With a Baby in the Temporary Detention Centre

Currently, there are three women with young children being held in the pre-trial detention centre (SIZO). One mother arrived quite recently: she both gave birth and breastfed her baby while in the temporary detention centre at the Bilozerka District Police Department. In total, she spent about six months there; all this time, she was not accepted into the SIZO. There were several reasons for this. Firstly, she was initially ill with syphilis and was not accepted until she had been treated in a hospital. Later, when the baby was born, the paediatrician at the district clinic did not enter the data from his initial examination into the child's medical record—the examination had taken place at the hospital, and she simply did not have the records. To sort out why the mother and baby had been sitting in an IVS cell for so long, it even required the intervention of Natalia Kozarenko, the assistant to the Minister of Internal Affairs for Human Rights in the Kherson region. In the meantime, while this issue was being resolved, the head of the IVS made arrangements to ‘rent’ a cot from the district hospital. He bought herbs and nappies for the baby with his own money, and milk and biscuits for the mother in the evenings as a supplementary meal. Staff heated water in buckets using an immersion heater (the IVS is currently undergoing renovations, and there is not even a cold-water shower yet) so that the child could be bathed every day. Incidentally, the same paediatrician honestly said that she had not seen such a healthy and clean baby in a long time. And considering that he is living with his mother in a cell… When the two-month-old baby finally arrived at the SIZO and saw another child there, he began to cry. He was frightened: ‘Do people actually come in small sizes?’
The second mother arrived at the SIZO while pregnant. She gave birth in one of the city maternity hospitals. Prison guards were in the ward with her and the child. The birth was successful, and four days later she returned to the cell, but this time with her son. Staff brought them a cot from home. However, she bought a refrigerator to store baby food with her own ‘child’ money. The child's father is also held in the SIZO: he and the mother are ‘accomplices’. But he has never seen his son, even though the boy is now over a year old. The toddler is already walking, repeating everything, singing, and loves listening to classical music when it is broadcast over the radio. Yet for some reason, classical music is rarely on air; modern ‘radio DJs’ probably do not like it. The mother’s cellmate (they call her the ‘nanny’) says she misses her own little daughter very much. When she was arrested, her daughter was nine months old, and she was still breastfeeding her. The daughter was taken away and given to the grandmother. The little girl is now one year and seven months old, and she has only seen her a few times, in court. If she knew how it could be done, she would take her in: they are well-fed here, there is time to walk in the fresh air, and there is someone to play with. Moreover, the daughter would have her love.
When the head of the SIZO, Yevhen Chayka, heard about this, he was very surprised: in principle, it is possible and is not prohibited by law. But there had been no such precedents before.