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Her name is Torry Hansen and I agree that she should have been charged with criminal neglect and abandonment. So far the only thing done to her was that she has been ordered to pay $150k in child support (of which she will likely never pay a dime).
I think that this could not have been handled worse had they tried. People who adopt want to be taken seriously as parents. Sometimes we feel inauthentic, because of how society views adoption.
And sometimes, parents by adoption can be sensitive.
As a parent who has adopted and will again, I am horrified and appalled beyond belief by what this woman did. How she abdicated her motherhood and rejected a child as one would a defective piece of pottery.
What if this had been a child from US foster care? OR a child through birth? CPS would be called. She would lose her other children - if she has any. She would be - IN JAIL!
She may have ruined this child's life by this reckless and monstrous act. Yet were is the public outrage?
Does no one care because it was a Russian child?
And $150 K in child support? That's a laugh! You are right. She won't pay a dime.
And is that what a little boy is worth? !50 grand? PLEASE!
The press was more interested in exploring "what is wrong with kids adopted from Eastern Europe than they were with what the hell was wrong with this woman????
I am not calling for a witch burning , but this was a slap on the wrist!
And you know what? I am sure that this woman thinks she was right!
As a former RN - changed careers, I wonder if she lost her license and registration. Nurses can lose that for leaving five minutes late for a shift - or for leaving early. There is a term for it - patient abandonment.
I can't imagine what would happen had she put an unruly patient on a plane to Russia.
Encouraging news from Russia this morning - it looks as if the ban on adoptions by Americans will not be enforced until January, 2014, thanks to a November, 2012 agreement signed between the US and Russia.
Huge sigh of relief, and I hope the reports are true. If so, this allows time to reconsider and fine-tune some details, so that perhaps a few exceptions can be allowed, such as kids with special needs who've been in orphanages and institutions since birth, but who would be welcomed by loving families elsewhere.
I'd also look for a huge uptick in Americans' efforts to adopt Russian kids before the ban takes place, especially those children with special needs, knowing what faces them otherwise.
While the ban extends to U.S. potential adoptive parents, we need to remember that it doesn't ban people from other countries (Canada and Sweden, for example, are also high on the list) from adopting children with special needs in Russia. There are other possibilities as to how this situation will play out, and perhaps this will mean that Russia will review its own affairs. Change doesn't happen without some debate.
Along that line, I have read some interesting views such as:
Things are very complicated; yes, I am sure there are loving families here, but it is rarely as simple as connecting the dots. I am sure that Torry Hansen thought she was very loving--and played herself off as very loving, as well. Ethics matter as much as love; sometimes one person's "love" is another person's hell. We have to make sure situations like that DO NOT HAPPEN. And before you ask, no, I don't want children to "languish" in orphanages, but this is a meta-level discussion, and yes, children will die either way. It is heartbreaking.
Encouraging news from Russia this morning - it looks as if the ban on adoptions by Americans will not be enforced until January, 2014, thanks to a November, 2012 agreement signed between the US and Russia.
Huge sigh of relief, and I hope the reports are true. If so, this allows time to reconsider and fine-tune some details, so that perhaps a few exceptions can be allowed, such as kids with special needs who've been in orphanages and institutions since birth, but who would be welcomed by loving families elsewhere.
I'd also look for a huge uptick in Americans' efforts to adopt Russian kids before the ban takes place, especially those children with special needs, knowing what faces them otherwise.
But this is Russia - so stay tuned.
Word is that Russia is trying to withdraw from that treaty so the year isn't enforced.
While the ban extends to U.S. potential adoptive parents, we need to remember that it doesn't ban people from other countries (Canada and Sweden, for example, are also high on the list) from adopting children with special needs in Russia. There are other possibilities as to how this situation will play out, and perhaps this will mean that Russia will review its own affairs. Change doesn't happen without some debate.
Along that line, I have read some interesting views such as:
Things are very complicated; yes, I am sure there are loving families here, but it is rarely as simple as connecting the dots. I am sure that Torry Hansen thought she was very loving--and played herself off as very loving, as well. Ethics matter as much as love; sometimes one person's "love" is another person's hell. We have to make sure situations like that DO NOT HAPPEN. And before you ask, no, I don't want children to "languish" in orphanages, but this is a meta-level discussion, and yes, children will die either way. It is heartbreaking.
I always appreciate Amanda's posts (The Declassified Adoptee), and I found this one gave me some new insight. I hope others read it.
That being said, I do think it's an incredibly complicated issue. One of my friends has a nonprofit in a Romanian hospital, and the bleak lives these children live is so sad. I sincerely hope this decision causes the Russian government to really take a hard look at the state of their orphanage system.
I sincerely hope this decision causes the Russian government to really take a hard look at the state of their orphanage system.
I do, as well. And I, too, agree that it is complicated, as I said. The conditions are not ideal in orphanages in Eastern Europe, not by a long shot, but neither is the lack of oversight on this end. I don't want children to die either way, but neither do I want them to die in war, or from hunger, or from abuse.
I see kids dying from poor health almost every day at work; it happens, right here in the United States. We have Third World communities (and suffering children) in our own country, but we tend to ignore them. Because it's taboo to talk about class (we're not supposed to have a class system here), people think class doesn't exist if we don't talk about it, which is bunk. Or we blame the victims, or do all kinds of awful things to those who we don't feel are "trying" hard enough. There was an excellent article in the NYT recently showing how it takes social supports, as well as brains, to "pull oneself up by the bootstraps."
Again, heartbreaking. Life is messy, messy, messy.
I was reading a transcript of a discussion that took place around the time of Second Russian-American Child Welfare Forum, last June, at which Russian government officials were asking the NCFA and other groups what supports there were for children in suboptimal adoption situations. The U.S. spokespeople kept returning to what supports there were for APs, rather than children. Finally, the spokesperson for the National Center for Children and Families said, "I don't know," except for turning the kids over to Social Services, which really isn't an acceptable answer. The NCFA had nothing to say about supports. Parents are frequently ill prepared for adoption (this was admitted) and don't have enough resources (also admitted). This is reform that must take place.
We mentioned this case where a woman put the child on a plane back to Russia with a note saying that she didn’t want him anymore. What safeguards are in place for kids? You are talking about the resources for parents that do get in these situations when they adopt children. What in particular resources are out there to protect the children [emphasis mine] who are actually adopted, say, for this little boy in this particular case and even here domestically?
Unfortunately, I don’t know. I think, unfortunately, for most of those kids that I work with, they are put back into the public welfare system and so those are the safeguards for them.
Social Services and the foster system are "safeguards"? Whoa.
As I've mentioned before, there are many international adoption clinics located in major hospitals (often university-affiliated hospitals) throughout the US. These clinics are excellent resources for both adoptive parents and children. They focus on a wide variety of frequently-encountered issues, such as FAS/FAE, RAD, and of course, all kinds of physical concerns, and can refer parents to additional specialized care and treatment for their children.
There are also hospitals which specialize in children's critical and rare disorder care, such as the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), which has recently helped a number of newly-internationally adopted children battle refeeding syndrome, and which also specializes in treating children with arthrogryposis, a congenital condition in which joints are tightly fixed and cannot be moved through a normal range of motion (treatment includes surgery and bracing). Shriners' Hospitals for Children also specialize in correcting congenital problems such as cleft lip and cleft palate, along with other disorders, and many children whose families adopted them internationally have benefitted by such treatment.
Refeeding syndrome is the same thing which killed many concentration camp survivors at the close of WWII, when their rescuers offered them food. Their starved bodies went into shock...the same danger faced by the severely neglected, tiny and emaciated children emerging from some of the worst institutions in eastern Europe within the last couple of years. Thankfully, one of the worst of such places now has a new administrator, and things are far, far better, thanks to an adoptive family who went public - both here and in their daughter's native country - about the corruption and abusive neglect which led to the deaths of 18 children within one year, in that one institution.
Help is available for any adoptive parent who seeks it in this country.
I agree. "hidden deep within Russian society..." There is also a fear in Russia of an aging population. Has Putin recently urged Russian women to have more children?
Yes, the government pays $250,000 rubles or $9,200 dollars for a second child. There really is a demographic crisis. The drop in births is attributed to economic issues, and that's why the Russian government came up with financial incentives. The catch is the money can be used as a fund only for housing or education (if I am not mistaken).
Glad to hear the good news about the extension today.
I find the comments to that article more interesting and enlightening. Not much outrage in the article about the role congress played in this by interfering in another country's internal affairs (once again) by freezing the assets of 60 Russian officials without trial or proving their guilt in their perceived role in the death of one lawyer in prison - if that indeed is the reason for the ban.
However, I have heard talk of this ban months ago in Russian media, I am not 100% convinced this is really in response to Magnitsky act, as it is being shown. The fact that this is scoring political points against Putin, who the American media loves to bash, makes me wonder if there is more to the story.
To play devils advocate, not being able to follow up on adoptions (allowed in other countries) was one of the reasons stated for the ban.
Even though I would hope the ban would be overturned, I don't think I like how the American media is using this to fuel anti-Russian (government) sentiment. Because of America's plans to put a missile defense system on the Russian border, and their endeavors near Russian borders in pursuit of natural resources I guess I question the motives of American government and the media.
Craig, enlightened people can find help for their children. Of course they can. My point was that is is positively pathetic that the spokespeople for the NCFA and the NCCF were unable to speak intelligently to the media and Russian officials about the very same things you mentioned. Or to say that yes, we need to develop training for APs in the U.S., or have a centralized place for information sharing (and better screening of PAPs!) so that the tragedies of Artyom Saveliev and the Barbour children in Pennsylvania (adopted from Ethiopia) do not happen. Children should NEVER have been placed in those homes.
It horrified me that the woman speaking for the NCCF said that the safeguard for the children would be to put them in foster care. That is the person lobbying/responsible for adopted children's safety?
And when speaking of children adopted from Eastern Europe, there is frequently talk of FAS, RAD, etc. Many children from orphanages with problems, to be sure, but not all children; and when things don't go precisely as the adoptive parents wish, there seems to be a tendency to label the adoptees as horribly damaged. I can imagine that being in an orphanage results in PTSD (at the very least). I have worked in an inpatient psychiatric facility, with suicidal children, many of whom, as it happened, were adoptees from Russia. Suicidal. As young as the age of six. Having sat with them and their interpreters (and knowing some Russian myself) in their meetings with their psychiatrists, it's no walk in the park being them. It's not that they're trying to be cute, or being "spoiled," or seeking attention. They are hurting. They have been through hell, thrown into a new environment where they don't speak the language, and told to "love" strangers. They may not have the best coping mechanisms or know what "love" means, and certainly they do not love themselves, at times, which is the biggest problem. But so often, so often, discussion focuses on how these children cause trauma to the families they join, how hard it is to live with them, how it's almost impossible to love them, etc. Adjustment is difficult, to be sure. I am not denying that. But when the children are cast as villains, and the families are beleaguered saints, I don't buy it.
What is it like, I wonder, to have to live with the pain and losses these children have experienced? To live in their heads, for even a day? I think that's what the questioner was getting at: who is protecting the children? These children who are thrown out, sent on planes back to Moscow or swallowed up by a unlicensed ranch in Montana; these children whose adoptions are disrupted; these children whose parents are poorly prepared for children who don't immediately and openly love them back. Talk about broken promises: what were the kids promised?
I cannot stand the NCFA because it's a lobbying group for agencies that doesn't care about what happens once money changes hands. It's not about the children; it's about the paying customers. The NCCF could do better than I read about.
Children rely on adults being accountable to more than the market or their own personal desires. Ethics are hugely important, as is putting the child's welfare first. Good parents are the best resource a child has, but we are not doing enough to make sure that we have the right people taking care of adoptees.
Last edited by MirrenC; 01-10-2013 at 11:18 PM..
Reason: typo, clarity
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Social Services and the foster system are "safeguards"? Whoa.
