specific needs of children and elderly left behind as a ... - IOM Moldova

CHAPTER I
but is regularly sick. She stays in the hospital for 2-3 weeks with a cold and chest
infection and when she comes back she has to work hard” (FG_ EC_rural).
Environmental conditions that some children left behind have to face
are strongly influenced by improper practices of people who take care of
them. Unfortunately, in our society the cases of adults abusing children
physically, mentally or sexually are frequent. It is indubitable that such
situations have a significant impact ona child’s health. Besides the cases
that have been reported recently in the mass media, the research disclosed
other tragic stories. One of the experts involved in the focus-group discussion
stated: “The mother was abroad for 14 years and left a girl and a boy
with her co-habitant who was regularly abusing her sexually. The girl was in
the 12 th grade. Everybody in school knew about it, the priest, the community
but everybody was keeping their mouths shut – “maybe somebody else will
say it, not me”... While the child continued to suffer” (FG_ EC_urban).
There are obvious physical and mental consequences in the case of another
12 year old girl sexually abused by her stepfather half a year after her mother
left to work abroad (III_C_24).
The state of physical exhaustion and permanent physical abuse from the father
caused serious health problems for another 17 year old girl: “It is very
hard especially when my father comes late and he’s drunk and he beats me,
it’s hard... I am very tired, I always feel sick. I have headaches and my kidney
hurts. I work a lot in the yard, I pick up buckets, I do not have time to rest.”
According to a friend, the teenager made two suicide attempts because of
her exhausting lifestyle (III_C_22).
In addition to unfavourable psycho-emotional conditions that children
face after their parents’ departure to work they often have to live in unsanitary
conditions with poor levels of hygiene. The study unveils three
causal groups that, once parents are gone, threaten the proper development
of children in a healthy environment:
1. When leaving, parents place their children in families with poor
material and unsanitary conditions or people with reduced capacity
to take care of children (elderly, alcoholics, ill persons). Such conditions
may endanger the health of lonely children.
This situation is determined in the case of a 15 year old boy who lives only
with his grandmother and he says: “My grandmother gets drunk once in a
while... about 2-3 times a month” (III_C_20).
In this context, we mention the case of an 11-year-old girl, who together
with two younger brothers was left in the care of their father and grandfather
aged 74. The interviewer describes the living conditions of these
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