ABSTRACT
As the world celebrated Christmas 1989, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu faced a fir ing squad and paid for 24 years of tyranny with their lives (Kifner, 1989). As despot ic as their regime appeared (Blumenthal, 1989), few were prepared for the horrors revealed following their deaths. One of the Ceausescus’ most heinous legacies was a system o f 600-800 (Battiata, 1991) institutions for abandoned children. Although Romanian government officials acknowledged only 14,000 orphans in their care in 1990 (Hilton, 1990), a more realistic figure was 100,000-130,000 (Battiata, 1991; Hunt, 1991), with estimates ranging as high as 200,000-300,000 (Jamieson, 1991; Williams, 1990).
