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DOR
DoR (Decât o Revistă) is an independent quarterly magazine and website publishing narrative nonfiction from Romania.
Abstract painted image of an adult and a child walking. The adult is holding the child's hand.
Society
Oana Sandu

After A Femicide, What Happens To The Children?

Children orphaned by domestic violence are a uniquely vulnerable kind of victim. An investigation from Romania.

NOTE: The names of the characters in the two stories featured in this article have been changed to protect the identity of the children.

A seven-year-old boy bounces out of the schoolyard towards his grandmother, who welcomes him happily and takes off his backpack. The child smiles at her and tells her that in one of his classes he got up from his desk and looked out of the window.

"You're not allowed!" the grandmother replies firmly. "Never do that again!"

The boy, Vladi, who has just started primary school, is puzzled: "Granny, do you forgive me? But I didn't know it was a rule. You didn't tell me I wasn't allowed to look out of the window."

"There are rules," the woman tells him. "Don't talk without being asked, don't interrupt class, don't get up from the bench."

"Yeah, but you didn't tell me I wasn't allowed to look out the window."

Grandma Ileana doesn't answer and hurries him towards the crossing to go to the supermarket. When he hears about the shopping, Vladi forgets the unspoken rule he had been warned about and is already thinking about what sweets to put in the basket.

The real reason for his visit to the supermarket in the center of a small town near Bucharest, Romania, where his grandma has lived for almost 20 years, is a promise from the manager to help her with a much-needed document.

Her daughter died three years ago and she wants to make sure Vladi and her sister have access to orphan allowances. To do this she needs the original work card for her daughter, who worked as a shop assistant here more than 10 years ago, when she was free and could choose where to work.

With her voice trembling, she tells the manager that her daughter worked here in 2009, and the government has been asking for her old work card. "It will be three years now, in February, since she died. I don't know, maybe you heard of the case?"

The manager doesn't reply, reads the document worriedly and then tells her that a long time has passed since 2009 and there is little chance that the original work card will be with them. She phones a colleague, asks a few questions and then explains to the grandmother that in 2011, work cards were given to employees, so the daughter probably already received it.

"Got it," the grandmother replies resignedly. She asks Vladi what they have to take, and he answers quickly, as if he had already learned the list: "Bread, milk, cereal — and I would like some sweets."

Vladi and his sister Eliza have been Ileana's top priority since February 2020, when their father killed their mother, Ileana’s daughter.

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illustration of a child looking out a window
Society
Oana Sandu

Bystander Victims: Facing The Trauma Of Children Who Witness Domestic Violence

Children who live amid domestic abuse are at serious risk of long-term physical and mental health problems. It's imperative we start to look deeply at these long-term effects because violence is passed down from generation to generation. A close-up investigation from Romania.

BRASOV — “This morning, she was laughing when she told me that her tummy hurts, that her head hurts, that she feels sick." Irina, a 34-year-old mother, tells me as I sit down on the living room couch in her apartment on the outskirts of Brasov in central Romania.

She tells me about her daughter, who is in her bedroom reading an Isadora Moon book, about a half-fairy, half-vampire girl. I can feel the girl's presence through the tiny plasticine figurines around the house: dandelions, bunnies, flowers modeled in as much detail as only an eight-year-old can.

On Irina's arm, I can see a black tree tattoo, with a winding stem and vigorous, almost frightening, roots. Behind it, there is a sunset in strong shades of red and green. It's the tree of life, a tattoo Irina got this year to remind her that life has been hard for her in recent years, but she is still standing.

She's a woman who has experienced domestic violence and, six years ago, managed to get out of her abusive relationship with Maria's father. (The names of the children and mothers in the article are pseudonyms and I have used them to protect their identities.)

I came to visit them because Irina is currently looking for answers to a question that interests me too. I’m a reporter who has been documenting the impact of domestic violence for the last eight years. Irina wonders to what extent the violent incidents her daughter witnessed as a child affect and will affect her emotional and physical health.

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