Russia May Limit Foreign Adoptions

“Children are for sale in Tula!” television broadcasts and newspaper headlines have been screaming about the latest adoption scandal.

Communist deputies in the Duma, the lower house of parliament, are angrily pushing for a virtual ban on foreign adoptions, claiming that Russian children sent abroad may be abused, killed or plundered for their organs.

Even the more sober officials charged with supervising the grim institutions that house Russia’s unwanted children are calling for strict new controls to ensure that orphans adopted abroad are not being delivered into danger.

Ever since an Arizona couple was arrested last May for beating two newly adopted Russian girls on the flight home, and a Colorado woman was sentenced in September to 22 years in prison for killing her Russian-born son, adoption has been portrayed by nationalist politicians and sensationalist media here as a fate that can be far worse than life in a loveless institution.

“The ultranationalists in the Duma know that these tragic incidents are rare exceptions, but they are using them for their tremendous propaganda value,” says Boris Altshuler, a human rights activist fighting the moves to restrict foreign adoptions. “Unfortunately, for such people, it is more important to score political points by casting rich Americans as evil than it is to help orphans have a chance of a normal life.”

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Amendments to the 1995 law governing adoption have already received preliminary approval in the Duma, and a final vote is expected in March. The new restrictions are likely to sail through the Communist-controlled chamber, but they could face a more critical review by the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, or a veto by President Boris N. Yeltsin.

Mindful of the emotional showdown over religious freedom that ended in September with Soviet-style shackles on foreign missionaries, those fighting to keep the doors to Western homes open to Russian orphans observe with dejection that “in Russia, anything can happen.”

“The notion that children sent abroad can be sold for their body parts may be absurd, but it is unfortunately very widespread in Russia, and not just among the nationalists in the Duma,” says Galina Krasnitskaya, senior advisor on adoption to Moscow’s Institute on Childhood.

She cites the recent baby-selling allegations in the central city of Tula as evidence of a general campaign being waged against foreign adoptions in the wake of the two U.S. cases. Russian media have given extensive coverage to charges raised last month that a Tula doctor encouraged two women seeking abortions to have the babies and sell them instead. Even respected newspapers such as the Kommersant Daily have riddled their dispatches with innuendo, observing that “the evidence has not yet been uncovered proving the babies were sold to foreigners . . . or that they could have been used as donors for body parts and tissues.”

Russian and Western adoption authorities agree that the system needs reform, but they say that more follow-up on the fate of Russian children adopted abroad and better preparation of prospective parents would be sufficient to deter the rare instances of abuse. Krasnitskaya cites the case of the Arizona couple, Karen and Richard Thorne, and the two girls they adopted as a doomed match that should have been averted.

“It was clear from the very beginning that this was not a family that was going to come together,” Krasnitskaya says, recalling that the two 4-year-old girls had been adversaries in the orphanage where they grew up and had exhibited behavioral problems for which the Thornes were not prepared.

“I can easily imagine how the situation got out of hand. These girls grew up in tough surroundings and, like many orphanage children, they only respond to force,” Krasnitskaya says. “There ought to be better investigation of the cases before the children leave the country--some way for Russian authorities to step in when necessary and say, ‘This is not going to work.’ ”

In the Colorado case, single mother Renee Polreis was convicted of beating her 2 1/2-year-old Russian-born son to death. Her attorneys argued during the trial that the child suffered from serious behavioral problems instilled by his early experience in orphanages.

Follow-up reports on the fate of adopted Russian children might bring the rare instance of a troubled adoption to official attention, Krasnitskaya notes. But she dismisses the Duma’s proposals as nationalist rabble-rousing that would do nothing to ensure more successful adoptions and would effectively erase any chance for institutionalized children to grow up as part of a family.

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The adoption of Russian-born children by foreigners--especially Americans--has been growing exponentially in Russia since the collapse of the Communist regime, which hid social problems and proclaimed no need for outside help in providing for abandoned children. More than 4,000 Russian children were adopted by U.S. citizens last year.

The growth in foreign adoptions has coincided with a sharp drop in the number of Russian families choosing to take in orphans amid this country’s difficult economic conditions. Domestic adoptions fell from nearly 14,000 in 1992 to fewer than 9,000 in 1996.

The image of prosperous Americans spiriting away Russia’s children has given rise to a nationalist backlash and inspired opponents of foreign adoptions to distort the few instances of abuse as evidence that the whole system is flawed and in need of drastic restrictions.

“The quantity of killed Russian children is not the issue, but the fact that poor regulation allows such a thing to happen at all,” says Igor V. Khamanev, a Communist deputy who helped write the adoption-law changes being debated in the Duma.

“A very unpleasant situation has developed in Russia, with laws and regulations violated routinely,” he adds. “This is happening because a very lucrative market has developed for the sale of our children.”

Khamanev and other supporters of the restrictions contend that the $10,000 to $20,000 that many adoptive parents spend to get through the legal and bureaucratic maze of Russian adoption actually feeds a network of bribery and corruption. Among the changes they are pursuing is a ban on all intermediaries, including nonprofit agencies.

Proponents of foreign adoptions are quick to agree that there are many flaws in the process, but they condemn the proposed restrictions as a nearly literal case of throwing babies out with the bathwater.

“There are flagrant abuses by some agencies, but instead of clamping down on those breaking laws and doing it wrong, they try to legislate against all foreign adoptions,” says Ronald Stoddart, executive director of a Brea-based group that assists Southern California families in international adoptions.

Other proposed amendments troubling adoption advocates include a requirement that separate treaties be concluded between Russia and the countries of prospective parents--a diplomatic process likely to require years of negotiation--and that the closest living relative of the child to be adopted be present at court proceedings. The latter is opposed as both impractical and likely to instigate a new level of corruption among relatives who will want to be paid to relinquish parental rights.

At the end of last year, 533,100 children younger than 18 were registered as orphans in Russia, although most have living parents, and an additional 100,000 or so children are abandoned, orphaned or taken from abusive parents each year. But fewer than 15,000 have been adopted by either Russian or foreign parents in each of the last three years, leaving the vast majority to languish in dreary, underfunded institutions.

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Activist Altshuler cites recent sociological research showing that, of children who grow up in Russian institutions, 30% commit crimes, 20% become homeless and 10% commit suicide within the first year of leaving the homes.

The threat of the new restrictions has prompted both foreign and Russian authorities to push through pending adoptions over the last three months, a U.S. Embassy official said.

“We had three times as many cases processed in December” as in any previous month, the diplomat said. “The agencies are really trying to move things through quickly, because if [Russian authorities] want to delay the process, there is nothing the Americans could do about it.”

Adoption counseling services are more concerned about the possibility that the current debate will frighten prospective parents away from Russia.

“What concerns us is that families are reluctant to jump into the process when there is such uncertainty,” says Linda Perilstein, executive director of the Washington-based Cradle of Hope adoption center. “Nothing has really changed, but they could decide they should look somewhere other than Russia to adopt.”

Under the current law, Russian parents have priority in adoption of children younger than 8 months and exclusive access to babies under 4 months. Most of the children adopted by Americans are at least a year old, often 2 or older, because of the time needed to complete the legal proceedings. Authorities on both sides note that there is virtually no demand among Russian families for those older children.

“If Russia were to close to foreign adoption, many of our families would be devastated, not only because they are waiting to meet their children but because it would mean less of a future for so many orphanage children,” says Mara J. Kamen of Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoption, a nonprofit support network.