Freeing disabled people from Soviet-era institutions

Hey there,

Before I get started, I have a favour to ask. TBIJ is running its annual audience survey this month. If you’re enjoying the Spark, letting me (and my bosses) know would be very much appreciated. Or, if you want me to change something, or get more from TBIJ, it’s your opportunity to say so!

Now, onto this week’s story. Earlier this year a really shocking investigation came out in Moldova from the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN) and Ziarul de Gardă.

Over the course of two years Daniela Calmis went undercover and documented the treatment of people with physical and mental disabilities who were housed in a “placement centre” in Badiceni, in the north-east of Moldova.

What she found was horrifying and deeply upsetting. Residents of this Soviet-era relic of an institution were living in horrendous conditions and being systematically abused and exploited by staff members.

One resident, Mihail Ghimpu, had been there for more than 45 years. He was living in a storage room with no windows or ventilation.

Another resident, who was kept anonymous in the story, said she had been forced to work by the centre’s staff. She’d had to take cattle out to graze for long days in all weather conditions, and was “paid” in cigarettes. When she tried to refuse she was threatened with punishment. In one conversation, she told Daniela that she “wants to die soon”.

Other residents had in fact died while doing manual labour for the staff members.

When Daniela first started working on the story in 2023, she told me she “faced a lot of mistrust”. The residents had always been treated so badly by everyone around them that it took her a lot of time to convince them that she was different. “I’m very grateful that, in the end, they did grant me that trust,” she said.

Some of the issues at the centre had already been documented by the national ombudsman and international institutions, but media coverage was very rare and limited to individual cases. The human stories had not been told. Uncovering these stories, in countless interviews with residents and in documents, made Daniela “furious”.

The investigation brought change, fast. In the days and weeks that followed publication Moldova’s ministry of labour and social protection launched its own investigation into the Badiceni centre. It sanctioned more than 20 employees and suspended three, including the director.

Later that month Alexei Buzu, the relevant minister, took responsibility for the serious abuses by staff found in the investigation. He promised to rethink the entire residential system for people with disabilities in Moldova.

Daniela was genuinely and pleasantly surprised. She said: “I’m incredibly glad I was able to make them acknowledge that the reality is far harsher than what they had previously perceived, and that I was able to motivate them to take action.”

The ombudsman also conducted unannounced visits to the centre. It confirmed that there were reasonable grounds for suspicion of forced labour and exploitation, as well as verbal abuse and violence, and referred the case to the public prosecutor.

And for the residents themselves? Four victims of abuse were transferred to another placement centre to avoid safety risks. Daniela keeps in touch with them. They recently told her that, with staff from the new centre, they had gone out to a restaurant and visited a zoo for the first time in their lives.

“I’ve been working as a lawyer in Moldova for 18 years, specialising in protecting human rights. I specialised in the protection of victims of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment, victims of medical malpractice, and vulnerable persons – including those with intellectual and physical disabilities institutionalised in residential care centers or psychiatric hospitals.

At the end of 2024, I had suspended my legal licence and worked as Head of Examination of Complaints and Protection of Persons Directorate at the People’s Advocate Office. This allowed me to continue working on human rights issues, but at a different and more powerful level.

This is around the time when Daniela first called me. She got in touch knowing that I have extensive experience in monitoring placement centers and psychiatric hospitals. At that time, I was also representing the interests of a former resident of a placement center at the European Court of Human Rights.

We recommended that she file a complaint at the ombudsman’s office, and that we would investigate the case. The case that Daniela told us about referred to physical and psychological abuse against a woman with a disability. She was being forced to work without being paid. The resident had to graze the cows from a cattle farm and the owner of the farm offered her only shelter and products such as cigarettes, alcohol or coffee.

We undertook our own visit to the center and afterwards we decided to refer the case to the general prosecutor’s office and the regional prosecutor’s office, requesting the initiation of a criminal investigation. As a result, a criminal case was opened on trafficking of human beings for the purpose of labour exploitation. The criminal investigation led to the arrest of the director of the Badiceni centre and two other employees.

The women with disabilities, along with other three people, were recognised as injured parties. Thanks to the ombudsman’s intervention, they were offered protection and psychological services by removing them from the Badiceni Centre to other social protection centres.

This investigation has had a huge media impact because, for the general public, the daily life and living conditions of people in these institutions was not known. People watched the investigation, commented on it and shared it. It raised awareness on respect for the rights of people with disabilities, and prompted calls for changing abusive and discriminatory practices, as well as demands for those responsible to be punished. Such investigations are always welcome because they bring state policies for the protection of vulnerable groups to the forefront. Transparency always contributes to the prevention of similar cases.

Sometimes investigative journalism, if it’s based on objective facts, has a much more extensive and significant impact than official approaches to the authorities. Daniela’s story informed our society about abusive practices happening in the residential centers that lawyers and the ombudsman have known about for years – and they had taken lots of official action to stop them. But sometimes, official and formal interventions do not change the authorities’ response to this type of abuse.

If we combine the legal powers of the ombudsman in investigating and confirming the violations, with video investigations confirming the facts, the chances that the authorities will intervene and stop all types of abuse and implement preventive measures grow significantly.”

I am so impressed by the tenacity and doggedness of Daniela’s investigation. And hearing from Olesea about how investigations support her work makes me proud to be working on driving impact from TBIJ’s stories. 

Much of our work also covers institutions that should be doing more to protect the vulnerable people entrusted to their care – take our story on the UK council that spent over £500,000 to house a vulnerable 10-year-old boy in an illegal children’s home for four months, for example. If you can, please support us with a few pounds a month and join our brilliant community of Bureau Insiders:

Take care,