Just When You Thought it Couldn't Get Worse for Torry Hansen, according the latest ABC News report, Hasnen had turned to a second adoption agency to bring home a child from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, a source with the sheriff's department told ABC News.
She switched adoption agencies after the agency that arranged the adoption of her first child, World Association for Children and Parents, urged her to wait before adopting again, the source said. The association advised Hansen it would be best to settle in with the boy before adding to her family, the source said. ">the latest ABC News report: Torry Hansen had turned to a second adoption agency to bring home a child from the Soviet Republic of Georgia, a source with the sheriff's department told ABC News.
They report that she switched adoption agencies after the agency that arranged the adoption of her first child, World Association for Children and Parents, urged her to wait before adopting again, the source said. The association advised Hansen it would be best to settle in with the boy before adding to her family, the source said.
If this report is true, this woman seems seriously mentally defective (though not legally insane and still should be liable and put in jail)...or, she was trying to obtain a replacement kid so when she dumped kid number one no one would notice??
This case has brought up the RAD discussion front and center. Jean Mercer has a second thoughtful blog post on the subject also being discussed on Motherlode.
RAD is a "pesudo" (read: BULLSHIT) diagnosis created to ease the consciences of guilt-ridden inadequate mothers. Now there's a real syndrome for the DSM: Inadequate, Ill-prepared Mothering Syndrome. usually co-existing with Unreal Institutionalized Child Expectation Syndrome.
What RAD is, is quite simply: Ridiculous Attachment Diatribes; Radical Adoption Dogma.
RAD is more accurately defined as REALISTIC ADOPTION DISORDER: an inability to obtain, digest and believe truthful information because of a blind desire to become a mother despite all the glaring alarms and warning signs.
The only FAILURE is not of the child's ability to bond, bit of these mothers compassion and patience. And please don't flood my inbox with all your tragic stories of the horrors you dealt with for years before sending your kid off to a ranch or dumping your parenting problems on someone else. I am well aware.
I am also well aware that plenty of mothers deal with horror stories as a result of raising children born to them with incomprehensible physical and emotional challenges. Yet few of them dump their kids, and nONE have ever just put a seven-year-old on a plane alone to rid themselves of the expense and hardship of the responsibility they COMMITTED to! And if they did, they'd be appropriately tarred and feathered and NO ONE would come tot heir support as adoptive parents have come to the support of Torry Hansen with non-condoning understanding.
I have a friend who was a certified "health nut." Yoga, exercise, and eating only the purest organically grown vegetarian fare and home baked goods. She gave birth to a severely brain-damaged child who was "saved" by extreme medical measures and handed to her by doctors patting themselves on their backs for not letting the near-vegetive child die.
My friend changed her non verbal son's diapers for 30 years! And although she admitted to me that with each seizure she thought about not administering his life-saving medications and treatments, she diligently did so, her marriage eventually failed, her two subsequent children's lives suffered. But this was her child. She had not asked for these problems. She had not "signed up" for it, as so many adopters have commented about their great disappointment with the "damaged" children they find themselves with. In fact, she subsequently became strong proponent of home birth to disallow doctors playing God in this manner and interfering with an issue that nature should take care of naturally.
But she never gave up on her son... and I know adoptive parents who have done likewise.
9 comments:
Amen! I am sick of adoptive parents making excuses for Torry Hansen, and even more sick of those who say she did it the "wrong" way so bad on her, but others who dump their "forever kids" the "right" way are in need of sympathy and understanding. Dumping your kid to the state, or finding someone to "rehome" and take the problem off your hands are also bad, also cruel, just not as stupid and dramatic as what Hansen did.
I do not think there is a "right" way or a good excuse to get rid of a child you promised to a parent to forever. Yes, some severely mentally ill children, natural and adopted, need to be institutionalized. I can accept that, but a real parent, natural or adoptive, who has to make that awful choice does not also terminate their parental rights and walk away. They remain legally, financially, and morally responsible for their child even when that child cannot live in their home.
Yes, some natural parents abandon and mistreat their children and that is not acceptable. It is not an excuse for adopters to do the same and expect sympathy either. The big difference is that adopters went out of their way to get that child, spent a lot of money, went to a distant country, and fanatically wanted a child to raise at any price. Then they turn around and try to return or "Re_Home" (ugly term) the defective merchandise when the kid is not their dream child. What were they thinking? How can they expect tea and sympathy from everyone?
Oh, and the ones who are crying about Russia putting a freeze on adoptions...the best thing that the Russian government could do at this point. Too bad some people won't get their special prize package from Russia. Yes, Russian orphanages are bad, but are kids treated that well in institutions and foster care in this country? And are they really better off here with some of the selfish beasts that inexplicably adopt? I don't think so. By the way, decent adoptive parents are as outraged as we are and all for cleaning up the foreign adoption sewer, and for stopping it until better controls are in place. Those who offer "sympathy for the Devil" to Hansen and others who dump their adopted kids are part of the problem and they have lost my respect.
We totally agree on this one!
"Yes, some severely mentally ill children, natural and adopted, need to be institutionalized. I can accept that, but a real parent, natural or adoptive, who has to make that awful choice does not also terminate their parental rights and walk away. They remain legally, financially, and morally responsible for their child even when that child cannot live in their home."
Well said!
As for a right way and wrong way, there are legal and illegal ways. What Hansen did is very likely illegal and if not, she was saved by a technicality.
But the line in the sand is as you said: relinquishing all responsibility including financial.
Either way, legal or not - maintaining financial responsibility or not - it is a TRAUMA for the child of enormous proportions! It leaves the child as scarred as any other form of SEVERE ABUSE!!
The biggest common denominator of violent offenders of all kinds in prison and serial killers is ABANDONMENT!
Parents who care and find it necessary to seek out-of-0home care for their child, temporarily or permanently - not only remain financially responsible, but VISIT and let the child know that they are loved, cared about and cared for despite their ILLNESS. It will likely not eliminate feelings of abandonment but may reduce the strong slightly. besides financial abandonment, the reason parents often do not visit institutionalized children is because they - the parent - cannot "bear' to hear the child crying to be taken home with them! I have heard this first hand, embarrassingly from my own family, regarding a disabled adult cousin I am now legal guardian of.
You know that Georgia is no longer a Soviet Republic right? Since, you know, there haven't been SSRs since the fall of the Soviet Union? No?
Okay, then.
Well said Anonymous, so crucial to the discussion above!!
Agree with all that has been said, adoption practise is a sewer.
It's sad enough when this child's natural mother gave him up/her rights. She had alcohol problems, his father is nowhere in the picture. Life probably most likely was neglectful, violent, unloved etc... I don't know. No child should ever be without a mother/father, family, nurturing, unconditional love.
He lived in orphanage til this Hanson woman adopted him. Then Torry Hanson decides she doesn't want to be his mother because he's this-and-that. If he was violent or had psychological issues, is it his fault for having an alcoholic mother or lived in the orphanages (heaven knows what else he's seen or been through in his young life?). What about counseling and other services for the child??
He's not like a puppy you can drop off at some shelter (like she did when she put him back on a long flight back to Russia alone). Totally irresponsible and reprehensible. I can't believe someone who wanted to be this child's mother could do that!
He's a child who needed a chance, who needed love. He didn't need to made to feel like a throwaway thing you don't want anymore.
I hope this woman NEVER allowed to adopt another child ANYWHERE. Not fit to be a mother or parent. I pray and hope the child will get a home with patient, compassionate, nurturing parents who will love him and help him.
Amen. If you have a link to early family history on Artyem, please share as I have not seen any. I would thus not make any suppositions about why he was in an institution to begin with.
Bottom line for me is that ALL international adoptions should be stopped and each country take care of their own!
Earlier commenter wrote:
"Yes, some severely mentally ill children, natural and adopted, need to be institutionalized. I can accept that, but a real parent, natural or adoptive, who has to make that awful choice does not also terminate their parental rights and walk away. They remain legally, financially, and morally responsible for their child even when that child cannot live in their home."
Could not be stated any better. There was a case in Cincinnati where this very situation occurred: adoptive parents of young man with severe mental health issues did everything they could to get him into an institution where he would be safe and also not endanger others. This was after many years of violent behavior that was not improving with outpatient treatment.
Shortly after being placed in the institution he murdered a fellow patient. The adoptive parents had stood by him through the years of dangerous behavior and continued to do so after this horrific event occurred; they remained his parents and supported him during the trial and subsequent permanent institutionalization.
With all the bickering over who is a "real" parent, I can say that couple was the most "real" I've ever read about.
Yes, real parents give a shit, even when things get very tough. There are so many things that are wrong with what the Hansens did, I can't believe some diehards are still sticking up for them.
Mirah, I think it is in one of the reports on Marley's blog that Artem's natural mother was an alcoholic whom he lived with most of his life, only recently having come into the orphanage before the creeps got him. Alcoholism on a scale we can't imagine is a huge problem in Russia.
MaryAnne,
I cannot find that on Bastardette or elsewhere. If true, I wonder if he was not separated from sibs s well? and how much harder to leave your country when you've known your mother and would maintain the hope of reunification.
What I did find on Bstardette is a SHOCKING link to an undated Q & A with an online attorney asking about returning a Russian born adoptee who was disruptive. The online attorney gave a very detailed description of procedure to be followed.
Law enforcement should investigate this. if it can be traced to Nancy Hansen (as it is written as by the mother of a woman seeking to rid herself of her adopted child, it disproves claims that she was advised it was ok to do (not that that would really matter) but also that it was not such last-minute decsion. In fact, as Batardette theorizes, it could because she was advised there would be payments she'd be obligated to "pay maintenance."
Read it here: http://www.1cisus.com/questions/answer.php?id=1950
Anyone still have any pity?
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