Russians Halt American Child Adoptions

Russian officials have suspended child adoptions by Americans after a seven year old boy was put on a plane alone and sent back to Moscow.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said that no more children would leave Russia for the United States until the two countries had negotiated an agreement regulating adoptions.
“Russia believes that only such an agreement which will contain effective tools for Russian and US officials to monitor the living conditions of adopted Russian children will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated,” he told a televised briefing.
The announcement followed widespread anger at the treatment of Artyom Savelyev, who was returned unaccompanied to Russia with a note from his adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, saying that she no longer wanted to care for him.
Ms. Hansen, 33, from Tennessee, claimed that the boy was violent and had psychological problems, and accused the Russian orphanage of deceiving her about his character when she adopted him last September.
President Medvedev denounced her actions as “monstrous” and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called the case the “last straw” in a series of scandals involving adopted Russian children in America. Russia was the third largest source of adoptions to the US last year, according to the State Department, with 1,586 cases.
American officials have been similarly appalled. The US Ambassador to Moscow, John Beyrle, appeared on Russian television to say that he had been “deeply shocked…and very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted”.
A State Department team is expected to arrive in Moscow next week for talks on an agreement covering adoptions, a long-standing Russian demand. Russia has suspended the license of the American group that organized Artyom’s adoption, the World Association for Children and Parents, until an investigation is completed.
The boy, who celebrates his eighth birthday tomorrow, was renamed Justin after he was adopted from an orphanage in the town of Partizansk in the far east of Russia. His adoptive grandmother Nancy Hansen took him to Washington, DC, last week and sent him alone on a United Airlines flight to Moscow.
A tour guide who had been paid $200 by the family met Artyom at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport and left him at the Education and Science Ministry with the note from his adoptive mother renouncing care of him. The letter said: “This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues. I was lied to by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues.
“After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child.”
The orphanage’s deputy director, Nadezhda Guseva, has denied the allegations. She said that Ms Hansen, a nurse, had visited the boy three times before the adoption process was completed and that six other children from the orphanage had been successfully adopted by American families.
Adoptions by Americans were controversial in Russia even before this case, following publicity over two child deaths. A woman was jailed for 25 years in 2006 for beating to death a two-year-old girl she had adopted from Siberia.
A 21-month-old Russian boy died of heatstroke in 2008 when his adoptive father left him in the car after forgetting to drop him off at a day care centre on his way to work.
At least 15 children have been killed by their adoptive American parents since 1996, according to the Russian Prosecutor-General’s Office. An estimated 60,000 Russian children have been adopted by Americans over this period.
The children’s ombudsman in Russia, Pavel Astakhov, told reporters on Monday that around 15 adopted children each year are killed by their Russian parents, adding: “If we compare the statistics for dead children in Russia with America, it is not in our favor.”