TURIN. “The more you foster, the better you are.” Children as numbers. To increase, to inflate. To be written in numbers in the objectives grid at the end of the year. Children as a measure of performance.
There is a shocking report in the “Bibbiano bis” investigation papers, That it allowed the Turin prosecutor’s office to open up a world that was little known until now. A report from a former social services manager, who changed jobs today. “I could no longer tolerate what I saw,” she said after the recording to the carabinieri who listened to her for hours with the prosecutor Giulia Rizzo.
What he saw, and what he knew, he told in detail: «We felt the pressure from the managers. They wanted that we would increase the credit lineseven because Foster home was considered the flagship of the Municipality of Turin. They put pressure on our work. They told us that the more fosters we managed to do, the better we were. And sometimes, to follow this logic, it happened that it was necessary to bypass or speed up some steps of the foster care process. This has happened sometimes.”
As in the case of two Nigerian brothers, removed from their mother and placed in foster care – «after just one interview», reveals another witness – to a couple of women. “One is an educator, a colleague, her partner is a policewoman”, this is what a second employee of the Municipality of Turin revealed. She added: “There were no rules to overcome problems of conflicts of interest.” So was there a fast track to having a child in foster care if you were in the world of services? It is the suspicion of the Turin prosecutor’s office. The employee, interviewed in 2021, specified: «In the case of the two African brothers, the situation got out of hand. All steps are skipped. In Nigeria, homosexuality is punished. The parents did not know that the pair of foster parents were two mothers. They would have had the right to know, as per the rule. Nobody said anything.”
There was a moment, since the end of 2007, when the so-called “performance anxiety” of collecting “high numbers on foster care” would have reached a maximum level. The witness herself confirms this: «In that period the Municipality of Turin had included a card in the pay slip to give information to employees on the possibility of fostering minors”. They needed numbers. So, everything was worth it, even advertising with the paychecks.
Yesterday, for the first time in the recent judicial history of Turin, a judge – Stefano Sala – used harsh words towards the system. In the reasons for the conviction of the two foster mothers of the Nigerian brothers and the psychotherapist Nadia Bologniniex-wife of Claudio Foti, involved and then acquitted in the trial on the alleged illicit fostering of minors in Bibbiano, in Emilia-Romagna, the investigating judge wrote: «It is crucial to highlight that the investigations have brought to light what turned out to be the failed product of a public system of care and protection of minors, which failed to fully protect – and in minimally acceptable terms – the psychophysical well-being of two children in their first years of life». Prosecutor Giulia Rizzo had investigated and requested the trial of six other people who work in Turin’s social services. Their positions have been archived. But, as the judge writes, there would be a “failed public system” behind the management of children in difficulty.
The story began in 2013 and concerns the foster care – piloted, according to the prosecutor’s hypothesis – of two African brothers. The little ones would have been led to believe that they have suffered sexual abuse in order to obtain their definitive removal from their family unit of origin. Forgery, abuse of office, procedural fraud, abusive access to a computer system and fraud to the detriment of the biological parents and the Municipality of Turin, the prosecutor’s hypotheses of crime.
The hearing that gave the turning point to the investigation dates back to January 26, 2021. An employee of the minors area, who will become one of the key witnesses, says: «I felt castrated in some choices. I was induced to adopt certain solutions. All involved the removal of minors from their families. The tendency is to see abuse even where it doesn’t exist. Many people know about it. Yet the managers of social services, who know, did not deal with it. There were cases in which a forced reading of suspicions of sexual abuse took place. But once the removal has been ordered, it is difficult to go back”
