For the past few days, you couldn’t talk to a parent who didn’t cringe after hearing about that Russian boy tossed aside by his Tennessee mom.
Torry Hansen, of Shelbyville, Tenn., adopted 7-year-old Artyem from a Russian orphanage. A few months later, she decided she couldn’t handle him anymore.
So the other day, she pinned a note to his shirt that read as if written by a lawyer. She put him on a United Airlines jet, by himself, and sent him back to Moscow alone.
“This child is mentally unstable,” Hansen wrote. “He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviors. I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. … After giving my best to this child, I’m sorry to say, for the safety of my family, friends and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child.
“Sincerely, Torry Hansen.”
Her best was only a few months? What about parents — adoptive and biological — who give their lifetime?
Naturally, Americans and Russians were horrified. You have a child, you don’t return it to the Child Store. Now Tennessee authorities are considering charges. The one that comes to mind is abandonment.
So we can wag our fingers at selfish people who should stick to dogs or other pets and leave parenting to adults. But it is complicated.
Russians send thousands of children here from their orphanages to desperate American couples who pay dearly. Many children suffer profound difficulties, including fetal alcohol syndrome, which comes from a mother swilling vodka during pregnancy.
I’m told some orphanages are like warehouses where infants never properly bond with anyone and suffer what some experts call institutional autism.
“Anytime you adopt a child that has had many caretakers, you’re going to have attachment issues,” said Regina Thompson, director of Angels’ Cove in Mount Vernon, Ill., a Baptist group that inspects adoptive homes and helps women carry their children to term rather than abort them.
“In Russia, some are mistreated. Some are malnourished. There’s FAS,” Thompson said. “If you’re a parent who wasn’t prepared for even the least of the parenting struggles, and you get a child at the other end of the spectrum, it’s difficult.
“But is that a reason to bail? That’s what you’re asking me. And most people would say, ‘No.’ “
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted as saying that the abandonment of Artyem was “the last straw.”
“We have taken the decision to suggest a freeze on any adoptions to American families until Russia and the U.S. sign an international agreement,” Lavrov said about the obligations of adoptive parents.
If abandonment of a Russian child was the last straw, then what kind of straw was drawn by 6-year-old Alex Pavlis?
Almost seven years ago, he was punched to death by his adoptive mother in suburban Chicago.
Irma Pavlis and her husband, Dino, lived in Schaumburg. She’d had two miscarriages. They didn’t have the money to go through official adoption agencies, so they hired what is called a Russian “facilitator.”
Irma found the boy’s photograph on some Internet adoption site. She fell in love. They traveled to Siberia and met Alex and his little sister. The children were adopted and came over in November 2003.
A little more than a month later, Alex was pronounced dead. The official cause was blunt force trauma to the head. But he’d been punched in the abdomen too.
At her 2005 trial, Irma Pavlis testified that Alex acted out, urinating on the floor and so on, his behavior probably the legacy of a drunken birth mother.
On the witness stand, Pavlis admitted she hit Alex because she couldn’t control him. The defense argued that many of his injuries were self-inflicted and that he would constantly pound his head against the wall.
Cook County prosecutors offered the jury a way out, suggesting they could bypass first-degree murder and find Pavlis guilty of manslaughter. And that’s what they did.
Pavlis was sentenced to 12 years in prison. She served five and was released in 2008. The little sister was turned over to Russian-speaking foster parents. Irma and Dino Pavlis now live in Mexico City.
“She couldn’t live here with the scrutiny,” said her attorney, Shannon Lynch. “And through the whole thing, Dino stuck by her.”
Back then, the speculation was that Alex’s death would prompt Russian politicians to stop allowing foreign adoptions. It didn’t stop then, and it won’t stop now. There’s too much cash involved.
The problem comes when couples try to have kids and fail and fail. There’s almost a physical pain that comes with it, and they’re desperate.
I’ve been there. You think about legacy, about being unstuck in the universe, about not leaving a thing behind that said you were here. You think a lot of crazy things. You think about yourself and your pain.
But miracles happen. When your wife goes through labor and the pain of giving birth, like mine did, or if like some others, you’ve been given the gift of adoption, something happens.
It’s not about your legacy anymore. It’s not about you at all. It’s all about the kids.
And there’s no Child Store open for returns and exchanges.
