Russia DOS Notice about Regional Suspensions UPDATED

Following Russia’s latest call for a full ban on Russia to US adoptions, US DOS issues a notice about…suspensions.

See here and pasted below:

“Russia

Notice: REGIONAL SUSPENSIONS ON ADOPTION PROCESSING IN RUSSIA
The Department of State has received reports that local departments of education and some judges in Russia have instituted a de facto freeze on adoptions to the United States. In some instances we are told that local departments of education have refused to provide referrals which are necessary for agencies and families to schedule court dates.

The Department of State has not received official notice that adoptions to the United States have been suspended and continues to work closely with Russian authorities to obtain as much information on the situation as possible. Updated information will be provided as it becomes available on www.adoption.state.gov.”

Update: Putin (again)weighs in on Russia to US adoptions.

“The adoption of Russian children by foreign families should become a “rare exception,” prime minister and president-elect Vladimir Putin said on Wednesday.

“We should try to ensure that most [Russian] children find their families here in Russia,” Putin told a government meeting in Moscow. “Foreign adoptions should become a rare exception, a last resort.”
The issue of foreign adoptions has become controversial in recent years following several incidents involving the mistreatment of Russian children in the United States. Russia is one of the largest sources of adoptions for U.S. families, accounting for about 10 percent of foreign adoptions.

The countries signed a bilateral adoption agreement in July last year which stipulates psychological testing of the adoptive parents and allows only accredited agencies to organize adoptions. The document is yet to be ratified by Russia’s parliament.

During the Wednesday meeting, Putin criticized foreign child adoption firms for what he described as a “lack of cooperation” with Russian authorities in monitoring the situation with adopted children.
Relevant government bodies should promptly react to any cases of mistreatment of such children, he said, adding that children whose rights have been seriously violated should be given to other families or returned to Russia.”
Putin Urges Limiting Foreign Adoption of Russian Kids
[RIA Novosti 3/7/12]

For our newer readers, we want to remind you that Russia already has declared a three-fold slashing of adoption agencies and this was communicated to Hillary Clinton. See our July 2011 post here.

Also, it is important to review what Russia wants from our June 2011 post here and all the provisions they have asked for, which we have discussed in this July 2011 post here.

Russia additionally is angry at the Craver trial–see here; the Dykstra verdict–see here; the death of a Canadian child that they were not told of –see here; Ksenia’s case–see here ; the special needs adoption frenzy–see here; Ranch for Kids–see here; 400 missing children in US–see here; Theresa McNulty abuse–see here ; Russian adoptee self-reporting abuse to Russia in 2012–see here; US citizen returning twins to orphanage in February 2012–see here  and of course Torry Hansen’s return of Justin/Artyom–see all posts here .

All of this information MUST be taken together to understand Russia’s position. US agencies, DOS and support groups continue to NOT discuss any of this!!!

REFORM Puzzle Piece

PAPs and the general public need to be educated about ALL of the issues, not just the ones that the adoption agencies are telling you so that you stay on as clients.

Update 2: “In the past decade, about 32,000 children were adopted from Russia by Americans, according to the U.S. State Department. Those adoptions reached their peak in 2004, at 5,862, but have been declining yearly ever since. In 2011 only 962 took place.

Now Russia is seeking to reduce those numbers even further – and casting doubt on its continued role as a source of children for international adoptions – in light of the country’s shrinking population and controversial deaths of Russian children adopted abroad.

“We must aim for the majority of Russian orphans to find their new families in Russia,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said in March. Although most children adopted abroad go to loving families, Putin said, “there are also blatant, tragic cases of the death of Russian children in adoptive foreign families.”

He called for foreign adoption to “become the rare, exclusive case.”

In March 2008, 14-month-old Nikolai Emelyantsev, a Russian child adopted by Fyodor and Kimberly Emelyantsev in Utah, died of a skull fracture. His mother subsequently admitted in court that she had thrown Nikolai to the floor.

A few months later, 18-month-old Dima Yakovlev died after his American adoptive father left him in a locked car for nine hours, in mid-summer, in a Virginia parking lot. A court ruled the death an accident.

But it was the story of 7-year-old Artyom Savelyev – whose adoptive mother, Torry-Ann Hansen, sent him back to Russia by plane alone in 2010 – that caused the most strain, prompting Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to order a temporary freeze on American adoptions of Russian children. The two countries have agreed on tougher rules for such adoptions, including a requirement for potential parents to receive psychological training and for adoptions to be arranged only by agencies accredited by the State Department.

Although there is currently no official, nationwide freeze on adoptions, the State Department has alerted Americans that “local departments of education and some judges in Russia have instituted a de facto freeze on adoptions to the United States. In some instances we are told that local departments of education have refused to provide referrals which are necessary for agencies and families to schedule court dates.”

Putin blamed the tragedies on low standards required of adoptive parents and the inability of protective services to intervene on behalf of a child.

According to the website of the Russian ombudsman for children, Pavel Astakhov, 19 Russian children have died of homicides or accidents in American adoptive families since 1992.

Meanwhile, more than 8,000 children were returned to orphanages from Russian adoptive families in 2009 alone, and more than 3,000 cases of abuse of adopted children were reported, Alina Levitskaya, director of the Russian Education and Science Ministry’s child welfare department, told an international conference on child cruelty in November 2010.

“In 2009 at least 24 people who adopted or fostered children [in Russia] were convicted of crimes that caused either death or harm to the health of those children,” Levitskaya said, according to the Rossiyskaya Gazeta newspaper.

“Unfortunately, our society doesn’t react the same way to those statistics as it does when a sad case happens to a Russian child abroad,” she told the conference.

Svetlana Agapitova, children’s ombudsman in St. Petersburg, said the Russian authorities do not plan to freeze foreign adoptions, as there are not enough native families waiting to adopt the country’s orphans.

Instead, she said, officials are trying to limit the process to accredited and trusted agencies, making it possible to monitor a child’s life and well-being. The Russian Education and Science Ministry lists at least 79 foreign adoption agencies that are accredited to cooperate with Russian agencies. Agencies not on that list tend to work with private mediators, and the children involved are often lost track of.

Marina Levina, president of St. Petersburg charity Roditelsky Most (Parents’ Bridge), said Russian families are more reluctant than foreigners to adopt sick children, especially those with serious illnesses such as HIV, hepatitis, or Down syndrome. Levina said cutting back on foreign adoptions could mean more Russian children would remain in orphanages.

According to government statistics, 40 percent of people who grow up in Russia’s state orphanages commit crimes after they leave, 40 percent become alcoholics or drug addicts, and 10 percent commit suicide. Only one in 10 manages to adapt to normal life.

Levina said foreign adoptions present their own difficulties; as parents and children get to know each other, they’re also having to adapt to strange and sometimes troubling circumstances. For the child, there is the matter of a new country, a new culture, a new language, even new food. “In some cultures people are not as emotional as Russians and that may also be a difficult moment for an adopted child whose new parents are reserved by nature,” Levina said.

Under such circumstances, misbehavior is understandable, she said, but it adds to the stress on adoptive parents.

“Adopted children may cry a lot at first, wake up all through the night, and even kill animals before they calm down after a long while. That may really drive adoptive parents crazy,” Levina said.

Levina recounted the experience of a Russian family who adopted a child who had witnessed his biological mother being stabbed to death. “For a year and a half that child used to describe to his adoptive family in detail the scene he had witnessed,” she said.

Levina, who has an adopted daughter of her own, said thorough social and psychological training for adoptive parents is crucial – a service that many adoption agencies do not provide.

The procedure for foreigners to adopt Russian children is already considerably more difficult than for Russians, who have priority.

Foreigners can adopt only after a child has been in care, unclaimed by his or her parents or any Russian adopters, for at least six months. Russians pay no fees to adopt, and might even be paid to do so. (Some regional governments provide one-time payments of up to $10,000 to adopters.) Foreigners, on the other hand, can pay $40,000 to $50,000 for an adoption, experts say.

The process usually takes one to three months for Russians, compared with about 18 months for foreigners, who must have their paperwork translated and authenticated.

In 2010, 11,157 Russian children were adopted, about 70 percent of them domestically. That is a significant shift from 2005, when Russians took in only 43 percent of 16,432 adoptees.

In 2010, the other 30 percent of children went to families in the United States (1,016), Spain (792), Italy (686), France (304), and Germany (150), according to the Russian Education and Science Ministry.

Adoption, whether foreign or domestic, is not necessarily the best solution, said Joanna Rogers, project director at the St. Petersburg charity Partnership for Every Child. Rogers said the government needs to make a priority of keeping children with living parents out of orphanages.

According to Roditelsky Most, more than 74,000 children were taken from their parents and sent to live in orphanages in 2006. About 4 percent were the victims of child cruelty, another 10 percent faced threats to their life or health from their parents, 13 percent were abandoned in maternity wards, and about 60 percent had parents who were not fulfilling their duties in some other way.

“In European countries, there is competition among potential parents, whereas in Russia potential adopters have their choice of children,” Agapitova, the children’s ombudsman in St. Petersburg, said.”

Russia Moves to Limit Foreign Adoptions
[Transitions Online 4/18/12 by Irina Titova]