Adoptee Reunion in Kazakhstan

Adopted Children: Invisible Ties to Faraway Lands [The Augusta Chronicle 2/3/12 by Tara Bahrampour of The Washington Post] tells the story of a Kazakh adoptee who learned about her biological family at age 10 through a searcher, kept in contact with letters, and then visited in the summer following her sophmore year in high school.

An excerpt from the Kazakh side shows that the circumstances of her placement were murky: ““From the time that she was 4 years old, she was wondering about her birth family,” her father, Roger, recalled. “She would ask, did she ever have any brothers and sisters in Kazakhstan, what were they like and would it be possible to meet any of them?”

When Karen heard about James’s agency, the family decided to try it. Eight hundred dollars and 14 months later, they received a letter from a researcher. He had found Deanna’s birth mother, Maryam Sevastianova. A mother of eight, she sold cigarettes and beer out of a metal stall in a remote coal-mining town called Solonichka.

The researcher’s letter recounted how he had approached her in her metal stall and showed her photos of Deanna. Maryam later said that her brain registered that she was looking at one of her children. But she couldn’t figure out which one. As she realized who the child was, she began to sob.

“I don’t understand why the doctors cheated me,” she told the researcher.

Deanna, her sixth child, had been born prematurely while Maryam was traveling in a distant city, she recalled. Doctors had put the baby in intensive care and sent Maryam home, telling her to call and check in. She called often, but one day the doctors told her the baby had not made it. She went on to have more children, and she told them about their sister who had died.

Now, Maryam was confused. She wanted her daughter back. She wanted to sue the doctors. But she looked again at the pictures of Deanna, particularly one of her surrounded by Christmas presents.

Maryam could afford to give her children only one present per year. She could not afford to put them through college. Deanna didn’t speak the same language as her other children. And Deanna looked happy in America.

“We’ll never know if there’s some kind of graft there or there’s a terrible mistake made,” said Roger Torstenson.”

REFORM Puzzle Piece

In some countries, paying a searcher is a good way to find the original family.