Lost child

TWO Fridays ago, four delegates attending the Tenth Global Consultation on Child Welfare Services requested me to accompany them to places where children under the most difficult circumstances are situated. I brought them to multi-awarded Molave Detention Home in Quezon City that provides the best services for children in conflict with the law relative to Manila, Caloocan, Malabon, and the rest of Metro-Manila where children continue to languish in jails. At Molave, Danish Pia Brandsnes of DanAdopt and Spaniard Juan Luis Lorenzo of ANIDA immediately noticed one particular young girl who stood out from 180 detained children just because she did not seem to belong there.

Friendly and polite, the charming 14-year-old girl Justine was the product of a broken family. When her father abandoned his family, her uncaring mother soon left her as well to the care of a friend with a personal agenda on the minor. She sought refuge in the dangerous streets of Quezon City that, to her, provided more security. For years, Justine fended for herself, finding excitement in the danger of petty thievery and shoplifting for food. In December last year, just before her 14th birthday, she got “caught” and was turned over by police authorities to Molave.

It is not clear now what particular offense Justine had committed; she has not been charged with any crime. In any event, as a minor below 15 years of age, she is supposed to have been exempt from criminal liability and instead provided with social welfare intervention to modify her behavioral dysfunctions and guide her towards more positive and constructive endeavors.

Yet family courts have instructed social workers of Molave Detention Home to continue detention while the children in their care undergo diagnostic assessments (which all children below 15 years old must undergo) and come up with intervention programs. Seventy-eight of them in Molave are still undergoing diagnostic assessments. After being in detention for eight months for purposes of safekeeping and diagnostic assessment (as have many other minors detained in Molave), there is still no formal diagnostic evaluation report in Justine’s case.

Perturbed, the foreign delegates pleaded with me to do something to have Justine released to the orphanage I founded for abandoned and marginalized children, specifically in the Andorra Homes of Meritxell Children’s World Foundation. I explained that it was going to be extremely difficult for a child detained for eight months to be integrated with abandoned children. Then too, Meritxell was an “open” institution; it was not a prison. Justine, detained for eight months, could easily take flight from there if she was so inclined. But I shared the concern of the foreigners. There was simply no reason to detain Justine.

For decades, I had been representing pro bono children in conflict with law but have turned over custody to child-caring agencies with expertise over such children. I had never taken personal custody over a child offender until now. Since no criminal charges had been filed against her, I pleaded with Molave’s child-oriented social workers to turn over custody of Justine to Meritxell. They agreed. The Danes and Spaniards happily bought Justine two bags of clothes. At Meritxell, she was immediately counseled by our social worker and houseparents. Justine could now move forward after an interrupted life of eight months detention under the nurturing care and guidance of Meritxell Foundation.

It was not to be.

Just a day later, she packed her newly purchased clothes and surreptitiously left through the open gate as some Meritxell children came home from school. She left two origami paper swans, which she learned to create at Molave. For the first time, a child had left my orphanage without an alternative family waiting for her. I am devastated. I constantly replay in my mind the series of events from the time I met the lonely, crying child to the text message of my social worker informing me that Justine had just left. And I ask myself if there was something more I should have done that could have convinced her to stay with Meritxell.

Right now, I am overwhelmed with anger—but not at Justine. But against her parents who had uncaringly abandoned this young child; anger at a government that provides a harsh criminal justice system and inhumane prison cells for tender-aged children despite a Juvenile Justice and Welfare Law that was supposed to uplift children in conflict with the law from their miserable circumstances; anger at legislators who still believe in the criminal justice system for children aged 15 years and who still want to bring down the minimum age of criminal liability to 9 years old; and anger at the incapacity and lack of resources for the Social Welfare department to redeem our children and provide salvation from the brutal, overcrowded prisons they euphemistically label as detention homes.

I pray that someday Justine will find her way home, knock at our doors again knowing that she shall always be welcome, no longer lost. –Eric F. Mallonga, Manila Times

ericfmallonga@yahoo.com