«The eyes of a child never lie»: human rights activist says that the Children's Home in Mykolaiv hid a girl who was abducted from «Cities of Kindness»

A child was kidnapped from the crisis centre «City of Kindness» and hidden in the Mykolaiv Regional Children's Home for over a year. Instead of rehabilitation, the girl was kept in isolation, tied to a chair. And the authorities did everything to prevent the child from being handed over to those who really love her.

Inna Miroshnychenko, a human rights activist for orphans and a lawyer, said this in an interview, according to NikVesti.

She is convinced that the staff of the Mykolaiv Regional Children's Home do not value their work, hate children and are not afraid of being held accountable for their actions.

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«They say: «We are saving these children, they will not be better off anywhere else». No — you are crippling these children,» Inna Miroshnychenko is convinced.

According to her, in 2022, children from the Mykolaiv orphanage were evacuated with their staff to the crisis centre «City of Kindness» in Chernivtsi. There, the Mykolaiv staff were immediately told that it was forbidden to beat children, humiliate them or behave inappropriately.

«They didn't like it, and they didn't like the fact that children were adopted very quickly from there,» says Inna Miroshnychenko.

According to her, the founder of the Centre, Marta Levchenko, and her team are doing everything to ensure that children who have status are placed in families, and that children without status are quickly granted it. There are still children with complex diagnoses who are not really adopted.

The human rights activist said that one such girl, who was in the «City of Kindness», was abducted at night and returned to Mykolaiv. They searched for her for a year, but, as it turned out later, she had been in the Mykolaiv orphanage all along, where she was actually hidden.

Children in the Palliative Care Centre are kept tied up in front of the TV. Photo by the Ombudsman's Office

«And one such girl was abducted at night. She was kidnapped and returned to Mykolaiv. And Marta spent a whole year looking for this child. She wrote requests wherever possible and no one could answer her. Because the Mykolaiv local authorities are responsible for this child, they sent her far away, but literarily,» said Inna Miroshnychenko.

There, the girl did not receive rehabilitation, was tied to a chair, or simply lay in a playpen and was in complete isolation.

«In the photo, she was lying in a bodysuit for five years with her legs bent, because it was squeezing her all the time, tied up. When we asked to untie her, they put her in a playpen and she just looked at the ceiling. She was deeply unhappy. And people talked about her too: «She is a useless invalid», the human rights activist said.

After a six-month struggle with the Mykolaiv authorities, the girl was returned to «City of Kindness». There she changed beyond recognition.

«Marta Levchenko, a saintly person, made sure that Natalka moved to «City of Kindness». Six months of struggle. I was there last week, it's impossible to recognise, they are two different children. This is the child whose eyes shine, I talk to her, she is so happy, smiling. Adults can lie, but a child's eyes can never lie,» said Inna Miroshnychenko.

She stressed that it is beneficial for the authorities to keep children in special institutions because they can write off the costs, while many families in Ukraine are ready to raise such children but are not given the opportunity.

«A whole bunch of people used administrative, governmental, and media resources to «rescue one child from the clutches of the» regional authorities. Because they fought for it: «'One child will be taken away here, another child will be taken away there, who will we write off the money to?», Inna Miroshnychenko is convinced.

Scandal in the reorganised baby home in Mykolaiv

On 3 March, it became known that the monitoring group of the Ombudsman's Office, together with NGOs, conducted an inspection of children's educational institutions in Mykolaiv region and found gross violations of children's rights. The children were fixed with belts to chairs and strollers, and a six-month-old baby suffered swelling from «tying». In other institutions, children were given expired medicines, did not receive medical care and had limited access to basic services.

On the same day, Inna Miroshnychenko, an orphan rights activist and lawyer who is a member of the Ombudsman's Monitoring Group, showed the conditions in which children live in the reorganised Centre for Medical Rehabilitation and Palliative Care in Mykolaiv (Regional Children's Home). She actually showed the children tied to chairs, who are not allowed to go for walks and are forced to spend time watching TV.

The human rights activist said that according to the conditions, 89 staff members are supposed to take care of the children. However, as it turned out from the data of the Ombudsman's Office monitoring group, only two employees were looking after the children. She called the conditions in which the children were kept inhumane.

It should be noted that in April 2024, the Centre for Medical Rehabilitation and Palliative Care was merged with the Mykolaiv Regional Children's Hospital. At the time, this decision was explained by the need to «protect» the institution from lack of funding.

We would also like to remind you that this is not the first scandalous case involving the Mykolaiv Oblast Children's Hospital. Back in July 2023, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the hospital was in poor condition during his visit to Mykolaiv.

In one of the wards, Volodymyr Zelenskyy noted that the room was not adapted for a comfortable stay. In particular, the ward lacked curtain rods, curtains, and air conditioning.