The organization CCF Moldova – Child, Community, Family and its British partner Hope and Homes for Children are concerned about the tendentious reporting by a series of features on the closure of the boarding school in Grinauti village of Ocnita district, produced by NTV Moldova channel. In a statement, the organization says the journalists and the interviewed persons related only a part of the reality, which was taken out of the context of the reforms done by the Government, in accordance with the European and international standards and the provisions on human rights. CCF – Moldova said the boarding school in Grinauti was closed in May 2015, the 80 children being reintegrated into their biological or in substitutive families, IPN reports.
“We consider that the protagonist of one of the features about the boarding school in Grinauti was presented publicly by violating the journalist’s ethical norms. This girl was taken home by her sister last January, before the boarding school was closed. So, her return home does not have direct connection with the closure of the institution,” says the statement.
Moreover, CCF – Moldova said the girl’s return home is closely connected with the abuses committed in the boarding school. This was the reason why the family decided to take her home. “The confessions of a number of children and their relatives about the abusive behavior of the institution’s director made us to file an application to the Ocnita Prosecutor’s Office, while the school’s former director Veaceslav Demciuc, who in the feature says that the boarding school should be urgently reopened, is now under investigation. The case was sent to court and the first hearing was scheduled for February 23,” said the organization.
CCF – Moldova invites the journalists to collect facts and present the information in a balanced way, after consulting all the available sources, and to provide the complete information, without taking it out of context. It calls on all the other members of society to help the deinstitutionalized children to integrate into the school and community life, without discriminating them or pleading for their isolation.
