Ugh! Why is it that one person can ruin things for an entire group? And why do people do such dumb things?
I just read the article below on another persons blog. They are in Russia now, and I guess it's all over the news there.
How horrible! I hope this doesn't add to wait times even more. For us they already slowed things down due to a death of an adopted child in US so hopefully this doesn't increase those times.
I feel horrible for this little boy, I don't understand some people at all!
Here is the article.....
American parents send adopted 7-year-old back to Russia – by himself
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permalinke-mail story to a friendprint versionPublished 08 April, 2010, 19:57
Edited 09 April, 2010, 04:12
A seven-year-old boy arrived at a Moscow airport from the United States on Saturday morning. “I refuse him”, read the note the boy carried with him.
Yahoo StumbleUpon Google Live Technoratidel.icio.us Digg Reddit Mixx PropellerThe Russian representative on children’s rights, Pavel Astakhov, as saying the child had been earlier adopted in Russia by an American couple. The boy was adopted six months ago.
The fact that a seven-year-old arrived by plane without accompanying adults was revealed only at immigration control. Astakhov learned that the boy had been adopted earlier from the care taking bodies. The boy was taken to a police station in Moscow and the hearing representative went there, too, to clarify the situation.
Read moreLater in the day Astakhov said the boy’s name is Artyom Justin Hansen. The boy was born in Vladivostok, in Russia’s Far East, and arrived in Moscow from Washington.
“The procedure for returning an adopted child has been violated. We face such situations when adopters return adopted children quite often within the first year, including international adoptive parents, though it happens less frequently. But, nonetheless, there is a procedure. They were to send a corresponding application to the guardianship bodies, social protection authorities in the US. In America there is a child service which is in charge of children protection. And they were to send a corresponding application,” Pavel Astakhov said.
“But the mother decided to make her life easier, as she writes in her application, and says that she abandoned the child because she does not want him to destroy her life, her family, and lose her friends. She thinks that she has been misled as to what the boy was going to be like. But we have the boy’s history and we can see that he is a normal boy and has no mental or physical abnormalities, he is psychologically stable. Our task now is to find out what was the reason for the abandonment. The boy was taken to a hospital in order to find out whether he has any diseases, signs of beating or trauma. So if he’s fine, he will be in quarantine for two weeks and after that he will be sent to a child care center.”
Further, Astakhov said he would ask the authorities to suspend the practice of Russian children’s adoption by Americans. “We must tighten the control over candidates for international adoption. I will raise this question now as it is possible that we must even suspend American adoptions to clarify how many similar cases we have there,” the Russian official said.
Now Artyom is being treated at one of the hospitals in the Russian capital. According to a preliminary examination by doctors, his condition is satisfactory.
This latest case is just one of many
adoption scandals with Russian orphans and American adoptive parents being involved. In another case,
a two-year-old boy died after his American adoptive father left him inside a car with temperature outside about 30 degrees Celsius.
Andrey Fedorov from Alaska international adoption agency says families who adopt a child should be closely monitored by social services, at least in the first couple of years.
“Every family should be screened and they should get much more attention from social workers, especially in the first couple of years when the child just came to the family and he is trying to adjust himself in this new environment. And, of course, this is a new environment for the [adopted] parents, too, so this situation should be under the control of the social services,” he said.
