My good friend Noz and his wife have been attempting to adopt a child for many years now. They’ve been in Kazakhstan since late last year attempting to get a hearing and satisfy the authorities there that they are suitable parents (which they certainly are, and then some). And, yet, they keep getting screwed by untimely disclosures about stupid Americans being shitty adoptive parents (or worse).
let’s see, just before we filed our adoption petition with the court, casey johnson died and the resulting news stories screwed everything up in our process here. then two days before we finally got our first meeting with the judge, a pennsylvania couple was [arrested] for the death of the boy they adopted from russia, causing an anti-adoption firestorm in the russian media (which also dominates in kazakhstan) and further jeopardizing our process.
but now we’ve finally weathered these delays, staying here more than twice as long as we were originally supposed to and put up with the fact that noz jr. was condemned to months of additional time being cared for by an institution instead of a family. it’s only natural that this story would come out just two days before our long awaited court date.
That story, of course, is the story of Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tennessee, who put her 7 year-old adoptive son on a one-way plane ride to Moscow with a note saying she didn’t want him back. Which led to this:
MOSCOW — Russia formally announced on Thursday that it would suspend all adoptions of Russian children by Americans, responding to the case of a 7-year-old boy who was sent back to Moscow alone last week by his adoptive mother in Tennessee. The case of the boy, who was named Artyom in Russia before he was adopted last year, has caused widespread anger here, and Russian officials said new regulations had to be put in place before adoptions by Americans could proceed.
Kazakhstan, of course, is a former Soviet Socialist Republic and it is heavily influenced by Russian media and culture. It is my understanding that Mr. and Mrs. Noz had their hearing two days ago and are awaiting a follow-up visit with the judge. Needless to say, Russia’s announcement doesn’t help their cause and could even lead to a generalized moratorium on American adoptions in Kazakhstan.
I don’t know how they could do more to demonstrate their commitment to this child than they have already done. They have put their careers on hold for five months to live in a relatively poor country on the entire opposite side of the Earth. Who does something like that if they aren’t seriously committed?
I wish there was something I could do to help them. I hope the judge doesn’t overreact and is fair and clear-minded about what is best for this child who has already bonded with his prospective parents.
And I wish I could give a piece of my mind to Torry Hansen. Just think of all the broken hearts of people who have been pursuing adoptions from Russia.
Lots of kids hereabouts could use adoptive parents…
The problem with adopting kids in America is that the birth-parents retain so many rights and can take the kids back, sometimes years later. I believe they researched this and decided it was an intolerable risk.
That sounds a whole lot like the rationale for offshore outsourcing – American laws give the people too many rights…
well, imagine raising a child for four, five, six years and then having a sheriff come out and take the child away and give it to the biological parents. Could you live with that risk? I couldn’t.
I understand the thinking – in both instances – I just find the similarity to be rather interesting. How often do biological parents subsequently reclaim the child that they put up for adoption?
The answer to that is that it is more often than you realize. It has actually happened to another poster at this blog.
I don’t have anything against overseas adoptions, but as someone who works with the foster care system I can tell you there are THOUSANDS of kids available for adoption and the parental rights are terminated…end of question. But yes, they are generally not infants. At least after all of the legal stuff is over and the child is available.
I’m no expert, but that was their explanation to me, as I remember it.
“Lots of kids hereabouts could use adoptive parents…”
I am so tired of hearing this. Oscar in Louisville, do you think an American-born child is somehow more deserving of our love than a Kazakhstan-born child? I’d like to hear the reasoning behind that.
We chose to adopt internationally because it is difficult to adopt an infant in the US. (We have family friends whose hearts have been broken 4 times by domestic adoption arrangements that have fallen apart when the birth mother changed her mind at the last minute.) We would like to adopt an infant for two reasons. First, like most people who want to be parents, we want to be part of our child’s entire life, or at least as much of it as possible. Second, the effects of institutionalization and the effects of foster care become worse the more years the child spends in these systems. Unlike Ms. Hansen, we have tried to be honest with ourselves about our limits as parents. We know that we are not ready to parent a child with a high likelihood of emotional disturbances. Unless you have adopted such a child, you are in no position to criticize.
The reason that infants are available for adoption in the developing world is not because “birth mothers have no rights” vis-à-vis adoptive parents. It is because parts of the developing world are dirt poor and some parents tragically cannot afford to raise the children they have given birth to. There is not even a welfare system that poor single mothers can rely upon; it is extremely unlikely that a mother in such circumstances would ever be able to afford to raise the child. For this reason, the birth mother of the child we are adopting signed a formal relinquishment on the day of his birth. Until we find some solution to poverty, the reality is that there will be abandoned infants who need loving homes. Children who are not adopted from the orphanages that we have seen are consigned to remain in the orphanages, and it is not a nice life. Is that what you think should happen to our son?
I’m not saying that American infants are more deserving, I’m saying that they are not less deserving. There are American infants up for adoption, not just youth and teens, and many of their biological parents have terminated their rights (see link below). My objection is to the concept that foreign adoptions are the only option, beyond that I found Booman’s argument interestingly close to that of those who promote offshore outsourcing as it pertains to the abundance of American rights.
As to poverty, let me walk you through my hometown of Detroit or through the hills of Appalachia here in Kentucky sometime – you don’t have to go far to find the conditions of which you speak here in America, from sea to shining sea…
Yes, there is poverty in Detroit and Appalachia. But poverty in the US is not the same as poverty in the developing world. It just isn’t. Our social safety net in the US is frayed, but at least we have one. We have welfare; we have food stamps, school lunch programs, public housing, WIC, Medicaid. I’m not saying these systems are without flaws, but they are something. They make it possible for a poor single mother and her child to subsist, albeit at marginal levels. Very poor people in the developing world often have nothing. No safety net, no government assistance. Nothing. It is not the same.
Also, women in Detroit and Appalachia who experience an unwanted pregnancy do have a choice about whether to continue the pregnancy. Yes, there are problems with making sure that abortion is truly accessible for women who want that choice. However, many women in poor rural villages in the developing world don’t have access to any medical care at all. None. The option of a safe legal abortion is simply not there. For that reason, unwanted pregnancies that might result in abortions in the US may instead result in abandonment in the developing world.
It is for these reasons that if you go to Detroit or Appalachia, you will not see orphanages full of babies who have been abandoned because of poverty.
As for the comparison to oursourcing…. I understand you are trying to make an interesting intellectual point. Forgive me if I’m slightly uncomfortable with the analogy. This is my kid you’re talking about, a beautiful child who has lived for his first year in an institution with no parents to love him, and we are taking him into our home. I’m not expecting you to sing our praises–we are just trying to have a family like so many other people–but please consider how it makes us feel when you compare our situation to economic outsourcing.
If your objection is to the concept that “foreign adoptions are the only option”, then I’m not sure who you’re arguing with. Of course they’re not the only option– don’t insult our intelligence. People who choose to have adopt have actually, you know, thought pretty carefully about our options, for many years.
I’ve personally met several people who adopted a baby through foster care.
And that was just pretty much at random — I’ve also looked into foster care and it’s less expensive to adopt through that system, there’s healthcare support for the child, there are other benefits, as well.
I don’t understand the prejudice against adopting through foster care, but I expect it’s partly racism (fear of getting a less than white child), or some other unjustified fears of getting a less than perfect child.
Parents who have to give children up “for financial reasons” is code for “I’m afraid the parents were on drugs, or worse,” visiting the sins of the parents on the child.
has anyone here criticized the idea of adopting through foster care? has anyone doubted that it is possible to successfully adopt through the foster care system? or that there are advantages in going that route as opposed to trying something else?
it’s weird how talk about international adoption brings out all these weird insecurities about other kinds of adoption programs. like, for example, oscar, who criticizes those who seek to adopt internationally for ignoring children “at home”. but then when there is a pushback, he suddenly claims that he wasn’t criticizing international adoption as an option, he was only criticizing “the concept that foreign adoptions are the only option”. but did anyone ever say that foreign adoptions are the only option? if he’s okay with it being an option, why is he not okay with hearing about someone who chose that option?
there are several different ways to go about adoption. all of them have their plusses and minuses. and reasonable people will come to different conclusions about which route is right for them. is that really so hard to understand? why would anyone possibly have a problem with anyone’s choices about so personal a matter?
i completely disagree that people choose to adopt internationally rather than through the u.s. foster care system because of racism or fears of getting a child who is “less than white.” our child here in kazakhstan is not white. the two most popular countries that americans go to for adoption right now are china, ethiopia. other big countries right now or in the recent past were places like guatamala, vietnam, the philippeans and colombia.
I didn’t criticize foreign adoptions, I simply noted that foreign adoptions were not the only option and the loss of the Russian option was not the end of the world – see below.
“I don’t understand the prejudice against adopting through foster care, but I expect it’s partly racism (fear of getting a less than white child), or some other unjustified fears of getting a less than perfect child.”
Every parent worries about “getting a less than perfect child.” In any adoption, those worries are of course going to be even more pronounced because often the child experienced really tough conditions prior to adoption (whether domestic or international), or the pre-adoption condition of the child is simply not known. Are you saying those fears are unjustified? Then you really don’t know much about the effects of early life experiences on child development.
Any adoptive parent needs to go in with eyes wide open about the risks. (Wasn’t it Ms. Hansen’s error, in part, that she did not anticipate the risks?) You evaluate the risks and promises of each of your options, and you decide what balance you think you can live with. Different people will make different choices– adopting from foster care will be right for some people; adopting internationally will be right for others; and still others will decide that adopting is not the right choice for them at all. So be it. The important thing is that adoptive parents think carefully about these decisions.
I’m really tired of people criticizing our choices– we’re racists, we don’t want birth mothers to have rights, etc. (both untrue)– when we’ve gone to hell and back (actually we’re not quite back yet) trying to give an orphaned child a home. I guess this is our introduction to parenting: people do love to judge, don’t they?
Sorry about the delay in responding – I just got back from my honeymoon. If you look back through the thread and see the sequence of posts you’ll clearly see that I am not critizing YOUR decisions – I was responding to that which Booman asserted. Booman implied in his orignal post that this one woman’s stupid actions eliminated the adoption option for many deserving parents, to which I simply noted that there were other options. Booman asserted that the inherent rights of American birth parents made domestic adoption unacceptibly risky, and it was to that point that I noted the similarity between his argument and the argument for offshore outsourcing. The only way that this would be a judgement of your choices is if Booman accurately voiced your argument for foreign adoption AND if you judge offshore outsorcing to be ethically wrong. I simply noted the similarity of the arguments, and I also stated that I fully understand the perspectives of both arguments, and I didn’t pass judgement on either argument – check the posts.
That said, I can understand if you feel defensive – it was never my intention to offend, simply to talk through the implications of Booman’s perspectve.
Be well.
If Hansen legally adopted the kid, how is putting him on a one way plane trip overseas not a crime? It sure would be if she’d given birth to him. The way to assuage overseas anger at shit like this is for the US to exact swift and severe justice in cases like this. Hansen belongs either in the pen or the psycho ward.
I was listening to legal experts debate this and there was no consensus that a crime was committed, at least on American soil. She put the child on a plane, which parents do all the time. So if a crime occurred it was on Russian soil? I have no idea.
I assume her crime was not simply putting the child on the plane, but doing so with the conscious intent to abandon him.
Parents put their children on a plane to visit relatives or go on a school trip or something. They do not put them on an international flight with a one way ticket and nobody to take care of them at the other end. Do you really think she wouldn’t be prosecuted if she’d done this with a birth child? It’s inconceivable to me.
Of course it’s despicable, but it’s not clear that a law was broken, or if so, where it was broken and who has jurisdiction. I’m not sticking up for her…sheesh.
But do you think she wouldn’t be in court if this were her birth child? Assuming the kid was legally adopted, what’s the difference?
I don’t know. I assume it’s a donut hole in the law? At the very least you’d think she’d be charged with child endangerment or abandonment, or SOMETHING.
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Right, from the article in The Guardian …
“You know, you look at it and it’s hard to say exactly if a law has been broken here,” Bedford county sheriff Randall Boyce said. “This is extremely unusual. I don’t think anyone has seen something like this before.”
Bob Tuke, a Nashville attorney and member of the American Academy of Adoption Attorneys, said abandonment charges against the family could depend on whether the adoption had been finalised and the boy was a US citizen.
A Tennessee health department spokeswoman said the situation was unclear because there was no birth certificate issued for the boy, a step that would indicate he had not yet become a US citizen.
Of course, the Russian boy was an illegal alien. The adoptive single mom did us all a favor to avoid further medical costs. <snark>
Within a year of the adoption, the Wescotts told the Tulsa World, the child was diagnosed with reactive detachment disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, major depressive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder and fetal alcohol syndrome.
The parents said the boy became violent toward other children and nonresponsive to adults, hurt and killed animals and ran away regularly, requiring help from police.
So they’re trying to return him to the care of the state’s Department of Human Services, but the state says adoptive parents should be treated no different from birth parents.
Adoptive Parents Treated the Same as Biological Ones, State Says “A parent is a parent,” Karen Poteet, who runs the state’s post-adoption program, said. “It doesn’t matter where the child came from.”
Poteet says all parents are warned that the children they are adopting were abused or neglected and that the symptoms of that treatment could manifest themselves years later.
[See my comment Ranch for kids
≈ Cross-posted from my “breaking news” diary @BooMan with no comments nor recommends — ‘Return to Sender,’ Adopted Boy One-way Ticket to Moscow ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
“endangerment of a minor”? Used to be a crime in every state of the Union.
The mere fact that we are seeing legal discussion rather than legal action shows that the Russians are unfortunately right to impose a ban.
Americans are simply not adequate to the adoption process. Crazy individuals are neither screened out nor reigned in by a functioning political/social/legal system.
“Americans are simply not adequate to the adoption process.”
Roughly 50,000 Russian children have been adopted by Americans in the last 20 years. Do you think a small handful of high-profile media cases negates the other 49,990 cases where the parents were fully “adequate”?
If a biological parent abuses a child, does that mean that biological parents as a category are “inadequate”? If not, why do you apply the same logic to adoptive parents?
Russian is engaging in pure political posturing. They are positively gleeful at the opportunity to bash Americans instead of looking in the mirror and facing the real threats to Russian children: rampant alcoholism and an abysmal orphanage system.
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US only Holdout on UN Child Rights Treaty
Tue Nov 24th, 2009 at 01:20:27 AM PDT
≈ Cross-posted from my “breaking news” diary @BooMan with no comments nor recommends — ‘Return to Sender,’ Adopted Boy One-way Ticket to Moscow ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
Surely the Hansons went through a lot of effort, time, and money to adopt Artyem. Unbelievable that they did this. One has to wonder about how well they were vetted for stability and suitability.
Of course, they are not alone for being unable to cope. A couple of years ago after a spate of babies abandoned in trash cans, FL passed a law that allowed children to be left at fire stations with no strings attached. The intention was to save newborn infants, but the consequence were more than expected–families started to leave two or more older children because they couldn’t cope and care for them any longer. Very sad.
A success story. Friends adopted two Russian children about ten years ago, and they went through intense efforts, frustrations, and a lot of time. After bringing them home, the family required lots of coping and adjustment. Today, the kids are thriving and happy teenagers. I hope your friends get past this impasse and have the same type of long-term success with their families.
link
that’s a lot of broken hearts.
never mind the parents, think of the children waiting to go to a home they can call their own.
There are a lot of them…
I have been reading this story with a heavy heart and I have avoided talking about it.
The mother (the American one – the only one he had) should go to jail. Period. Kids don’t come with a receipt. You don’t get to say “Opps, this isn’t what I bargained for, so away with you.” Not if it is a biological child or an adoptive child. There are agencies out there to help and those resources should be exhausted. That child would be a thousand times better getting what help he could here than stuck in an orphanage. This whole story has made me wonder just what kind of care my recently diagnosed with autism son would have received in the orphanage in China. The mere thought makes me weep uncontrollably.
Many foreign governments that “facilitate” foreign adoptions lie. The Chinese government withheld information about Andrew’s health history until we were there. It would not have made a difference, but I would have been nice to have a complete record of his health.
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“What happens when you adopt a child who has difficulties in his or her new home? Typically, you try to work it out, right? But what if the child is abusive, violent and even threatens to kill his parents and siblings? That’s where a ‘Ranch for Kids’ comes in. It’s a ranch in Montana that tries to rehabilitate troubled adopted youth.” AC360
EUREKA, Montana — At first glance, the children saddling up the horses look like they were cast by Hollywood to play wholesome, athletic all-American kids. But outward appearances don’t tell the whole story.
One has molested a sibling. Another has tried to kill the family pet. Lying, stealing, vandalism, fire-setting round out the list of transgressions.
Because their parents can no longer manage them at home, the 24 youngsters — almost all international adoptees — have ended up at the Ranch for Kids, a therapeutic boarding school in northwest Montana.
This is the final stop.
Most had already logged countless hours in psychiatric units, wilderness programs and residential treatment centers, searching for answers to their disturbing behaviors. The goal is that, through intense intervention and structure, their conduct will improve enough that they can go home.
But some will never return, moving on to new families. They are part of an expanding phenomenon known as adoption disruption — the official term for parents attempting to return their adoptive children.
“Some parents just can’t do it anymore; they’re done,” said Joyce Sterkel, who runs the Ranch for Kids. “It’s tragic . . . and everyone is a victim.”
No one appears to keep data on adoption disruption. Relinquishment is statistically rare among the 20,000 foreign-born children adopted by Americans each year, but experts say it is happening with increasing frequency.
The Ranch for Kids
≈ Cross-posted from my diary @ET with some excellent comments — ‘Return to Sender,’ Adopted Boy One-way Ticket to Moscow ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."