On the morning of October 20 last year, a strikingly young-looking defendant was brought in handcuffs to the ground floor courtroom of the Budapest Environs Regional Court. The 16-year-old boy, Cs. R., was a resident of a child protection institution, a special residential home in Pest County, where he regularly beat up his peers.

According to the indictment, in August 2024, he singled out two children who were smaller, weaker, and mentally disabled than himself, and then forced them to collect money and cigarette butts for him. According to the prosecutor’s statement in the case, until mid-December 2024, he “terrorized the targeted children on a daily basis,” and if they failed to collect at least HUF 1000 (EUR 2,6) on occasion, he “assaulted them all over their bodies with his hands, feet, or a stick.” He also instructed other children living in the home to abuse them.

The boy’s case is by no means unique; violence pervades the world of children’s homes. So-called peer abuse is the most widespread type of abuse affecting most children in child protection institutions. Hundreds of reports of such cases are received each year, demonstrating that the state care system is unable to protect children from being abused by other residents of the homes.

Official reports have been published on this phenomenon, so the government is also aware of the problem. Despite this, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated in parliament last November that “I would like to assure the entire Hungarian public that all 23 000 children currently in state care receive appropriate, safe, high-quality care worthy of 21st-century Hungary.”

These cases of peer abuse rarely receive much attention, except on exceptional occasions. For example, when disturbing photos showing injuries are leaked, or a shockingly violent video is posted online. In such cases, the perpetrators are themselves children who, above a certain age—like Cs. R.—can even be held criminally responsible for their actions.

However, in such cases, the responsibility lies largely with adults, institutions, and the system. “In the case of children living in child protection institutions, it is the duty of the professionals working in the care institution to protect them against any form of abuse and to prevent abuse,” said Ákos Kozma, then ombudsman, in a 2023 report.

However, according to Direkt36’s research, the current child protection system is unable to fulfill this role due to a lack of professionals, the heavy workload of those who do work in the system and overcrowding in children’s homes. In recent months, we have spoken to more than twenty sources working in child protection, who were either raised in institutions or have insight into the field for other reasons, all of whom confirmed that these shortcomings contribute to the normalization of violence among children.

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Data also show that there have been an increasing number of reports of such cases in recent years. The government expects the deployment of guards to curb violence in children’s homes, but child protection experts say that children need healing care rather than guards.

We did not receive a response from the Ministry of the Interior to our questions on this subject.

More than 7000 children with trauma

There are more than 500 residential children’s homes and smaller, more family-like apartment homes in Hungary. The Ministry of the Interior provided the exact number when it ordered an extraordinary inspection of all institutions in 2024: at that time, there were 530 homes, of which 416 were run by the state, 6 by civil organizations, and 108 by churches.

According to data from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office (KSH), 7,458 children and young adults lived in such homes in 2024. These are children who, for one reason or another, cannot be raised by their own families, either because their relatives have died or abandoned them, or because their home environment was deemed dangerous for them.

These children—as child protection professionals agree—are all traumatized. Being torn away from their original families was a serious trauma in itself. But the vast majority have experienced even greater trauma in their past, especially those children who exhibit aggressive behavior.

Two researchers from the National Institute of Criminology (OKRI), Dr. Eszter Sárik and Dr. Orsolya Bolyky, conducted a file analysis in 2022 on juvenile offenders who committed violent crimes. During their research, they found that a significant proportion of the offenders in the sample had previously lived in children’s homes or residential care homes, thus identifying the “tragic background” to serious violent crimes. They concluded that a significant proportion of the children and young people concerned had been victims of abuse in their biological families.

“Thirty-five to forty percent of those living in children’s homes and residential homes were subjected to further physical abuse in the home, and half of those raised in children’s homes were also traumatized by psychological abuse,”

they wrote in the study.

Direct intervention is only possible up to a certain point

“The numbers speak for themselves. These young people carry one trauma after another, so it’s no surprise that the only solution and form of communication they know is violence,” concluded OKRI researchers.

Trauma is a determining factor in the nervous system and overall personality development, criminal psychologist Gabriella Kulcsár, who wrote a book on peer abuse titled Bullying and Cyberbullying, told Direkt36. According to her, much more work needs to be done to address situations of peer abuse in children’s homes than “simply saying that it is not allowed, that you cannot behave like this, and that it is not okay.”

“This is what is difficult with traumatized children in children’s homes, that you can only directly prohibit that behavior to a certain extent,” she explained. According to her, real change in the behavior of these children can be achieved if they can experience that the presence of safe adults in their environment “who are consistently there for them.”

As the expert said, they need adults who can interpret their behavior and emotional instability in a trauma-informed way, who can keep them safe, and who do not respond in the same abusive way as their original environment.

There is a lack of stable adults

However, there are hardly any stable adults in children’s homes at present. Due to poor conditions, there is a high turnover of staff.

In 2024, the State Audit Office (ÁSZ) published a report on the inspection of state-run institutions providing specialized child protection services. The ÁSZ’s analysis covered a total of 18 institutions, each comprising several homes, thus covering a significant part of the field, as these 18 institutions cared for an average of 3304 children or young adults per year.

One of the findings of the report was that home care workers earn low wages. The average gross monthly wage of employees in the institutions examined was HUF 450 300 (EUR 1182) in 2023, which, as pointed out by the ÁSZ, was significantly lower than the average wage of HUF 571 200 (EUR 1499) reported by the KSH.

According to the ÁSZ report, this is one of the reasons for the constant turnover of staff. They wrote: “low earnings may also have contributed” to the fact that in 2023, the proportion of employees who left the institutions examined was “extremely high, at 31.9 percent (822 people)” compared to the average statistical headcount. They found a particularly striking example: at the Bolyai Farkas Children’s Home Center in Budapest, the turnover rate reached 82 percent in 2023.

The report also revealed that despite the arrival of new employees at these institutions, many positions remained unfilled. In 2023, 856 new employees joined, but there were still 362 vacant positions at the end of the year.

According to a source familiar with the operations of several children’s homes, there are places where half of the staff are absent. “This means that not only are they unable to cover summer vacations and sick leave, [but they are also unable] to ensure that there are enough people on duty during a shift,” she explained.

The situation was further exacerbated by the introduction of the impeccable lifestyle test in 2024. The government launched this after the pedophile pardon scandal broke out (The Hungarian President Katalin Novák pardoned the accomplice of a convicted pedophile.) with the aim of checking the suitability of those working in the child protection system. This screening meant that those being screened had to answer personal questions and undergo an environmental study, during which even their neighbors could be questioned about them.

Some people refused on principle to submit to what they considered a humiliating procedure and therefore left the system.

“They considered it a gross intrusion into their private lives, and rightly so,”

said a Budapest children’s home director, adding that she and several of her colleagues disagreed with the investigation and only accepted it “because someone had to stay.”

The situation is particularly critical in the case of childcare workers who are responsible for everyday activities such as meals, order, cleanliness, and accompanying children. While educators with higher education degrees who perform more complex pedagogical tasks have had their salaries adjusted in the past, childcare workers have not received similar increases. In recent years, they have taken home between HUF 200 000 and 300 000 (EUR 525 and 787) net with overtime, while working 12-hour shifts.

“During these two years, I had so many colleagues that I couldn’t even remember all their names,” said a former childcare worker, summarizing his two years of experience with staff turnover.

The source also told Direkt36 that there were times when he worked 60 hours a week because there weren’t enough staff. Once, after two night shifts, he had to go back to work for a 12-hour shift after only an hour and a half of sleep. That’s when he quit, while still on probation. “I didn’t really have a life during that period,” he said.

Before Christmas 2024, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán promised a “breakthrough” wage increase for social sector workers in 2026. So far, all that has been implemented is a 15 percent increase that took effect on January 1 this year, partly due to an increase in the minimum wage and the guaranteed minimum wage.

According to a joint statement by the Trade Union of Social Workers and the Democratic Trade Union of Social Workers, the increase is “far from sufficient, in fact, it is ridiculous.” They argue that an immediate wage increase of at least 50 percent is needed for disadvantaged occupational groups within the sector, which would give workers some breathing space and mitigate the deterioration in the functioning of institutions.

Under the current circumstances, there are hardly any applicants for vacant positions, and even if someone does apply, they have to go through a two-month procedure involving a background check before they can start work, which few can afford to wait for.

Sometimes, people with only a primary school education are hired as childcare workers. These workers often have difficulty even writing a memo. As one children’s home manager put it:

“There are simply so few people available that anyone with two hands and two feet can be hired.”

These workers then complete the training required for childcare work later, sometimes only years after starting the job.

Just putting out fires

Existing employees, even if they are skilled professionals, are overworked. This was the experience of Richárd Répás, who was placed in a nursery after birth and lived in the child protection system until he was 21.

He noticed that over the years, it became increasingly rare for staff to sit down with him and the other children to study or draw. It also became rare for them to ask him how his day had been or take him to the playground. Instead, it became more and more common for the staff to say they couldn’t help him with his homework because there were eight other children they had to look after.

But he believes that they didn’t really help any of them, not because they didn’t want to, but because they already had other things to do. They had to feed them, bathe them, hand over their shift, write the log, or clean up. “So they have so much to do that I don’t think they have much time left for the children,” said Richard.

The environment is therefore very stimulus-poor, “and aggression is a very strong stimulus,” explained a psychologist who previously worked in a children’s home, explaining why many children exhibit violent behavior. According to the director of a children’s home in the capital, “the lack of care has caused the children to become so wild that I don’t know if we can reverse it.” She added: “In the form we exist now, certainly not.”

The shortage of professionals leads to overcrowding: the homes are often full, so there are more children per adult. In practice, this means that groups of children that were originally planned to be smaller are merged. Even in serious cases, it is difficult to effectively separate children who are hurting each other because there is nowhere to move the abuser to.

The main problem with overcrowding is not that there is no extra mattress or extra dinner for the children, but that overworked staff are unable to focus on preventing violent incidents. “The challenge is to be there to prevent peer abuse,” said Nóra Bercsák, former director of the Alföldi Street children’s home. According to her, it starts with adults recognizing when a child is “overstimulated” and understanding why.

“And then you don’t let them kick the other person, but you sit down with them for a moment and distract them, and try to involve them in something positive,” she said. “And you have the patience to do that,” she added. This sends the message to the child that they don’t have to kick anyone, they don’t have to cause trouble, because even without that, there are people who pay attention to them, people who care about them.

In the current system, she believes that “even the most committed adults can only put out fires. There is the basic trauma, and from there, they are thrust into a large group of children without their parents, where everyone has something to carry in their baggage. And in order to help them with their trauma and process it, you need a very conscious presence, not groups of 15 or 20 people,” she said.

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Child psychiatry: a six-month wait

There is another area suffering from a severe shortage of staff, which is linked to the prevention of peer abuse as well as the management of existing situations. One of the main findings of research conducted by two researchers from the National Institute of Criminology, Eszter Sárik and Orsolya Bolyky, was that many of the perpetrators living in children’s homes struggled with psychiatric problems, mainly anger management issues. However, the lack of child psychiatric capacity is a serious, long-standing problem in Hungary.

On the one hand, there are very few doctors. According to figures presented at a 2023 meeting of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, there were only 50-60 child psychiatrists practicing in the country at that time. This number may have increased somewhat since then, but only slightly. In January 2025, in response to a parliamentary question, Bence Rétvári, State Secretary of the Ministry of the Interior, stated that between 2015 and 2024, a total of 90 people had obtained a specialist qualification in child and adolescent psychiatry in Hungary. However, it is not known how many of them retired in the meantime, nor whether any of the new graduates ended up working outside Hungary.

However, there are clearly more and more children who need psychiatric help. According to József Sztupa, professional director of a foundation-run children’s home, when he started his career, 10 out of a group of 12 children were completely normal and 2 were more problematic, but this has now completely reversed. He sees one reason for this in the fact that more and more children are trying extremely harmful, cheap drugs at an increasingly younger age. He knows of children who started using such drugs at the age of 8.

Not only are more doctors needed, but also appropriate institutions. “Based on feedback from children’s rights representatives, there is a need for additional institutions and homes that are suitable for the education, care, and therapeutic assistance of children with psychiatric disorders,” according to the latest annual report of the Integrated Rights Protection Service (IJSZ) under the Ministry of the Interior.

“For those who pose a serious threat to their peers, it is not enough to take them to a psychologist or psychiatrist; instead, places and homes should be created for them where they can receive regular, even continuous, psychiatric care”

said a source who runs a children’s home, agreeing with this statement. As he explained, quite a few employees left the institution because the presence of such children created a situation in the entire children’s home that was impossible to manage.

It is almost impossible to get into existing child psychiatric care in time. “If my child didn’t want to kill himself, it would take 6-8 months to get in,” a guardian summarized his experience.

“I requested an appointment at a child psychiatric institution in February to have a child examined, and we got one in July,” said József Sztupa, noting that they were not even that unlucky, as he had heard of even longer waiting times of 8, 9, 10 months, or even a year.

Worsening figures, declining latency

The government must also be aware of the national scale and trends of peer-on-peer abuse.

The Integrated Rights Protection Service, which is part of the Ministry of the Interior, includes children’s rights representatives whose job is to protect the rights of children living in homes and with foster parents. There have never been many of them, but now there are only 16 in the whole country.

They are responsible for protecting the rights of 23 000 children living in the child protection system, in homes and with foster parents.

Their phone numbers are public, so children can contact them directly, but they also receive information about cases of abuse through official channels. A recurring finding in the IJSZ’s annual reports is that “most reports were received about physical abuse among peers.” The latest report, from 2024, is no exception.

The 2024 report recorded 859 cases of repeated or severe peer abuse. This represents a significant 48 percent increase compared to the previous year: in 2023, the number was 580. The interpretation of the data is complicated by the fact that, as the IJSZ pointed out in a letter to Direkt36, these numbers do not specifically represent the number of cases of abuse, but rather the number of cases in which child rights representatives took some kind of action. “This could be a report of suspected abuse, monitoring of an investigation in accordance with protocol, participation in an investigation, requesting information, or a report from a guardian,” they explained.

The increase can be observed not only in the number of cases reported by child rights representatives. More serious cases of peer abuse that qualify as criminal offenses are also included in the statistics of the investigating authorities. The prosecutor’s office collects separate data on crimes committed by children living in child protection institutions.

Since crimes are not included in these statistics when they are committed, but only when the prosecutor’s office makes a decision on criminal proceedings in the case, we cannot make statements about how many crimes occurred in a given year, but trends can be identified. Based on the statistics, the situation has clearly deteriorated in recent years.

In 2020, a total of 1104 crimes were recorded in the statistics, but by 2024, this number had risen to 1427. Within this, the number of physical assaults increased from 146 to 168 (although there were 202 in 2022), as did the number of disturbances of the peace, for example, from 101 to 163. The former represents a 15 percent increase, while the latter represents a 61 percent increase.

According to sources working in child protection, the spectacular statistical jump is largely due to a change in mentality: since the pardon case, child protection workers have taken a different approach to reporting. “Based on the experience of child rights representatives, there has been a greater reduction in latency,” the IJSZ replied to our question, referring to the fact that professionals are reporting more and more cases that come to their attention.

At the same time, according to several sources working in child protection, there has also been a noticeable deterioration in the situation in the area of peer abuse.

Boxing as initiation

A recent court ruling also highlighted the importance of the role of adults in curbing peer abuse.

The ruling concerned the case of a young man named Ricsi, now 22 years old. Ricsi had been in state care since the age of 14, and as soon as he turned 18, he commissioned the civil society organization Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) to represent his case.

Ricsi lived in children’s homes in Kalocsa and Zalaegerszeg, and in both places he experienced abuse from his peers. One type of abuse he suffered was boxing. The existence of this initiation ritual was also recorded in a previous ombudsman report. According to the children’s accounts, when a newcomer arrives, the older children try to break him or her by forcing him or her to box, with the tacit consent of the educators.

“They asked if you were a good kid. If you were a good kid, if not, you still had to box.”

Ricsi recounted in a video produced by TASZ. Another incident of abuse left a visible scar next to his right eye, which he showed to the judge of the Budapest Metropolitan Court at the latter’s request. In its ruling on January 14, 2025, the Budapest Metropolitan Court found that by exposing him to peer abuse, the special children’s home had violated the boy’s personal rights to physical integrity and health.

“The plaintiff’s right to mental health was violated by the fact that he was surrounded by peer abuse, in which there was a real possibility that the plaintiff would be physically attacked by his peers; According to the plaintiff’s statement made during the police investigation initiated following his report, he was already frightened when someone simply walked past him,” the judgment reads. According to the judgment, the presence of peer abuse during the period covered by the lawsuit, in the children’s homes involved in the lawsuit, is the responsibility of the special children’s home center to which the two children’s homes in question belong.

The decision in Ricsi’s favor has since been upheld by the Budapest Court of Appeals in its final ruling on June 17, 2025. According to Ilona Boros, head of TASZ’s Equality and Autonomy Program, what happened to Ricsi is “unfortunately not unusual.” “What we wanted to show in this lawsuit is that those who live in these institutions are systematically exposed to abuse and neglect,” she said.

Concealed reports

The government also has information about what the system did or did not do about the abuse. On February 29, 2024, the Deputy State Secretary for Social Affairs at the Ministry of the Interior instructed all county government offices to conduct extraordinary inspections of all children’s homes, focusing on internal investigations of abuse cases.

The inspections took place in March and April 2024. The public was not informed of the results, as only one government office – in Nógrád County – published the inspection report on its website. The report revealed that there were 18 cases of abuse in the county during the period under review, 12 of which were cases of peer abuse.

The inspection in Nógrád revealed numerous shortcomings, such as a shortage of professional staff at seven institutions. With regard to abuse, it was found that in one case – emotional and physical abuse committed by an employee – no police report was filed.

Last year, Direkt36 submitted a public interest data request to the Ministry of the Interior, asking for all reports. The case went to court, and Direkt36, with the help of TASZ, filed a lawsuit to obtain the reports. We won the lawsuit in the first instance in December 2025, but the Ministry of the Interior has not yet handed over the requested documents and has appealed the first-instance decision.

Guards are being deployed

The government has recently chosen to show strength and is attempting to prevent further scandals by deploying guards. “Security guards in children’s homes: fewer conflicts, a calmer environment,” wrote State Secretary Attila Fülöp in his Facebook post on June 27.

At the time of writing, security guards were working in 10 children’s homes across the country. According to information received from the Ministry of the Interior, this was a pilot program launched in May 2025 and running until December 31, 2025. Fülöp wrote that “the number of conflicts between children and the frequency with which they escalated into physical violence decreased.”

Before the pilot program had even ended, the government decided that it would not stop at just a few security guards. At a government briefing in November, Gergely Gulyás, Minister of the Prime Minister’s Office, announced that school guards would be employed, which “means about 700 people.”

“There are 40 institutions where police officers will perform school guard duties, and there are 388 locations where there will be school guards, so we are extending the system previously introduced in schools to these locations as well. We believe this will greatly contribute to the safety of both children and staff,” said Gulyás.

Viktor Orbán also spoke on the subject in parliament at the end of autumn.

“As for abuse, I would not like to see this debate repeated, so I have ordered that all state children’s institutions, such as childcare institutions, must have police officers on duty 24 hours a day, just like in schools,” said the prime minister, adding: “I have instructed the Minister of the Interior to deploy police officers to all such children’s institutions, so that there will be a uniformed police officer in the institution every day to avoid these debates.”

Child protection experts do not consider this to be the right approach.

“We don’t need guards here, we need healing professionals,”

said a former children’s home director. According to one of his colleagues who is still active, the only thing that could help would be “if guards who understand children’s souls on some level were assigned to the children’s home.”

“So I wouldn’t want a guard who starts yelling at the child, ‘What do you think you’re doing? I could imagine someone who would pay attention to the child and explain to them why what they are doing is not good, but forcing the child to be good with words of authority and yet another rule is not going to work, in my opinion,” he explained.

According to another leader, József Sztupa, deploying guards is “just another case of putting out fires, treating the symptoms.” “Instead of hiring the right people, educators and childcare workers who are valued both financially and morally. They would be able to do much more with these children than these guards,” he added.

In the current situation, it often happens that abuse goes on for a long time without interruption, and adult workers do not intervene.

“When a child is beaten for an hour, where the hell are the adults? When they go into the child’s room, barricade themselves in with six people, and beat and torture him for an hour, where are the adults?” asked one guardian.

The obvious answer is that adults do not notice what is going on because they are busy with something else, but there is a much more serious explanation.

According to Richárd Répás (not the same person as the TASZ client), a young man who grew up in state care, “it often happened” that when a tense situation arose, or perhaps a caregiver did not like a child, “he would say, ‘I’m going to the caregivers’ room, do whatever you want with him. According to Richárd, in such cases, the caregiver “would close the door as if he couldn’t see or hear anything. This happened very often.”

It also emerged that 16-year-old Cs. R., who was convicted last October, had also been allowed to abuse his peers for a long time without anyone intervening.

The boy did not dispute the charges against him in court. He did not really try to defend his actions, only stating that he had forced others to collect cigarette butts,  which they then smoked together, so he did not consider it a big deal. At the preliminary hearing, he was found guilty of human trafficking and forced labor, as well as two counts of assault, and was sentenced to four years in a reformatory.

“There is still a long way to go before he can integrate into a society as a young adult where it is not the law of the fist and threats that prevail, but honest work and perseverance,” said the prosecutor. The court did not discuss how the abuse could have continued on a daily basis for months without anyone intervening.

Illustration: Máté Fillér / Telex

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