Russian lawmaker proposes stopping U.S. adoptions

Waterbury Republican-American ^ | July 20, 2005 | Maria Danilova (A.P.)

[Graybeard58]

MOSCOW -- A senior lawmaker called Tuesday for a moratorium on U.S. citizens adopting children from Russia -- a sharp escalation in a campaign against foreign adoptions triggered by a series of deaths of Russian children in the United States.

Yekaterina Lakhova, chairwoman of a parliamentary committee that oversees adoption legislation and member of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, urged authorities to impose restrictions on countries where adopted children have been abused.

She did not mention the United States by name but noted that 13 Russian children have been killed there in recent years.

"When 13 children die in one country ... I would make some statement and introduce a temporary period, a moratorium for that country," she said.

Russian nationalists often accuse foreigners of "buying" children, some 260,000 of whom live in orphanages and similar facilities. Incidents of abuse by foreign adoptive parents are widely reported in the media.

In the most recent case, a North Carolina woman was arrested in early July on charges of fatally beating a 2-year-old Russian girl she had recently adopted. Earlier this year, an Illinois woman was imprisoned for 12 years for the death of her 6-year-old son just weeks after he was adopted from Russia.

Children's advocates assailed Lakhova's initiative, saying that imposing a moratorium would only harm those waiting to be adopted.

"Lakhova is ready to sacrifice thousands of children, many of whom will die" without proper medical care, said Boris Altshuler, director of Russia's Right of the Child group.

He said that the figure of 13 children was minuscule compared with the estimated 2,000 children killed in Russia every year.

Deputy Prosecutor General Sergei Fridinsky disputed that, saying 1,080 children have been killed in Russia in 2000-05, about 200 children per year.

Altshuler said most of the children who died in the United States were adopted via individual brokers, over which Russian authorities have no control, as opposed to foreign adoption agencies that operate with official accreditation and oversight.

He said he supported enforcing stricter controls or even imposing a moratorium over such "independent" adoptions.

Speaking at the same news conference, Fridinsky accused foreign adoption agencies of giving bribes and using illegal middlemen to speed up the process.

"A significant part (of the agencies) is working in a way they should not be working according to law," the prosecutor general said.

He said foreign parents were getting an illegal advantage over Russian citizens wanting to adopt and that Russians should be guaranteed priority.

The number of Russian adoptions dropped from 14,000 to about half that since the early 1990s, he said, while the number of foreign adoptions rose from 1,400 to 9,000 -- half of those by U.S. families.

Russian families rarely adopt because of social stigma, and the Education Ministry recently launched a Web site to promote domestic adoptions.

[MarMema]

And "independent" adopters must meet the same stringent police and background checks, and home study requirements, and submit 3 years of post placement reports, as do people working with agencies

That's not enough. Our agency required us to attend 8 hours of attachment training, and was right there when our 7 yo came home setting fires and spitting on us to refer us to excellent specialists in attachment.

New Hope Child and Family Services, Seattle.

We went on to adopt twice more after this child, btw, who is now 17 and doing wonderfully.

[MarMema]

I suspect racism and general unfitness to be a parent may be at the root cause

I suspect you have never parented a child with reactive attachment disorder.

[silverleaf]

Why are you so angry and making assumptions about me?

YGBSM. You're the one who posted the comment that "a lot" of "racist losers" were adopting from Russian. I do not think anyone reading that needs to make "assumptions" about your views. Approximately 30,000 kids gave been adopted from Russia or other EE countries in the past decade. Define "a lot" for me in your views of how many are being raised by racist losers.

I spend several hours every day networking with other adopters of Russian children who are dealing with RAD (do you know what that is, and what causes it?).....parents who are battling to get a diagnosis of the brain damage and treatment for kids suffering from fetal alcohol exposure, people whose kids don't know how to stand, sit, sing or eat, much less love or trust another human being; people who spend month after month after month of rocking frightened screaming struggling scratching kids- some of them pre-teenagers- to sleep; people who literally dissolve into their homes because it is unsafe or unhappy to take their hyperactive dangerously impulsive children sexually precocious kids out in public; people who cry via the internet because their kids either get better so slowly or they don't get better at all or they get worse, and the adoptive parents feel like failures.

We can't even imagine the conditions in Russia that produce children with these issues. We adopt these children who are survivors of extreme familial and societal neglect. They have survived being sent to orphanage cribs from their hospitals of birth because they are strong. But the behaviors that help them survive, push humanity away and are very difficult to heal. Some never do.

The consensus in our community is that Peggy Sue Hilt probably "lost it" and beat to death a child with severely resistant behaviors, the root cause of which may never have been apparent or revealed to Ms Hilt when she adopted, as in fetal alchol exposure or severe attachment disorder. Post adoption (as in post partum) depression, exhaustion, unrealistic expectations, lack of a true support network for respite care and advice, and poor anger management, are usually at the root of child abuse and death, birth child or adopted.

BTW, my family choice was to be a biracial family, which we did through adoption of a noncaucasian child. It is ALWAYS a choice whether or not to form a biracial family. People do not deserve to be disparaged, no matter which way they choose. You know what difficulties you face when you choose to go biracial and you chose to do it anyway. So did I. But I am surprised that you would cast such a large stone at anyone who would adopt any orphaned child. White, Hispanic, Asian and Black, they all die the same sad deaths, alone, when no one adopts them.

[silverleaf]

That's not enough Maybe not. But it does meet Russian law. I'm only the messenger. Glad you got a good agency. They probably would have worked with Peggy Hilt, too, if she had applied. Can't say if 8 hours of training would have helped her aviod beating her toddler to death. She was a trained child care worker and experienced adoptive parent with an older child. Glad your kid is doing well.

[Tuscaloosa Goldfinch]

Not terribly offended, actually, conceding your point that there IS racism, only it's not always in the adoptive parents themselves -- sometimes it's in potential grandparents or other relatives. Extended family is a major component of raising well-adjusted children, and having relatives who don't like you as much as your cousins because you don't look like them is an issue.

You obviously did a wonderful job giving your children healthy attitudes toward adoption if they are adoptive parents themselves. I hope when our daughter is grown she will look positively on the fact she joined our family. (Right now, she's thirteen, so that may explain a lot).

[MarMema]

Tell them not to give up. It took us about 10 years. We have two now past the ten years mark and doing ok. We have one only at the 7 year mark and she sometimes makes me despair.
But I am waiting for ten years with her before I let myself
be depressed. :-)

[HamiltonJay]

How many kids have died in those orphanages during the same period of time??

I'm not condoning folks who go buy kids for abuse from Russia... but Russian orphanages are hardly places that provide great care for these kids.