Thousands of people took to the streets of Budapest on Saturday to express their indignation over alleged child abuse cases in a juvenile correction facility in Budapest.
The protest was organized by the Tisza Party, the governing Fidesz-KDNP coalition’s main challenger in the upcoming election, after an opposition activist published security footage from the institution on Szőlő street showing severe physical abuse of the minors held there. In the videos, the institution’s former acting director is seen bashing a minor's head against a table and throwing another to the ground, then beating him, kneeling on him, and repeatedly kicking him.
The man seen in the videos submitted his resignation the day before the videos were published, claiming he was “under too much pressure”. The next day, special investigative units of the police raided the institution and Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office announced that all five Hungarian juvenile detention centers would be immediately placed under police supervision and that an investigation was launched into the case.
The former acting director was placed under arrest, but that was far from the end of the story. Throughout the week, as a result of the police investigation inside the institution, four more employees were arrested, most of them under the suspicion of abuse, with one of them suspected of aiding and abetting.
This is the same institution whose director was arrested alongside his girlfriend under suspicion of human trafficking and forced labor in May, with the man also being charged with multiple counts of abuse of public office and the misuse of a firearm.
Trying to reframe it, without success
When the footage was first published, the government attempted to lighten the blow by emphasizing that the underage victims were not orphans, and this was not an orphanage, but “practically a prison”, with Minister Gulyás even listing the crimes the young boys are accused of. However, this did not sit well with the public, and psychologists were also quick to stress that regardless of what some of the institution’s young tenants had committed, nobody should be treated the way they were.
Other experts, like Vera Kovács, (one of the founders of an organization that helps homeless people get back on their feet by providing housing and other assistance) stressed that “All the sins that Gulyás attributed to the boys from Szőlő Street are reflections of the government's shame” – namely, the fact that in the past fifteen years, none of the Orbán governments have made an effort to properly and effectively address the social challenges, including poverty.
In addition, on Friday, the Tisza Party published a document which, according to party president Péter Magyar, was drawn up in 2021 by one of the departments of the National Child Protection Service with the goal of providing an overview of the conditions in child protection and the abuse suffered by children placed in state care. The document’s findings have been cited in several published studies on the subject and Gábor Kuslits, the child protection expert who led the team that put together the report has confirmed to Telex that it was at the time forwarded to the relevant authorities.
Among others, the 47-page report found that one-fifth of the children in state care have experienced abuse, most often emotional, psychological and physical, but there has also been a significant enough percentage of sexual abuse reported to warrant action by the authorities. The guardians, whose reports the document was based on, also reported that the system is severely understaffed and said that even when they informed the authorities about the abuse suffered by a minor in their care, the procedures were often conducted in an unprofessional manner, without consideration for the fact that the victims were underage and growing up in an institution.
The current situation may be particularly worrying for Fidesz because the biggest scandal during their fifteen years in power was also connected to child protection and led to them losing two prominent politicians at the beginning of 2024. Then president Katalin Novák, and former justice minister Judit Varga resigned after it emerged that Novák had pardoned the former deputy director of a children's home, (Varga countersigned the decision) who blackmailed several residents of the home to withdraw their testimony against the pedophile director who had abused them.
Two protests, one message
At Saturday’s protest, Orbán’s challenger, Péter Magyar pointed out that “the 2021 report is not about correctional institutions, it is not about young people who have committed crimes, but about children "whom we have entrusted to the care of the Hungarian state. You knew about these atrocities – he said, directly addressing the government – and yet you did nothing except engage in deceitful political manoeuvring and incitement."
According to Magyar, this is a crime for which – in a democratic state governed by the rule of law – any government should resign.
An entirely different protest followed on Sunday, when a smaller group gathered in front of the juvenile detention facility itself for a silent protest “to stand for the lives crippled under state care”. Many people lit candles in front of the building, and some brought torches to the demonstratively silent protest, where there were no speeches and no music could be heard – the crowd simply stood in front of the building in quiet murmuring.
The silence during the protest was only broken twice with a few short chants of "Filthy Fidesz' and after someone in the crowd suggested that they "send a message to the young ones in there," they began chanting "We stand with you!"
As one of our readers who was at the scene recalled, in response to the "We stand with you!" chants, a young person responded from one of the darkened windows of the building, "On behalf of all of us at Szőlő Street, thank you very much!" The crowd responded with cheers and applause.
One of the banners at the protest read, “Every country will be a reflection of how it treats its children.”
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