Two weeks after the publication of an investigation into the evacuation of Ukrainian orphans to Turkey, 17-year-old boarding school graduate Nastya managed to return her little daughter Melek. This was reported by a journalist from Slidstva. Info"
According to the journalist, Nastya, who was raised in a Krivoy Rog boarding school since childhood, came to Turkey along with more than 500 children from the Dnepropetrovsk region as part of the project “Childhood without War” by businessman Ruslan Shostak.
As journalists found out, the conditions of stay of some children in Turkey were inadequate - cases of beatings and bullying were recorded. Also, two minor “state” girls returned to Ukraine pregnant. To avoid publicity, the girls were placed in vocational schools, and neither government officials nor representatives of the foundation were interested in their fates. Nastya, who gave birth at the age of 15, found herself in a difficult situation.
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“I raised my daughter Melek on her own for several months, and then turned to a local charity organization headed by Pastor Maxim Fetisov. Subsequently, according to the girl, Fetisov fraudulently took away her then 1-year-old child,” said Anna Babinets. “She was not allowed to see her daughter and through the court they planned to deprive her of parental rights - probably in order to transfer the child to the pastor’s family. However, Nastya, still a child herself, dreamed of returning her daughter and raising her herself."
After the publication of the film “State Children,” Nastya’s fate touched human rights activist Inna Miroshnichenko, who herself is raising adopted children. She helped Nastya get her daughter back.
“This is a very unusual, but very bright impact from our investigation, which exposes the ugly boarding school system and tells how the state “takes care” of children for whom there is no one to care,” states Anna Babinets.
Read about why such tragedies have been repeated for decades in Alla Kotlyar’s interview with Daria Kasyanova, Chairman of the Board of the Ukrainian Network for Children’s Rights Union, “State children: what happened to them during evacuation in Turkey and what happens every day in Ukraine”.