Trauma to Orphan

* Re “For Vika, a Special Summer,” July 19: Who is advising these people in Kidsave International in how to place the children they are trying to help? To fly a 5-year-old from Russia, place her in what has to seem a paradise where she is able to bond with a mother figure and be happy without knowing the language and then, in six weeks, fly her back to the orphanage where they don’t have the means to care properly for her is very cruel and traumatic.

Vika being upset by her host mother leaving her, even for a short time, is a minuscule portent of the agony the child will go through on the flight back to the orphanage and in the time it takes her memory to fade. Or will it fade?

R.J. STEELE

La Quinta