I believe Law and Order did a segment on this problem. It seems many of these kids have no physical or emotional contact and when adopted out have severe problems. Not that this is right, but it appears to be another problem in developing countries.
What a bitch. Adoption is forever.
</sarcasm>
She can’t do that. That is very illegal I would think.
Depending on how long ago she adopted the boy, he's probably a U.S. citizen by law, also.
It wouldnt’ surprise me if she was mislead by the adoption agency, but it is very important to do due dilegence before adopting a child.
Sending him back like that was wrong.
This seems an extreme way to deal with the problem though.
just like a defective product, returned to vendor
I wouldn’t just put him on a plane either and I agree that it appears that action is illegal?
I watched an unbelievable segment on these Russian orphan children and it would scare the daylights out of you. One adoptive mother (USA) was brought up on charges of molestation/abuse of her adopted 3 or 4 year old because a wooden spoon handle had been shoved up his rectum repeatedly, then the feces were smeared all over the dryer and laundry room.
After a lengthy investigation, the woman’s story proved true: the child did it to himself. Along with other unmentionable and unfathomable things. I don’t know how to describe these seriously deranged kids other than warped and beyond rescue. It’s as if they have no feelings at all.
Though very sad, I am more frightened of their potential candidacy as the ideal terrorist protege.
"As he is a Russian national, I am returning him to your guardianship and would like the adoption disannulled."
Russian children's rights commissioner Pavel Astakhov slammed the mother, who is understood to be a single parent, and called for a ban on all adoptions to America in the light of the case...."
Let them ban adoptions to America.
Sounds like it may be a case of Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD). Not unheard of for children living (if you can call it that) in some horrid institutions.
Most children with Reactive Attachment Disorder have had severe problems or disruptions in their early relationships. Many have been physically or emotionally abused or neglected. Some have experienced inadequate care in an institutional setting or other out-of-home placement (for example a hospital, residential program, foster care or orphanage). Others have had multiple or traumatic losses or changes in their primary caregiver.
They often show nearly a complete lack of ability to be genuinely affectionate with others. They typically fail to develop a conscience and do not learn to trust. They do not allow people to be in control of them due to this trust issue. This damage is done by being abused or physically or emotionally separated from one primary caregiver during the first 3 years of life. “If a child is not attached-does not form a loving bond with the mother-he does not develop an attachment to the rest of mankind. The unattached child literally does not have a stake in humanity” (Magid & McKelvey 1988) They do not think and feel like a normal person. “At the core of the unattached is a deep-seated rage, far beyond normal anger. This rage is suppressed in their psyche.
“Now we all have some degree of rage, but the rage of psychopaths is that born of unfulfilled needs as infants. Incomprehensible pain is forever locked In their souls, because of the abandonment they felt as infants.” (Magid & McKelvey 1988) “There is an inability to love or feel guilty. There is no conscience. Their inability to enter into any relationship makes treatment or even education impossible.” (Bowlby 1955)
It’s always a very sad situation under the best of circumstances and, from what I’ve read, it is very, very difficult to deal with these children. I’m not speaking from personal experience but I’ve researched developmental problems for other reasons and this disorder it about the saddest/worst/usually pretty hopeless one that I’ve come across.
There definitely should have been a different way she handled this; ‘re-abandoning’ a child at the age of 7 will compound his difficulties (to say the least). I’m not even attempting to make an excuse for her actions. There are easily hundreds of choices she could have/should have made differently.....
Children must have ‘good enough’ parenting (not perfect but sufficient) during the critical years generally believed to be ages 2yrs - 4yrs. During this ‘window’ the child must bond to a parent, usually mom but can be other family or guardians, and then ‘grow out of’ being bonded to see themselves as a separate, individual person.
If this kids have little to no contact, this critical phase of development does not happen. It is sometimes possible to correct some of the damage up until teens (ethically, in the US, psychologists often declare 18 as the age past which this kind of damage can not be reversed). A child ‘warehoused’ in an orphanage or anywhere else and abused etc. is likely to be so thoroughly wounded that the personality, who the child was going to become, dies but the body lives on.
Once an adult, there are no techniques or therapies known to repair this damage. A child has one chance to ‘grow’ a personality - after that - therapy cannot give a personality/conscience to a child. Therapy works by addressing the personality, cultivating the conscience. But for severely damaged people - there is no one ‘there’ for therapy to address.
Basically you have an adult with the uncompromising wants, needs, tantrums of a 2 year old in the body of an angry, calculating adult. It can be quite scary. I too have read of sociopaths stalking and tormenting their families and these individuals cannot be treated/healed.
A child with this sort of damage typically has personality disorders. Inability to bond with people, lack of conscience or compassion, tireless rage, pleasure in tormenting others etc.
It is possibly to see clear signs of sociopathy in children - if she’s read or seen the kinds of horror stories (horribly abused children adopted into homes where the abused child begins setting fire to the house, stating the desire to kill family members, found stalking siblings with scissors, tormenting small animals etc.) - then she panicked and sent him back.
I do wonder why this was the method of escape she chose. We still have ethically responsibilities to those who have no conscience or capacity for compassion - I am just not sure what those are or how they are expressed. Did US orphanages refuse to adopt him - is it not possible for her to put him up for adoption in the US? Would she be financially responsible to pay for him to live in a treatment home? The child would be damaging to other children - where does one safely raise a rage filled child who cannot love and has no conscience.
Of course, to place him for adoption in the US is to hope that some other family face the stalking, rage, destruction of a baby abused right out of existence and into sociopathy. I wonder what paths, if any, she pursued before she chose to fly him home.
But the ‘one-way-ticket-home’ seems the harshest method I can imagine.