Trud story
This article was sent to us as a scanned PDF file, making it impossible to print out and translate for some time due to the limited memory capacity of a decade-old printer. If you want the originals, email us until we get some sort of document archive up and running.
However, it is about the most comprehensive accounting of the scandal we could find in any Bulgarian online media outlet. It contains some interesting information not repeated anywhere else — perhaps the reason it has never appeared in English until now. Also, by translating it ourselves, as native English speakers we were able to render it into smoother, more natural prose, as opposed to the often-fractured parsings found on web sites like Bulgaria Online.
A little necessary background information is in order: Trud, like many European newspapers, doesn’t really pretend towards impartial news coverage. In other words, it has an agenda.
And that agenda is political. The name means “labor,” so it might not surprise you that it’s closely tied with the Bulgarian Socialist Party (basically, the respectable remnant of the former Communist Party). At that time, it was the main opposition party and parliamentary elections were imminent, so it was also stepping up criticism of the ruling Union of Democratic Forces (the opposition group from the end of the Communist era), both directly and indirectly.
(But it is also worth knowing that it is one of the highest-circulation daily newspapers in Bulgaria and one reporter has had acid thrown in her face for her efforts to expose official collusion with organized crime.)
So the article may have a somewhat tabloidy and innuendo-laden tone to an American reader (especially against the background of a common belief in countries that place lots of orphans for intercountry adoptions ... that the children are desired primarily for their organs).
The facts are there (with a few exceptions — see our notes at the end), they just have been given a particular interpretation.
ORPHANS SOLD ON SUNDAYS
In Trud, May 31, 2001, p.26-27
Translated from the Bulgarian by Daniel Case
Translator’s note:
I have been a little loose with the original at some points in this text in order to put it into language more consonant with what an English-speaking reader, particularly an American, would expect to encounter in a news story. Bulgarian journalistic stylings seem often to include a great deal more second-reference identification than an English reader would find necessary, and so I've deleted most of that as repetitive. I also have broken up some of the rather windy paragraphs in the original.
Despite that, however, some European usage and turns of phrase still persist. In these cases I decided that modifying them would be too much a distortion of the feel of the story, so I left them in to at least give a reader the flavor of the language.
As noted above, the language of the article does tend towards the colloquial and sometimes pejorative at times. The English words I've chosen may be a little softer than their Bulgarian counterparts, but again I felt it was better for the reader that I retain that sense for honesty’s sake.
In other words, any offense was intended by the original authors, not me.
A former lieutenant colonel in the Army counterintelligence service [the VKR], Valeri Kamenov, sold Bulgarian children overseas, Novinar reported.
He represented the American firm “Building Blocks Adoption Services” (BBAS), which currently has many paying clients interested in the adoption business. Kamenov selected children from the orphanages in Burgas, Buzovgrad and the Kazanlek-area village of Kurjali. For each child exported to any of eight countries, primarily the U.S.A., he received a commission of $15-20,000, the security service established.
800,000 levs [roughly $375,000], furniture worth 650,000 levs [$300,000] and five automobiles were recovered from a search of his home. He declined to explain where this money came from.
Investigators have brought a case against the directors of social establishments [i.e., orphanages] in the cities in question removed from their jobs for not preventing this. This trade in children went on as recently as February of this year, they confirmed yesterday.
But the removal of the directors of the Burgas, Kurjali and Buzovgrad orphanages has been kept confidential until this week by the order of a Sofia judge.
The head of the Burgas home, Dr. Zhivka Sabrutova, has not gone to work for two days running. But one of her colleagues said yesterday that the most frequent visitor to the orphanage was “that guy from VKR” or Valeri Kamenov. People called him “the conduit.”
It was this conduit that hooked up to Burgas with the owner of a Jeep on St. Konstantin and Elena’s Day, this May 21. Along with him was an English family taking a small child.
They had chosen a girl named Sofka, but it is unknown why they made off with two more children.
Where they were going with them, no one at the orphanage knew. Nor would they speculate, for fear of losing their jobs.
Especially on Sundays, when most workers were at home, there came the Jeeps and limousines of the connections that chose children. Employees, however, tell of how early in the morning Mondays they saw the nice Jeep parked in front of the orphanage.
And from it peered little heads, the heads of children. Who they were and to whom they were given — nobody knew. The director offered no explanation to her staff.
Yet they would say that in the orphanage, they prepared two sets of medical records on the children.
The first was incorrect, but grave — it was shown to prospective Bulgarian parents. And the second, the true records, were given to foreigners who would take them to their own countries.
And there were other outrages — assistants of the director bought children for 200-300 levs [$110-160] from Roma mothers with large families. They well would have abandoned the children without this, and in this way were able to both save the children and make a little money. Afterwards, they were sold to foreigners for lots of money.
Besides Valeri Kamenov there was another frequent visitor to the Burgas orphanage, a well-known actor in the local theater. He was Conduit Number 2 and he was accompanied by personalities from different foundations.
Dr. Sabrutova did not like her colleagues to involve themselves in her work. They were forbidden to catch a glimpse of her in the corridors when these visitors were present. As a matter of principle the doctor was known to have good connections in the MVR [The Ministry of Internal Affairs].
Over 10 years earlier, Burgas had been rocked by another adoption scandal. Then, a Belgian family, resolved to pick up their little Burgasite, pulled up to the orphanage in a brand-new car. But at that moment many Bulgarian families were waiting there for an adoption decree, and an uproar broke out among them.
It was, however, quelled; and friends of Dr. Sabrutova say she saved her skin thanks to the local MVR chief, husband of one of her assistants.
“Whatever is said at this moment, there is no clearing my name from slander and lies even if I promise the moon and the stars," said Dr. Ivelina Panova, former director of the medico-social home at Buzovgrad. She was one of the three directors charged with trafficking in children.
Despite being dismissed from her job, she remains at work. There is no one else who could keep records and take responsibility for approximately 105 children.
She would not say yesterday whether she was acquainted with Valeri Kamenov. According to the American firm [i.e., BBAS] he represented, she was one of the very best.
The head of the Mother and Child Home in Kurjali, Dr. Yordanka Gospodinova, pleaded not guilty to the charges. She refused to comment but did file an appeal against the decision to suspend her from her job
Prosecutors were informed of the scheme late last year by the National Security Service. There was a possibility that the orphanage directors breaking the law were deceiving Bulgarian families seeking to adopt.
They were given frightful information on the medical condition of children. They were led to believe that they suffered from horrible diseases to secure their refusals to adopt them.
The law requires letters of refusal from three Bulgarian prospective families before a child may be placed abroad. This happens, it is understood, following signatures from the ministries of Health and Justice.
For the time being investigators have eliminated the possibility that children were admitted to the U.S.A. with falsified medical records. The former military man Valeri Kamenov was the conduit between the directors and the adoption agency there, BBAS. Detectives believe that as many as 15-20 children were exported through this channel, although they will not have concrete information until further investigation.
“This case has reached this point with great difficulty and it would be too early to say anything,” said Stefan Stefanov, head prosecutor at the economic division, yesterday. “Any comments would prevent us from making headway and getting results.”
He did say that the former VKR lieutenant colonel Valeri Kamenov was interviewed on the occasion but refused to give more detail. There are still other versions of the story, outside of the investigation, of the illegal business in Bulgarian children.
According to some in the West, childless couples were charged $40,000 or more to obtain a child. They came from far away to adopt children more cheaply in Eastern Europe, where the service was offered with no intermediary firm
But just who is this American company [BBAS, again] showing such a lively interest in our orphans? Two of its addresses were not secret ... they can be found on the Internet. Through the first anyone wishing to learn about children available for adoption may do so.
But this appears after an instruction to send an inquiry via email, for which correspondents must include their names and countries. At the second website are displayed over 100 children, who have already been adopted through the same firm from overseas.
For example: “Kaylie, daughter to Kim and Al, was adopted from Eastern Europe.” But the country is not mentioned. Other children whose country of origin is shown are Russian.
In January of this year the Times of London revealed that Bulgarian children were being sold for $16,000 over the Internet by a different company. Our countrywomen, according to the newspaper, were half as cheap than their American counterparts.
And the American firms offered to arrange immigration papers quickly for a fee of $1,000. But to get to where they had to pay this tax, a long trip was in the offing. For the first stop was for the necessary children, in custody of the orphanage directors.
–Trud staff.
There are two short sidebars of interest. The first is accompanied by a picture of Dr. Sabrutova and says:
This is not the first time Dr. Sabrutova, head of the Burgas Mother and Child Home, has been implicated in a scandal involving adopted children. Some of her colleagues refused to discount the possibility that she was involved in the child-trafficking ring she profited from. No matter that she lived in a modest house on Asen Zlatarov Street.
The other one gives some statistics on waiting children and domestic adoptions in Bulgaria:
The 35,123 Bulgarian children abandoned by their parents is the most of any European country. They are placed in 31 “Mother and Child” orphanages run by the Ministry of Health and 58 specialized institutions run by the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy.
There are about 1,400 adoptions annually from the Mother and Child Homes, where toddlers are placed. With great difficulty, 50 children are placed from the other homes, because there are almost no Bulgarians waiting to adopt children over the age of two.
No one wants to adopt Roma children, and abandoned children make up 80 percent of those in the orphanages.
Adoptive parents from Canada, the U.S.A., Scandinavia, Italy and other countries have no reservations about the children’s ethnic background, as long as they're healthy. They have agreed to adopt children even if they suffer from serious physical or mental birth defects.
According to unofficial statistics 240 Bulgarian families have adopted newborns and infants under a year old. The wait can take from one to five years. Nearly 280,000 Bulgarian families are childless.
Through email, we later learned that one of the initial reporters who wrote the stories this one draws on, in the Standart and Novinar admitted to some errors later when discussing their work on TV: namely, that Valeri had not served in counterintelligence as initially reported, and that the value of the furniture in his house may have been overestimated.
Valeri also later claimed, in the media again, that the cash was his wife’s share of the sale of some property in Germany she inherited. OK, if you say so ... that’s his story and he’s stuck to it since.
Nevertheless, there are some interesting tidbits here.
Most obvious is the allegation that Dr. Sabrutova, to assure a constant supply of children to sell, had her assistants go around and buy children from Roma (Gypsy) mothers with large families (For a couple of hundred bucks? Wow! Now there’s the real scandal. Even the poorest Romanian parents reportedly get at least a thousand). This was not mentioned anywhere else.
We also had not heard about this earlier scandal involving her and Burgas, nor the official connections that got her out of it. One begins to wonder just how much she personally was getting out of this.
Dr. Panova, alone among the three directors, has continued to protest her innocence. Some people at adoption agencies in the U.S. that continue to place children from Buzovgrad believe her; others still have their doubts (But we should say that according to one other person we heard from, the entire scheme was Dr. Gospodinova’s idea and Panova was a rather passive player, perhaps not even benefiting financially. The jury is still out).
Lastly, we can corroborate the information about the orphanage and Valeri’s m.o. On her first trip, Elizabeth was indeed taken to Burgas on a Sunday, as were others. Our pickup trip for Anguel, similarly, was on a Monday morning and we left Sofia at about 5 a.m. or so to make Burgas by 9 ... about the time workers must have been starting their day.
Dr. Sabrutova also impressed ourselves and several other parents/visitors as running the orphanage like a tight ship. It’s entirely credible that she would have kept the staff away from any area of the orphanage where she was entertaining foreigners interested in a child ... we ourselves got that impression when we were there.