The problem of a children's home

Press release:

The problem of a children's home

AJB-3091/2012

Máté Szabó Commissioner for Fundamental Rights concluded that the children's fundamental right to protection and care is violated if the experts caring about them fail to signal or delay their signaling that there is a suspicion of sexual abuse of the children entrusted to their care. The same fundamental right is directly endangered if the legal representation of the children interrogated as a witness is fulfilled by a person having an employment dependency relationship with the head of the institution suspected of committing the crime.

 Last autumn the police initiated proceedings against the director of a children's home on suspicion of sexual abuse. According to the complainant turning to the ombudsman the situation of the children concerned is not to be further tolerated. In recent years, several children indicated that the director gives hints of sexual content and occasionally touches them in intimate areas. The children had not received real help. The adults being aware of the suspicion of the abuse attempted to solve the problem among themselves, and spoke to the director. However, they only resorted to the institution maintainer last autumn. According to the Commissioner for fundamental rights, the children's fundamental right to protection and care is violated by the failure of the obligation set out in the Child Protection Act to signal and cooperate and the signaling delay of the suspicion of the abuse. In the Commissioner's view, the proceeding of an expert (psychologist, children's right representative, tutor/guardian advisor) would have been possible already after the first signal of the child.   

The children's guardian who is the director of the institution resigned from his office of guardianship when the investigation started and the guardianship authority appointed the vice director as the guardian. The vice director has been in a working relationship with the suspected director, he was inferior to the director. Consequently, due to the inferiority the conflict of interest could not be excluded between the children and the person fulfilling their legal representation which could have directly jeopardized the children's right to protection and care. In the Commissioner's view, it was reasonable to appoint an ad-hoc guardian independent from the director of the children's home for the legal representation of the children concerned.  

Máté Szabó asked the minister of human resources to raise the attention of the child care services workers to the significance of the fulfillment of the obligation set out in the Child Protection Act to signal and to cooperate. In addition, the Prosecutor General was asked to present his report to the investigating prosecutor organs and those responsible for the supervision of legality of the investigation under his supervision.

The police terminated the investigation against the director in the summer of 2012, since the crime could not be established.

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