The Boy Who Does Not Exist:

Born to be homeless Sergey
finally finds a safe place to live

June 2002

4-year old Sergey is not listed in any population register. He was born in a wood at a dump. The mother and the son now live on our farm which at the moment provides them the only way back to a normal life.

Our street patrol workers know several children who were born staright into a street life. Sergey from Moscow is one of them.

He was born around Christmas in 1997 in a wood at a dump in a shelter built of materials found from the trash. Nadya the mother was alone when she gave the birth to her son.

Other children took 3-year-old Sergey to eat at the street patrol

“We were acquainted with Sergey prior to his mother, ” says Marina Dolbina from the Moscow street patrol. “The other children who stayed at the railway station used to bring him to eat at our patrol van. At last we met his mother, Nadya. We had with her many talks and as the result she lef for our farm for alcohol rehabilitation.”
This was the best solution both for the mother and the son. The decision was urged by the mother’s fear of losing the son of whom she didn’t have any certificates.

Single mother with 5 children and problematic background

Divorces, being cheated, homelessness, alcoloism and other problems led Nadya to the the street for many years. She has five children. The youngest is in an orphanage, about the fate of three oldest she is not sure even herself...
At the rehabilitation center Nadya participates in different farming and kitchen work and her condition has been improving. She is already thinking about having her smallest child back. However, even Sergey’s official matters have not yet been fully arranged.

For the first time Sergey has a home and enough food.

Sergey who plays with other small children and pets on the farm is not aware of these problems. In spite of that he certainly understands in his mind that now for the first time he has a safe place to live where his mother is all the time with him and he has his stomach full of food.