Whatever Things Are True: the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful in the World of International Adoption

Russia and US Sign New Adoption Agreement

 

Russia and the United States signed a new adoption agreement this week after months of diplomatic discussion in the wake of the shocking Artyon Savelyev case, and other instances of abuse of Russian children at the hands of their American parents. According to Russia's RiaNovosti, the new regulations specify that:

• prospective adoptive parents must undergo psychological testing
• parents may only work with accredited adoption agencies vs. independent facilitators
• Russian children will mainain dual US/Russian citizenship until age 18, at which  time they may declare permanent citizenship in either country

In an interview with NPR, Associated Press reporter David Crary highlights changes coming from the Russian side as well:

They're undertaking to be more forthcoming with details about these children's medical and psychological problems these kids have. That has not happened in the past. There's been some cover ups, and deception and kind of over-rosy pictures of these kids. So we'll see how it plays out. There still could be trouble. But on paper, at least, there's going to be a more diligent effort to be forthcoming.

Crary also points out that the new agreement demands more oversight of Russian children in their adoptive homes. Adoption agencies will be charged with carrying out the regulations, with the US government "making sure that the adoption agencies live up to their commitments to be proactive." Exactly how these new mandates will be carried out remains to be seen.

 

 

Adult Adoptee from Russia Nominated for ESPY Award

Wheelchair racing champion and adult adoptee  Tatyana McFadden has been nominated for an ESPY Award in the catagory of Best Female Athlete with a Disability. Here'e more about  McFadden, from the bio posted on her website:

By all accounts Tatyana should not be one of the top female athletes in the world. She probably should not be alive. She was born in 1988 in St. Petersburg, Russia, with an underdeveloped spinal cord resulting in paralyzation below the waist and a hole in her spine, a condition know as spina bifida. When operated on immediately, spina bifida is rarely life threatening. Tatyana was left for 21 days before doctors operated. Only her innate strength of will kept her alive.

As an unwanted disabled child, Tatyana was immediately sent to an orphanage after her surgery. She grew up in a place so poor they could not buy crayons for the children to color with let alone a wheelchair for Tatyana to get around in. Unfazed, she spent the first six years of her life using her arms as legs and walking on her hands as if the were feet.

In 1994, Debbie McFadden, working as the commissioner of disabilities for the U.S. Health Department, visited Tatyana’s orphanage on a business trip. When she met Tatyana, she immediately felt a connection with the young girl and decided to adopt her and bring her to the United States.

For Tatyana the adoption meant freedom, it meant a real family, and it meant her first wheelchair, but the excitement was short lived. When she arrived in the US she grew very sick. She was severely anemic and grossly under weight and doctors thought she would only survive a few more months. For a second time in her short life Tatyana’s innate strength would defy the odds.

To aid in her recovery Debbie began to enroll Tatyana in various youth sports groups. Tatyana began taking swimming lessons at the local pool and, a year after she arrived in the US, began participating with the Bennet Blazers, a Baltimore, Maryland area wheelchair sports organization.

No longer having to use her strength for survival, Tatyana quickly found she could use that strength to excel in athletics. She tried every sport she could find from archery, to ping-pong to basketball, but from the start she fell in love with wheelchair racing.

It did not take long for Tatyana’s racing career to take off. In 2004, at the age of 15, she was the youngest member of the USA track and field team at the Athens Paralympic Games, her first international competition. She shocked the world in the process, winning a silver medal in the 100 meters and a bronze in the 200m.

Two short years later, Tatyana etched her name in the record books, winning the gold medal in the 100m in world record time at the 2006 IPC World Championships in Assen, Netherlands. She followed that performance with two silver medal performances in the 200m and 400m, securing a spot as a “Beast” in international wheelchair racing heading in the 2008 Beijing Parlaympic Games.

Tatyana did not disappoint in Beijing, coming home with four medals, winning silver in the 200m, 400m and 800m and a bronze in the 4x100m relay.

The ESPY winner will be chosen by online poll, and voting closes July 9. You can vote for McFadden via a link on her homepage.

AP News: Adopted US twins return to Russian orphanage

AP reporter David Nowak tells the story of  18-year-old twin sisters, adopted from Russia at age 2, who are relishing their first return visit to their homeland. The article also addresses the state of the Russian adoption program:

More than 16 years after an American couple traveled here to collect two malnourished 2-year-old girls named Galina and Svetlana, the identical twins - now Jessica and Jennifer Allen - have made their first trip back to Children's Home No. 13.

As Russia and the United States work out an ugly dispute over abuse of Russian adopted children, the sisters' story brings home how international adoptions can have a happy ending, and carries a message of hope to former Cold War foes still struggling to break down barriers of distrust.

The twins celebrated their Russian heritage as their journey came full circle last week.

"It's like, wow, we're from here," said Jennifer, formerly Svetlana. Her sister chimed in: "We're definitely Russian." The twins have high Slavic cheekbones but sound like typical California teenagers.

Russia has for years been the second biggest source nation, after China, of adopted children for Americans. But such adoptions have fallen steadily in the wake of a string of abuse scandals that outraged Russia, prompting officials to demand tighter control over adoptions or that they be suspended altogether.

This month the two countries hope to sign a binding agreement obliging the U.S. to investigate any reports of trouble and to increase oversight of adopting families. Russia demanded such an agreement after an adoptive mother from Tennessee put her 7-year-old boy on a plane back to Moscow last year, unaccompanied. At least 17 adopted Russian children have died in domestic violence in American families, according Russian officials.

You can read the full story here:

AP News: Adopted US twins return to Russian orphanage.

The "Hot Sauce Mom" Creates New Concerns in Russia About International Adoption

By now you may have already heard about the Alaska mother who is facing child abuse charges  after a recent episode of Dr. Phil showed the woman "disciplining" her 7-year-old son by forcing him to drink hot sauce and take an icy cold shower.

I avoided reading the details for several days, even though the headline kept popping up online. I didn't realize at first that this ugly tale was in fact an adoption story.

Jessica Beagley and her police officer husband are the parents of six children, including twin boys from Russia adopted at the age of five.  The Beagleys have apparently had trouble managing the boys' behavior since they arrived two years ago, so Jessica Beagley sought "help" from Dr. Phil by agreeing to appear in an episode titled "Mommy Confessions."

According to the  Associated Press, Ms. Beagley forced her son to swallow hot sauce on camera AT THE REQUEST OF THE DR. PHIL PRODUCERS.

Writer Anna North of the blog Jezebel says:

There's always something unsettling about watching people treat each other badly on television — as the boundary between scripted and reality shows grows increasingly blurry, it's hard to pretend producers and viewers are just flies on the wall with no effect on what the "characters" do. Sure, maybe Beagley was "hot saucing" her kids long before she ever thought of Dr. Phil, but once the show got involved, there's the extremely uncomfortable possibility that she was doing it at least in part to get on TV. Was she more likely to discipline her son in the weeks following the show's request, knowing she needed that footage? And even if she wasn't, did she really think making a ten-year-old film her brother as he screamed and cried was an acceptable price to pay for TV coverage? Beagley's lawyer says she only wanted to get on Dr. Phil "to find solutions" — but even if that's true, it sure seems like there should've been a way for the Beagley family to solve their problems without forcing their kid to sob on national TV.

Of course, the Dr. Phil producers are far from blameless here. Show spokeswoman Stacey Luchs told the AP, "We were shocked by what we saw, and called for the immediate halting of this behavior and also referred, at the show's expense, both mother and child for evaluation and treatment with appropriate professionals." So, they told Beagley to quit hot-saucing her kid immediately — as long as she taped it for them first. Really, nobody comes off well here — and ultimately, the victim is Beagley's son, who never had a choice about whether he'd be on TV in the first place.

Read more: http://jezebel.com/5751841/hot-sauce-mom-sauced-her-son-at-producers-request#ixzz1D9IFoALo

I couldn't sit through the complete video of Ms Beagley screaming at the little boy, who is so new to this country and this family, that he still speaks with a Russian accent, though I've included it below for those who must see for themselves.

According to ABC News, Russian officials are also investigating the case.

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International #Adoptions Hit 15-Year Low in 2010

David Crary of the Associated Press has a report on the international adoption numbers for last year:

The number of foreign children adopted by Americans fell by 13 percent last year, reaching the lowest level since 1995 due in large part to a virtual halt to adoptions from Guatemala because of corruption problems.

China remained America's No. 1 source of adopted children, accounting for 3,401, according to figures released by the State Department on Monday for the 2010 fiscal year. Ethiopia was second, at 2,513, followed by Russia at 1,082 and South Korea at 863...

Organizations representing U.S. adoption agencies have called on the U.S. government to be more active in trying to reverse the decline in international adoptions. However, the State Department says any such efforts must be accompanied by initiatives to provide better options for orphans in their home countries, including support for birth parents and foster care.

"Not every child is going to be eligible for international adoption," said Susan Jacobs, the State Department's special adviser on children's issues. "The first thing we need to do is protect children in their own countries."

The State Department also reported that 43 American children were adopted by residents of foreign countries last year - 19 of them went to Canada and 18 to the Netherlands.

Unfit to Keep a Dog, Let Alone Adopt a Child

My late grandmother liked a tell the story about the time she got mad at my grandfather and decided to hit the road with their young three children. Apparently, my grandfather sat on the steps on their North Carolina home, just watching his wife slam in and out the front door with fury as she packed the car, as Rags, the family dog, lay curled at his feet. Finally, when she had all the bags loaded and the kids tucked in to the backseat, she called the dog.

"C'mon, Rags! Let's go!"

"You're even taking my dog?" my grandfather purportedly asked.

"You're not fit to keep a dog," Grandmother snapped.

They both stared at each other for a moment.  The dog refused to budge. A second later my grandparents both burst out laughing, and managed to stay married until my grandfather's death some 30 years later. I never learned what the fight was about -- I don't think they even remembered -- but crowning somebody "not fit to keep a dog" remained the ultimate family insult.

Sadly, these are the very words that came to mind today when I heard the latest twist in the saga of Torry Hansen, the American woman who returned her  adopted son to Russia last year.

The Moscow Times cites children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov as the source of the news that Hansen is refusing to terminate her parental rights to Atryem Savelyev, thereby preventing the boy from being re-adopted by a Russian family.

According to UPI:

Eight-year-old Artyom Savelyev arrived at a Moscow airport in April with a note from his adoptive American mother, Torry Hansen, saying she did not want him because he was "psychotic," RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

Hansen is now claiming the boy wanted to go home, Russian children rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said.

"Ms. Hansen is trying to prove that she did not reject Artyom. 'He wanted to go back to mummy and she let him go,' her lawyer says," Astakhov wrote on his Twitter account.

Hansen "is trying to avoid paying child support," Astakhov said.

"We will seek justice with regard to Artyom," he wrote. "(We will) demand child support from the American adoptive mother and annul the adoption."

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/01/18/Russia-to-seek-adoption-payment-annulment/UPI-83841295374657/#ixzz1BdStjNYw

 

So many in the adoption community expressed compassion for Torry Hansen last year,  imagining her as a desperate, isolated, frustrated new parent who likely had nowhere to turn when she faced challenges with her son. (Well, not me.) It's possible that we still don't know the whole story, that the media has gotten the facts wrong, and that Hansen is not a monster, but it sure doesn't look that way. How did this woman ever get approved to adopt a child?

There's no denying that  Artyem Savelyev is languishing without a family. In this Russian TV report, apparently filmed before Hansen stated her desire to retain parental rights,  the children's ombudsman talks of plans for finding the child a new family.

 

 

 

 

 

International Adoption: It's Not All About the Money

One of the most passionate arguments against international adoption goes like this: large sums of money flowing from desperate, greedy Western parents drives a push to "harvest" children in developing countries, especially babies. This ugly scenario is in fact possible; in "Anatomy of an Adoption Crisis," journalist E.J. Graff examines US State Department documents concerning the adoption program in Vietnam that seem to prove that Vietnamese orphanages were "sourcing" and  "producing" children to meet demand. Many critics claim that if you take Western cash off the table, the number of kids proposed for adoption will plummet. This assessment has always felt willfully simplistic to me; the child welfare issues driving the global orphan crisis are far more complex than that. Case in point: the ongoing persecution of the Romani people, the gypsies of Europe.

In the past month, France has deported more than 1,000 Roma, forcing them back to Romania and Bulgaria, where they also face horrific discrimination and exploitation, as I've written in the past. The expulsion has ignited a firestorm, with human rights activists and European politicians calling for France to be booted from the European Union, and certain bloggers even comparing the French to the Nazis. However, as this article shows, Holland, Italy, Germany and Sweden have similarly harassed the Romani people and sought to drive them out. There is truly no place in Europe the Roma can go to live in peace.

The fact is that Romani children are disproportionally represented in Bulgarian and Romanian orphanages; many Roma also end up institutionalized in Russia and other Eastern European locales. Some of these kids land in the international adoption pipeline, a tragedy driven clearly by discrimination and European politics vs. demand created by foreign adoption money.

At one time, my husband and I sought to adopt from Bulgaria; we hoped for a Romani child. Had our Bulgarian adoption succeeded, we would have seen ourselves as responding to a humanitarian need; adoption critics certainly would have seen us as exploiting the tragedy of the Roma. The bottom line is this: Americans are not lining up to adopt Romani children, and yet Europe's orphanages are overflowing with them. A grasp of the total human rights picture and an international outcry is needed to protect the Roma and keep more original families intact.

To learn more, visit the European Roma Rights Centre.

New International Adoption Rules Won't Solve Russia's Problems

Everywhere you turn, there's speculation and concern about Russia's new international adoption regulations. It's not that there's anything wrong with the rules themselves, but rather that so many serious, related child welfare issues remain unaddressed. This Moscow News article, "Adoption Changes Risk Ignoring Plight of Orphans in Russia" by Tom Washington, lays it out pretty succinctly:

Russia is experiencing an enormous child welfare crisis --

There are now 700,000 orphans [in the country], 30 per cent of them living in state homes, according to figures from the parliamentary committee on family and children – more than at the end of World War II. Pro rata it’s four to five times higher than in the west.

Committee bosses describe it as a “humanitarian catastrophe”, and it’s one which childcare workers fear is being hidden by the lurid headlines.

Post-adoption follow up is not enough --

The scrunity (sic) won’t stop when the child leaves Russia. “It’s important that we can monitor the situation in the family until the child reaches 18,” Director of Education Alina Levitskaya told Kommersant...

But reports on the children’s progress are meaningless, says psychologist Galina Semya. The earlier reports on the children in Russia are less rigorous and so there is nothing to compare the American checks with. 

That last point -- the earlier reports on the children in Russia are less rigorous and so there is nothing to compare the American checks with -- really jumped out at me. Providing comprehensive child evaluations to prospective adoptive parents seems critical to promoting successful child placements, but Russian officials don't appear to be considering this.

A new UNICEF report, Blame and Banishment: The Underground HIV Epidemic Affecting Children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, further underscores the child welfare crisis in Russia and its neighboring countries. As law professor Sara Dillon points out on her blog:

this region has "the highest rate of family separation in the world," --  with 1.3 with 1.3 million children living out of family care. Rates of institutionalization are not decreasing–rather, abandonment is increasing. 

I fully understand Russia's anguished outrage over the Artyem Savelyev case, but looking at these grim statistics, I can't help but feel that the case has also become the  outlet for ALL of Russia's anguish and frustration in the child welfare arena. Demanding post-adoption changes from the US is no doubt easier and cheaper than finding the strategies, the will and the money to attack overwhelming, tragic problems at home.

Russia and US prepare to sign international adoption agreement that includes right to prosecute parents

According to The Christian Science Monitor and other media outlets, after months of negotiation, the US and Russia have finalized an international adoption agreement that will allow the threatened program to continue. Key points in the accord include:

• Independent adoptions involving facilitators will end. Only international agencies accredited by the Russian Ministry of Education and Science will be permitted to process adoptions.

• Prospective parents must undergo special training, for which they will receive certification. Regular reports on the progress and conditions Russian children find in their adoptive homes become mandatory.

• Russian "monitors" will have the right to check on adoptees in their US homes.

• Russian authorities will have the power to press charges against negligent adoptive parents.

• The most noteworthy aspect by far is the fact that the right to press charges will be retroactive, which: will enable Russian authorities to prosecute...Torry Hansen of Tennessee...[the adoptive mother who returned] her son to Russia with a note claiming he had severe psychological problems and posed a danger to the family.

Media and the Russian Adoption Crisis

The media coverage of the Artyem Savelyev case and the  Russian adoption crisis has largely fallen into two uncomfortably broad themes: international-adoption-as-fairy tale vs. international-adoption-as-nightmare, a split that I analyze in more detail in this post for my blog at Adoptive Families magazine.

Time has just published a new, lengthy article with a headline that proves my point: "When the Adopted Can't Adapt." Journalist Kate Pickert  tries to take a balanced look at the serious challenges embedded in the Russian adoption process, but that headline sure lays the blame for those challenges on the kids.

A few interesting points in the article:

• Nearly all Russian children adopted by American parents have come from orphanages, where children 3 and under lose one IQ point for every month spent inside, researchers say. Russian orphans are more likely to have fetal alcohol spectrum disorder than those adopted from elsewhere. They are also, on average, older than adoptees from other countries and have spent more time institutionalized — the factor that most impedes adjustment to life in an adoptive home.

• A 2008 study...surveyed 1,834 Minnesota parents who adopted foreign children in the 1990s and found that 58% hired independent U.S. physicians to review medical records preadoption. But just 31% of parents who adopted children age 5 or older — the ones most likely to bear the scars of institutionalization — did so.

• there are no reliable statistics on how many Americans adopting from abroad later decide to relinquish their parental rights, but researchers know that disruptions and dissolutions are more common with children adopted at older ages. Ronald Federici, a developmental neuropsychologist in Virginia who specializes in international adoptions, has, in 24 years of practice, witnessed 357 disruptions out of the approximately 11,000 children he's seen. A leader in the field of orphan trauma and rehabilitation — and an adoptive father of seven children from Eastern Europe and Russia — Federici estimates there have been about 4,000 disruptions or dissolutions since 1990. (He bases his tally on consultations with parent support groups, adoption agencies and social services.)

• Nina Ostanina, a member of the Russian parliament who sits on the committee for family, women and children, concedes that even within her country, thousands of adopted children have been returned to state care by parents unable to cope with them. "On the whole, only 10% of the children are able to normally adapt to society after they [age out of orphanages]," she says. The rest die young, turn to crime or drugs or alcohol, or end up in prisons or on the streets, says Ostanina — a sign that Russian orphanages may cultivate destructive behavioral patterns and mental illness no matter where the children end up.