Protection for the Children

According to official data, approximately 60,000 children have been taken to America for adoption over the last 20 years. In reality, this number may be twice as high. This type of record wasn’t kept in the late 80s and early 90s. Today, we know nothing about the fate of the majority of our children who were taken during that period. In fact, we have absolutely no information about more than 400 children who were officially taken from Russia through an independent adoption program.

Why did such a preposterous situation happen? When I was named children’s rights commissioner for the president of Russia, I discovered that foreigners were very actively adopting our children; several thousand were adopted every year. There was not even one signed agreement on adoption with foreign governments. It is impossible to explain or understand how our children could have been sent to foreign families without having any legal basis for it. We have just one bilateral agreement, which was signed two years ago with Italy.

Obviously, we must not continue foreign adoption without having bilateral agreements with the countries that are taking in our children. These countries are Great Britain, Finland, Spain, France, Holland, Germany, Switzerland, Norway and, of course, the United States. It is Americans who adopt the great majority of Russian children. Fifteen years ago, up to 14,000 children went to America in a year. In recent years, that number has decreased by several times. We began to handle chosen candidates much more carefully and to present stricter requirements for so-called independent adoption.

Since the middle of last year, we have been working on creating a bilateral adoption agreement with the United States. There have been five rounds of negotiations. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, has personally monitored this process ever since Artyom Savelyev returned to Russia. (The American side of the issue is under the control of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.) It was this “Artyom Savelyev issue” that showed that our children are absolutely unprotected and without rights. The little boy flew from America to Moscow by himself with a note saying that his adoptive mother was rejecting him.

Seventeen children adopted from Russia have died in the United States during these years. Many of these were cases of child abuse. Nothing is known about the majority of them because without the bilateral agreement being signed, Americans are not required to inform us about each situation of that type.

Next week there will be a trial for the case of Jessica Beagley, who made her adopted son Daniil Bukharov rinse his mouth with hot sauce and take ice-cold showers. Similar measures of mortification were undertaken in the torture of Guantanamo Bay prisoners.

The lack of an adoption agreement between Russia and the United States makes collecting support payments from unscrupulous parents a fairly complicated procedure. After all, the “Artyom Savelyev issue” was already the third case of a child being returned to Russia since 1994. According to the law, a child who has been rejected by his adoptive parents has a right to receive support payments. He cannot just be thrown out onto the street without support.

We are now conducting legal proceedings in the Moscow City Court, seeking the collection of support payments for Artyom from his adoptive mother. A parallel process is taking place in the state of Tennessee through our American representatives, because it will be nearly impossible to carry out the Russian court’s decision in America. We do not have an agreement on legal aid; we do not have an agreement on adoption. The signing of the bilateral agreement will make it possible to recognize a decision by the Russian courts in U.S. territory. This is very important when talking about foreign adoption.

The bilateral agreement obligates the American side to present accurate information about the lives of our children adopted by Americans and taken to the United States and to also monitor the activity of adoption agencies strictly. They will have to receive accreditation first in the United States and then in Russia. Moreover, the bilateral agreement obligates the agency to collect accurate information about adoption candidates. It is of particular importance that the agreement will have retroactive force when it goes into effect, allowing for the monitoring of the lives of children who were adopted before it was signed.

I hope that at the meeting of the heads of foreign administrations of Russia and the United States in May, the bilateral adoption agreement will be signed and we will finally obtain a legal basis for the protection of young Russian citizens. After all, a child adopted by an American family is considered to be a citizen of Russia until he is 18 years old.