Click To Read Full Article From Fox News
MOSCOW -- A top Russian official demanded that all child adoptions by U.S. families be frozen Friday after a woman from Tennessee shipped her 7-year-old adopted Russian grandson on a one-way flight back to Moscow all alone.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the actions by the grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville, "the last straw" in a string of U.S. adoptions gone wrong, including three in which Russian children had died in the United States. The cases have prompted outrage in Russia, where foreign adoption failures are reported with gusto.
The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption -- the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency -- for the duration of an investigation. In Tennessee, authorities were investigating the adoptive mother, Torry Hansen.
Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States.
The boy, Artyom Savelyev, arrived unaccompanied in Moscow on a United Airlines flight on Thursday from Washington. Social workers sent him to a Moscow hospital on Friday for a health checkup and criticized his adoptive mother for abandoning him.
The Kremlin children's rights office said the boy was carrying a letter from his adoptive mother 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. "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. ...
"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child."
The boy was adopted last September from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.
Nancy Hansen, the grandmother, told The Associated Press that she and the boy flew to Washington and she put the child on the plane with the note from her daughter. She vehemently rejected assertions of child abandonment by Russian authorities, saying he was watched over by a United Airlines stewardess and the family paid a man $200 to pick the boy up at the Moscow airport and take him to the Russian Education and Science Ministry.
Speaking from the home in Shelbyville that she shares with her daughter, Nancy Hansen said a social worker checked on the boy in January and reported to Russian authorities that there were no problems. But after that, the grandmother said incidents of hitting, kicking, spitting began to escalate, along with threats.
"He drew a picture of our house burning down and he'll tell anybody that he's going to burn our house down with us in it," she told The Associated Press in a phone interview. "It got to be where you feared for your safety. It was terrible."
Nancy Hansen said she and her daughter, a single mother, went to Russia together to adopt the boy, and she believes information about his behavioral problems was withheld from her daughter.
"The Russian orphanage officials completed lied to her because they wanted to get rid of him," Nancy Hansen said.
She also said the boy was very skinny when they picked him up, and he told them he had been beaten with a broom handle at the orphanage.
Russian state television on Friday showed the child in a yellow jacket holding the hands of two chaperones as he left a police precinct and entered a van bound for a Moscow medical clinic.
The U.S. 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."
Anna Orlova, a spokeswoman for Kremlin's Children Rights Commissioner, told The Associated Press that she visited the boy on Friday and he told her that his mother was "bad," "did not love him," and used to pull his hair.
Russian officials said he turned up at the door of the Russian Education and Science Ministry on Thursday afternoon accompanied by a Russian man who handed over the boy and his documents, then left, officials said. The child holds a Russian passport with a U.S. visa that expired April 4, Russian officials said.
Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, said the agency is looking into Friday's allegations, although it does not handle international adoptions.
Bedford County Sheriff Randall Boyce also said Torry Hansen is under investigation although no charges have been filed. Officers were expected to interview her Friday afternoon.
Lavrov said his ministry would recommend that the U.S. and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.
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JMC Ministries Response
So if you don’t like the child you adopted then you just put a “Return To Sender” sign on them and put them on a plane back to their home countries?
Unbelievable!
When you adopt a child or even have a child of your own, you don’t know what kind of personality, health problems etc this child is going to have or even if they may have mental problems. This is the risk you take bringing a child into this world. We are human and humans are not perfect! If this woman wants a perfect child she will never find one.
Obviously if this child has mental problems as this woman is saying the little boy has. Putting him on a plane back to Russia by himself and abandoning him definitely is not going to help matters.
Now Russia is trying to put a stop on all adoptions outside of the country because of this one woman's choice. And thousands of little boys and girls will continue to live in orphanages and foster homes because of this one woman who didn’t want this little boy because she claims he has mental problems.
What if Jesus would do that to us? What if he would look at us and say, well you are too messed up to be in my family and you won’t be living with me in heaven. I’m sending you back where you came from.
How horrible would that be? But Jesus didn’t say that he said, “come just as you are” He died on the cross for the remission of our sins because we cannot be perfect enough for God in our own power with out the mercy and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
Only through the blood of Jesus and you asking him for forgiveness of your sins and allowing him to come into your heart that we are made perfect in his sight.
Maybe this woman needs to remember that Jesus didn’t throw us away because we weren’t perfect and loved us anyway and never left us or abandoned us.
