Women’s rights center: Children of femicide victims were handed to abusers, the institutions had been informed

The Women’s Rights Center (CŽP) had warned the competent institutions as early as the beginning of 2022 about suspicions that the foster parents from Cetinje, recently arrested for domestic violence and human trafficking, were abusing the three children entrusted to them, whose mother had been a victim of femicide, the NGO announced, as the public service RTCG reports.

The CŽP said it expresses its strongest protest and indignation over the police information that the foster parents of three minor children have been arrested in Cetinje, suspected of human trafficking and domestic violence.

According to the police, the suspects physically abused the children from January 2022, beat them with their hands and wooden objects and forced them to hide the violence from officials of the Center for Social Work, while the eldest child was allegedly forced into heavy physical labor for profit and denied schooling.

These are children whose mother was a victim of femicide and who, after that trauma, were placed in a foster family, which was later also entrusted with their guardianship.

“Instead of protection and safety, the children, according to the police allegations, endured almost five years of renewed violence and exploitation — in a family chosen, licensed and supervised by the state,” the CŽP said.

The organization stressed that it had warned the competent authorities in February and March 2022, only a few weeks after the children were placed: on February 23, 2022 it informed the Social Inspection, two days later it also sent a written letter, while on March 2 of that year it sent urgent requests for action to the competent centers for social work as well.

“In those letters we clearly said that we have information that the children are inadequately dressed and cared for, that the foster parents beat them, that the children are frightened, that before visits by expert staff the foster parents prepare them and tell them what to say, which is why the children do not dare to tell what is happening to them,” the CŽP statement said, quoted by RTCG.

The NGO said that at the time it had also warned that the competent authorities knew that this family was on the records of the Center for Social Work, because the Office for Combating Human Trafficking had in 2015 reported the suspicion that the foster parent had attempted to marry off his then-minor daughter.

The CŽP demanded that the factual situation be established urgently, that the children be spoken to separately from the foster parents, and that their placement with relatives on their mother’s side be considered.

The CŽP said the competent Center for Social Work replied on March 3, 2022 that during visits the children “were always found in an adequate condition — properly dressed, cared for and in a good mood” and that they “express satisfaction with their stay in the family,” and that the foster parents had been issued a license after an assessment of eligibility and proof that they had no criminal convictions.

“Today the police say that since January 2022, that is, from the very beginning of the placement, the foster parents forced the children to hide the violence precisely from the officials of the Center for Social Work. This is exactly what we warned about more than four and a half years ago. The institutions had been informed,” the CŽP said.

They demanded that the state prosecution expand the investigation and establish the possible responsibility of all officials who took part in licensing the foster parents, placing the children, granting guardianship and supervision, as well as of those who acted on the warnings of 2022.

They demanded from the Ministry of Social Welfare, Family Care and Demography that it urgently carry out extraordinary supervision over the work of the competent centers for social work and publish the findings, while protecting the children’s data.

“We demand accountability from all those who handed the children into their hands and did not want to listen to the warnings we sent in time,” the CŽP concluded, according to RTCG.