Irina Mihale - What's it like outside? | People of Justice 2022 Bucharest
Author: Irina Mihale
I was walking into a disability day care centre for the first time. I was nervous, I felt hot and cold, and I was trying to hide it.
Gabriela was one of the first who welcomed me in the entrance hall, where, at a table, five other residents were sitting and staring absently. She didn't look into my eyes, but she took my hand and she asked: What's it like outside?. The first answer came to me automatically, as if I'd forgotten where I am: Didn't you go outside today? I saw that you have a garden in the back. Gabriela looked up to me and answered: No, not in the garden! Outside of the centre! What's it like?. I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to say. From the hundreds of scenarios that I'd imagined for this visit, this is one I hadn't prepared for.
Gabriela is 47 years old and she has an intellectual disability. Her family decided that they couldn't care for her at home, so they put her into a care home. For Gabriela and for other people in her situation, the state doesn't really have a solution. If their family can't take care of them at home, they end up in care homes, almost their entire lives, care homes they can no longer leave and to which they are assigned to automatically. From then on, each time I visit this type of centre, although I try to pay attention and do my job the best I can, Gabriela's words echo in my head: What's it like outside? If I were to answer, I would probably be cynical, because I would have to tell a person that is locked up against their will that it's fine outside, that I can come and go whenever I please to the house I live in, that I have a room with a window and natural light, that I keep my clothes in a closet, not on the bed I'm sleeping on, that my bed has clean sheets and doesn't have bedbugs, that I have soap, shampoo and towels in my bath, that I can cook for myself and that... That my kitchen doesn't have mildew or bugs. That I can go out or order food at home or, I don't know, that I can make plans for my vacations or that I buy more clothes than I need. After every visit like this, I get home, shaking from exhaustion, and the first thing I do is to wash all my clothes and take a shower. Then, invariably, I remember what got me here.
In sixth grade, I decided to become a lawyer, after I'd been to the Appeals Court in Constanța, because my family sued the Pensions Services. The atmosphere of the courtroom fascinated me, even though I didn't understand a thing. But I was watching the lawyers dressed in robes and I realised that they did understand. They seemed to speak a secret language only they understood.
I became a lawyer, I ended up talking the secret language of the legal experts, but, now, this fact no longer fascinates me, it makes me furious. Because what remains after a courtroom session is a handful of people who are leaving confused and are trying to discover what happened to them. In this world, lawyers measure their abilities, according to the clients in their portfolio or the value of their cases. The greater the value, the better the lawyer. For a while, it seemed obvious. I'd entered the game, I knew the rules and... I was doing my job quite well. I've specialised in litigations, most of them related to commercial law or administrative trials. I had a lot of work, I would spend the nights at the office, an attorney's office, and I was encouraged to keep doing it. I was told: If you have a lot of work to do, that's good, it means you're good.
However, after a while, I started to feel that I am superficial. Two years ago, I decided to open my own law office and that has allowed me to get involved in projects that meant more than just sums of cash. I started collaborating with the Centre for Legal Resources, an NGO working to protect human rights. Until 2020, the civil code stated that, if you didn't have the necessary discernment to take care of your own interest, you could be put under conservatorship. That meant that you were given a conservator who would represent you and decide for you. From then on, you couldn't do anything anymore. You couldn't work, you couldn't rent a home or buy a car.
Moreover, if your conservator believed that you couldn't live alone and there weren't any other solutions for you, he could send you to a centre that you couldn't leave anymore, because, being under conservatorship, you couldn't decide for yourself anymore.
In 2020, the Constitutional Court decided that this procedure is unconstitutional. A legal limbo followed for about two years, during which the work of drafting a new law began, to which the Centre for Legal Resources has contributed. The new law went into effect this year and it came with new measures for protecting these people. These measures were applied gradually, according to the concrete needs of each person. In short, the new law helps people exercise their rights, instead of banning their rights.
At CLR, I ended up knowing people with intellectual and psychosocial disabilities and I also visited the places where they were locked up. That's how I met Alexandra, who was under conservatorship and had spent the last 16 years in a centre, because, this way, it was easier for her family to handle the condition she was struggling with: schizophrenia. Alexandra wanted to get rid of the conservatorship, in order to work. Even though she could decide for herself on her own, she needed the consent of her conservator at every step. I decided to represent her in a case about lifting the conservatorship and I found out the results last month: Accept the demand. Lift the conservatorship. Basically, now... Alexandra can choose where to live, she can rent a home, she can work, she can manage her own money. I also got to know Lidia. She's been living in a centre for 12 years, where she was sent to against her will. Her sister obtained the conservatorship and became her conservator.
She told me that it's toughest around Christmas. All her colleagues from the centre get packages and gifts from their families, but she never gets anything. I took over her case of lifting the conservatorship, which has been dragging on since 2021. A few days ago... I discovered that the first appearance was scheduled sometime in January. Until her case receives a final decision, Lidia is waiting for news and is locked up in the same centre in Bucharest. She often calls me at the same hours of the day, because, otherwise, her phone is turned off. She can't even use her phone whenever she wants. In every centre, I hear about stories like this one. Today, conservatorship no longer exists, but there still are people who are under conservatorship.
When I was a student and I was studying Civil Rights, I thought that the conservatorship is a procedure meant to protect people who can't take care of themselves. Now, I believe that in many cases we end up putting people under conservatorship, because we don't want to talk, to see or to live with people who have such conditions or disabilities. I think that this is where the state's concern for isolating these people from society is coming from. And it's not a small number.
Only between 2012 and 2020, there were around 48,000 persons put under conservatorship. Oftentimes, while showering after this kind of visit, when I try to leave behind the complicated day I had, I think that it would be a lot easier if I restricted myself to more comfortable cases, where we only debate sums of money, real estate or contracts... To clients I can meet in an office, who express themselves coherently and who can afford to pay their lawyer. But, then, the answer comes to mind: if we all did this, people like Alexandra, Gabriela or Lidia would wind up locked up for life in a place they don't want to be in, without being able to complain about the abuse they go through.
And we are the ones responsible for this, those from the outside.
