The lawyers of the Moldova Institute for Human Rights (IDOM), who represented in court a minor from Nisporeni district who was placed in the psychiatric hospital by order of the mayor, are not satisfied with the punishment given to the mayor, who was recently sentenced for professional negligence with serious consequences. The lawyers are waiting for the final decision in another case, started over the subjecting of the minor to ill-treatment by the personnel of the Chisinau Clinical Psychiatric Hospital.

In a news conference at IPN, IDOM lawyer Ion Schidu related that in 2014, the mayor of Ciutesti village of Nisporeni district had guardianship of the minor aged 14, who remained without parental care. After the boy completed the year of studies at a vocational school, the mayor ordered to place the child at the Clinical Psychiatric Hospital “Codru” of Chisinau. The mayor didn’t appropriately fulfill his duties as regards the social protection of children in situations of risk and children without parents. Against the will of the minor, he ordered to place this in the psychiatric institution for treatment.

Ion Schidu said the minor was told that he goes to a summer camp for children, but when he reached the place he understood that it was a psychiatric hospital. The mayor was accused of not taking measures to have the minor discharged when the treatment period expired and this led to the extension of the forced detention period of the minor for 144 days. In the period, the teen was subject to multiple abuses by the hospital’s personnel. A separate criminal case was started over ill-treatment.

Even if the ordinary court of law acquitted the minor, following approaches made by the IDOM lawyers and the prosecutor the Appeals Court gave the mayor a suspended sentence of two years and a half and banned this from holding public posts for a period of five years. The mayor was also obliged to pay 60,000 lei damages to the minor. According to the lawyer, the boy now works.

Dumitru Russu, coordinator of the IDOM monitoring and reporting program, said that even if the situation concerning the observance of human rights in the national psychiatrist institutions has improved, the exiting requirements are not met. There is conceptual non-recognition of what human dignity is.