Absent System

An unknown call. A familiar voice, but impossible to recognize. Josefina (53) barely managed to ask: “But are you sure? How do you know this?”

- I am almost certain that the Madame is giving medicines to the girl. She is giving her Klonopin to make her sleep. Please, do something about it- it was heard from the other end.

The person on the other side of the phone was one of the nannies of Amalia's mother, Josefina's granddaughter. The grandmother never knew which of them dared to speak up, but her accusation triggered a turning point in their lives. Only a few weeks ago, after several years of temporary custody of the girl, Josefina was granted definitive care. She says she is relieved.

Today, Amalia is six years old and as her grandmother recalls, she watches cartoons on Netflix from the other side of the room. “Just a little while,” she says to the girl, and resumes her story, in a low voice, so that the little girl does not listen. “She was three years old when this happened. I couldn't believe it. With my son, we knew that his ex-partner, Amalia's mother, was addicted to alcohol, but we never imagined anything like it.”

At that time, Amalia was going to a kindergarten located on Las Condes and Josefina was going to look at her during the recess. With a lot of persistence, she managed the little girl, who lived with her mother and grandparents in Vitacura, to visit her home in La Reina. When she checked the clothing change that was sent to her granddaughter, Josefina noticed that it was very dirty and torn. Then she thought: “If you have four nannies in the house, how can you fail to at least send her clean clothes?”

Josefina went for the girl one day. “Come in, she's still sleeping,” said the mother. It was almost 10 o'clock in the morning and Josefina was surprised: when she arrived, the girl usually ran to greet her. “It took me a while to wake her up and I thought, Could it be true?” The next time they got together they went with Amalia's father to do a blood test. Five days later the results were out: the little girl had traces of the tranquilizer clonazepam in her blood.

We didn't have any culture or knowledge of what you're supposed to do with a problem like that. I used to relate this kind of stuff to the children of Sename or very low-income people, but there are so many ways of violating children and it happens everywhere.”

Josefina, 53

Both the grandmother and the father were desperate and didn't know what to do. They finally got assistance at the Office for the Protection of Rights (OPR) of La Reina. They were well off, but hiring a lawyer was too expensive.

The Offices for the Protection of Right (OPR) has been labeled by many as “Sename’s gateway.” That's usually where violations are first detected. Whether by spontaneous demand (relatives or acquaintances of the child who arrive asking for help), local networks (public health centers, schools) or referrals from courts, the children and their families come to the OPRs to be evaluated and draft “descriptive reports,” which determine the following actions, where the OPR is not in charge.

The vast majority of the country's districts (called communes) have an OPR. In La Reina it is relatively recent and has been in operation since 2015. Providencia also has one and Las Condes has the Centro del Buen Trato (Centre for Good Treatment), which is not an OPR itself, but is similar in terms of its operation (all these are communes where a lot of people from high strata lives). However, in Vitacura, one of the richest communes, not only in Santiago but in Chile, there is no agency acting in this role.

When compared to La Pintana, one of Santiago's poorest communes, Vitacura only has 9.08 legal cases of child protection and domestic violence for every 1,000 children against the 29.49 cases reported in La Pintana. However, when checking Child Custody and Visitation issues, Vitacura has 31.8 cases for every 1,000 children, while La Pintana only has 17.93. Most of the children rights violations in the higher class are found through these cases.

For Bessie Gálvez, La Reina’s OPR Coordinator, her greatest difficulty is the lack of local networks to refer children in case of violation. "We are forced to take the cases to court and through the court get access to these interventions.” The problem is that these programs are already full and children enter a waiting list. “Children can wait for around a year and in that time; a moderate intervention turns into a serious one.”

The Judiciary Power claims that the system has collapsed. Therefore, family judge Verónica Ortiz believes that cases like these should not be referred to state support networks. The problem is that there are very few specialized private institutions providing psychological repair and family therapies or parental skills workshops. “The logical thing would be to refer those families, who are able to pay, to these institutions, but they are counted on the fingers of the hands, five or six in Santiago and no single one in regions. We’ve hit a wall.”

The saturation of the system is also seen on another flank: guardians ad litem. There is more awareness of the importance of having a child's agent in these processes and, consequently, judges assign them more frequently. Unfortunately, the supply cannot meet the demand.

“In summer, for instance, when universities are closed, we have a high shortage of guardians, or guardians already allocated to other cases cannot attend hearings and we miss appointments,” says Ortiz. Others criticize that, whether due to negligence or lack of time, guardians barely talk to the children they represent.

According to the Children's Advocate, Patricia Muñoz, a “specialized legal representation to any event, where a lawyer works with a psychosocial pair, for all children and adolescents, should be the minimum standard.”

For Ester Valenzuela, this is a key matter: “There is more wisdom in childhood and adolescence than we believe. In all my years as a guardian, I have never had a case where the child’ own words had compromised or contradicted his or her best interests.” However, she adds, many times children's wishes are completely ignored by their parents or caregivers.

It never made sense to me that nobody did anything. I don't understand why they do it with people of low social stratum and not with people of high social stratum.”

I.M.

When judges need to deliver a child’s custody to someone other than his or her parents, they also face difficulties. “In the lower strata, extended families often live together. You can take an abusive mother or uncle out of the house and leave child care to the grandmother, but in the higher strata, families are nuclear. Uncles and grandparents are rarely seen or live far away,” explains Judge Veronica Ortiz.

After surgery, a nine-year-old boy said that it was his nanny who accompanied him every night in the clinic, recalls a lawyer. “Indeed, there are cases where the significant adult, the attachment figure, is the house’s nanny,” says Ortiz, “but we cannot grant the child's personal care to her.”

“Does a child that is being a victim of a serious violation within a high-income family have the same chance of being taken out of this family environment immediately, as it occurs to a low-income child? The answer is no,” says Patricia Muñoz.

For the lawyer, this poses a major contradiction. “We cannot deny them the possibility of receiving proper care and protection just because they live in a much better environment than other children.”

The government acknowledges this reality. “When resources are scarce, you usually worry about those who have less but given that children are not only vulnerable for their income but just for being children, we are working on preventive policies for everybody,” says Childhood Under Secretary, Carol Bown. Consequently, she mentions the creation of a “Childhood Phone (and chat)” by 2020 and improvements in police protocols for receiving this kind of reports.

What changes does the system need to meet these challenges? Private support networks need to be improved, says attorney-at-law Francisco Estrada. And in that context, he adds, the ABC1 group can learn from Sename's professionals, “who have vast expertise and know how to spot and intervene.” It's not about expanding that system, he says, but learning from good practices and practicing them.

Gynecologist Andrea von Hoveling suggests imitating the "mistreatment committees" that exist in public hospitals, where professionals from different areas review cases and support each other.

Everything cannot rely on wills, on whether I call the school or contact the child's psychologist. If the network is institutionalized, one can work with more ease.

Andrea von Hoveling, gynecologist.

Pediatrician Fernando González states that the "early warning system" that is being proposed by the government, should consider a set of rules that enables health authorities to audit, penalize and intervene in different scenarios where the actions of private or public healthcare providers are not enough when investigating or reporting a children's rights violation. Something similar should happen at the educational level, apart from “training education professionals in these issues,” says Estrada.

Carol Bown notes that, when the State fails to get in time for several reasons, there is also a duty of the community. “We need to establish the idea that the protection of our children is everyone's job, not just an official’s job.”

But almost 30 years after Chile ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, there is still no legal framework actually securing the protection of those rights. The Act on children's rights guarantees, which entered the Senate in 2015, is still in its second constitutional process.

I.M.'s case against his father was finally closed in early April. Monthly signature and a five-year restriction order for leaving the country was the sentence. “I steal a cashier and go to jail for five years, easily,” complains the boy, who feels that society as a whole abandoned him.

“Psychologists tell me that a person with my life experience would have committed suicide before entering adolescence. I've been to about eight therapies already, but they haven't been of much help. I guess you're always going to wait for your mom and dad to show up and say 'I'm sorry.’ All you want is for someone to give you a hug.”

Note: Some names and details of the people who offered their testimonies for this report were changed for their protection and, in particular, that of the minors involved.

Volver