RTL journalist Željka Felbar investigated for RTL Today TV show what is going to happen to a 2-month-old boy who tragically lost both parents in a recent murder of six people and suicide in Kajzerica, and how do children go on later with their life after such traumatic events? Tatjana Brozić Perić, Director of the Social Welfare Center of Zagreb and Prof. Gordana Buljan Flander, Ph.D., Director of Zagreb Child and Youth Protection Center gave their opinion in TV report.
Since none of the wider family has come forward, it is possible that the boy will be adopted by someone else. Tatjana Brozić Perić, Director of the Social Welfare Center of Zagreb said: ”Given that the child doesn’t have parents, that is, he has no legal representatives, the guardianship will be determined as soon as possible. Family law only prescribes who cannot be a caregiver and others can, and this will be decided solely by the Social Welfare Center. No one has heard from the wider family so far, and he certainly won’t stay in the children’s home. If we decide for adoption, we have a register of adoptive parents, and we choose parents for the child not the child for parents.”
If the boy is adopted, no matter how severe the tragedy in which he lost his parents was, the adoptive parents must tell him. Not talking about the specific case, but generally about the children who are adopted, the Director of Zagreb Child and Youth Protection Center commented:
”The profession says that it is necessary, usually by the age of seven, for the child to know the truth. It’s not a good idea to hide the fact that parents died. So the child must know the way it happened too. It is very important that the child learns from a loved one and not from someone on the side or that a child starts mocking him and thus throws the truth into his face. Especially nowadays a child cannot be spared, and other children find out on the internet. I had one case when parents brought me a child of 14, worrying about being told he was adopted. When I asked him if he knew why he came to me, the child said, “Why don’t my parents know how to tell me I was adopted.”
With support and love of a new family and environment, children with the most severe traumas can be happy and successful in life, and carry that event only as a scar from scratch that is forever there but no longer hurts.
