A top Russian official has urged the freezing of all child adoptions by US families after a woman from Tennessee put her seven-year-old adopted Russian grandson alone on a one-way flight back to his homeland.
The grandmother, Nancy Hansen, said from her home in Shelbyville, Tennessee, she put the child on a plane to Russia with a note from her daughter. She said the family paid a man $US200 ($215) to pick the boy up at the airport and take him to the Russian Education and Science Ministry.
She said the boy had been violent toward his mother in the US.
A previous string of US adoptions gone wrong - including at least three in which children died - had made Russian officials wary and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the latest incident the last straw.
The boy, Artyom Savelyev, arrived unaccompanied on Thursday in Moscow on a United Airlines flight from Washington.
The Kremlin children's rights office said the boy, whose adoptive name is Justin Hansen, was carrying a letter from his adoptive mother, Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, saying she was returning him due to severe psychological problems.
"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said.
The US ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was "deeply shocked by the news" and "very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted."
http://www.smh.com.au/world/woman-retur ... -rza5.html
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“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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But they wouldn't think of adopting to someone like be because I'm on antidepressants.
Okay... There's all kinds of things wrong with what you just said.
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Mind you his cartography is still shit!!These are the pictures proving that there is finally love and happiness for the boy who suffered the most appalling neglect when his American adoptive mother sent him on a plane back to his Russian motherland with a note saying she no longer wanted him./
Torry Hansen, a 34-year-old nurse, unilaterally revoked her adoption of Justin, then seven, that she had agreed after travelling to Russia and plucking him from an orphanage in 2009 offering him a new life in the West.
Less than a year later the child had virtually forgotten his Russian when he was unceremoniously dumped alone on the plane and sent back to Moscow, with a note 'to whom it may concern' saying: 'I no longer wish to parent this child'.
Her action sparked worldwide outrage and a diplomatic rift between Moscow and Washington, as the Russian authorities - left to pick up the pieces - desperately sought a suitable home for a child who Hansen also cruelly labelled 'mentally unstable'.
The Kremlin's tsar for children Pavel Astakhov took a personal interest in the case but despite his efforts, initially the right home for the boy eluded them. Yet now almost two years on from his horror flight, Justin finally feels loved and cared for - thanks to a remarkable Russian foster mother.
Once again, he now lives under the name he was born with - Artem Saveliev - and he is approaching his tenth birthday.
Vera Egorova, 53, is the woman he now calls Mama. She is an 'SOS mother' in Tomilino village, part of an unusual and highly effective project to rescue society's most neglected children.
A former office worker, she has no children of her own yet she now mothers six, all under 18, and has 11 more who have grown up and left her village. To her, they are all her sons and daughters, and she raises them with her husband Vasiliy Tibenko, 46.
'Artem came to live with us on 25 October last year (2011),' she recalled. 'We had a party that day - my daughter Sonya turned 9 - we invited Artem to join us and eat something but he was not so keen
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1ogr79gl2
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”
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Why isn't the bitch being charged in the U.S. with child endangerment.
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
-- Author unknown
-- Author unknown
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What an appalling derriliction to her parental responsibilties she showed. How nice to see he has someone to care now.
Her actions shouldn't go unpunished.
Her actions shouldn't go unpunished.
Bah!
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Did she send a jar of marmalade with him?
Why is it that when Miley Cyrus gets naked and licks a hammer it's 'art' and 'edgy' but when I do it I'm 'drunk' and 'banned from the hardware store'?
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Wasn't he the kid that was vivisecting animals, lighting fires, and had the entire family terrorized?
Treat Gaza like Carthage.
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Whatever you think of her it was better to end it than to continue what appears to have been a disaster for both of them.
The cultural dislocation (along with his abandonment by his real parents) may have made him much more difficult here in the US than in familiar surroundings. And it is worth keeping in mind that we are only seeing that part of the picture which is being shown to us about his life in Russia.
yrs,
rubato
The cultural dislocation (along with his abandonment by his real parents) may have made him much more difficult here in the US than in familiar surroundings. And it is worth keeping in mind that we are only seeing that part of the picture which is being shown to us about his life in Russia.
yrs,
rubato
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What would the endangerment be? Sending him on a plane to Russia?Scooter wrote:Why isn't the bitch being charged in the U.S. with child endangerment.
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Its not like she sent him to Cuba or something!
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Sending an unaccompanied child on a plane, to be picked up on the other end by a complete stranger, is endangerment, yes.Joe Guy wrote:What would the endangerment be? Sending him on a plane to Russia?
Then again, you didn't think so when parents left two children, one of whom was autistic, completely unsupervised when they went to Las Vegas, and were completely unreachable, so...
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
-- Author unknown
-- Author unknown
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That would be a difficult case to make in juvenile court.Scooter wrote: Sending an unaccompanied child on a plane, to be picked up on the other end by a complete stranger, is endangerment, yes.
Besides, what could CPS do other than remove the child from the parents' custody?
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She may be charged with contempt, she evidently will be required to pay child support...
Sometimes it seems as though one has to cross the line just to figger out where it is
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I'm not sure how someone in Russia would be able to get child support from someone here in the U.S. And who would press the contempt charges?keld feldspar wrote:She may be charged with contempt, she evidently will be required to pay child support...
And contempt of what?
Last edited by Joe Guy on Sat Mar 10, 2012 7:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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She could be charged criminally for neglect, endangerment, abandonment and/or whatever else will stick.Joe Guy wrote:Besides, what could CPS do other than remove the child from the parents' custody?
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
-- Author unknown
-- Author unknown
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Who will charge her?Scooter wrote: She could be charged criminally for neglect, endangerment, abandonment and/or whatever else will stick.
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From here
LYNCHBURG, Tenn. (AP) - A judge in Tennessee ruled that an American woman who sent her adopted son back to Russia is liable for child support in a lawsuit brought by her former adoption agency.
Torry Hansen was living in Shelbyville in April 2010 when she sent her then-7-year-old adopted son on a plane alone back to Moscow with a note that said the boy was violent and she no longer wanted to keep him.
Her adoption agency, World Association for Children and Parents, filed a lawsuit in Bedford County seeking child support for the boy. After she repeatedly failed to appear in court or respond to requests for a deposition, Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell on Wednesday approved a motion for a default judgment against Hansen.
Hansen faxed the court a letter on Tuesday that said she no longer lived in Tennessee and she wanted to request a court-appointed attorney. But Russell said that for the court to appoint her an attorney, she would have to appear in court to answer financial questions, which she refused.
Hansen said in the letter that the adoption was "canceled" and that she was not his legal parent.
"I do not believe that I can obtain a fair and unbiased hearing from this court," she said in the letter. No phone number is listed at Hansen's California address.
Russell said he gave her ample opportunity to participate in the case and she has not complied with his orders to give a deposition to the adoption agency's attorney, so he granted the default judgment.
No criminal charges have ever been filed in the matter, which sparked outrage among Russian officials. Attorneys for the adoption agency said Hansen has finally been held responsible.
"Whether or not Ms. Hansen will ever realize the consequences of her actions remains to be seen, but at least we know now there has a been a ruling by the court that she has been determined to be liable for her actions," said Larry Crain, attorney for WACAP, after the hearing.
The exact amount of child support and damages will be determined at a hearing in May, and Crain said he intends to present testimony then about the boy's current condition and what impact her actions had on him.
"The real victim here is Justin Hansen, and his voice needs to be heard in this case," Larry Crain said, referring to the name that the Hansen family called the boy, who has been identified in court documents as Artem Saveliev.
The boy is currently living in a group home in the Moscow suburb of Tomilino with other children who cannot be adopted. Crain said a custodian for the child in Russia has said in an affidavit that the child support funds would go into a trust fund for his exclusive benefit.
Crain said they will be seeking back payment of child support as well as support for him until he turns 18. He said that despite her failing to show up in court or answer questions, there were ways to get her to pay child support.
"A child support arrearage order is enforceable in all 50 states under uniform laws and she can be found and this order will be enforced," he said.
Crain said the ruling may set a legal precedent in adoption cases and may lead to better protections for adopted children.
"The irony is if you leave a child in a car with the windows rolled up in a parking lot today, you can be arrested," Crain said. "But sending a child 3,000 miles across the Atlantic and there are no consequences for it, that is truly disturbing," he said.
Sometimes it seems as though one has to cross the line just to figger out where it is
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Police usually charge people who commit crimes. Why no charges have been filed in this case is baffling to me, because her behaviour was grossly irresponsible and could have exposed that child to grave harm. Anyone could have snatched him anywhere along the way. To say nothing of the fact that this was a child she committed to caring for and she threw him away like an old pair of shoes.Joe Guy wrote:Who will charge her?
"If you don't have a seat at the table, you're on the menu."
-- Author unknown
-- Author unknown
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I'm surprised that the adoption agency here is able to file for child support. I was thinking it would be required for child support to be requested by the agency in Russia that is caring for him.
I guess that means that if the agency here does get child support, they will forward it to Russia.
The other issue is whether the adoption is or isn't terminated. If the adoption is terminated, there will be no child support from that point forward. The lady should be showing up in court. She's already gotten a default judgement against here that she may have been able to avoid.
I guess that means that if the agency here does get child support, they will forward it to Russia.
The other issue is whether the adoption is or isn't terminated. If the adoption is terminated, there will be no child support from that point forward. The lady should be showing up in court. She's already gotten a default judgement against here that she may have been able to avoid.