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ST. PAUL — “We used to take the daily bath outside, even in winter. All we had to eat was plain bread and water.” That was all Annie could remember about the first 6 years of her life, spent in a miserable orphanage in Campulung, Romania.

Oh, and one more thing: a song. She hummed it without knowing the meaning of the words or where she learned it. I immediately realized that it was the “Song of Joy,” sung by the Romanians in the streets of every major city during and after the fall of the communist dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu, in December 1989.

Annie was one of several hundred Romanian kids who were brought to Minnesota to live a better life, in a loving home.

Dr. Megan Gunnar, principal investigator of the International Adoption Project at the Institute for Child Development in Minneapolis, said that “between 1990 and 1998, the period we surveyed, there were 212 Romanian children adopted into Minnesota.” There were dozens more orphans adopted until 2001, when Romania banned international adoptions.  

Jennifer Augustson, a single American woman in Minnesota, adopted Annie — Anne Karin Ionela — 15 years ago. Augustson went all the way to Romania and paid a total of $12,000 for all the adoption formalities. After she died some years later, Annie was left in the care of Jennifer’s sister in the city of Willmar, Minn., 100 miles west of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

Jennifer Augustson and her daughter, Annie, posed for a family photo 10 years after Annie was adopted from Romania.

Annie Augustson’s adjustment was fantastic. She quickly learned to speak English, made new friends and by the age of 21 was studying to become a nurse.

Her biological parents lived on a small diary farm in Romania outside the city of Campulung. They gave up all their children for adoption and Annie didn’t keep in touch with them, although she planned to visit her native country one day.

“I liked my father but my mother was an alcoholic,” she said.

Although sad, her story was not unique. According to the Institute for Child Development in Minneapolis, most of the East European children adopted in the United States came from alcoholic parents. Some of them had developmental delays consistent with fetal alcohol syndrome, Dr. Gunner said.

“Like other internationally adopted children, the probability of mental and physical problems is related to the child’s prenatal care, with a major risk being whether the mother drank alcohol while she was pregnant, and whether the child lived in a hospital or orphanage after birth, and how much individualized attention, cuddling, talking to, etc. the child experienced,” Dr. Gunner explained.

Jean Hopfensperger, a reporter at the Minneapolis Star Tribune with extensive experience in investigating similar cases, agreed.

“The vast majority of Minnesota children adopted from abroad wind up at the University of Minnesota’s International Adoption Health Clinic for medical care. The clinic also screens videos and pictures of potential adoptees, looking for signs of Down syndrome and other problems,” Hopfensperger said. She, herself, adopted “a wonderful daughter from Rostov on Don, Russia” in 1995 at the age of 9 months.

“Families are very resourceful in managing the problems of their adopted children,” Dr. Gunnar elaborated. “They work with the school system, they get therapy and tutoring for their children, they form parent groups to gain support from one another and help each other find resources.”

Ionela Stefan, one of Annie's sisters, visited the girls' biological parents in Romania several years ago. Ionela moved to La Rochelle, France, in 1991 after she was adopted by a French family. There were 4 girls and 1 boy in Annie's family, all of whom were placed in orphanges by their parents.

One of the best known initiatives in this respect in Minnesota is a camp organized every summer for American families and their adopted Romanian children. “I have heard about it and I will definitely go there next year,” Annie said.

EU asked Romania to ban adoptions

Romania banned international adoptions in late 2001 under pressure from the European Union, which Romania aimed to join by 2007.

Despite success stories like Annie’s, word that some kids became a “commodity” for corrupt Romanian authorities prompted the European Union to call for a ban on international adoptions until corrective measures could be taken.

The EU accused the Romanian authorities of dealing in abandoned children and human trafficking and asked Bucharest to suspend the practice until the corruption was completely eradicated.

As a result, Romania found itself trapped between the wishes of the EU and pressure from foreign governments, including the United States, that were keen for the embargo to be lifted because some 3,500 foreign families, including more than 200 American, were left stranded in the middle of adoption proceedings.

U.S. officials repeatedly asked Romania to lift the ban. In October 2005, the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, a U.S. government agency that monitors progress in the implementation of the 1975 Helsinki Accords, convened a hearing entitled “In the Best Interests of the Children? Romania’s Ban on Inter-Country Adoption.”

“The Romanian government was told by the European Union to ban inter-country adoptions as the price for membership, and they capitulated. That the EU should demand such a policy is appalling. That the Romanians should accept it is equally troubling,” Commission Chairman Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, was quoted as saying by the Romanian news media. “Romania has denied thousands of children a loving home and a caring family, and the EU is at fault for letting politics get in the way of helping children.”

Annie Augustson was lucky enough to have an adoptive family who loved her. In Willmar, Minn., she found the caring home she never had in Romania with her biological parents.

But what about the children still living in poor conditions in orphanages throughout Romania who have never known the love of a parent?

“There has to be a better and more humane way to deal with this problem and I urge the EU and Romania to sit down and take seriously the fate of thousands of innocent children and loving families,” said Senator Brownback.