Odesa Oblast police say they have launched an investigation into alleged cases of child abuse in a local orphanage, Svitanok (Sunrise).
According to the message published on Odesa Oblast National Police website on Aug. 6, the investigation started after a five-year-old girl, an orphan living at Svitanok, was filmed on Aug. 5 complaining about numerous cases of humiliation and violence children there suffer at the hands of orphanage staff.
“They beat us in the face, belly with their hands,” the girl was said in a video posted on social media.
Viktoria Lazarchuk, the deputy head of the Odesa Oblast National Police juvenal prevention department, said that the orphanage head and half of the staff had resigned after the video was posted.
Odesa Oblast police officer Zoya Melnik, who filmed the video and posted it on social media the same day, said that a girl was covered in bruises, and her hair and clothes dirty.
After talking to a girl, Melnik spoke with other children at Svitanok and discovered that it was not only the staff abused and humiliated young children, but also the older kids.
“As I understood, the kids frequently run away from the orphanage to beg for money in the streets,” Melnik wrote.
The officer said she decided to publish the video on Facebook because “the head of the Odesa Oblast is ignoring the problem.”
After Melnik’s post went viral, Odesa Oblast police juvenal department opened a criminal case on alleged child abuse, and Odesa Oblast Governor Maksym Stepanov reacted as well. Stepanov, along with Odesa Oblast National Police Chief Dmytro Golovin, said they would take the investigation under their personal control.
Lazarchuk said that the police had previously registered several cases related to children from Svitanok going missing or running away from the orphanage.
“But we must understand that the orphanage is not a place kids chose to stay voluntarily. We investigated all the circumstances that forced them to run away, and there were no complaints about child abuse in Svitanok before,” Lazarchuk said in a video message posted by Odesa Oblast police on Aug. 6.
The Kyiv Post tried to contact Svitanok orphanage for comment but received no response.
Not the first case
Unfortunately, the Svitanok case is not unique: Ukrainian Human Rights Ombudswoman Lyudmila Denisova on Aug.3 wrote on Facebook about another case of child abuse at another orphanage – in the town of Rozhyshche, Volyn Oblast.
“Locals heard children screaming in the orphanage and called the police. But a duty worker didn’t let the police inside,” Denisova wrote.
After the police and human rights activists got in, the orphans said that they were screaming for help as the duty worker had been violently beating them that day.
Volyn Oblast Prosecutor’s Office opened a criminal investigation into the alleged child abuse at Rozhyshche orphanage, and soon discovered that a child had run away from the orphanage back in May, but the staff hadn’t informed the police or even tried to search for the missing orphan themselves.
After Denisova’s office investigated the situation at the orphanage, even more horrifying evidence of abuse became known: More than 10 orphans had bruises and other marks from repeated violent acts on their bodies, as well as bloodstains on their clothes.
“Some girls complained that the brother of the orphanage director was touching them. They complained to a female staff member, but she just said that they were making it all up,” Denisova wrote on Aug. 3.
Leonid Matviychuk, the principal of the orphanage, denied all the accusations in a comment made to Ukraine’s TSN news website on Aug.3.
He said that the orphans were “difficult kids, who frequently attack the orphanage staff, and once a duty officer even had his ribs broken in such an attack.”
More than 106,000 children live in some 750 orphanages all over Ukraine, Mykola Kuleba, the Children’s Ombudsman of Ukraine, told the Radio Liberty news website in September 2017.
