Imelda Staunton
Posted on 02/06/2006 8:59:18 AM PST by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The spectacle of a hapless little boy staring through the heavy mesh of a cage launched mega-successful author of the Harry Potter books, J.K. Rowling, on a crusade to end the caging of Eastern European tots.
Referring to a 2004 story in Britain’s Sunday Times about little Vasek Knotek imprisoned in a Prague hospital, Rowling wrote in today’s Times, "If you read the piece and it’s as bad as the picture, then you’ve got to do something about it.”
The story hit her hard, she wrote, especially since she has a horror of what she sees as "one unendurable terror - incarceration in a very small space.”
"I tore out the article, frightened of losing it even though it was the most disturbing thing I had ever read,” she explained. "The following day I photocopied the page 50 times and started writing letters.”
Doing something about it has not been easy the Times noted, explaining that Rowling has had to combine her work for numerous other charitable causes and her roles as mother and author. It meant she had to stop breastfeeding her third child slightly early when she traveled to Bucharest last month to launch a charity, the "Children’s High Level Group,” which will campaign for improved rights for children.
Among its goals, she wrote is putting a stop to the "widespread cultural acceptance, even encouragement, of abandonment in the cases of children with mental and physical handicaps.” Noting that the Romanian government has put a moratorium on adoptions by foreign parents despite pressure from the West, she wrote that it is "an issue around which tempers flare like grenades.”
She writes movingly of "exceptional” children and teenagers she met who had experienced Romania’s child care system, describing how she found one abandoned baby lying listlessly in a hospital.
"I tickled her cheek with a finger; she continued to look ahead. But then as I was about to move away she looked round and gave a sudden smile.” Rowling writes that she so choked up that she felt she had a "hard-boiled egg in her throat”.
Conditions for children in Romania, says Rowling, have improved hugely since the fall of the communist regime in 1989. But she writes: "There is still much work to do there — more than 30,000 children remain in care.”
He's a blast ended scrut.
I was thinking more along the lines of the OOTP rescueing a bunch from the Deatheaters.
Pearl S. Buck added a retarded child to The Good Earth simply because she had one at her knee.
J K Rowling could certainly have something she is passionate about added to one of her books.
Also, the 5th movie "Order of the Phoenix" will come out sometime in 2007. They haVE ALREADY Started shooting the movie and they found the actress who will play Umbridge. I can't remember the actress but she is British.
An idea! :o)
Thanks! Get me one for my birthday...
*snicker*
A DVD?
And how am I going to get it to you?
Sorry about that, I'm not real good at saying exactly what I mean.
I'm still looking, but I can't find much on ways to help the children of eastern Europe. This new group JKR is in looks so new that I haven't found a website or anything yet. Just a lot of articles saying what horrible conditions the children, mentally-ill adults and senior citizens are living in. It's very foul stuff.
Imelda Staunton
yeah.
And how am I going to get it to you?
Hand carry?
};^P
LOL!
Thanks! :o)
She looks familiar, like I've seen her doing other movies or tv.
and they found the actress who will play Umbridge.
I always think of Helen Thomas when i read about Umbridge. :)
I find it unconscionable that the Romanian govt. would not allow them to be adopted by Western families! The Govt. is condemning those children to hell on earth.
Sounds like she only recently found out about it. Maybe she'll work this, or something akin to it into the last book.
If not, I hope she'll just work hard in real life for it.
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