Adopted Boy Sent Back To Russia

Very sad, there were others ways the mother could have dealt with the situation.
 
The way that the child was returned to Russia was stupid, to be sure, but in many of the reports I've seen/read about this (not so much this one) they've implied that the kid was dumped on a plane and shipped back to Russia to sit in an airport. He was chaperoned the entire way, it seems. Still an utterly idiotic way of doing things (and fairly awful to the kid involved, to be sure,) but not as bad as most of the reports have made it seem.
 
Hansen said the child had a "hit list" of people he was targeting, including her daughter, who he said he "wanted to kill for the house." He threatened to kill her grandson for a videogame, she said.

The final incident that convinced Hansen she should send the boy back to Russia was when she caught him starting a fire with papers in his bedroom last Monday, she said. She feared the child might burn down the house and kill her family, she said.
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Source

If the above claims are true, I think I'm going to have to break away from the herd and side with the mother. If your choices are "send the kid back" and "let the kid burn down your house and murder your family", I think the correct option is rather obvious. Sure there may have been "other ways" the mother could've handled it - like have the kid thrown in jail or a mental asylum, or kill him and hide the body, etc - but among those things, sending the child back to Russia was probably the kindest possible course.
 
It got me wondering how Russia could allow foreign adoption anyways. Aren't adoptions from 'poorer' countries to 'richer' ones? I never hear about someone adopting a child from France or Britain, has anyone ever adopted a child from the US?
 
Could be the boy was psychotic, many kids raised in orphanages have serious attachment disorders. It's really easy to see the orphanage or other people involved lying about the child, one to get rid of their own responsibility and two, purely for profit.

Parents who adopt and were lied to about the children's health and/or mental condition are still treated like a parent who won't care for a child who goes on to develop problems no one knew about at the time of the adoption. That isn't totally fair.

It sounds like this family made an attempt to return the child at least with some consideration. The news media is quick to call legal services obtained online as "turning the child over to a stranger you met online". That's a total mischaracterization. And a formal letter explaining the circumstances is reported as a note like one pinned to a kid's shirt.

Whatever the real story here, it's unlikely the news media and the politicians in Russia trying to make hay of this are reliable sources of information.


I worked in a group home once as the weekend relief parent. One of our kids was a 6 yr old with serious attachment disorder. One day he broke into a neighbor's house and totally trashed it, dumping over the fish tank and hamster cage, turning on all the stove burners and faucets, dumping the trash all over the place, and breaking and wrecking just about anything he could. Yes he really was 6 years old.

Before coming to the group home he had slit his mattress with a knife and he used to smear his feces on the walls. It was all passive-aggressive. When you were with him he appeared to be a sweet little kid.
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
It got me wondering how Russia could allow foreign adoption anyways. Aren't adoptions from 'poorer' countries to 'richer' ones? I never hear about someone adopting a child from France or Britain, has anyone ever adopted a child from the US?
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Russia has large areas one would consider similar to 3rd world countries. China is much the same with large areas of industrialized country mixed with large rural areas of peasant populations.
 
From Wiki:
Sources of children and adoptive parents

The most common countries for international adoption by parents in the United States for 2007 were China (5453), Guatemala (4728), Russia (2310), Ethiopia (1255), South Korea (939), Vietnam (828) Ukraine (606), Kazakhstan (540), India (416) Liberia (353), Colombia (310), and Philippines (265).(U.S. State Department) Other less common countries include Bulgaria, Norway, Australia, Kenya, Canada, Haiti, and Poland. These statistics can vary from year to year as each country alters its rules; Romania, Belarus and Cambodia were also important until government crackdowns on adoptions to weed out abuse in the system cut off the flow. Vietnam recently signed a treaty openings its doors for adoption.[citation needed]
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Silly Green Monkey said:
It got me wondering how Russia could allow foreign adoption anyways. Aren't adoptions from 'poorer' countries to 'richer' ones? I never hear about someone adopting a child from France or Britain, has anyone ever adopted a child from the US?
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Because adoption is an incredible source of income.

Most people would probably not want to adopt children from the US, including people who live here. Now, don't anybody take this the wrong way...but a couple who wants to start fresh with a happy and healthy child and raise them in a normal way might have better luck finding such a "normal" child overseas. A check of my state's website for adoption shows that every single child profiled has emotional or psychological issues as a result of abuse, the mother taking drugs, or what have you; and most other states' sites are similar. These children need loving families too; but a family that's adopting because (say) they're unable to conceive on their own or whatever, simply might not necessarily be equipped to deal with that baggage.

Children overseas, particularly in Russia, are often "advertised" as normal, healthy children whose only issue is a lack of parents. It sounds like exactly what many couples are looking for...only sometimes, the foreign orphanage or adoption agencies blatantly misrepresent or omit the fact that the child has severe issues. It's a pretty good ploy; most parents who think about returning the children are easily "shamed" into not doing so by the agencies who are prepared to call them heartless, callous, shallow, and whatnot. I'm willing to bet that's one reason why the legal firm had this family send the child directly to Russia with the letter - to avoid the manipulation.
 
Seemed to me that some years ago 60 Minutes did a segment on Russian adoption agencies "dumping" children with serious long-term illnesses and such on unsuspecting overseas adoptive parents.
Evidently the Russian health-care system was unable to cope...

I think Law & Order based an episode on this situation as well. No way to tell if that's what happened here....
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
It got me wondering how Russia could allow foreign adoption anyways. Aren't adoptions from 'poorer' countries to 'richer' ones? I never hear about someone adopting a child from France or Britain, has anyone ever adopted a child from the US?
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We adopted foreign 24 years ago, from Korea. My wife was 37, I was 35.
The rules, at that time, were simple. For a US born child, the wait was 4-6 years (for a child that was 6-10 years old, longer for newborn), cost was >20K ($US), and no one over age 35 at the time of adoption could be considered.
Foreign adoption was $5K, wait time was averaging 1 year. Ours took 4 months. He was 9 months old when he came home, spent his first 8 birthdays at 1830's rendezvous reenactments, and is now a college graduate, living at home...
 
Silly Green Monkey said:
It got me wondering how Russia could allow foreign adoption anyways. Aren't adoptions from 'poorer' countries to 'richer' ones? I never hear about someone adopting a child from France or Britain, has anyone ever adopted a child from the US?
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Russia is poorer. People in power would rather have hard, Western cash. So if you want a baby, there are whole tourist junkets you can take, you hemorrhage cash here and there to various officials for official stuff, and you get your kid.

The Russians apparently need to highlight their warranty against defects.
 
Adoption is not a tryout. If you adopt a child you are legally the parent, as if you are the biological parent. When problems arise you deal with them as if it is your biological child.
 
scratchy said:
Adoption is not a tryout. If you adopt a child you are legally the parent, as if you are the biological parent. When problems arise you deal with them as if it is your biological child.
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You can take an absolutist position on either side here. If you are lied to, conned and swindled into adopting a known seriously psychotic child, and you are not prepared for such a child, there is no question the adoption agency and those who likely made a profit off the deception are responsible for the child.


The one thing that strikes me about the people who knee-jerk blame the parents here is, of those I've seen, they have no idea how seriously disturbed a child might be. The average couple looking to adopt are not prepared for such a child and it does a disservice to both the parents and the child to trick that couple into taking the child.


So while you are right under some circumstances, like you adopt a child and 2 years later the child develops an expensive medical condition, or develops schizophrenia 10 years after the adoption, I'm not so sure the same thing applies when you are lied to about a dangerous psychotic child.

In the vast majority of cases where a child develops problems after adoption, the parents have bonded to the child and would not abandon that child when problems arise.

But I have lots of empathy for couples who naively adopt a child, raised in an orphanage with a serious attachment disorder or severe fetal alcohol syndrome, but who were lied to about the child's problems before the adoption. It would be nice if everyone seeking to adopt were aware of such problem children, but that just isn't the case.

Maybe what we need are adoption laws that mandate prospective parental education about the existence of, and risks of adopting such children.
 
Checkmite said:
Source

If the above claims are true, I think I'm going to have to break away from the herd and side with the mother. If your choices are "send the kid back" and "let the kid burn down your house and murder your family", I think the correct option is rather obvious. Sure there may have been "other ways" the mother could've handled it - like have the kid thrown in jail or a mental asylum, or kill him and hide the body, etc - but among those things, sending the child back to Russia was probably the kindest possible course.
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I'm not sure what the laws in the US are regarding adoption - and it is also possible someone already brought this up - but where I come from an adoption is complete and irreversible. Once an adoption is complete the parent is just as much legally responsible for the child as if they squeezed it out of their own fanny/unloaded in the mother's fanny. There is no difference whatsoever in the rights and responsibilities of an adoptive parent and a biological parent.

If said parent starts to worry about the child's behaviour then the course of action would be exactly the same as with a biological child: i.e seek help from social services, psychiatric care for the child etc.

I agree that if the recount is true then the child is displaying some very worrying behaviour, and my response to that is: "Well, he's yours. What are you going to do about it?" You can't just send a child back like a plate of soup.

I'm sure many biological parents sometimes secretly wish for the possibility to send Kevin back to the stork with an angry letter - but if they do that we are all horrified. Just as horrified as we are when Kevin is adopted.

This devalues adoptive parents everywhere - you know, normal adoptive parents who either manage to bond with their child or at least takes full responsibility for it if it takes time to bond.

There is an increased risk that an adoptive child will have special needs. That must be taken into the calculation when deciding to adopt, just as different outcomes must be considered when deciding to go for a biological child - we can't know who any child will be.

To my mind, and to everyone I know, an adopted child is no different to a biological one. If you can't understand that then you simply shouldn't have children. Adopted or biological.
 
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whatthebutlersaw said:
I'm not sure what the laws in the US are regarding adoption - and it is also possible someone already brought this up - but where I come from an adoption is complete and irreversible. Once an adoption is complete the parent is just as much legally responsible for the child as if they squeezed it out of their own fanny/unloaded in the mother's fanny. There is no difference whatsoever in the rights and responsibilities of an adoptive parent and a biological parent.

If said parent starts to worry about the child's behaviour then the course of action would be exactly the same as with a biological child: i.e seek help from social services, psychiatric care for the child etc.

I agree that if the recount is true then the child is displaying some very worrying behaviour, and my response to that is: "Well, he's yours. What are you going to do about it?" You can't just send a child back like a plate of soup.

I'm sure many biological parents sometimes secretly wish for the possibility to send Kevin back to the stork with an angry letter - but if they do that we are all horrified. Just as horrified as we are when Kevin is adopted.

This devalues adoptive parents everywhere - you know, normal adoptive parents who either manage to bond with their child or at least takes full responsibility for it if it takes time to bond.

There is an increased risk that an adoptive child will have special needs. That must be taken into the calculation when deciding to adopt, just as different outcomes must be considered when deciding to go for a biological child - we can't know who any child will be.

To my mind, and to everyone I know, an adopted child is no different to a biological one. If you can't understand that then you simply shouldn't have children. Adopted or biological.
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QFT. I was going to reply, but you have already said what needed to be said.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
The one thing that strikes me about the people who knee-jerk blame the parents here is, of those I've seen, they have no idea how seriously disturbed a child might be. The average couple looking to adopt are not prepared for such a child and it does a disservice to both the parents and the child to trick that couple into taking the child.

So while you are right under some circumstances, like you adopt a child and 2 years later the child develops an expensive medical condition, or develops schizophrenia 10 years after the adoption, I'm not so sure the same thing applies when you are lied to about a dangerous psychotic child.
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I'm going to have to agree with SG here. My parents fostered a number of children when I was young; and it's difficult in the best of circumstances. A child who has serious mental problems due to an abusive or otherwise traumatic childhood is difficult for trained professionals to deal with; let alone average parents. And when such a child is misrepresented, intentionally or not, as being more stable and capable, that creates an undue burden on the adoptive parents. Some people are capable of rising to such circumstances and persevering; but I'd wager that most simply don't have the mental, emotional, or financial resources to cope with what is often a nearly herculean task. And the older the adopted child is, the more difficult the problem, and the less likely that there can be any satisfactory resolution.
 
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