As conservative activist Erika Kirk publicly mourned her husband Charlie Kirk, social media users targeted her work on a Romanian charity project.
“Did ya’ll know Erika Kirk is banned from Romania because her Evangelical group was accused of trafficking children out of Romanian villages?” one self-described “leftist” X user wrote Sept. 23.
Another post from an X user whose bio encouraged people to “vote blue” said“Erika Kirk is banned from Romania due to sex trafficking allegations — Just saying…”
A PolitiFact reader also texted us to ask if a charity Kirk ran was “accused of child trafficking in Romania.”
Kirk, whose maiden name is Frantzve, founded the nonprofit organization Everyday Heroes Like You, which aimed to assist other charities. That work included an international Romanian Angels project that teamed up with the U.S. Marine Corps to sponsor a Romanian orphanage, Kirk once told Arizona Foothills Magazine.
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What’s the evidence for these claims? There isn’t any.
Some posts repeated the baseless narrative without giving any hint about where it originated.
One of the earliest posts we found, dated Sept. 16said Kirk’s organization had links to missing Romanian children and trafficking and included screenshots of two articles.
The first, a 2001 report from the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was about a Romanian investigation into Israeli adoption agencies and an international conspiracy to sell children’s organs for transplants. The report did not mention Kirk, Romanian Angels or Everyday Heroes Like You. Kirk was about 13 years old when that news report was published.
The second was a 2023 article from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, a media organization founded by the U.S. that reports internationally, including in Romania. It detailed the stories of Romanian children, now adults, who were adopted internationally and who’ve sought information on their Romanian birth families — including some people who concluded they were trafficked as children. This report also did not mention Kirk, Romanian Angels or Everyday Heroes Like You.
Another Sept. 18 post included a screenshot of a Jan. 23, 2022, BBC video titled, “Sex trafficking: Children groomed in Romania sent to UK.” The nine-minute BBC piece focused on young Romanian girls who it reported were groomed in Romania to be trafficked to the United Kingdom. It didn’t mention Kirk or either of her organizations.
Both X posts also contained a low-resolution image with a Romanian Angels banner that encouraged people to “join the movement.” Using a reverse image search, we found a higher resolution version of what looks like a flier with details for a fundraiser organized by Everyday Heroes Like You. The flier, other documentsand Kirk’s social media posts show her traveling to Romania and discussing the project from 2012 to 2014.
The flier says people can “change the life of a Romanian orphan this holiday season” by “adopting” a child, which involved selecting their name from a list, purchasing their “wish list item,” and then bringing it to pack as a gift that would be sent to Orphanage Antonio in Constanta, Romania. An archived version of Everyday Heroes Like You’s website says the project involved a partnership with U.S. service members and United Hands Romania.
We contacted the U.S. Marine Corps and U.S. Army to ask about the partnerships and did not hear back. We also contacted United Hands Romania and received no response.
We emailed press contacts at Romania’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Romanian Police, the General Inspectorate of Border Police and the National Agency Against Trafficking in Persons. We received no response.
The news organization Lead Stories said its Romanian staff reviewed media reports and court records and found only positive mentions of work by Romanian Angels and Everyday Heroes Like You.
“Romanian media reported Erika Kirk’s ‘Everyday Heroes like You’ made donations in the form of gifts to Antonio Placement Center in Constanța, as well as to the local hospital, between 2011 and 2015,” Lead Stories reported. “There is no evidence that the ministries were involved in actual international adoptions. A local newspaper article documented the gift donations to the orphans.”
We also searched using the Nexis news database for reports about Kirk being banned from Romania and found none.
We rate the claim that “Erika Kirk is banned from Romania because her Evangelical group was accused of trafficking children out of Romanian villages” False.
PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: Google translations of Romanian government websites were used when reporting this article.
