How Could You? Hall of Shame-New Zealand Adoptee from Russia

This will be an archive of heinous actions by those involved in child welfare, foster care and adoption. We forewarn you that these are deeply disturbing stories that may involve sex abuse, murder, kidnapping and other horrendous actions.

From Christchurch, New Zealand, Russian adoptee Andrej Michael Schwaab, 18, “has pleaded guilty to five charges in Christchurch District Court.” The article claims he has “attachment disorder.”

Andrej “admitted taking a car from Wairarapa Terrace on November 29, and after driving around Christchurch, taking it to a paddock in Darfield and setting fire to it, the Christchurch Court News website reported.

On the same day he entered a house in Rolleston through a back window, and took a laptop and liquor worth $450.

The laptop was not recovered, and the car was worth $7600.

He was on release conditions at the time and has admitted a charge of breaching those, and another charge of receiving.

Judge Gary MacAskill remanded Schwaab in custody to May 21 for sentencing, and ordered a pre-sentence report with a report to advise on the suitability of home detention for him.

Defence counsel Mark Callaghan told the judge that he had reports from a psychiatrist and a psychologist for the sentencing.

Schwaab spent the first two years of his life tied to a potty in a Russian orphanage, before he was adopted and eventually brought to New Zealand.

In his last spree of offending in 2010 he was eventually stopped by road spikes and at police gunpoint, after he and a co-offender had been tracked through Kaikoura, Seddon, Blenheim, Havelock, and the Rai Valley taking cars and stealing property.

At that sentencing Judge Tony Zohrab told Schwaab: “The best nurture could not undo what nature had done to you.”

He said Schwaab had had a troubled life through no fault of his own.

His lawyer, Mark Dollimore, said Schwaab was a tortured soul without even realising it.

His adoptive mother said Schwaab had been abandoned at birth, and fed red berry juice rather than milk.

He attracted the attention of Child Youth and Family when he was 14, she said.

At an earlier appearance on the current charges Callaghan said Schwaab was not criminally motivated, and did not know at the time that he was offending.

Mother pleaded for help

In 2010, Schwaab’s adopted mother Sue Gibson told the Nelson Mail the system had failed her son.

She first saw Schwaab when he was two years old and weighed just 10 kilos. He had been abandoned at birth in an orphanage in north Russia.

He was fed a red berry juice rather than milk or formula. He was “tied to a potty as soon as he held his back upright”, Gibson said.

He had extreme emotional deprivation and neglect from birth to when he was two.”
At the time she knew nothing about emotional attachment disorder. ” I thought he was just a wilful, independent child.”

She asked Child Youth and Family for help, fearing he would become a criminal but was told her son did not qualify.


He needed intense therapy to reconnect parts of the frontal cortex of his brain which was neglected in his formative years, she said.


“I’m very angry with them. We wouldn’t be in this situation if he had received that help.”

Former Russian Orphan Admits Crimes
[The Press 3/23/12 by Anne Clarkson]

REFORM Puzzle Piece

Postadoption support is paramount in special needs international adoptions. It is grossly lacking in every country. Even the judge in this case understood that love was not enough.