- Ruth Clegg
- Producer, Disability, in Ukraine
image source, bbc news
Vasyl was sent to an institution when he was five years old.
It is a hot day and although Vasyl Velychko has been tied to a bench for hours, no one who hears his screams will untie him.
The 18-year-old is one of the thousands of disabled people who live in orphanages in Ukraine. The BBC gained access to five institutions and found widespread abuse and mistreatment, including restrained adolescents and adults lying in cots for years.
Human rights investigators say that Ukraine should not join the European Union until it closes these institutions.
Before the war with Russia, the Ukrainian government said it would reform the system.
*Warning: some details of this story may offend readers.
No choice?
Vasyl, who has epilepsy and learning disabilities, lives in an orphanage on the outskirts of the city of Chernivtsi, in southwestern Ukraine.
The teenager is wearing a diaper. He rocks back and forth, intermittently emitting a long, high-pitched scream, but the staff don’t react.
They are tired, overworked and it is clear that it is easier – and accepted – to keep an eye on children and young people by holding them down.
An influx of evacuees from the east has put more pressure on the system, but the way people like Vasyl are treated in Ukraine’s institutions is before the Russian invasion.
Next to Vasyl lies another young man. His hands are tied with the sleeves of his sweater. His vacant eyes gaze into the distance and a puddle of urine has pooled beneath him.
These disabled people are among the 100,000 children and youth who live in Ukrainian orphanages, but many of them are not even orphans.
Most have families but end up living in these places due to a lack of community support and services.
Vasyl’s family, for example, felt they had no choice but to give him up.
They tried to get a diagnosis when he was very young and even consulted a UK neurosurgeon to help him get the support he needed.
But a poor health and social care system meant they had trouble keeping him at home, as he has regular seizures and can become aggressive.
In the end, when he was five years old, the local authorities told them that an institution was the best place for him.
“It’s very difficult being a parent of a disabled child,” says Vasyl’s mother, Maryna, as she gently holds her son’s hand. She doesn’t question or seem disturbed by the fact that Vasyl is tied up.
image source, bbc news
“A father’s heart is always with his son,” says mother Maryna, pictured with Vasyl and his father Illya.
“I am proud to be Ukrainian, but we need more support from the state.
“If we lived in the UK, our son would probably live with us.”
She says that the first few years visiting Vasyl were difficult. “We would come home crying,” she says. But now they have learned to live with the situation.
Ukraine has the largest number of children living in institutions in Europe.
They are victims of a Soviet-era system that made it easy for parents to turn their children over to the state.
Many in Ukrainian society believed, and still do, that disabled children receive better care in an institution.
Neighboring Romania has closed many of its orphanages since the children were found to be living in appalling conditions following the 1989 revolution.
But in Ukraine, before the Russian invasion in February, about 250 children a day were being placed in an institution.
The network of almost 700 facilities receives more than US$120 million a year from the State, and employs 68,000 people.
The Ukrainian government has promised a series of reforms in recent years, recognizing that its system of institutionalization needs to change.
Until the war brought the plans to a halt.
The government had begun moving thousands of “orphans” into family-style group homes. But people with disabilities are excluded from these plans.
The Ukrainian government did not respond to a request for comment on this matter.
A decades old problem
Eric Rosenthal, executive director of the human rights group Disability Rights International (DRI), says disabled people are now commodities in “disability factories.”
He has visited hundreds of these facilities and says he is always shocked and devastated by what he finds.
We are shown another institution, about an hour’s drive from Vasyl’s orphanage, where disabled men in their 20s and 30s live in baby cots.
image source, bbc news
A man in his 30s whose limbs have sprained due to his life in a crib.
There is a man in his 30s whose limbs have sprained due to his life in a crib from which he rarely gets out, not even to eat. The staff spoon-feed them through the bars.
Eric says that a man’s crooked, bony ankles and protruding ribs are a sign of “lifelong malnutrition.”
He says the war cannot be used as an excuse for such terrible care, as disabled people have been neglected for decades.
Standing next to the man, Eric says, “He’s slowly dying in this bed.”
This child’s protruding ribs show malnutrition
The wooden beds are lined up side by side, row after row. The brightly painted walls collide with the desolation of the lives of these young people.
They’re not trying to break free, they’re just desperate for some attention.
In the next room, Oleh has been lying in bed for decades. The 43-year-old man was sent to this institution when he was a young child. He has cerebral palsy, a condition that affects movement and coordination.
With proper care, people with cerebral palsy can live full and independent lives.
image source, bbc news
Oleh even feeds lying on his bed
Oleh understands everything about the world around him, and his face lights up when he sees Halyna Kurylo, one of the DRI investigators.
He recognizes her from his last visit, seven years ago.
Oleh greets her with a warm smile and introduces us. She expresses surprise and excitement when she finds out that we are journalists, smiling and asking our names.
Holding her gaunt arm, Halyna says it’s clear from her poor physical condition that she spends most of her time in bed.
“I just worry about the potential that he hasn’t tapped into, because he’s been here his whole life,” says Halyna.
Before the war, Ukraine was already one of the poorest countries in Europe.
Poverty and lack of support for struggling families contribute to the mindset that these facilities are necessary.
That is what the director of the Oleh institution, Mykola Sukholytkyi, believes.
“It’s better for children with disabilities to live here than with their families,” he says.
“Instead of being in dysfunctional families where they can be neglected, without food, here they can benefit from all the essentials.”
Eric says that the billions of dollars of international aid that was pumped into Ukraine during the war should also be used to close orphanages, help families care for their children, and build a community that accepts disability.
“We know orphanages don’t need to exist,” he says.
He fears that some of the money will be spent on upkeep of institutions, and that after the war is over, “international attention to Ukraine will end and the orphanages will remain as they are.”
After a long, hot day in the yard of his orphanage, it’s time for Vasyl to say goodbye to his parents.
He’s still tied up. He’s still screaming.
Maryna says as she leaves that she is “very grateful to the institution.”
But he adds: “Our children with disabilities should not be hidden from society, behind these high walls.”
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