Pl*v*n Baby House

A few months ago, I stumbled across the blog of a woman named Susanna Musser who was in the process of adopting her nine-year-old daughter Katie from the baby house in Pl*v*n. During her first trip, Susanna witnessed horrible conditions for some of the children at her daughter's orphanage. They were starved, dirty, on their backs confined to their cribs all day. They had little to no human contact. They were on deaths door and no one seemed to care. Susanna's daughter, Katie, at 9.5 yo weighed less than 11 pounds.

The things Susanna and her Bulgarian attorney had seen at the Pl*v*n baby house could not be ignored even though there were many entities in Bulgaria who wanted this issue to be kept quiet and swept under the rug. Instead, Susanna's attorney reached out to a human rights group, the Helsinki Committee, and in conjunction with this group, the Bulgarian government undertook an unannounced search of the Pl*v*n orphanage. They discovered everything Susanna and her attorney had described and more, including deaths and attempts to cover up evidence.

In response to these horrific conditions, the Pl*v*n orphanage director has been fired for systematic violations of the rules and failure to perform her duties. There may now be hope for the 250 or so children at this large social home.

I had the pleasure of meeting Susanna and her husband in person as they were in Sofia to pick up Katie the same week we got Emilia. Susanna and I would like to help expand the Baba Program in Bulgaria as Katie's baba was the only ray of light in her life at Pl*v*n. However, we are having a very hard time getting in touch with the people who run the baba program to receive more information and share our ideas, so if anyone has the right contacts, please let me know.

Lastly, I'd like to note that the conditions found at the baby house in Pl*v*n are not indicative of the care most Bulgarian children receive at their orphanages and that, unlike some would like us to believe, turning a blind eye to these issues is not the only way to protect international adoptions from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian government is trying to do its very best for its nation's orphaned children and I do not believe that they will shut down their IA program because some of us are brave enough to report abuse and neglect experienced by any of those children. Susanna and her attorney were not the first people to witness these conditions, but they were the first to do something about it and for that I thank them.