When I started working as a lawyer in NGOs, I was obsessively thinking about the advocacy component. I wanted to change laws, to see how we could get legislative proposals written that would make the world a safer place for children, that would hold abusers truly accountable, or that would make it easier for victims to heal and reintegrate into their own lives. No half-measures.
Gradually I learned what I actually have to do, what makes sense to me personally and what can change at least a piece of this world. I sat face to face with a child who told me that she agreed to be sold by her boyfriend because he was the only man who told her she was beautiful and that he loved her. Then I listened to another little girl who told me that she accepted to be in a situation of abuse because she was afraid. But she wasn’t afraid of the abuser, but to tell her parents what she had done, thinking that if they found out what she had done they would kill her and no longer love her. And I wondered, what is the sense of what I am doing and what good are all the laws that we have if there are children in this world who have never been told that they are beautiful, valued or loved.
And from a lawyer I chose to become an NGO leader. I took on the leadership of Love in Action NGO because I was also part of the team that founded it long before I became a lawyer, and because this was engine that has always moved me. Compassion (which translates to love in action). Throughout my whole professional life I have noticed this need in the legal system, but also in the legal world. Things that are overlooked - caring, compassion, to think about why victims end up being victims, beyond what they did or didn't do, of what happened to them, and act according to this.
What I choose to do is sometimes intimidating. I sometimes look in the mirror and scare myself when I think about how many ideas I have and how strongly I think sometimes that I can change the world. But I like the shoes I've chosen for myself and even though I sometimes feel lonely, I keep going forward. There are not many, let alone lawyers, those who understand that yes, through love and care, we can truly change the lives of a generation of children and have fewer victims, and fewer people going through trauma.
How did I realize that this is the way?
There were a few defining moments. One time I met a little girl who was cursing at police officers who had busted in and pulled her out of an exploitative situation because she loved the trafficker and he didn't hurt her, because he was her family.
I was able to help a young woman get out of a trafficking situation because she wrote to me four years after we met when she had just gotten out of the foster care center where she had grown up. Now she was in another country, she was in a situation of exploitation, and she remembered that I was there for her, that I listened, didn't judge and that I was there for her. She had a chance to get out of that situation just because she remembered that she had someone she could trust. She didn't call the authorities, she called me.
It also shocked me lately to hear in the press about cases of children who have committed suicide as a result of interactions with the digital world, especially with artificial intelligence programs. One little boy fell in love with AI and killed himself. He was a victim of bullying at school, he felt that no one understands him and at home he felt he couldn't talk to his parents. All he wanted was to be understood by someone and be loved.
These are just three examples, but daily, in our communities and in our schools desks, there are other children who quietly suffer various forms of abuse and exploitation. Many of them are from financially well-off but emotionally disconnected families. Some have no family, despite having other adults, educators, caregivers who are there to protect them, but do not see beyond dry procedures. Some even end up in front of lawyers and yet they don't feel safe enough to disclose to us the abuse they experience. Doesn’t it seem wrong?
When children disclose cases of abuse to us, do we know how to react or do we blame them too? Do we threaten them with punishments and ugly names?
Can we move beyond indignation and see a child who is hurt, manipulated, in need of protection and help? And do we really know what to do when we receive this information? Do we know what the law tells us to do?
I firmly believe that the protection of children should be our burden, of adults, not theirs.
I hear more and more often how children need to use their devices responsibly, how they need to report cases of abuse or what is happening online or to point out the misery that happens online. We still expect the solution to come from them, but they are children. Digital safety is not just about laws, regulations or technology. It's equally about safe spaces and connections, emotionally safe, and the red thread in the stories of all the children I've interacted with is their need for love, for understanding, for someone to hear them and care for them...
But we seem to find it hard as a society to put our finger on the wound and speak clearly, applied and openly about these issues. We hide behind big words and tick off awareness activities where all we do is not awareness. Because these kind of problems, what our children feel and face today, cannot be solved with a Power point in a classroom.
It is solved with more clarity about the reasons why they end up in these situations, but also about the laws we live by.
Because we have problems in the law chapter as well. According to the Romanian Criminal Code, child pornography is an offense against public order. This offense is still called like that, instead of being called how it would be normal: materials containing forms of child sexual abuse. Isn't that clearer? Doesn’t it give us a real direction towards what we have to do?
After setting up Love in action I did a course on Cybertrauma - cybernetic trauma. I wanted to better understand where all the vulnerabilities come from and all of these forms of trauma on children of today and, again, what is the string, the red string that I have to pull.
I learned there, among other things that:
1. We, adults from today’s age, have a very limited understanding of how today's teens and children really live in the digital world. How they measure their self-worth in likes and shares, how online interactions shape their identity, and how their ability to perceive the dangers or risks in online interactions is limited in a physiological way. Did you know that the part of the brain that normally perceives threats and signals to us that something is wrong simply doesn't work the same way in online interactions? Because if we are talking about grooming, the manipulation starts very slowly, the abuser gains the trust over time, which is why most children don't realize they are being manipulated or ended up in a situation of abuse. The danger to them takes forms we can't even conceive of and it is a world where their emotional reality is deeply intertwined with their digital experiences.
2. I also found out that digital abuses, whether we're talking about cyberbullying, about exposure to violent or sexually explicit content, or direct abuse such as sexting, sextortion, blackmail for producing material containing forms of child sexual abuse leaves real wounds - what happens online happens to real children, in real bodies, with real emotions, and who need real safe spaces and trusted adults to listen and help them.
3. And I also realized that in a world where digital threats are evolving faster than ever before - where Artificial Intelligence and tools for predators are becoming increasingly sophisticated - our comfort of ‘not being tech savvy’ is a luxury our children can't afford. Care can't just be in words, and love is manifested when we make the effort to understand their digital world. Their safety depends on our competence to understand and confront the real dangers they face every day in the virtual space.
My mission for 2025 is to start a revolution of face-to-face love and connection - so that every child knows that there are adults who, step by step, can protect them even in the digital world.
I want to help as many adults as possible too - parents, teachers, advocates, and school counselors - to truly understand the growing digital threats and the digital trauma that children from this generation are silently carrying. That we all are better able to recognize the signs of digital distress and intervene effectively, because only together, informed but also competent, can we build a safer future for our children.
So let's close ranks and put our love into action so that every child has at least one adult in their life that they know that they love them madly. That they can run to when someone tries to approach them, manipulate them, or convince them that they`re only worth 50 or 100 lei. And this movement starts with me today.
