Transcripts For CNNW Amanpour 20171125 : vimarsana.com

Good evening. Welcome to a special edition of the program, i am Christiane Amanpour in london. The magic of harry potter transformed her into the most famous, most loved, most celebrated author of our time. But away from the limelight, j. K. Rowling has a deep but much less public passion, her charity lumos, dedicated to unseen, unknown tragedy of our time, the institutionalization of children. 8 million in orphanages around the world. Heres the rub. According to research, more than 80 of them arent even orphans. J. K. Rowling said to have amassed 25 billion empire, giving away hundreds of millions to her charities. She mostly communicates by her twitter followers and rarely gives interviews. But tonight she opens the door into her other world. J. K. Rowling, welcome to the program. Thank you for having me. What is it that got you interested from the beginning . How did you decide this was your mission . Well, like a lot of people, i have no idea. I really have no idea about the scale of the problem. I was pregnant and therefore perhaps particularly vulnerable and emotional to anything to do with small children, flipping through the sunday paper, i saw what still i see it in my memory, a very disturbing image of a small boy screaming through chicken wire. And i went to turn the page, not proud of it, i did go to turn the page. Then i stopped and i thought if the story is as bad as the picture looks, you have to do something about it. That was his existence. From that, thats how it began. I was appalled and horrified. Lumos comes from where . It is corny. Not corny. I wanted to call it lumos and no one could think of anything better. But it is a metaphor. It is obvious youre doing this. It wasnt obvious to me at the time, but to be very candid, i think i have i think my worst fear, my personal worst fear is powerlessness and small spaces. So when you think about that little boy trapped in the cage bed, he is totally voiceless and nobody was speaking for him. And i think that we all have something that touches us on a very vis ral level, and i think thats my thing. Small spaces why . I dont know, i always had that. I think just the idea that these children were being kept penned like this was horrific to me. Although i didnt think thats like harry and his cupboard, i suppose why did i put harry in the cup barreoard, it is my fea being trapped and powerless to get out. On a very crude level, that news story tapped into something that i found personally horrifying. Harry has done a lot of good in the world. I hope so. Harry has inspired this work to help some of the most forgotten children. Millions believed to be warehoused in orphanages. A year after seeing that boy in the cage in 2005 she created a charity to stop it. It operates in places like muldova, czech republic, haiti, and bulgaria. This is once bulgarias largest, most notorious institution with its long, dark, decaying corridors, and countless bare bedrooms. This is what many children once called home, where they lived and where many died. Now through the efforts of lumos, it has been shut down. The children helped into Small Group Homes closer to families where they get individual care and attention, the opportunity to socialize and plan for a future they may never have imagined. Lumos works all over the world supporting children like those, providing them with an environment that is safe and caring. And as much as possible, lumos wants to help children return home to the arms of those they love, like christina and igor, siblings both with disabilities. With the support of lumos, they have been reunited with their parents after years of living in an orphanage. Now for the first time, theyre able to sit arn the family table to enjoy each Others Company and finally experience a love they had been so tragically deprived of. Youre trying to deinstitutionalize them, right . The objective is get these kids out of institutions. Our ambition is to end child institutionalization by 2050. Thats the ambition. All over the world. All over the world. Global. How many kids are we talking about . Well, thats a far more important question than many people will realize because we estimate there are 8 million children in institutions worldwide, but that might be a low guess. And we know that around a million disappear in europe every year. The crisis shes speaking about is one i first came across three decades ago as a young Foreign Correspondent in romania, the last of communist block countries to fall back in 1989. I saw for myself the harrowing sight of children and babies in long rows of caged beds, helplessly trapped in a life from which they could never escape. In the village in southern romania stanlds another of the horrifying legacies. [ crying ] this is an asylum, overflowing with more than 200 mentally Handicapped Children abandoned by parents who couldnt care for them and neglected by a state that wouldnt. It considered the children useless, even though many of victims of the high birth rate policy which banned contraception and abortion. In months since the revolution, conditions have improved but are still grim by any standard. There arent enough beds so the children are packed in two and three at a time. Some beds cant be used because the mattresses are rotting. Theres one nurse to every 30 children, and theyre coping with the barest essentials. They sit for hours in their you are in and go unwashed because water is severely ragsed. Neglected that even a visit from reporter is a chance for some affection. One doctor assigned to this asylum is a pediatrician, untrained in psychiatric disorders, fighting to keep them alive. Before the revolution, three children would die a week because of inhuman conditions here, he says. Now things are better. We have had only three deaths in the past five months, because we show more interest. This doctor teaches them to sing, dance, count. He has to keep them occupied best he can, there are no rehabilitation programs here. Most of the children lie in bed dayin and dayout. There are hundreds of mentally Handicapped Children hidden in asiel u asylums. Some aid coming in as word comes out. But theyre strapped for cash, and he wonders where they rank on the new governments list of priorities. Christiane amanpour, cnn, romania. In pictures of the report from romania, i was stunned even talki talking 1990. A young reporter. I wasnt a mother. I was stunned by the little children coming up to me as if they had never seen anybody give them affection or anything, trying to hug me. That happened to me as well in institutions. You know and i know, anyone thats been around children knows the immediate impulse of a young child to see a stranger walk in the house is wariness. And that is correct behavior. Normal human behavior. These children are so hungry and thirsty for any kind of one on one attention that they will run and cling to total strangers. So i have literally had the experience of being crawled over by shaven headed children. I remember a girl crawling on my lap and holding me and i did hug her. I was heartbroken by it. Part of me wants to pick her up and go, of course it does. Thats the human reaction. For me, lumos is about the children who i mean, i heard heartbreaking stories. I met children, i visited institutions, i am hyper aware, when i visit, i see the best of the best, and even then, i have seen horrible, horrible things. Up next, how her charity tries to bring happiness to families by actually reuniting them at home and out of the orphanage. Plus the vital support of her own family, how she jug else charity work with blockbuster screen plays. How much money do you think youll need in retirement . Then we found out how many years that money would last them. How long do you think well keep oooooohhh you stopped youre gonna leave me back here at year 9 . How did this happen . It turned out, a lot of people fell short, of even the average length of retirement. We have to think about not when we expect to live to, but when we could live to. Lets plan for income that lasts all our years in retirement. Prudential. Bring your challenges. A trip back to the dthe doctors office, mean just for a shot. But why go back there, when you can stay home. 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If youd rather be home, ask your doctor about Neulasta Onpro. vo take home something in for 999 or more,ds box and you also take home an xbox one s, with a terrific bundle now, thats thinking outside the box at helzberg diamonds. While supplies last. Welcome back to the program and my interview with j. K. Rowling. How she juggles her empire and charity, wants nothing less than end child institutionalization all over the world. Lumos reckons the 8 million in orphanages are technically not orphaned, and warns off well meaning donors and volunteers. We hear about the heartbreaking trip her husband dr. Neil murray made. My husband recently went to muldova on a field trip. I cant clone myself, i needed to do a screenplay. Neil who is a doctor said ill go, ill have a look whats going on. I said that would be amazing, so good. Anyway, he told me he went into a room in this institution and he saw a little boy, sort of this long, propped up on a chair who clearly had multiple physical issues and neil said to me, he was suffocating. I said what do you mean. Neil is a doctor. He made a beeline for the boy, m manipulated his jaw. He said he thought he must be five or so. Turned to the nurse and said how old is he, and how does he normally breathe. She said well, normally he lies face down with his head over the bed, brings his jaw forward so he can breathe. Because of visitors that come, they put him into clothes, propped him up, and he is suffocating in a corner. She said oh, he is 15. Neil was pretty upset when he came home and told me about him. He said i dont think he is going to make it. But he did make it. We got him to hospital. You started this really tragic story which has a good ending saying you couldnt go because you were writing a script. Im on the second screenplay for the fantastic beast franchise. No one else can write it. We are about to start filming me, so i needed to be on the screenplay. I wonder what it is like to do that one day and be in this area of extreme abnormality and need and poverty and sadness. Was it weird . Its not weird, no. I love writing. We all know i dont actually need to write any more, you know. Thats a given. I write because i love writing. It gets me up every day. I would be writing no matter what. But i suppose i always had this other side, i used to work at families international, had this side of me, wants to make a difference. But i want to do it in a meaningful way, and one of the things that lumos caught me is to be careful how you give. Even if youre giving with the best of intentions, you may inadvertently be doing harm. Very, well meaning donors inadvertently propping up a system that we know we have maybe 100 years of Hard Research that shows that even a well run institution, even an institution set up the best possible will irrevokably harm the child. What is it that you can do. Absolutely. This is the key question. Possibly the most staggering figure in all of this is that we know at least 80 of these children arent orphans. Theyre not orphans. This is mind blowing to most people. It is in the name, right . These are all 80 of the children have at least one living parent who overwhelmingly, they didnt want to give up the child. Why are they in the institution . Grinding poverty. Thats the number one reason. You have Children Special needs, physical and mental handicaps. What do you do. How do you reunite children with parents. Thats the number one goal. Get them back to families that want them. This is doable. It is ten times cheaper to put a child even with special needs back into their family than to keep them in the institution. So the family themselves might need daycare. We repurpose the institution for daycare center, but the child goes home every night. The institution is often a major local employer, so many people that are not bad people have huge vested interests in keeping that institution going, we can retrain them to be nurses, social workers, foster careers. So far retrained 30,000 professionals across 34 countries. And we have 18,000 children out of institutions. There are cases where a child cant go home. We estimate 20 are orphans. We would first look at extended family. Can we support the grandmother or the aunt to take the child. And they would be happy to take them . Overwhelmingly, yes, but because the poverty is the thing that overwhelmingly has driven them into the institution, they need to support them and their communities. If anyone wants to donate, i have covered all costs. Any money going in goes to the field. A lot of the solution is donate differently and volunteer differently. Thats a huge message i would like to get out to my people, the people that are in their 20s, volunteering is an amazing thing. But volunteer in the right way. Volunteering in an orphanage is not a good thing to do. Youre propping up a system and unfortunately little though you might not want to believe it, one of the reasons theyre set up is to bring foreign money in the country in the form of donations and in the form of volunteers, wealthy western volunteers. A powerful reminder that the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. When we come back, a scoop, a surprise for her fans. J. K. Rowling and the last manuscript. Imagine that next. Pain used to shut me down during pickup games. But with odor free blueemu continuous pain relief spray, i can box out any muscle or joint pain immediately. Blueemu continuous pain relief spray, it works fast and you wont stink. But he hasoke up wwork to do. In. So he took aleve. If hed taken tylenol, hed be stopping for more pills right now. Only aleve has the strength to stop tough pain for up to 12 hours with just one pill. Aleve. All day strong. Ahh. The new guy. Whoa, he looks he looks exactly like me. No. Separated at birth much . We should switch name tags, and no one would know who was who. Jamie, you seriously think you look like him . Uh, im pretty good with comparisons. Like how progressive helps people save money by comparing rates, even if were not the lowest. Even if were not the lowest. Whoa wow. I mean, the outfit helps, but pretty great. Look at us. And finally tonight, you heard j. K. Rowling telling me earlier she will probably always be writing. Imagine what her legions of fans will make of this. I read that you were considering writing a political book for children, young people. That was a fairy tale. Yeah, i ended up, i dont know whether ill ever publish that, i will tell you this. My 50th, the theme of my 50th birthday which i held at halloween, even though thats not really my birthday, was come as your own private nightmare. I went as a lost manuscript and i wrote over a dress most of that book. So that book i dont know whether it will ever be published, it is hanging in a wardrobe currently. This is a scoop. Hidden book somewhere. Talking about a lot of grim stuff. Throw in something fun. And j. K. Rowling, why the initials. Oh. Because my publisher who published harry potter, they said we think this is a book that will appeal to boys and girls. I said great. They said so could we use your initials, basically they were trying to disguise my gender. Obviously that lasted about three seconds because which is wonderful, im certainly not complaining, but the book men won an award, i got a big advance and got a lot of publicity. I quite like jk. I wouldnt have chosen it for that reason either, but i was grateful to be published. If they told me to call myself rupert, i probably would have. I like having a pen name, thats like an identity, and in private life, joan murray. Thank you very much. Thank you. Can you fit in there . I got this. Thats the new man, huh . Yup. Getting kinda close to my ride. Wow. Now, thats how you make a first impression. Theyre going to love you. Thats ford, americas bestselling brand. Hurry in today for 0 financing for 72 months across the full line of ford cars, trucks and suvs and just announced. Get 0 apr for 72 months plus 1000 cash back take advantage of these exclusive holiday offers during the ford year end sales event. At tmobile, when you holiday together, great things come in twos. Like tmobile and netflix. Right now when you get an unlimited family plan, netflix is included. Ho ho ho tmobile covers your netflix subscription. Best Christmas Gift ever . So you can binge watch all year long. Now youre thinking christmas and now when you buy any of this seasons hot new Samsung Galaxy phones, you get a second one free to gift. Thats one samsung for you. And one to give. Tmobile. Holiday twogether. Top of the hour. I am ana cabrera. We begin with the possibility that former National Security adviser michael flynn, the one President Trump asked the fbi to stop investigating may be working with special counsel leading the russian probe. Sources tell cnn that flynns attorneys tell others involved in the investigation, including those representing the president , that they can no longer share information about the case. New york times first reported this devel