Ceausescu's Children

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BBC Radio 4 - Ceausescu's Children

Adopted from an orphanage in Romania, Ionica Adriana returns to discover her past.

The actor Ionica Adriana, one of the first children to be adopted from Romania after the fall of the communism, returns to the country to uncover its past and her own.

Today, the actor Ionica Adriana lives with her family in the North Yorkshire countryside - but her life could have turned out wildly different. Until the age of two-and-a-half, Ionica lived in an orphanage, in Transylvania, north-western Romania. 
 
From 1965-1989, the Communist dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu enforced a strict set of policies to set about vastly increasing the Romanian population. But widespread poverty meant it was impossible for many Romanian parents to look after their newborn children - and so many ended up in state-run institutions, where they received little care and attention, and where they were left in dirty clothes, to feed and fend for themselves. 
 
Ionica returns to Romania to uncover her past and the history of Ceaușescu’s barbaric orphanages. She explores what childcare and protection looks like in Romania today, meets someone who grew up in the state system his entire childhood and has an emotional encounter of her own.

Producer: Sasha Edye-Lindner
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