It has been described as "disgusting," "despicable" and "callous," a crime deserving of a life prison sentence. But the case of an American woman who sent her adoptive seven-year-old Russian son back to his homeland has elicited a cautious response from other parents who have adopted children from eastern Europe.
Tennessee nurse Torry Hansen provoked outrage last week after she packed Artyom Savelyev onto a flight back to Russia with a note to say that she could no longer care for the child, seven months after she had adopted him.
Hansen, 32, said the boy was "violent" and "mentally unstable" and had threatened to burn down his adoptive family's home.
Experts say the case -- which led Russia to suspend child adoptions to the United States -- is a tragic example of what can happen when a parent is unprepared for the worst case scenario.
Joyce Sterkel is the founder of the Montana-based "Ranch for Kids," a facility which houses around 25 children, mostly adopted from eastern Europe, who have struggled to adapt to their new families.
Sterkel, who worked in Russian maternity hospitals from 1992-1994 before returning to the United States to set up her own adoption agency, says children at her ranch often have "myriad" mental illnesses.
More commonly, the children have fetal alcohol spectrum disorders -- the physical, behavioral or cognitive impairments caused by heavy maternal consumption of alcohol during pregnancy.
"I do not know the circumstances (in the Hansen case) but it is known that this child was the child of an alcoholic," Sterkel told AFP.
"That already tells me that the child is probably a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder child, which most likely means he has some organic brain damage which makes it difficult for him to modulate his emotions."
Sterkel said individuals seeking to adopt in Russia often had little access to the detailed medical histories of adoptive children.
"The records are very sketchy," she said. "You might get a very scant statement such as 'the mother was an alcoholic.' You might not have the child's birth weight. You might get whatever medical information the orphanage has, but nothing in depth.
"So it's very difficult for someone to make a judgement call based on observing the child."
Sterkel says she often asks parents how they will cope if their adopted child develops behavioral disorders.
"I ask them 'What are you going to do if your child tries to kill you? What happens if your child harms family pets or other children in your home?
"We can assume that in most cases that will not happen. But at least if you get parents thinking about those scenarios you get them asking the question 'Do I want to take this risk?'"
Ultimately, Sterkel says, adoption is a "game of chance."
"But it is also a game of chance when we give birth. We don't know if we are going to give birth to a child with autism or Down syndrome," she said.
One 37-year-old woman from northern California, who asked to remain anonymous, said she and her husband fully accepted the risks involved when they adopted their son, who is now five years old.
"For me I was willing to take on the risk of if his mother did drugs, or if he had been abused, whatever, I was willing to deal with that," she told AFP.
"You know when you have a biological child you have no guarantee that that child is going to be healthy either."
"You hope for the best but the reality is that's not always how it goes. I think mentally you have to be willing to take on what you get."
She said she felt some sympathy for Hansen.
"If it had happened when we were in the process of doing our adoption I would have rushed to judgement. 'Oh what a horrible person, who could do such a thing?' But life isn't so black and white. It's gray," she said.
Kristen Altbaum and her husband Ron, from Lafayette, east of San Francisco, adopted their daughter Kayley in 2004 from an orphanage in Kaliningrad, knowing little of her family background.
"There was a mother's name and age on the birth certificate but the judge at the formal hearing told us that could be completely false," Kristen Altbaum said.
The Altbaums, who already had two biological sons of their own, instead relied on instinct when they were introduced to Kayley for the first time.
"I just felt I knew as a birth parent that this child was healthy and could catch up," she said. "She was clasping at her crib railings and screaming for someone to pick her up. And a lot of the other children there had given up."
Altman said Kayley had been a blessing and that most adoptions from Russia ended happily.
"There's a lot of success stories out there and it's unfortunate that you hear only about the problem cases," Altbaum said. "Because I know that for every problem case there's a lot of families who have brought home children who are healthy and happy and living in loving and caring homes."
Copyright 2010  AFP American Edition
