscow Property already has sold the building where the shelter now is located), and representative of the Administration for State Supervision of the Preservation and Use of Monuments of History and Culture of the City of Moscow. (tr. by PDS)