ADOPTED RUSSIAN BOY REJECTED, IN SELF DEFENSE

I remember being afraid to go to Phoenix, back in the early eighties, all those people packing guns, and what I heard were all the roads around the city with bars/et al with a lot of gun folk and booze, well lit.

I admit my then view was also a page of fear of the unknown. Still, many years later, I am still more comfortable around people talking, discussing, arguing, enraged even.. if none have guns on their belts.






I think you paint armageddon, David.

However, you uttered at many occasions your happiness that you couldn't be subject to parricide as you had no progeny. From what, I inferred that you feared parricide and, on a more general acception, that you fear for your life..

But it doesn't take full blown RAD for these issues to present themselves.

I have a kid with "attachment issues". We have done attachment therapy. At times living with him was very scary. He was incredibly cruel to me. Meaner than most people can imagine a child being. He was darling to almost everyone else ("parent shopping", the therapist called it).

Everyone thought I was nuts and making stuff up.

Just like they're doing with these women.

A statement released by Adoption Assistance, Inc. said the child appeared to be adjusting and the mother was enthusiastic during a visit by a social worker in January. But by late March, the agency has been unable to get in touch with her.

"Our agency worked diligently to locate the mother, including e-mails and calls to the client's mother, with no success," the statement said.

The agency said that part of their services includes providing families with education on issues like attachment, bonding, behavioral issues and behaviors associated with institutionalized children.

"If this mother would have contacted us when the adjustment problems began, we would have worked with her on the issues or arranged alternative placement," the agency said.
http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/sheriff-mom-not-talking-457294.html

It's complicated.

Let me sleep on your questions and perhaps I'll PM you with answers if that's okay.

Aw, we saw it coming a mile away.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The New York Times
April 12, 2010
Child in Adoption Case Is an American Citizen, Not Russian, Experts Say

By DAMIEN CAVE and CLIFFORD J. LEVY
Russian officials and the sheriff in Shelbyville, Tenn., have both raised questions about whether the 7-year-old boy sent back to Moscow by his adoptive mother and grandmother last week is really a United States citizen.

But they appear to be wrong. Tennessee adoption lawyers and national experts said Monday that the boy became an American the day he reached American soil last September and that, legally, he should be returned to the United States.

“This child is a U.S. citizen,” said Chuck Johnson, acting chief executive of the National Council for Adoption, which is working with the State Department to place the boy if he returns. “The parental rights are still in effect.”

A tug-of-war over the boy’s nationality has begun. As prosecutors in Tennessee consider whether the adoptive mother, Torry Ann Hansen, and her mother, Nancy Hansen, will be charged with abandonment or neglect " and as new details emerged about their interactions with social workers " the international dispute over what will happen to the boy they named Justin has intensified.

On Monday, Russian officials said the American government had no right to be involved because the boy they call Artyom Savelyev was not an American citizen.

The federal children’s ombudsman, Pavel Astakhov, said at a news conference that Moscow health officials and child welfare officials disagreed over whether the boy should remain in Moscow, be adopted in Russia or be sent back to the orphanage in Russia’s Far East.

For any of that to happen, however, Ms. Hansen would first have to relinquish her rights, according to adoption lawyers in Tennessee.

The Hansens have yet to announce their intentions. Sheriff Randall Boyce of Bedford County, who on Monday acknowledged that the boy probably had dual American and Russian citizenship, said he had been told by the Hansens’ lawyer that they would speak only if they were charged with a crime.

Whether that will happen is an open question, and Sheriff Boyce appeared reticent. He said he told the State Department, “Do you not feel that this is over the sheriff department’s head?”

Charles Crawford, the district attorney for Shelbyville, said prosecuting the family would be difficult. “Making it a child abuse case without the child being available to testify is a very tall order,” he said.

Still, adoption experts said there would seem to be a strong case for criminal or civil charges of abandonment or neglect. Family law, they said, considers adoptive parents the equals of biological parents, responsibilities included.

“You can’t leave your child in a place where it’s reasonably foreseeable that they could be injured or psychologically injured,” said Dawn Coppock, an adoption lawyer in Strawberry Plains, Tenn.

New details about the boy’s arrival in Russia suggest that the Hansens completed his travel plans at the last second. Nancy Hansen located an English-speaking guide over the Internet to pick up the boy at the airport and take him to the Education and Science Ministry. But the guide, Artur Lukyanov, told Russian television he had learned only at the last moment that he was supposed to pick up the boy, not Ms. Hansen herself.

The family apparently came to its decision about what to do with the boy without seeking the help of the United Way of Bedford County, the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services and a social service agency in Shelbyville. All said the Hansens had not contacted them.

And the agency that conducted home visits before and after Justin’s adoption, Adoption Assistance, in Smyrna, Tenn., released a statement Monday saying the Hansens had not told its social worker about the severity of their concerns. In January, the statement said, a social worker found that “the child appeared to be adjusting to his new home and family and his mother was enthusiastic about his accomplishments.”

Nancy Hansen has said the boy became a problem later. Adoption Assistance said, “If this mother would have contacted us when the adjustment problems began, we would have worked with her on the issues or arranged alternative placement.”

wow, does that just make the mother look dumber than she already did! (statement, not question). She was never informed of his citizenship status??? I can't believe that.

That all bulks up nicely my argument that
they dumped this kid without making an effort to solve the problem.