Adults starve foster children, wrap adopted children
in carpets, sit on top of them
Excerpting, editing by
Carolyn Bennett
Svetlana Smetanina reports at Pravda.Ru: “Sadistic methods of
raising children are absolutely normal in the United States of America”
Countries restrict adoptions to protect their children
Many countries that had “‘supplied’ their children to the
adoption market” now cut back on adoptions, Svetlana Smetanina
reports.
In 2007, 4,726 children were exported
from Guatemala to the United States; in 2009, the number dropped to 754; in
2011, to 32.
Vietnam also banned the ‘export’ of
its children.
In 2007, U.S. citizens adopted 828
Vietnamese children; in 2010, 9; in 2011, 0.
In the past five years, Chinese
export of children to the United States decreased by 50 percent.
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wo years ago, a well-known U.S. expert in the field of child
psychology and psychiatry, Professor Jean Mercer, sent an open letter to the
Russian Ombudsman for Children’s Rights urging a curb on adoptions of Russian
orphans by U.S. citizens. Dr. Mercer’s appeal was based on “the fact of too
many traumas and deaths among foster children were resulting from the use of Attachment
Therapy (AT).”
Dr. Jean Mercer
Psychologist Jean A. Mercer, Ph.D., Professor Emerita of
Psychology (teaching retired) at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, is
the foremost spokesman for science-based and humane psychotherapy for adopted
and foster children.
In the late 1990s, Dr Mercer encountered ‘Complementary and
Alternative Medicine’ (‘CAM’) in the form of ‘Attachment (Holding) Therapy’ and
‘Rebirthing.’ After the therapist-caused death of 10-year-old Candace Newmaker
in 2000, Mercer began to speak out and publish critiques of ‘alternative’
mental health interventions.
Since her retirement, she has devoted her time to countering
the claims of ‘CAM’ psychotherapists that their methods are evidence-based. Her blog on Psychology Today regularly
addressed unvalidated practices.
Dr Mercer has also been involved with issues of
inappropriate use of psychological testing in child custody cases and has both
testified and published on this topic. She is currently working on a study of
historical factors that may help to define ‘CAM’ practices more clearly. In 2007 she was an expert witness in the child
abuse trial of Sylvia Vasquez, a California mother who used Attachment
Therapy-related methods with three of her adopted children.
D
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r. Mercer has written many articles on the subject of “Attachment
Therapy.” Among them are these:
2001
“‘Attachment therapy’ using deliberate restraint: an object
lesson on the identification of unvalidated treatments,” Journal of Child and
Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing, 2001 Jul; 14(3):105-114. [Abstract]
2002
“Attachment therapy: a treatment without empirical support,”
Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2002; 1(2):9-16. Reprinted in SO
Lilienfeld, J Ruscio & SJ Lynn, eds.,
2003
Violent therapies: the rationale behind a potentially
harmful child psychotherapy,” Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2003
Spring-Summer, 2(1):27-37.
“Attachment therapy parenting methods” (with LA Rosa),
Report to Advocates for Children in Therapy, 2003 May
“Violent therapies: the rationale behind a potentially
harmful child psychotherapy,” Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, 2003
Spring-Summer, 2(1):27-37.
2005-2006
“Coercive restraint therapies: a dangerous alternative
mental health intervention,” Medscape General Medicine, 2005 August 9; 7(3):6.
Discussion, 2005 November 22; 7(4):58. Author reply, 2005 November 22; 7(4):59.
“Open letter to ATTACh,” Advocates for Children in Therapy,
2006 March 10
2012
“Parsing the ‘Attachment Cycle’: the fox terrier of
Attachment Therapy,” The Study of Nonsense, 2012 August 15
“Why study nonsense?” The Study of Nonsense, 2012 August 8.
“That old basic trust concept: peddling the ‘Attachment
Cycle’,” Child Myths, 2012 August 4.
“ATTACh tells us about attachment disorders: an
unrecommended video,” Child Myths, 2012 July 16
Attachment Therapy Savagery
In the United States, Svetlana Smetanina reports,
practitioners of pseudo-science have diagnosed “lack-of-attachment
syndrome” and administered “Attachment
Therapy” in children adopted from Russia.
“This ‘therapy’ has been recommended in the United States to
suppress the will of foster children and make them attach to their foster
parents. The followers of such practice already actively support and promote it
in Russia,” Svetlana Smetanina wrote.
A
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dvocates for children, such as Dr Mercer and her organizations, have
described tactics carried out in Attachment Therapy as “wild and downright savage toward foster children”; “dangerous
to children’s life and health”; “unbearable suffering inflicted on defenseless
and vulnerable children, who live in custody institutions, with foster
families.”
Svetlana Smetanina details footage from a video used on
television that shows a woman ─
Forcing her adoptive boy from
Russia to rinse his mouth with hot pepper sauce [and] forbidding him to spit it
out; then
Making the child stand under a cold
shower ─ as the boy is heard screaming and begging the woman to stop the
tortures.
These abusive acts recommended and supported by pseudo-scientists against children, Smetanina writes, “more than strange methods of ‘education’ (more like tortures), should not be regarded as the fruit of sick imagination of
mentally challenged individuals.
“Sadistic methods of raising children in the
United States are ‘absolutely normal.’”
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ut Advocates for Children in Therapy call the Attachment
Therapy methods “the most dangerous form of fraud in the United States.”
‘How on Earth can the suggestion of
fear, hunger, pain and humiliation lead to attachment, faith, love? How can [these
methods] make a child happy?’
Echoes U.S. “humanitarian” foreign relations in violence gaining hearts and minds across the world
 |
| Supporting ban on U..S. adoptions of Russian children |
Consequences in foreign relations
Late last year amid protests from officials, media and
public, Russia’s Federation Council unanimously voted for a bill that bans U.S.
citizens from adopting Russian orphans.
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ubbed the Dima Yakovlev Law, the bill also imposes a visa
ban and asset freeze on U.S. officials who violate the rights of Russian
citizens abroad, and bans the U.S. sponsorship of NGOs that operate in Russia
as well as the work of U.S. citizens in Russian NGOs. Russia’s Lower House also
amended the bill with a provision to apply not only to the United States
but to any nation that violates the rights of Russians.
Sources and notes
“Sadistic methods of raising children absolutely normal in U.S.”
(Svetlana Smetanina, Pravda.Ru
Copyright © 1999-2013, «PRAVDA.Ru». When reproducing our
materials in whole or in part, hyperlink to PRAVDA.Ru should be made. The
opinions and views of the authors do not always coincide with the point of view
of PRAVDA.Ru's editors), January 30, 2013, http://english.pravda.ru/society/stories/30-01-2013/123625-foster_children_usa-0/
Open Letter to ATTACh by Jean Mercer, PhD., Professor of
Psychology, Richard Stockton College, Pomona, New Jersey
Overview to letter:
The Association for Treatment and Training in the Attachment
of Children (ATTACh) is a self-described “international coalition of
professionals and families dedicated to helping those with attachment
difficulties by sharing our knowledge, talents and resources.” (www.attach.org)
It also is a leading proponent for Attachment Therapy and as such has been a
target of criticism by Advocates for Children in Therapy.
Recently, Professor Jean Mercer, who is also President of
ACT’s Board of Professional Advisors, sent an Open Letter to the President of
ATTACh outlining her — and ACT’s — concerns about the nature of ATTACh and its
activities. We reprint that letter here with some slight editorial revisions.
As of this posting, Professor Mercer reports no receipt of a
response from ATTACh’s president or anyone else purporting to speak for ATTACh.
http://childrenintherapy.org/essays/letter2attach.html
“Advocates for Children in Therapy is an educational and
public advocacy organization dedicated to halting the dangerous cruelty done to
children by Attachment
Therapy, its associated Therapeutic Parenting practices, and other
unvalidated, pseudoscientific interventions for the unrecognized diagnosis
called ‘Attachment Disorder.’” http://childrenintherapy.org/index.html
Dr. Mercer cont’
Jean A. Mercer, Ph.D., Founding Fellow, Institute for
Science in Medicine
Moorestown, New Jersey, USA; Psychologist and the foremost
spokesman for science-based and humane psychotherapy for adopted and foster
children.
Dr Mercer received her Ph.D. in general psychology from
Brandeis University in 1968. Her dissertation investigated the effects of
vestibular stimulation on sound localization and was followed by an invitation
to apply to the ‘Scientist as Astronaut’ program. Remaining earthbound,
however, she began a teaching career that emphasized research methods and
statistics. Her research in developmental psychology includes work on factors
in the timing of human lactation and on pain responses in premature babies. She
was president of the New Jersey Association for Infant Mental Health for five
years and remains an active board member.
Dr Jean Mercer’s blog sites: “Child Myths” and “The Study of
Nonsense”
http://scienceinmedicine.org/fellows/Mercer.html
“Russian Upper House unanimously passes ban on U.S.
adoptions as part of Dima Yakovlev bill” (Published: 26 December, 2012, 14:48, Edited:
28 December, 2012, 14:48, http://rt.com/politics/passes-ban-us-adoptions-834/
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