Five persons in preventive arrest in slavery case in Maramures

Five persons were placed in remand in the case in which a group led by a family of Germans is accused of holding in slavery and obligating German youths to execute exhausting works in the households of locals, under the pretext of a so-called "re-education program". 

According to sources in the judiciary, among those arrested is the leader of the group, German citizen Schumann Bert Sieghard, while his wife, Schumann Babett, is investigated under judiciary control. 

The Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT) claims that, between 2014 - August 2019, eight suspects, among which two German citizens, husband and wife, have established an organized crime group that had as its main purpose trafficking in northwestern Maramures county several German youths, with ages between 12 and 18, under the cover of executing authorized activities regarding educative measures that had as a target the recuperation and social reintegration of the youths, on the basis of programs and projects ran and coordinated by the two suspected German nationals. 

"In reality, the youths were subjected to a regime of deprivation of liberty, of deprivation of communications with the exterior, with their families in Germany or with other persons or Romanian authorities, being obligated, under the pretext of a so-called 're-education' program conceived by the German citizen, to execute exhausting works in the households of locals in the entourage of the suspects - beyond the physical capacities and limits of their age or the illnesses they may suffer - the minors suffering humiliating and degrading methods, being kept in slavery and having acts of grave violence and threats exerted upon them. In this way, the youths were led into a state of fear and even trauma following the repeated beatings, deprivation of food, deprivation of liberty through their confinement in a so-called 'arrest', the performance of intrusive medical operations against them, the deliberate exposure to cold, rain, etc. - all as 'punishments' meant to 'educate' the behavior of the children. Some of the minors even had suicidal intentions because of this regime," the DIICOT prosecutors claim. 

The prosecutors show that the so-called social program (financed by the German state), founded and coordinated by the suspected German national, is represented by the social service called "Projekt Maramures", the accredited provider of which is an association with its headquarters in northwestern Baia Mare, from the data held up to this moment being apparent that the association has only a formal role in the operation of the said project, which received a functioning licence from the Ministry of Labor, valid for five years, in the February 2016 - February 2021 interval. 

In the official programs of this project a multitude of activities with the purpose of rehabilitation, meant to stimulate the desire for quiet and integration of youths, usually within nature. The youths were also supposed to have multidisciplinary education through specialists in education, psychology and various other activities. 

"In reality, the victims are excluded from any form of continuing their studies, their medical treatments prescribed as therapy are interrupted, their identification papers are confiscated, their personal goods (primarily those that would facilitate the possibility of communicating with the outside world) are confiscated and they are subject to harsh and brutal methods of so-called re-education, adopted by the suspect and persons in his entourage, in the basis of ideas promoted by them regarding the concept of education," DIICOT shows.