Russia 100414 Basic Political Developments

CNN: Russian official: Adoption case points to need for monitoring

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/04/13/russia.adopted.boy.returned.reaction/
By Ivan Watson and Maxim Tkachenko, CNN

April 13, 2010 -- Updated 2348 GMT (0748 HKT)

Moscow, Russia (CNN) -- Artyem Saveliev turns eight years old this week. His birthday will be anything but normal.

Last Thursday his American adoptive family put him on a solo, trans-Atlantic flight from the United States to Moscow. They hired a Russian driver to deliver the boy from the airport to the Russian Ministry of Education.

Russian officials allowed CNN to see a copy of a letter addressed to the Ministry of Education and signed by Artyem's adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, which the little boy carried when he arrived.

"To Whom It May Concern," the letter reads, "This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviors. I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability... 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. As he is a Russian National, I am returning him to your guardianship and would like the adoption disannulled [sic]."

Russian officials are fuming at these accusations.

"How can you imagine that a 7-year-old boy can be [a] menace or danger for the family? For the adult people?" said Pavel Astakhov, Russia's Child Rights Ombudsmen.

"[Artyem] is in very good mental and physical condition," Astakhov said. "He's a very nice boy. He's funny. And he's very communicative."

Astakhov met with Artyem several times since he arrived in Moscow, as have officials from the U.S. Embassy.

"When we saw him, he looked like a very tired little boy off a long trans-Atlantic flight," said John Beyrle, the U.S. ambassador in Moscow.

The case of Artyem comes after the Russian media focused intense attention on several previous cases in recent years of abuse involving adopted Russian children in the United States. Not surprisingly, some Russians are calling for an end to the practice of foreign adoption.

"I am against the idea of sending our children abroad," said a woman, who gave her name only as Alexandra, as she watched her grandchildren play on a sunny day in a Moscow park.

Russian officials have made public appeals for a temporary freeze of American adoption of Russian children until a proposed bilateral treaty has been signed to allow monitoring of children after they are brought to the United States.

"We don't have any instrument or tools to control our children which are living in adoptive families," said Astakhov. "In this situation we have a kind of legal vacuum ... we have to freeze all activity in the adoptive process for the United States of America."

Those are ominous words for thousands of desperate American families who end up waiting years and spending tens of thousands of dollars trying to adopt Russian children. According to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, more then 50,000 Russian children have been adopted by American families in the last 16 years.

The U.S. State Department offered to send a delegation of diplomats to Moscow later this month to address the adoption issue.

"The Russian government has now told us informally that that's acceptable. We're actually working out the dates," said Beyrle. "So I would say to American families that are in the process of adoption not to worry too much. We're working on this, and we really don't think that this will have any long-term effect on the ability of American families to adopt here."

Russia has no shortage of orphans.

The United Nations Children Fund reported that in 2008, some 714,000 Russian children were living in state institutions. Unlike many Western societies, the vast majority -- 83 percent of these children -- are "social orphans" taken from biological parents who were deemed unfit by Russian state agencies, said Bertram Beinvel, UNICEF's representative in Moscow.

"What is important to draw out of this [Artyem's] case is to conduct a thorough analysis on the adoption of the child, then to [learn] what happened when he was put back on the plane," Beinvel said. He also called for a bilateral treaty to prevent future cases of abuse from occurring.

Both U.S. and Russian officials predicted it might take a matter of months to hammer out this proposed agreement.

But that offers little consolation to Artyem Saveliev, who has now lost two families before reaching the age of 8.

"He lost his native family, his mother. And he lost his adoptive family, Torry Hansen," said Astakhov. "Now the best way is to place him in a new family which can give him attention and love."

But Astakhov made it clear any new family for Artyem would be a Russian one.

ABC News: Petition Drive Urges Russia Not to Halt Adoptions

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=10368228

Petition drive in US urges Russia not to freeze adoptions despite furor over abandonment

By DAVID CRARY

The Associated Press

NEW YORK

Worried over a threatened freeze of adoptions from Russia, thousands of American adoption advocates are petitioning leaders of the two nations to prevent such a step even as they decry a Tennessee woman returning her adopted son to Russia.

Poignant pleas from would-be adoptive parents were included in the petition to President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, that was being coordinated Tuesday by the Joint Council on International Children's Services. The council, which represents many U.S. agencies engaged in international adoption, estimates there are about 3,000 pending U.S. applications for adoptions from Russia.

"My husband and I have been working toward a Russian adoption for two years now," wrote Susan Busek, a teacher from Loveland, Colo. "Please know that there are many would-be parents like us, who want only the opportunity to be parents and give our love."

The petition, which quickly gathered more than 11,000 electronic signatures, is a response to the outcry in Russia over the incident last week in which a nurse from Tennessee arranged to send her 7-year-old adoptive son back to Moscow alone on a plane, asserting that the boy had severe psychological problems.

Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, and its children's rights ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, have suggested that Russia suspend all U.S. adoptions until Moscow and Washington sign a bilateral adoption agreement.

"How can we prosecute a person who abused the rights of a Russian child abroad?" Astakhov said in a televised interview. "If there was an adoption treaty in place, we would have legal means to protect Russian children abroad."

Lavrov called the return of the boy, Artyom Savelyev, "the last straw" after a string of other cases in which adopted Russian children were mistreated.

As of Tuesday, however, no freeze had been imposed, and U.S. agencies handling adoptions from Russia told their clients that applications remained active.

The U.S. State Department is arranging for a high-level delegation to visit Moscow next week to discuss the incident and the possibility of some sort of new adoption agreement.

In the past, the United States has resisted Russian entreaties to sign a formal adoption pact, contending that an international accord called the Hague Convention would be sufficient once Russia ratified it. But the latest incident appears to have softened the U.S. stance.

"We're willing to talk about some sort of bilateral understanding where we would ensure that these kinds of things could not happen," the U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, told CBS's "The Early Show."

Tom DeFilipo, president of the Joint Council on International Children's Services, said he was not sure if a possible U.S.-Russian pact would require ratification by the Senate, but pledged that his group would help work for ratification if that was the case.

The petition being promoted by the council calls the abandonment of the Russian boy "an isolated incident ... not at all indicative of the thousands of successful adoptions between Russia and the United States."

It calls on Medvedev and Obama to ensure that "every child's right to a permanent and safe family is not interrupted due to the suspension of intercountry adoption services." It calls on the two governments to "aggressively prosecute any individual involved in child abuse to the fullest extent of the law."

Larisa Mason, executive director of an Oakmont, Pa., adoption agency called International Assistance Group, urged the American government to be flexible in the upcoming talks with the Russians.

"We need to work with the Russians on putting together something that will protect children in circumstances like this," she said. "This is the most unfortunate incident, and maybe this will push our government to do something more."

Mason said many Russians felt that 7-year-old Artyom — and other adopted Russian children — were treated like "second-class citizens" in the United States. She said Russians were outraged that no charges had been filed as of Tuesday against the adoptive mother in Tennessee, Torry Hansen.

One of the couples working with Mason's agency to adopt a Russian orphan expressed understanding for the outrage being voiced in Moscow.

"The number one objective has always got to be the welfare of the children," said Sharon Johnson of Atlanta. "But I'd ask them to not penalize all of the waiting families who can provide loving homes to raise these children."

Johnson and her husband, Don — both attorneys — already have an adopted 4-year-old daughter from Russia and embarked last year on efforts to adopt another girl. They fervently hope the abandonment incident won't delay the process.

"The families seeking to adopt are not represented by this woman," said Sharon Johnson, referring to Hansen. "We want to help children, we want to love them and grow old with them, and watch them do sports and ballet, and give them the opportunities here that they can't get growing up in an orphanage."

In recent years, the number of foreign children being adopted by Americans has sharply declined — and Russia has been a big factor. There were more than 5,800 U.S. adoptions from Russia in 2004, and only 1,586 last year.

Louise Schnaier, director of international adoption at the Spence-Chapin agency in New York, said there is a perception in the adoption community that many of the children being adopted out of Russian orphanages can present special challenges — due to such conditions as fetal alcohol syndrome.

"Ultimately we have to depend on the families to give us feedback so we can help them," she said. "There's inherently a lot of unknowns, and families need to be clear about that."

Natasha Shaginian-Needham, co-founder of the Happy Families International adoption agency in Cold Spring, N.Y., said she had no sympathy for Torry Hansen.

"She had many sources to go to, to get help: the adoption agency, the Department of Social Services, counseling, post-adoption support groups, and many more who would guide her appropriately in this crisis situation," Shaginian-Needham said.

"There is a child who cannot be treated as a broken toy that gets sent back to the store if it stops working," she added. "This abominable action is a crime."

———

Associated Press writer Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow contributed to this report.

Press release 108/2010

Ministry for Foreign Affairs

14.4.2010 8.43