Who Will Take Care of the Brothers – Romanian Grandma or Father, the Georgian Citizen

The reader will think how could it have happened in Georgia? How could a parent make children live near a garbage dump in an unsanitary building on a concrete floor, feed them rarely, dress them in dirty clothes, never take them to a doctor, and moreover, arrange sexual acts in front of them?

The Human Rights Centre became interested in little Sasha and Antosha’s story two years ago. Soon the story became known as “Musaev’s Case”.  An argument between the children’s parents and grandmother is still going on. The grandmother arrived from Romania.  They are arguing where the children should be brought up – with the father’s family, in a Tskneti children’s home, or in Romania with the grandmother. The grandmother does not demand to deprive the parents of their right to the children. However, she appealed to the Tbilisi City Court few days ago and demanded restriction of the parents’ rights on the children…

Tskneti Children’s Home

There is a blue gate and, beyond it, a large yard. As soon as you enter the yard, you guess that children are living nearby. There is a colorful playground set, a rocking chair, and a tiny traffic light in the yard. The traffic light does not work. It is very old. The buildings in the yard are old, too.

There is nobody around. It is cold, and everyone is holed up in the building. It is evening. It is getting dark. We have arrived in Tskneti to see Sasha and Tosha Musaevs – brothers. Sasha will be eight in spring, and Tosha is still six. Although they have parents, they have lived in the children’s home for several months already.

In the entrance, there are nearly 15 pairs of shoes of the same size. They are arranged in such an order that you wonder who did it so fastidiously. It is warm inside. We hear the sound of a TV from the room. Children aged six to seven are sitting on the carpet. Their number equals the number of shoes in the entrance. The children are watching a film. Everybody gets up to see us entering. None is shy or reserved.

-I will tell you a rhyme; I also know a rhyme…
-Do you know they taught us a new song? “It is summer. It is very, very hot. The town is dying from heat...” nearly ten children are singing in unison. They try to stay close to us and touch us.

-The forest has blossomed, the swallow is chirping… (A rhyme)

-Here are Sasha and Tosha, says their caregiver, Eka, who is pointing to two little boys who are reciting a rhyme about Father Frost.

-Do not eat all the sweets at once. You will have stomach ache if you do, says another caregiver. She tries to calm the children down. However, it appears that guests rarely visit them. The children don’t want to miss the opportunity to meet with a new guest.

Sasha and Tosha are particularly sensitive children, Eka explains to us. They need constant contact. They will try to hug and kiss you. We too try to pay attention to them. We are sorry for them. They have endured a terrible situation.

Looking at the brothers you wonder how these children can still smile and express their feelings so openly after the hunger and cold they have experienced.

-We do not want to leave the children’s home. It is nice to be here, and why should we go? says Sasha, as he tries to put the recorder’s earplug into his ear.

-I do not want to go either. We were treated badly there. We were wearing dirty and worn clothes then. They did not wash our clothes, says Tosha, his lips protruding to emphasize how dirty their clothes used to be.

-We did not have proper food, either. We used to eat soup from dirty saucepans. We used to sleep on a hard coach, says Sasha, who has finally succeeded in putting the earplug in his ear.

-Besides, father and Valia acted badly together. They were lying together, Tosha complains shutting his eyes.
 
-Our mom does not visit us here. When she came once, she behaved badly, and if she comes again, I will tell her to behave properly, Sasha says disapprovingly.

-We love our granny most of all. She sends presents to us and feeds us with tasty food. Granny sends us beautiful clothes. We miss her. She calls us on Sundays.

-We are fed with tasty food here, too. We like Khachapuri, Lobiani and Mchadi very much.

-See what Tosha has on his head, says Sasha patting his brother’s head.

-Valia pushed me and I burnt my head on the stove, says Tosha. He rubs his small fingers along the scar on his head.
-Father used to beat us. He once came home drunk. I was sleeping, but he dragged me onto the floor, Sasha says.

-Once father put us on a rug in the street and ordered us to bring him money, Tosha interjects.

Sasha and Tosha go to Tbilisi Public School #137. They are in the first grade and their favorite subject is Georgian and you should see how proudly they are showing us the pages of their textbook where the teacher has pasted stars. The children feel calm in the Tskneti Children’s Home as they wait for their grandmother’s call from Romania every weekend.

“Last time when their father visited them here, the children behaved aggressively toward him. They were crying and shouting at him to go. The father wanted to take the children claiming his sons should be with him. However, we did not allow him to take the children,” said Eka Tsamashvili, one of the caregivers at the Children’s Home.
 
Odessa

Everything started in the 1990s in Odessa.  Julia Stepanova, the mother of Sasha and Tosha, was having a rest with her friends in Odessa. She met Aliar Musaev there, who was ten years older than she. Soon after she declared to her family that she was in love and that she was going to marry Musaev.

“She was too young, only nineteen at the time, and I did not want her to marry so young. But, she did not take my advice,” recalled the mother of Julia, Claudia Brigidina, “Aliar came to meet us, too, and he said he loved our daughter. He said he was going to marry her and promised to look after her properly. We could not say no. They arranged a religious marriage and settled in Odessa. I asked them to stay in Romania. I wanted them to be close to me so that I could help take care of them. However, the young couple did not follow my advice. Very soon they moved to Georgia since Aliar was Georgian citizen.”

Tbilisi

Their first daughter died two weeks after birth. Aliar called me and asked me to come to see my daughter since she was ill. In 1996 I came to Tbilisi with my younger daughter. At that time Julia and Aliar lived in a rented flat in Africa District in Tbilisi. Julia really looked bad. Besides that, I noticed Aliar was treating her poorly. He was always shouting at her. So I advised my daughter to return home with me… [but] she did not obey me. I left for Romania without Julia. Later, Julia and Aliar started to work at the zoo as caretakers. Then Aliar wrote me in his letter that they became ill from working at the zoo and gave up working there,” Brigidina said.

On April 15, 1999, Sasha was born, and on December 24, 2000, Antoshka was born. The relationship between Aliar and Iulia was getting worse by the day.  Aliar was beating his wife in the presence of the children. He forced her to earn money through any way. They moved to a shack near the garbage dump in the same district. The conditions were unbearable for them to live there and especially for children… Julia ran away from house. She left the children with Aliar. During this time, Aliar was sending letters to Claudia and demanding money and clothes for children. Claudia would send clothes to her grandchildren from Romania. However, Claudia said that Aliar was selling those clothes to buy alcohol.

Having left the shack, Julia met another Turkish man by the name of Aidin Kaflan. She started to live with him, and she soon bore him a child.

During that time, Julia took Sasha and Antoshka from the shack several times with the help of Aidin. However, Aliar returned the boys forcibly and prevented Julia from seeing the children.

There was no floor, electricity, heat, or food in the shack where the children lived. The one room was dark and complete disarray. A person could not stand an hour in it. It was difficult to pass among all the dirty dishes and clothes. Aliar was continuously drinking alcohol with a woman by the name of Valia and some other people of ill repute. Rabid dogs roamed around the shack. There were snakes in the swamp nearby, too.

Claudia Brigidina learned about the unbearable situation of her grandchildren in July 2005. “I did not know where and how the children were living. I had not seen their photos. I was asking them to send me pictures, but they never did. [Aliar] would demand only money and clothes in his letters. One day Julia called me and told me that she had married another man and had borne a third child. I decided to travel to Georgia. I arrived there without having told anyone in advance. I met a man whom I had known before, Mamed Lataria, and asked him to take me to the children. We went in a car, and it seemed to me that we were going to the end of the earth…We approached a field that was burning in the heat. I felt bad. I could not believe that my grandchildren could live in such a place. I noticed two little boys in the distance and Mamed told me they were Sasha and Tosha. I cannot express in simple words in what conditions I discovered them. They were wearing rubber boots when it was 38 degrees Celsius, when I had already sent them so many clothes. They had black t-shirts and shorts on, and the boys were so dirty that you could hardly make out what their true skin color was,” said Brigidina.

Mamed Lataria said, “I cannot express with proper words what I saw there. I have never seen such a terrible existence in the movies. The children did not look like ordinary children. I do not know what to say about the mother of the boys. She was meeting various men. Her husband used to sell her to strange men for some time and later he bought her back. Aliar was not able to handle his life himself. He had no house. His parents did not like Julia and did not let them in. Aliar was looking for a job in vain. This is all the information I have. Claudia is a good woman, and I tried to help her.”

The grandmother took the boys from the shack to Mamed Lataria’s house. “The children had not eaten anything of substance for so long that they got sick from eating. They gradually adjusted to having food in their stomachs. I decided to take the boys to Romania. Aliar agreed with me. Later we found out that the children did not have birth certificates. We took the certificate for Sashka and we were going to take one for Tosha, too, but Aliar did not appear. I went to see him in the shack. He said he had changed his mind and did not want me to take the children…

Consequently, the chief of the Isani-Samgori Police Department, Kakha Kakachia, became involved in the argument, too. He advised the grandmother that it would be better if her daughter appealed against Aliar Musaevi, but Julia did not do that.

Sasha and Tosha lived with their grandmother for a week. “I tried to do everything for them. I was taking them out for walks. We were playing together. The children got used to me very much, and I felt that they felt happy with me. On the last day I was in the zoo with the boys when somebody called me from the police station. They told me Musaev had appealed against me. As I found out later, Musaev applied to the police saying that some foreign woman had taken his children and wanted to take them to Romania. He also said that the woman wanted to sell children’s organs abroad. The police officers demanded that I come to the station. I called Lataria and another man, Anzor Dikhaminjia to accompany me, and we all went together with the children to the police station. Officers at the station told me that, although the boys were happy to be with me, there are such laws in Georgia that stipulate a child must live with either the mother or the father. We went to look for Julia. We could not find her after searching for three hours. Finally, the police decided to leave the children to Aliar. The person who had deceived the police, won.  They knew very well at the station, too, how the children lived with their father. They knew the father was throwing them out onto the street and forcing them to beg. Anyway, they left the children with father. Sasha and Tosha were crying. They did not want to go, but Aliar took them away forcefully.”

Brigidina found her daughter in the evening. They immediately went to see the boys but could not find them. “We applied to the police again but were told to appeal to the court,” recalled Brigidina.

Brigidina dealt with the main problem at that stage. It turned out that Julia had lost her passport. They needed the passport everywhere they appealed to. So, Brigidina decided to announce an official search for the children. Simultaneously, she applied to the Ministry of Education and petitioned Minister Aleksandre Lomaia. A special commission was set up in the Ministry, which looked for the children together with Brigidina in the district of Africa in Tbilisi.

Salome Chichinadze, representative of the Department for Children in Particular Need within the Ministry of Education, recalled that she together with Claudia and two other social workers were looking for the children in the shacks of Africa District. Aliar with his children and the so-called nurse Valia lived in the area. In fact, the officers from the district police station should have done that work. However, as the situation shows and Chichinadze also confirmed, the Africa District Police Station did not show any particular interest in the case. Then, representatives of the Educational Ministry applied to the Isani-Samgori District Police Station # 7 and asked them to inform the ministry if the children appeared. They visited the lawyer of Aliar, too, and left their address with him as well. Chichinadze said that it was not her duty to look for the children in the garbage dump. Her department was only responsible for suggesting a solution [to the issue of the children’s custody]…”Later, we found out that the father had taken the children to the village. Several months later, he left the boys at the children’s house “Satnoeba”. Claudia demanded us to take children to Tskneti Children’s House and we obeyed because that house is under the charge of the Ministry and we could monitor the children better. Then, Aliar’s lawyer came to us who insisted that Claudia was not the children’s grandmother. However, we soon guessed the truth. The Human Rights Center submitted all the necessary documents to the ministry that proved that the woman was the boys’ grandmother. Aliar and his lawyer failed to bring any arguments against those documents. Besides that, there are photos of the place where the children lived with their father. Having seen those documents, Musaev’s lawyer turned to his client and asked why he had brought him there. Once Aliar visited us together with the representative of the Azerbaijan Association…However, they could not say anything against our arguments, either... The most important for us is to create better living conditions for the children, and we always make decisions accordingly,” said Chichinadze.

Brigidina continued, “Soon my vacation ended and I had to return to Romania. If my agent, Nana Merkviladze, and the Ministry of Education had taken responsibility, I am sure that they would gave gotten custody of the boys for me. However, nobody did anything. Nana Merkviladze promised me to do everything in her power to resolve the problem in the children’s favor. I sent her money, 500 dollars, but she did not do anything. Nobody knew where the father had hidden the boys for six months.

Nana Merkviladze, the former agent of Claudia Brigidina, said,  “I did my best to assist Claudia. I helped her find her daughter. Then, I accompanied Julia to Kazreti to pick her children up there. When we arrived, she did not get out of the car; she was afraid of Aliar’s relatives. We had a strategy and had hired a lawyer, too. Julia had no identity card and the case could not be investigated. We went to the Africa District together with the representatives of the Ministry of Education. We documented the area where the children had lived. Then I heard that the shack where the boys lived burned down. Neither parents was suitable for the boys. They are incapable of raising children and taking sufficient care of them. You can’t imagine how often I have visited the Turkish bars at night to find Julia. She leaves her other son at various places and goes to various bars. She has no right to have children. When I met Aliar, he categorically refused to leave the boys with the mother.”

Having heard that the children were being looked for, Aliar reported to the police six months later and stated that he had not kidnapped the boys; he had left them in the village of Kazreti in Bolnisi district with his relatives. The police, Julia, and Nana Merkviladze went to take children back to Tbilisi. However, they returned without boys. “As Julia told me, the police let me in the yard to take the children, but the family members threatened to kill me if I touched the boys. The police refused to interfere in family affairs. I do not know what in fact happened, but the boys remained in the village.”

Brigidina called her daughter, lawyer and Salome Chichinadze everyday in Tbilisi. However, she could not learn anything about her grandsons until January 2006.

“Having found no way out, I wrote a letter to Aliar’s brother. I begged him in the letter to let me know where my grandsons were, and I promised him to send money. I said I was ready to assist Aliar in everything, but the only thing I demanded in exchange was the information about the whereabouts of the children. Aliar’s wife replied. I learned from her letter that on January 31, 2006, Aliar had left the children at the children’s home, “Satnoeba”. I received information about the boys over the phone for six months. I sent packages to Mamed Lataria for the children. I arrived in Tbilisi the next July.”

(part II) http://www.humanrights.ge/eng_/articles.php?id=692

Nino Tarkhnishvili, Eka Kevanishvili