Adoption Scandal: The US-Russian Nuclear (Family) Standoff

While Medvedev and Obama were negotiating nuclear quotas and ways to protect the world from atomic terrorism, back home, some wondered whether they would have been better off talking adoption quotas and ways to protect Russian kids from their American foster parents.

That’s because more adopted Russian children have died at the hands of their new American families than from any Nato ICBMs. “Since 1990, when Russian adoptions were made open to foreigners, 13 children have been murdered, 12 of those have been within the United States”, according to a 2007 article on About.com. If that number is correct, than it would mean that American foster parents were responsible for 92% of all Russian adoptee deaths.

What’s more, of the 18 children internationally who died at the hands of their US foester parents between 1996 and 2007, 14 were Russian. Since then, another child has died, bringing the total number of deaths to 15.

A spate of high profile instances of deaths and abuse committed by American parents against their adopted Russian foster children has culminated in the shocking case of 7 year old Artyem, who was put unaccompanied on a plane back to Russia by his foster mother Torry Hansen last week.

That came just a month after the murder of 7 year old Ivan Skorobogatov (by tragic irony, his names means ‘to get rich soon or quickly’) and one year after a ‘Virginia man was acquitted in the death of his son, who died of heatstroke after being forgotten in a parked car for several hours’.

And while the nuclear diplomacy has been going really well, this latest incident has inflamed diplomatic tensions between Russia and the US.

‘Calling the case “the last straw,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told Russian television that he would propose adoptions by U.S. parents be suspended until the two parties are able to agree on a formal plan to govern the flow of children’, reported the Wall St Journal. And this morning, the US ambassador to Russia was foced to appear on the CBS Early Show to promise a thorough investigation of adoptions.

At least the Russian and American public are united in their incredulity, sadness and anger at the way the foster children have been treated.

Commenters on CNN’s story about Artyem were almost unanimous in their condemnation of the foster mother:

The boy is not like something that you purchased and then returned by shipment when you discovered that you were not satisfied with what you bought. This is human we’re talking about. This woman just proved that she is an unfit parent!

On the other hand, another commenter, on a recent USA Today story, asks:

Why doesn’t someone write a story about the many children adopted from Russia living in the United States and thriving?

She goes on to note that

Russia has over 700,000 children in their database. They deserve a voice. Most of the children adopted from Russia residing in the United States are thriving. The situation with the 10-12 children adopted from Russia abused and worse in the United States is tragic. The reality is that the situation in Russia is also tragic. The children in orphanges often experience severe developmental delays. Rates of prostitution, alcoholism and suicide are a very common theme among children in Russian orphanges. Russia does not seem to acknowledge that.

The halting of adoptions is a political move.

This commenter, Yamasheva, brings up several really important points. First of all, nearly 20 years after the fall of the USSR, Russia continues to have a severe problem with orphans and orphanages. The huge surge in social problems such as drug and alcohol abuse during the 1990s has resulted in hundreds of thousands of abandoned and orphaned children filling the increasingly dilapidated state orphanages.

For the most part, these are not happy places.  They are dangerously underfunded, overcrowded and understaffed; most have not seen much investment or renovations since Soviet times.

I was involved for a little while with Diema’s Dream, a wonderful American charity run by Mary Dudley, which was involved in rehabilitating disabled orphans in Russia.

It is nearly impossible to describe the conditions in which these children are kept and how the underpaid, underquipped and undertrained staff of state run nurseries struggle to deal with them. It is especially heartbreaking to consider that, given personal care, good therapy and human warmth, a child with cerebral palsy, for example, that has very little hope in such a place could otherwise grow up to be a functioning and fulfilled adult.

It is also a fact that Russians themselves are not big on adoption. They aren’t even having their own children. Economic and cultural reasons consipire to depress adoption rates further. During Soviet times, orphans were cared for in a very statist way, and Russian people have not had a chance to develop a personal taste for adoption like Americans, where private adoption is a long tradition and the state generally plays a much lesser role.

So, given the high numbers of Russian orphans and the terrible conditions in which they live, and given Russians’ reluctance to adopt, Russia desperately needs people from other countries, such as America, to continue to take these children into their homes.

The abuses committed against Russian kids in the US are ugly, worrying and must be investigated and prevented.

But Medvedev’s rather populist posturing smacks of politicking. After all, if the Russian government is so concerned about the well-being of a dozen orphans in America, what has it done to help the thousands who continue to languish in dire conditions on its own soil?