Sometimes we cringe as we read the “unimaginable” in a story. This story is one of those. Valerian is a young boy with a very harsh and sorrowful past, much due to the evil ways of his biological father. A father is someone you are supposed to be able to trust and from whom you receive love. Valerian and his siblings saw the extreme opposite of that.

Valerian has a permanent reminder of that evil on his hand today. One finger is almost completely gone, with much damage to the rest of the hand due to being intentionally burned by his father when the stove was lit, and Valerian’s hand was held to it. These kind of traumatic childhood situations can leave not only physical scars, but also great emotional scars.

Thankfully, these children are now living in a safe environment and receiving love and care in a Christian Family Home by “foster parents” who are part of the SGA-supported Orphans Reborn ministry. Please pray for these children, that their scars from the past would heal and that they would feel love and protection from their Father in Heaven, trusting Him in the days ahead. Here is Valerian’s story as shared by his foster father Leo to an SGA Storyteller. . .

Valerian grew up in a family of gypsies, a socially vulnerable family. In total, there are three brothers and one sister. The parents constantly consumed alcohol. The father was aggressive, he was constantly violent in the family with the children and his wife. Valerian has scars on his back after being hit with a metal cable.

In 2020, someone from the village accused Valerian and his older brother of setting fire to a garage. As punishment, the biological father lit the stove and burned the fingers of both children. The eldest struggled and escaped more easily and he ran to the outpatient clinic where he received emergency medical care. Valerian, being smaller, suffered a lot. His fingers were badly affected, one even burned 70%. Valerian was hospitalized for a long time. The doctors took skin from his leg and performed a transplant to restore his fingers and palm. However, one finger was partially amputated, and the rest of the hand was left with scars. For this act, the father was sentenced to work for the benefit of the community.

He mistreated his wife continually. Once he tried to drown her in tahe pool of water, but she was saved by the neighbor who saw the whole horrible scene. Later, he beat her so much that she was paralyzed in bed permanently and has difficulty speaking. For this act, this father was sentenced to prison for six years. The stepfather took the mother in for care, and the children were taken to a pulmonary sanatorium because there was tuberculosis in the house.

This child, together with his brothers, has had a very sad past filled with pain and fear. Someone killed the grandmother who lived with them, and they locked her in the cellar—they found her decomposing remains a month later. The stepfather often came home beaten, once they even brought him three times with a knife in his abdomen, but he survived. Thus, the family fell apart.

From January 2024, all four siblings are now in our family. They are very difficult children (the reason is that they were brought up that way). They don’t even know basic things, but with God’s help we are already seeing big changes. Valerian reads the Bible a lot and has many spiritual questions. I hope that one day the Holy Spirit will work on his heart and completely change him and the other children, too. Everyone goes to church with pleasure and gets involved in different activities (Sunday school). May God help us and bless these children with a beautiful and secure future.