Five people have been arrested in connection with alleged ill-treatment in a social project in Romania. This was reported by the unit of the Public Prosecutor's Office (DIICOT) in Bucharest, which specializes in organized crime.
The arrested are the German head of the facility, who is considered the prime suspect, and four Romanians. They are said to have exploited in the co-financed from German state funds home in the northern Romanian Oberwischau (Viseu de Sus) adolescents "in conditions of true slavery" wrote the investigators.
The project promises the "rehabilitation" of socially conspicuous, difficult or delinquent children and adolescents through activities and with psychological support.
"Barbaric methods"
The head of the "Maramures project" is accused of, inter alia, deprivation of liberty and trafficking, said his lawyer Ioan Sas the news agency AFP.
The allegations against the accused are far-reaching: the young people were treated "with barbaric methods" at the farms where they had to work. They were beaten and stretched together with animals in front of the car. Disobedience had been punished with food deprivation and a sort of solitary confinement that could take several weeks. They have withheld medication and contact with the outside world, as well as school attendance. Often they have been forced to persevere in the freezing cold.
How many teens were affected overall, has not been communicated. According to the Romanian youth welfare office, during a search this week, 20 children and adolescents were in the facility, a remote farm. Four of them have since been transferred to the care of the Romanian child protection agency.
According to the lawyer, the other children and adolescents are still housed in the facility: "It continues to function normally," Sas said. A Romanian employee of the project had denied any allegations on request.
Federal Foreign Office looks after consular persons consularly
The arrested German had acted "on the basis of personal pedagogical convictions", wrote the prosecutor. In addition, there is a suspicion that the operators of this home had used funds illegal. In two house searches have been found more than 145,000 euros in total, the origin of the suspects could not explain.
The case is known to the Foreign Office. The German consulate in Timisoara, Timisoara, is in charge of consular matters for the arrested, according to a request in Berlin.
According to the local paper "Banatul azi", the investigation took place after one of the youth fled the home and alerted the authorities. The maltreatment occurred in the period 2014 to August 2019, according to investigators.