It's a rainy fall day, I'm dressed too lightly and the hood of my jacket doesn't protect me. Through my droplet-covered glasses I look at the tall gate, with the blue paint peeling slowly at the corners.
In 2015, when I left Pitești to study law in the capital, I never imagined that life would take me here. I thought that the Law Faculty would put the cape of a heroine on my shoulders and give me all the necessary weapons to fight injustice and help as many people. Of course it didn't work exactly that way. When I graduated I ran away from a classical career in law and ended up in the European Parliament, then in an NGO.
And then here, at the gate.
I am waiting to have my data checked by an officer who has even less zest for life than I do, and I hear, "Miss, you must like us grately". I smile with kindness but it is a resigned smile. I walk into a detention center for juvenile offenders and I think again, for the thousandth time, what is in a child`s soul knowing that once you're in, you're here to stay. A few months or a few years.
I do the imagination exercise and feel shame, insecurity, pain, anger, but most of all, fear.
I walk the same route that a few months ago I attributed to a fairy-tale heroine who has to go through 3 trials to prove her strength. The road to the center, the first trial, is done.
Next comes a large courtyard, an administrative space that tries to look more friendly as most of the important visitors arrive here. Polite chats about how my ride was and how bad the weather is don't keep my mind occupied sufficiently. So I study the courtyard, the office buildings, and see the canteen in the distance. Many people were shocked when I told them that at the canteen the kids have access to everything you'd find in a normal kitchen and cook side by side with the chef.
Only the best can work there, however. The best behaved, those who don't cause scandal or are not dangerous.
I walk past two young boys, probably about 18-19 years old, who are walking with a wheelbarrow. The neon orange vests signal to me that they are from there, "hospitalized" as the law says. Practically prisoners. We have about 500 in Romania at the moment. With too much cheer for a rainy day and for the place we are in, they say to me: "Good evenin`, ma'am". I greet them and take a smattering of their good mood with me. I don't often meet it in this environment.
I get closer to the second trial: another tall gate with peeling paint, this time black. Same check, same signature given in the entry-exit register, and I wonder why something so mundane can't be done digitally. Anyway, all I do is store up reproval. Some time ago I was looking at them with reformist eyes, seeing the potential for improvement. Now all I see are bottlenecks.
I walk through the gate and see gray, a lot of gray. The rain accentuates the grayness of a three-story building that looks like a shabby apartment block, except it has bars on every window. As I get closer I notice everyone standing at the windows, scanning with their gaze for anything that might be interesting, new, different. It's noisy anyway, they are calling each other, but soon they are going to see me and start calling me too. From the typical "ma'am, ma'am" thrown into the void, to whistles or howls, I'm already familiar with it all. The first time they intimidated me, the second time I looked at them with some compassion, and now, for the “many-th” time, I am indifferent to their reaction.
I enter into the building and my mission truly begins. I carry with me a notebook and a pen, because they're the only things I'm allowed with, and I'm armed with patience.
"Ms. Uță has arrived, with the NGO", a security officer informs his colleagues who are about to escort me into the interview room. I have to talk to the people involved in the project I coordinate. I need to find out from them what they think about what we have implemented so far and what their needs are.
Having a security guard present in the room with us inhibits the discussions. The NGO I came from wants to support young people in the centers to rehabilitate themselves and have a better life after they get out. We were supposed to have 30 participants for one of the activities. Not all of them came and I only interviewed 14.
As it was expected, they told me a learned poem about how good the activity was, how well they are doing, how they lack nothing. Two timidly deviated from the speech and added some personal notes, but nothing substantial. Anyway, they wouldn't have had the guts to say anything bad with the guard nearby.
I finish the interviews and I feel like a straw doll. I'm pretending to make a change, just how they pretended to be sincere.
The first two trials are over, now comes the third, which is the hardest: change something. I get out of the center and make an inventory:
I had in front of me 14 children and young people who made mistakes, who have committed serious offenses. But who, at the same time, didn’t know how to speak properly, only one of them had graduated 8 grades, the rest of them less or none. They had no childhood, they come from vulnerable backgrounds, they didn't have my opportunities. Who may have run into a public attorney who had no interest in them, who are not visited by parents, who are just waiting for the days to pass them by. 14 young people whom society sees as having no future but who, paradoxically, have their whole lives ahead of them.
At the same time, I had prison staff in front of me: a few simple people doing their work, some with more dedication, empathy and understanding of the importance of their activity, others colder, hardened by the field, by escape attempts and by riots.
Also in front of me, indirectly, I had parliamentarians and ministers, who by their lack of interest live comfortably with the deplorable state of the four detention and educational centers from Romania. Who do not invest in their modernization, who do not believe in the rehabilitation of children or their reintegration into society.
I also see in front of me a piece of the NGO environment, which operates timidly and with little money in a rigid and closed field, which lives with hope and with doors slammed in its face.
After this inventory, I get stuck. The little that I do doesn't really help and it feels like I no longer have a voice to shout out all the injustices I see. With my stored up reproval I go back to a desk on which I will write a report in which I can't say everything I think about, because otherwise we don't get any more funds.
I haven't been in centers in months. I changed my job, I retired from the role of the heroine and I often blame myself because I didn’t do more. Who is to blame for what happens to children in conflict with the law?
I point the finger at the politicians who don't think of real strategies for social reintegration, at the staff in the centers who reinforce to the children the idea that they are bad and recidivism is inevitable, at the children or at their families for not being able to prevent the harm done, at the society because it is everyone's duty to help.
But still, at the end of the day, I look at myself with the greatest disappointment.
Because, of all the actors, I was the only one who could have left the stage unnoticed and that is exactly what I did. What a great heroine.
