Re-reported with commentary by Carolyn Bennett
Americans last year adopted an estimated 1,600 Russian children. Russian children, after Chinese and Guatemalan children, are number three in the nationality of children taken by U.S. citizens. These children suffer battering, death and dumping in the hands of violence-prone Americans of throwaway consumerist character.
Peggy Hilt of North Carolina adopted a two-year-old Siberian girl. A few months later, July 2005, Hilt beat this child to death. She then pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Nina Victoria. The court handed down a sentence of 25 years. On appeal, a Prince William County (Virginia) Circuit Court judge suspended 16 years of Hilt’s original sentence.
Fyodor and Kimberly K. Emelyantsev of Tooele, Utah, adopted in February 2008 a 14-month-old Russian boy, Nikolai. Shortly after the adoption, Kimberly Emelyantsev confessed to killing the “15-month-old child she and her husband had just adopted.”
Last week came news of 8-year-old (his age has also been given at 7) Artem Saveliev and the U.S. adoptive mother Torry Ann Hansen, who dumped him.
News reports said a confused and upset-looking Artem Saveliev arrived on Thursday unaccompanied in Moscow on a flight from Tennessee via Washington. The boy had a rucksack containing coloring pens, sweets and biscuits. “On his arrival, he gave immigration officials a typed note from his adoptive mother, Torry Ann Hansen, a nurse from Shelbyville, Tennessee, explaining in two succinct paragraphs why she no longer wanted this boy she had adopted in September of last year.”
Russian Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said he was unable to recall such an act of cynicism ─ a little child returned alone across the ocean.
Before being dumped by Torry Ann Hansen, Artyom Savelyev had lived for 6 months in the United States under the name Justin Hansen. Before being brought to the States, he had been in an orphanage in Partizansk in the Maritime Territory in Russia. Likely he will return to the orphanage.
There seems no end to cruelties, compounded, murderous cruelties, human beings inflict on one another ─ often in the name of their “religion” or “family values.” So many issues connect with the case of U.S. foreign adoptions but all seem rooted in a deeply flawed American character. Life really does not have to be this way.
Sources
“Peggy Hilt’s sentence reduced,” http://www.russiancarolina.net/en/news/crime-law-enforcement/413-peggy-hilt-sentence-reduced; Russian North Carolina, http://www.russiancarolina.net/
“U.S. couple charged with first-degree murder of helpless and sick Russian baby,” March 23, 2008 (Pravda.ru translation by Dmitry Sudakov), http://english.pravda.ru/society/family/104643-russian_baby-0
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7572387/Adopted-Russian-boy-7-returned-by-US-mother-on-one-way-flight-to-Moscow...-alone.htmlTelegraphNewsRussia
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/7572387/Adopted-Russian-boy-7-returned-by-US-mother-on-one-way-flight-to-Moscow...-alone.html
Daily Telegraph: “Russia Adopted Russian boy, 7, returned by U.S. ‘mother’ on one-way flight to Moscow... alone. [The] U.S. nurse put the seven-year-old Siberian boy she had adopted from a Russian orphanage on a one-way flight to Moscow with a note saying ‘I no longer wish to parent this child,’ when she found she could no longer cope with him.”
“Another scandal over adopted Russian child in U.S.,” April 9, 2010, The Voice of Russia, http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/04/09/6214514.html
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