BUCHAREST — The fall of communism in Romania decades ago lifted the lid on the country’s infamous network of orphanages, shocking the world with images of dirty and underfed children, most dressed in rags, crammed in filthy wards, some of them chained to beds.
A special Romanian committee established to investigate the crimes of the era of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who ruled from 1965 to 1989, has determined that more than 15,000 minors — orphans, children with physical or mental disabilities, or those unwanted by their parents — died in orphanages and other residential facilities.
