A few days after I returned home from Bulgaria in August, our Bulgarian adoption attorney emailed me with an urgent request.
Some non-governmental groups were distressed by what I had posted on this blog after seeing the extremely poor condition and neglectful treatment of many of the special-needs children in Katie’s former orphanage.
Out of their distress, they began peppering our attorney with emails and phone calls.
No, I’m sorry to say their distress was not a result of broken hearts over the condition of the children there, and they weren’t emailing and calling our attorney to learn what they could do to help rescue them or bring about justice on their behalf.
At any given time, our attorney’s workload is heavy. Since our visit to Katie’s former orphanage in August, it has only increased due to her diligent efforts on behalf of the children waiting there. The multiple emails and phone calls were keeping her from her real work.
Because of this, she kindly asked if we could please temporarily remove some specific things from the blog.
We also began to receive scathing and threatening anonymous comments from individuals who mistakenly thought that we were calling people Satan. For the record, we do believe that Satan exists, and we are not getting him confused with any human beings.
At the time we didn’t yet know that the MOJ, or Ministry of Justice, is eager to see the waiting children adopted, and that they get a lot of satisfaction out of helping those adoptions happen. They like and respect our attorney.
Contrary to the panicked threats being flung about, the Bulgarian government is not even close to shutting down the special-needs adoption program. It is one aspect of their laudable longer-term goal of closing Bulgarian orphanages and relocating the children via adoption, foster care, and very small group homes. We continue to unhesitatingly recommend the Bulgaria special-needs adoption program to many other families! It is an excellent, stable, trustworthy program. We have truly enjoyed every aspect of the Bulgarian side of our adoption!
There was another reason for us to temporarily take down the “offending” blog posts, a reason that I have not written about here on the blog at all.
The very first day our attorney and I went to the orphanage and saw the effect of the neglectful treatment, she called an international human-rights group, the Helsinki Committee. She and her contact in that group did a lot of talking over the next day and a half.
As soon as she and I got in the car that Wednesday morning in mid-August to head over to the orphanage to visit Katerina, she turned to me in great excitement and announced that the human-rights group had agreed to carry out an investigation of the orphanage.
In Bulgaria, directors of orphanages are required to be either pediatricians or family practice doctors. It is very difficult to remove them from their posts once they are established. The director of the Pleven baby house is not representative of the typical Bulgarian orphanage director! Our attorney has been in orphanages all over Bulgaria, and has met many directors who care about the kids and do their best to get them the care they need!
The director of Katie’s former orphanage has been there for years, and is directly responsible for the condition of the children there. The only way for her to be removed would be as a result of this type of investigation.
We had no idea how long this process might take, but we prayed. Prayed and did not ask our attorney. We knew she would tell us what she could when she could. We knew that she and her mom were working very hard to keep the pressure on where pressure was needed most.
It wasn’t until the November day that our attorney came to see Joe and me and Katie in our hotel room in Sofia, the afternoon before we flew Katie home to the States, that we learned the news. She had not wanted to trust it to an email.
The investigation had already taken place.
A team from the human-rights group and the government of Bulgaria went in unannounced with permission to perform a search.
They found all we had seen and more.
Katie was named in the report.
They found horrible things.
Deaths.
Attempts to cover up evidence.
Charges were being formulated against the director.
I wept to hear it!
It was real! God was really doing it!
He was really setting the children free!
I also wept with relief to know that I wasn’t being an over-dramatic crazy woman after all. I did question this at some low points during the long, silent wait, under outside pressure to keep it all pleasant. I’ve learned that it’s acceptable to talk about ignorance, but evil? Like some overheated religious fanatic?
This was more than ignorance.
They knew.
They knew.
They cared more about their own hides than about the little ones entrusted to their care.
On that Friday, our attorney also told us that the time was coming when we could “let the truth explode.”
Today that time has come.
In short, from our attorney~
“The orphanage director has been fired for systematic violations of the rules and failure to perform her duties! It is official!”
Shelley Bedford of the About A Child adoption agency stated in response, “That orphanage is NOT indicative of the level of care that most orphans in Bulgaria receive and the abuse that those children experienced directly conflicts with everything that the Bulgarian government is trying to do for the children in their care. Once they were made aware of what was happening to the children, they took immediate action and that director is GONE. Today we are thanking the Lord for those who saw the abuse and were brave enough to report it to the appropriate authorities (because many before had turned a blind eye) and that those in the Bulgarian government with the power to do so put actions behind their words and laws. I have said many times that Bulgaria’s adoption program, their policies in regards to orphan care and their pro-active government stance on adoption and orphan care is the one that all of Eastern Europe should model. There is no such thing as a “great” situation when a child is an orphan, but orphans CAN be taken proper care of while families are sought for them when those in charge DO THE RIGHT THING. Today, we rejoice that the children in this orphanage will finally start receiving the care that they deserve!!!!
Oh, friends! There are truly no words to describe the rejoicing!
If God does not act, human work is all for naught!
God has acted!!
PRAISE HIM WITH US!!!
Coming up, “The Rest of the Story: Q & A”
As soon as I saw Shelley’s post on facebook this morning I thought of you and Katie! I am praising God that things are changing in that orphanage.
Thank YOU to your attorney for speaking for these children who are unable. God has saved them just because of your getting a human rights group involved. Praise God for working through you.
This is so awesome to hear. Thanks for shining a very bright light onto not only Katie but the other children in her old orphanage! Praise God!
Praise God!!! Thank you for the update – and a huge thanks to your attorney for working so diligently on behalf of these orphans!! What a gem she is!!
Praise the Lord for shining light into the darkness!!!!!
I am praising God with you! Your Katie is beautiful, and so are you!
God is for the little children: HIS children and His will be done! God chose your attorney to bring about change. Sometimes it is easy and then there are times like what you faced where you hit the hardest of hard. Thank you for your faith and thank you God for people like your attorney!
To God be the glory. Great things HE has done. I am so glad to hear this news.
Thank you Jesus!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!! I am THRILLED to hear this.
Ya know.. I had NO idea what was going on behind the scenes but Brandon and I had a tear filled conversation after we visited your home. I asked him HOW this was happening and nothing was being done. Brandon and I felt that the neglect was criminal (from what had been shared with us and what we had witnessed.) I told him that someone had to do something.
Of course, we prayed for justice for Katie and all her little orphanage mates. We had no idea it would be like this! I cannot wait to phone Brandon and share with him!!!!!!!!!!
Praise God! (The reason I came to look here is that I saw rumblings on facebook about it, and came to see what was going on!)
Our God is an awesome God. Thank you for showing so many others that they can make a difference for these children. Katie is breathtaking and I enjoy your blog and seeing her transformation. It is truly amazing.
I couldn’t get over here fast enough after seeing the updates on facebook! Praise the Lord! I am SO happy to hear that the director is GONE! We are continuing to pray for those precious little ones that have suffered so much.
I am so thankful that some “good” has come from Katie’s criminally negligent neglect. While nothing, NOTHING, remedies all she has lost (save, perhaps, the love and food and joy she now soaks up in your home and family), at the very least, her loss saves another child from suffering the same criminal neglect at the hands of this particular director. I am humbly grateful to Him for sending your attorney to champion for Katie and her brethren. I am humbly thankful to Him for giving you Verity and setting this whole thing in motion. While my heart still breaks with sadness, this is a good thing. A step in the right direction.
tears are falling, but I am smiling ear to ear! It would take words literally written in the clouds for God to make himself more obvious right now.
This news is Awesome and accomplished only by our AWESOME GOD!!!
Amazing. Simply amazing. Thank you THANK YOU for doing what you do!!! xoxo
I JUST KNEW this was Katie’s orphanage when I saw Shelley’s post on FB, and I am PRAISING GOD with you!!!! And more than that, I am praising Him because of the LIVES of these precious children that will be saved because of this!
“YES!!”, I just shouted out, scaring my cat but with elation that justice is being done. Thank you, thank you, thank you to your attorney – for being the voice of the voiceless and for holding fast to faith and tenacity and patience, and for being the hands of Christ in the World.
Such good, good news. Thank you so much for sharing it.
Susan in Ky
Cousin to 2 from EE
p.s. I don’t have Shelley’s Facebook bookmarked – can someone share a link, please?
Rejoicing with you!!
~Please do not be so humble.~ Because you were brave enough to take a step of faith toward your daughter, Katie, God opened the doors to a closed orphanage that was full of sick and dying children. God used you and your beautiful family to help save an entire orphanage of children! You helped to shine light on the evil and the evil ran! The Lord bless you greatly for taking that step of faith! There is an entire orphanage of children who will be blessed by your faith!
Jesus loves the little children, ALL the children of the world!!!!!!!!!!!
Praise be to His Name and THANK you Mussers and your attorney for not turning the other way but being an advocate for those little orphans.
Wow- so amazing to see God’s work and work that flowed out of the life of Verity. Because of Verity so many lives will be saved and lived more fully. God bless you all and praise to the almighty!
I’m covered in chills and my eyes are filled with tears. Thank you God for protecting all the rest of those children!
why does it take an international human rights group to get the govt to check out what is happening at an orphanage in their own country? the govt should already be visiting the orphanages regularly. what happened has been happening for years. it’s not new. who knows what else is really happening? i am kind of rolling my eyes at their “quick response” since they really should have been first to know. this type of thing can only happen if they let it happen.
at least they are responding better than the chinese would, to deny that any of this happens at all.
but thank God that it’s happening now, instead of never. i pray for the day that orphanages are unnecessary.
That’s wonderful news! I’m relieved to hear that the level of neglect that Katie was subjected to is not typical in orphanages in her former country and that steps are being taken to change the conditions in that particular orphanage.
I had interpreted some of the things you’ve written on this blog to mean that children with Down syndrome were routinely starved and neglected in Eastern European orphanages, but this post makes it sound like that might not be the case, except in particularly terrible orphanages. Can you elaborate on what conditions healthy children and children with disabilities face in typical orphanages?
Praise the Lord!!! Now maybe Lina will be betetr taken care of until her Mama can get there to her also. Also praying for the new director. That he/she would have a heart for the children.
God raises up people in every generation, for all kinds of situations and times, to see with his eyes and speak his truth. What a picture of mercy and faithfulness the truth speakers in this unspeakable situation have been! Praising him with you!
Praise the Lord! My dear friend is adopting a sweet little girl from that same orphanage and God is truly working wonders. Praying that the new director makes the much needed changes and that God will continue working in that place!
Praise God! I have been praying about what surely could be done. What an AWESOME GOD we serve!!
Great and mighty is the Lord our God
Great and mighty is He!
Lift up your banner, let the anthems ring,
praises to our King!
Great and mighty is the Lord our God
Great and mighty is He!!!
Wow. Why can’t I visit your blog without some sort of tears welling up?
Praise the Lord! PRAISE BE HIS NAME!
Praise God! Happy tears at the way He providentially used willing people to rescue these children. (and the ways He prompted you to adopt Katie and led you to this orphanage so your attorney could see and call…..and people don’t believe in providence….wow)
YESS YES YES!!!!!!!!! Praise be to God
and bless those who got this done!!!!
Our God heals the broked hearted and SETS the captive FREE!!
Thank you for your part in this rescue of these precious children.
May God touch your attorney and all those involved in the other country.
Rebecca, yes, there are definitely better and worse orphanages, and sometimes within orphanages there are better and worse sections, and better and worse caregivers. BUT! Remember that all across Eastern Europe, CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS are routinely transferred from the relative safety of orphanages to ADULT MENTAL INSTITUTIONS somewhere between the ages of *4 and 8 years old!* Imagine a little, vulnerable four-year-old Verity being transferred to an Eastern European adult mental institution! Eighty percent of them will die within the first year of transfer. If the diagnosis is Down syndrome, that percentage rises to ninety-five percent. You may have read about this in my recent post titled, “Different kinds of hard: Adoption Q & A” (http://theblessingofverity.com/2011/12/different-kinds-of-hard-adoption-q-a/) in the section where I talk about the two types of Reece’s Rainbow stories. So the adoption of a child with special needs from a better orphanage may look less dramatic in some ways than the adoption from a worse one, but it is every bit as much the saving of a precious and totally helpless life. They are not statistics or aliens or defectives, they are people, just like I am a person or our children are people or you are a person! But unlike you and me and our children, they are seen as NOT VALUABLE, even to most adopting parents, and they have NO VOICE. And this is really happening to them right now.
There is so much more that I could say, but this reality should be enough to explain to anyone why our family hopes that God sends us after another child in the future. And then another…
Hallelujah! I have been praying for this news since you were there in August! I told my husband that those conditions must be a human rights violation, so I am praising the Lord now!
Wahoo!!!! That is fantastic!!
Praise you Lord!
This is great news!
Such fantastic news! What a gift, right in time for Christmas! Such a relief to know that those children will now receive better care!
As I’ve been browsing the blogs of RR families (and checking back with yours regularly; your daughter who shares my name has touched my life in a way that cannot be undone… in a way that will guide my life’s entire course). Anyways, as I was reading today I read the post about the orphanage director, and I thought of Katie immediately. I’d poked around and read enough to know where she was from, even if you hadn’t shared it recently. I searched out accounts of other families who visited Katie’s orphanage, as well as the attempts of humanitarian groups to change the conditions in orphanages such as hers. The news came to me as such a joy, such a blessing.
Truly I can say to you, I am a Christian but not one who will push my beliefs onto others. I am a Christian who believes that there are many paths to God. But I can also truly say to you that a person who allows such criminal neglect, such horrid conditions of life, for which I can scarcely come up with words… does not have God in their heart. The Devil is working in their heart, for it is cold and has let him in. These are not the people we need around our neediest children. We need people like Katie’s Baba, who have warmth, compassion, and love in their hearts. People who genuinely want the best for these precious angels. I hope that now all the children whose plight was uncovered as you worked to bring your little girl home, will get to come home with the families who said YES to them as you said YES to Katie. I pray that the process will be quick, so that these fragile children can get the care they need.
A thought that has been on my mind lately, as I see God working rapidly in the lives of these children, is that, in three years, when I’m personally ready to adopt, the landscape of adoption could be markedly changed. In the way I envision, I see many more families being touched by the stories of children like Katie coming home to be loved, and feeling the call to adopt in their own lives. Every day I see more little faces join the ‘my family found me’ page on RR. I think; in three years, they could ALL have families. Then my mind tells me that more children will follow in their footsteps, but hopefully meet with better conditions than those who went before them; that maybe, in three years, the horrible conditions from which so many of these children come, will be changed. In one way, it brings about a sadness in me, for God has opened my heart to adoption, to each of these little faces, to the *personalities* of these children shining through their circumstances. But in another way, I think, if God continues to work at this pace and in three years there are no more orphans to post on RR – I will rejoice, because it means that their pain is no more – and I will do good elsewhere, for there will always be children in need of adoption
I don’t know if you realize how much you’ve done to change the condition these children are in, not just Katie, but every one of them. By calling attention to their plight, by sharing Katie with us, you’ve helped God open more hearts, you’ve opened them up to His influence on their lives and decisions, and ultimately, you’ve played no small part in achieving what has been done for every one of those children.
Susanna, I am blessed to ‘know’ you via this blog. I am blessed to share in your stories and photos of your precious children. And I am blessed to have had my heart opened to a child who may someday need me as much as I need him or her. Thank you, for the best gift I could have received.
Oh my goodness! This is the best news!!! Thank God for his goodness and for people like your attorney, who he works thru!!!!!!!!!!!
Yet the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
therefore HE WILL RISE UP to show you compassion.
For the LORD is a God of JUSTICE BLESSED are all who WAIT FOR HIM! ~Isaiah 30:18
Standing and shouting praises!
I’ve typed and re-typed something only to erase it because I have no words. Seeing another miracle performed has left me speechless. There is so much beauty in everything Musser. I thank God for allowing this miracle to happen. I thank God your family KNEW ADOPTING JUST ONE CHILD WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE! I thank God for my neighbors who adopted children from Africa and I started following their blog…which eventually lead me to yours.
Truly a miracle – God used your dear attorney to move mountains. Thank you for having the strength to be the voice – both of you, all of you. What love you share and spread.
I read this post, I cired over the wonderful works of God and could not find the words to share with my family. I just handed the laptop to Steve and said “OH my, just read what God is doing!” So thrilled for those children!
Thank you Jesus. May he work deligently to restore all of these children. Amen!
Thank you, thank you Jesus!!!
What wonderful news to read this morning!!!!!! I had seen a little on FB yesterday, but am overjoyed to read your post!!! PRAISE THE LORD!!!!!!!
Again this is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes!!
((((Susanna))))
Wow. WOW. Tears and goosebumps and shock. Thank heaven that director is gone and hopefully done working in the childcare business. So many children will benefit. Amazing stuff!!!