Protecting abused girls in Transcarpathia, Ukraine – the story of a Hungarian pastor

What have been the main positive aspects of your 13 years of service?
I can say that my national awareness was strengthened, I felt the essence of being Hungarian. I also experienced what living faith is, and how important the church is for the people of Transcarpathia. On weekdays at seven o'clock in the morning, they put down the hoe, go to church, and then go back to the fields. I experienced their will to live, I saw their survival. They look for a task and try to do it, not expect someone else to do it for them. There is also no competitiveness. Of course, there were difficulties and people who were separate islands, but the empathy and mutual care that I experienced in Nagydobrony contributed a lot to my personal development, as I was only nineteen when I first got there.

Why did you feel your place was in the girls' home?
I was invited to a missionary week by Éva Balogh and Gyöngyi Tar; I was an assistant pastor at the time. At the end of the week, László Katkó Sr. who was the director at the time asked me if I wanted to come and work with the kids. I accepted.

On what goals have you tried to be a spiritual leader?
In theology college, we learned how to get close to people, but practically no one prepared us for what it means to work in a home with seventy abused children. I was still only 25. I didn't know what to do when I had children telling me that they hated God and I had to listen to them. In theological education, you get a general picture, which is a good starting point. That's why I think it's very important to have different trainings and workshops for pastors where we can get tools and training for these situations. I was very lost in this at the beginning.

We had a Bible study where, in the story of Joseph, the little girl said something about what happened to her at home, and I just sat there wondering what to do next.

Shall I close the Bible study? What should I do? I always came across yet another shocking story, unbelieving that this could happen to a child, that a person could do this to their own child. I just hope that I did not make a mistake, that I made a decision according to my abilities, and that my support could benefit the girls.

Image

Pastor Viktória Katona – Photo: Hungarian Reformed Church Aid

What were your duties as a pastor?
Talking with children, spiritual care, Bible studies, and worship services. Only later did I become a pastor-director. I have seen and experienced a lot, but I don't really feel that my role has ever been anything else but to say that change is possible, because God can work that change in the life of an abused person, so that she can decide whether she will remain a victim or start a new life, a life that will be more meaningful than the one of her parents. I love that they regard the shelter as their home, not an orphanage. I got really angry when someone said orphanage. It is a home and everyone needs a home. A very diverse community has gathered in this wonderful place!

When did you start a family?
I cannot have children because of a health problem, so my husband and I decided to adopt. Miraculously, we waited less than six months after filing the papers and God gave us a baby. Fülöp came to our family at the age of eight months, from the state children's orphanage in Szolyva (Svalyava, Ukraine). We did not have a clause of origin, which made the process faster. I adopted him as a Hungarian citizen in Ukraine, everything was done officially. He is a little boy of Roma origin, to this day I have no doubt that he is my child!

We have received many gifts through Fülöp: you could say he has saved something on us and we have saved something on him. He knows that he is "born from heart", and that he has parents whose features he bears. Of course, we are now struggling with his questions about his origins, but there is help there too. We pray for his birth parents and I am grateful to his mother for placing him to secure hands. She knew she couldn't raise him, but she gave her child the opportunity to have a life. I feel the same way about the girls in the home. I have told them many times that their parents did as much as they were able to do, but they gave them that they are safe now.

Of course, that doesn't absolve the parents from being abusive, and it was a big task to get the girls to stop hating their roots because everything can heal from its roots.

Just this morning I thought of the analogy that a tree that has been cut down can sprout, even a new branch can come from the trunk. I can only think of these girls as the ones who were cut down, pruned, and not wanted. We have a girl who is now a kindergarten teacher in a Waldorf kindergarten in Budapest. Another works as a nanny and is studying to be a kindergarten teacher in Budapest at the same time. A third girl works as a nurse at the Schweitzer Home. Another "daughter" of mine, who lives here in Budapest and is expecting her second child, has already surpassed her own parents by lovingly caring for her child. What are these if not miracles?

What is the typical age of the girls who come to the home?
From age zero to age 18, but they don't leave at eighteen. The home is called the Good Samaritan Reformed Children's Home Aid Association, and its constitution does not state that 18-year-olds must leave the home. There is a building called the Care House, where sixteen girls can live in four apartments. The girls living in this mentoring house continue their education while still being part of the community, so they can start an independent life. The home does not receive a capitation grant from the Ukrainian state for the children, which is why external support is so important. On social media platforms, you can find the bank account number with all contact details.

How is everyday life?
Girls go to school, and do homework and chores at home.

Has anyone ever not arrived on time, or wandered off?
Oh, of course, but that's normal! If they didn't rebel, it'd be a problem. I was in a children's home, and they told me to look at how well-behaved and clean they were. Oh, I said, you know what's not good here? The fact that there's not a greasy handprint on the window, the glass hasn't been licked or the walls kicked.

Where there is iron discipline, there is no life. Where fifty children live together, the walls must be dirty.

I always say that the children who don't rebel, who don't start trying to be themselves, should be approached with love, because they may have problems, and they should be given a kind of therapy. Of course, it is not good when a child gets carried away, there are problems there too.

There must have been problems that seemed unsolvable...
The hardest part was when it turned out that they had been sexually abused. Especially if I knew it was a close family member, a relative... There were times when I felt sick after the conversation, I couldn't bear it because the child was so open. It was very difficult to listen to, there were so many cases. When they were kept tied up, or not fed, destitute, helpless, or when they were victims of abuse, their mother was a prostitute, or they were looking for food in the trash... I always hope they will recover from it because they are very strong. I can't tell you how much I have received from them, and still receive to this day. They were honest.

I've learned that when the kid slams the door on me, she's not really slamming the door on me, she's slamming the door on somebody else, only that somebody else isn't there, I'm there instead.

I cannot fix what happened to them but God's healing love can, and time never heals. I've buried a lot of people and they say time heals wounds, but that's not true because the process itself is the one that heals. If you go through it painfully, sometimes screaming, sometimes stuck, now that heals. There is no insoluble problem! What seems to be, with enough energy and time, will be solved.

Do you have any positive memories?
Oh, plenty! It's hard to choose. One was a Bread of Hungarians celebration. We had a child who was severely abused, and treated as an adult woman. She sang in the choir, like everyone else, in clean black and white. The little girl stood in the aisle and I watched as she looked at herself in a mirror and smoothed her dress. I didn't understand. Suddenly she looked at me and said, "Viktória, look, I'm a little girl!" I said OK. We reached our goal. When a child stops putting lipstick on at 11 and says she's a little girl...
Another memory is when a disabled girl ran up to me after one of my surgeries, shouting for joy, "I thought you were going to die, but I prayed so hard for you not to die, and you didn't, my God loves us, He heard our prayers!"

The third is related to a traumatic experience I had. I had twin pregnancies from an IVF program – one baby was stillborn and the other had spontaneously aborted earlier, so I was very stressed out. It was nine years ago on 11 May. I was lying in the clinic in Debrecen (Hungary), and I was in so much pain mentally that I slammed my hand into the wall, I was covered in blood. I couldn't cope. Anyone who has been through something like that knows what it means - then I got a text message.

It was from the girls. They wrote: "Dear Viktória, today we know that your heart is broken and we also wanted very much to have little siblings. But please know that your 87 daughters are waiting for you at home." I felt then that I was really at home among them.

I have many other positive experiences, of course: when a skin-and-bone child becomes a healthy adult, or when they are accepted to college. They go to learn a trade, they get their first paycheck. Or when their first child is born. Even in the hard memories, there are positives. I have my mission statement on my desk: "It is love for Christ that makes you worthy of a greater calling, of belonging to a community." I think about them a lot, I try to support them in prayer and in whatever I can. I also visit them once a month. I am studying now so that I can help young people from similar circumstances in Hungary, in my own country. I feel this is a mission that has no end. In the meantime, I am also healing, I am being healed.

Image

Photo: Hungarian Reformed Church Aid

Why has your stay in Nagydobrony come to an end?
My little boy has special educational needs and there was no Hungarian institution there that could take him. Fülöp did not develop properly, and when I found out that he has ADHD, I wondered how much responsibility I had for the child who belonged to us. This was the main reason for us to leave, but it was a very difficult decision. Secondly, seeing that war had broken out, I knew that I had to be in this chair to help the people of Transcarpathia. I did not arrange it this way. God knew it, and He led me. Thirdly, perhaps I was carrying too much mental burden.