Official: Russia suspends all adoptions to U.S. families

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

Official: Russia suspends all adoptions to U.S. families
Posted 13m ago

MOSCOW (AP) — A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry says all adoptions by Americans of Russian children have been suspended.
Andrei Nesterenko said at a televised briefing Thursday that the freeze will be in effect until the two countries reach an agreement on adoption procedures.

The announcement comes after an American women sent back her 7-year-old adopted Russian son to Moscow on a plane by himself. The adoptive mother said the boy had severe psychological problems and that she had been misled by his Russian orphanage.

The case has ignited strong outrage in Russia.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010-04-15-russia-us-adoptions_N.htm

[dipsydoodle]

1. on a plane by himself

:wtf: That was so cruel.

[Judi Lynn]

2. How could a child recover from that level of massive rejection?

I'll bet the right was terrifying as well as long, and he had no home to comfort him when he got there.

Cruel, and selfish of her.

[Democat]

3. At first, is sounds like an overreaction.

But, if they are just asking for an agreement about how adoptions will be handled by both governments, then maybe it's a good idea and something that should have been worked out years ago.

[whyverne]

4. As the parent of an adopted special needs child, I have some

sympathy for this woman. But not that much. You adopt, that's your kid. Is she being charged with child abandonment? Should be.

[dipsydoodle]

5. BBC has picked up on it now too

Russians are furious that no charges have been filed against the 33-year-old nurse.

The US state department is arranging for a high-level delegation to visit Moscow next week to discuss the incident and the possibility of a bilateral adoption agreement.

Russian foreign ministry spokesman Andrei Nesterenko told a TV briefing: "Russia believes only such an agreement… will ensure that recent tragedies in the United States will not be repeated."

Moscow has urged Washington in the past to sign such a formal pact, but the US has said an international accord, the Hague Convention, would be enough once Russia had ratified it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/8621896.stm

bilateral adoption agreement ? Fuck knows what that's supposed to mean. I'm sure there are literally loads of US kids being adopted by Russians. :sarcasm:

[timo]

6. she was wrong

she should have interrupted the adoption by the letter and found a new home for the child. I have a daughter we adopted from Ukraine.
Russian and Ukrainian adoptions can be very difficult, alot of the children have issues, and fetal alcohol syndrome, and a whole host of other issues that families are not aware of, and most of the time sadly unprepared for, personally I hope this sad case sheds a whole new light on the practice and beefs up the education end of it, if you or anyone you know are/were considering it...EDUCATE YOURSELF and when you think you know all about it DIG DEEPER!!!!!
There are alot of families out there who adopted that are now broken homes because of it, one lady we had contact with ended up killing her daughter in a drunken rage because of all the issues the daughter had that she was never told about. The orphanages are desperate to have the kids adopted and will tell you anything you want to hear to get it done!!

[marshall]

7. She would have had to pay for part of his upkeep until he found a new home

She obviously just wanted to rid herself completely of the obligation to this child.

[timo]

9. ???

well thats what interruption of the adoption would imply!!!!!! usually when you interrupt, that means a new home is already been found!!

[marshall]

18. I believe she would be in a posi;tion for possible dissolution

Disruption occurs in cases where the adoption has not been finalized in the home country of the child. That is not the case in single parent adoptions from Russia.

[Chalco]

8. In my experience with Russian adoptions

I have been very involved with 3 Russian adoptions, not my own, but others. Two of the parents were lied to about the child's problems which were severe. The third was told that the child had reactive attachment disorder but that they always get over it by a certain number of months. Well, not so easy. The third child is severely disabled and requires massive 24/7 intervention as do the previous 2.

For myself I would have nothing to do with Russian adoptions. I know too much. When my husband and I were having trouble getting pregnant I knew all of the above and said "No way" because I knew that I did not have the patience to deal with a severely disabled child who was incapable of bonding with me.

My sympathy is with the mother. I would assume that she was lied to not only by the Russians but also by the adoption agency that took her money.

[Democat]

10. Sympathy for the mother?

What about the kid? The mother may well of been duped, but she sent a kid out into the world alone because she didn't want to be bothered to do things the right way.

I'm sure her story is sad as well, but it's hard to have too much sympathy for someone who intentionally mistreats a child to make her life easier.

[Chalco]

14. I'll clarify my remarks

Although I have sympathy for the mother, I think she could have handled it differently.

But, I don't think we have all the facts yet. I think adoption agencies capitalize on the naivete of potential customers.

[JI7]

16. there is no excuse for what she did, even if she was lied to, he is a little kid and she just ships

him off all alone.

she should never be allowed to adopt or take care of any kids.

[icee]

13. I have zero sympathy for the mother and would hope she is

subjected to some punishment for her cruel and frivolous actions. Possibly a parakeet would have been a better choice.

[EFerrari]

19. Mothers don't put disabled kids on a planes with notes pinned to their clothes.

Sounds like she had attachment problems of her own.

[icee]

23. Thank God she didn't put him in a pet travel cage.

[customerserviceguy]

11. What's wrong here

is that the US has allowed these (and other foreign) adoptions without making sure that there are resources available to help the families who wind up with some other country's discarded problem children. When this family felt threatened for their very lives, who did they have to turn to? Would all those condemning them for trying to rid themselves of a problem that they naively thought they were not getting feel differently if there were a story of an adopted kid burning down a house full of people?

Point of information: I myself was an adopted child from outside of the US.

[icee]

12. My niece in Massachusetts has two children she and her husband

adopted as babies from Russia years ago. She says what this woman did is unconscionable. She has no business with a nursing license, or being anywhere near sick people. And definitely no pets. I can see her at the pound: "I am returning this stupid dog to you because it barks. You never fully explained barking. And pooping?... Why he pooped on my new designer carpet. Give him to someone else. Hmmph--"

[customerserviceguy]

15. Show me a situation where a dog

ever burned a house down out of sheer spite, and your analogy would make some sense.

[icee]

20. Analogy? My comment wasn't intended to be used as an

analogy. People, at least most people, have the capability for higher level thinking than animals. No, my statement was meant to suggest how this nurse might react to other kinds of similar adversity. It is as much the way that this woman handled the situation then the need to handle the situation at all. Could there be culpability by the Russian government or applicable functionaries in not screening out the boy for suitability for adoption? Sure. But my niece who adopted two Russian children said that the screening on the potential adoptor side was detailed to the point of exhaustion. Why would they, the Russians, do less in selecting a child suitable for adoption? Something is not right here. I can just imagine how a little boy, spiteful or not, would feel getting on a plane by himself with some kind of Return to Sender documentation attached. I'm sure Burdick would nod knowingly after reading about this incident.

[customerserviceguy]

21. Excuse me, but it looked like an analogy

"This woman cannot take care of kids, so she cannot take care of pets, either." Then you went on to describe a fictional conversation that she'd have with a dog pound employee about barking and pooping, trying to make her look stupid for not realizing dogs did both.

I'll admit, she was naive about some dreamy ideal of some grateful child no longer having to live in Russia, but getting Hellboy is not the norm for most adoptions.

I'm sure your sister was screened thoroughly. I have a friend who is a supervisor at work who just adopted a pair of sisters from Russia, and she told me all about the process. But it's mistaken to think that the Russian authorities would take that kind of care in figuring out which kids to allow to leave the country for adoption.

You want an analogy of mine? If I had a really lousy car that I wanted to sell, wouldn't I try to find someone dumb enough not to sue me over selling it to them, even though I know it's shot? Wouldn't I also see if I could get them to jump through a lot of hoops first, so that they'd feel lucky to be able to buy my hunk of junk? Only if I were dishonest would that be the case, and it wouldn't surprise me to find that Russian orphanage officials had that kind of mentality.

Yes, this whole thing has had a bad outcome, and while I do feel for that kid, I also feel for the threatened family. It's my hope that the publicity on this accomplishes a few things, first and foremost among them, that it knocks some sense into people thinking they're going to get a perfect child from overseas. The second is that our government does its own background checking before letting these adoptions continue, and the third is that they provide some resources for the ones they let through that start to go bad anyway.

[icee]

22. I hope for a different outcome. I hope the Russians make their

temporary suspension of providing adoptions to Americans permanent. Right, the Russians are purposely doing an overly agressive job of screening adoption applicants so they can trick people into taking rotten kids? Hilarious.

[customerserviceguy]

24. If you had seen the hoops my friend Terry had to go through

you wouldn't say it was ridiculous. She's pretty lucky, any minor problems her two adopted daughters had were resolved rather quickly.

[babydollhead]

17. a dwarfed sociopath

that is the description my friend was told about her adopted boy from Russia. He was 5, the size of a 3 year old, set fires, killed a kitten, and would shit on the neighbors proch. He went to go to live with 2 nuns and has had intensive"holding therapy"... he was a scary boy stabbing us with butter knives under the table. It's so sad.