Lots of uproar today over the news of Artyem Saviliev's return to Russia by his adoptive mother, Torry Hansen. If you haven't heard about it, read the news story here, here or just about on any available news outlet. According to the Bedford County, Tennessee sheriff's department, an investigation is underway to see if a crime has even been committed.
Since I'm not a legal expert in real life or even in the completely imaginary television series that I star in when fantasizing about quitting my day job, I'll leave the legal commentary to the authorities and the folks who are paid to opine about those issues. The only "professional" expertise I have in this area is that of an adoptee and as a parent of a child whose behavior has been at many times in the last few years outside of the normal boundaries of behavior. And when it comes to those two areas, this case is pressing on my emotional hotbuttons with the PSI of a mastadon on meth.
Its not like I've ever had any reason to feel that my adoption was a bad or a shameful thing. My parents were, for the most part, good parents. Yes, we have our family drama and the occasional elephant on the floor. There were spankings and there were days when like most children I resented my mom and dad, but unlike a lot of kids, including my birth sibilings, I was safe. I was at all times loved and wanted. I was given affection and attention and support and more material things than I likely deserved. My folks were open and up front about the fact of our adoption from the time my brother and I were very young. It was not a secret, and it just seemed very normal.
At the same time, there are things about being an adoptee that perhaps only another one of us can understand. I remember worrying that if I was too bad that maybe my mom and dad *wouldn't* want me anymore and maybe they would take me back to the adoption agency. You may not believe this, but I know an adoptee this actually happened to. Not her, but her brother. Her parents divorced after they had adopted two kids, and her mom, unable to cope with single-parenting two children, sent the boy back. What the fuck she was thinking I have no idea, perhaps that it would be easier to parent a girl than a boy? And if she thought that, had she seriously not consulted anyone who has been around teenage girls? There might be worse things than being sent back, though. I know adoptees who were abused by their adopters. One really good friend recalled being beaten by her adoptive father with a length of garden hose.
It doesn't seem fair, perhaps, that those who must or choose to follow the adoption pathway to parenthood have to undergo rigorous scrutiny. After all, nobody made my birthmother take a fitness test before she birthed her litter of six. Ha. Maybe they should have.
But in my eyes, any person who says to another "I am willing to take on the responsibility of raising your child" has, if anything, a greater responsibility. So many people see adoptees as having been "saved" from whatever horrors there are to be imagined. Perhaps we are like Orphan Annie, stuck in an orphanage with an abusive matron. Maybe if we'd been kept we would have been beaten or drugged or sold as sexual trinkets. And maybe our adopters *did* save us, in some way. Unless our adopters were Joan Crawford, that is. But here's the rub: we didn't ask to be saved. The adoptee is the one member in the triad that has no say in what happens to them. We didn't ask to be born, we didn't ask to be relinquished, and we didn't get to choose the family we ended up with. We were at the mercy of the adults and the system, and so if we really were saved, than it is the responsibility of our "saviors" to live up to very VERY high standards.
So many parents who adopt are truly wonderful, amazing parents, and this is not directed at them. Those parents have my utmost regard. Those who provide their children with love and security and structure, they are the reason that for the most part I see adoption as an incredibly positive institution. I love it when people who know I am adopted and who are thinking of adopting come to me and ask me about my experience. It shows me that they truly care, want to be enlightened parents. I tell all of them to be truthful with their children and to love them not "as if" they were their own, but just to love them as any parent would their own child.
Artyem Savelyev has been failed so many ways.
Did Torry Hansen know of Artyem's issues when she signed adoption papers? Maybe, maybe not. If not, the agency requires scrutiny and perhaps censure. But regardless, when Ms. Hansen made a decision to adopt a child, she accepted a great responsibility, one that it appears she very quickly abdicated. I'm not speaking of legalities, I've already stated that I have no proper understanding of whether any local, state, national or international law has been broken. What I'm talking about is a moral code, the one that in my book makes my friend's garden-hose-bearing dad a criminal of epic proportions.
When you give birth to a child there are countless factors you will have no prior knowledge of. Your child might be born with an physical disability that doesn't show up on normal neonatal testing. Your child might have an unseen heart defect or neurological issue. You might end up with a child who has a learning disability or a personality disorder. Whatever the case, once you commit to bringing that child into the world, what you get is what you get. Your choice has been made and you are responsible to be the best parent you can possibly be. If you are not prepared for the worst possibilities, DON'T HAVE BABIES. I believe in my heart that the moment you choose to have a child - the moment you decide that a pregnancy will continue to term, that you will accept a child from another mother as your very own, that you are making a contract with God. Parenthood is often selfish in its origins. We carry within us - most of us, anyway - the need to nurture, to create, to care for. We want a baby because we feel our lives are better with children than without. But becoming a parent means being willing to be selfLESS at times. Yes, moms and dads must care for their own needs. But there are going to be times when your child needs you and it will require you to put your own comfort aside for a time. Sometimes, with some children, a LOT of time.
For J and I, becoming parents meant learning to deal with incredible rage and at times almost uncontrollable physical violence. There have been days when both he and I have been bruised and broken mentally AND physically. Our marriage didn't fail because of anything that our kids did or said, but our own inability as adults to properly care for our stress levels around their issues was a contributing factor to the disintegration of our marriage. (Please note that I am drawing a very careful distinction here. Our children did not cause our marriage to fail. WE caused our marriage to fail.) There have been days when I have been exhausted and frustrated and hopeless, and even moments when I have wondered how in the world I was going to survive ONE MORE SECOND. But never did it cross my mind that NOT parenting my child was an option. Of course it isn't. They are. My. Children.
Now. It is entirely possible that Ms. Hansen was not the appropriate choice of a parent for Artyem. I'm not going to disagree with that, or with the fact that she was apparently in it far over her head. But I truly don't believe she put as much time and effort into helping him get well as any person who was making a commitment to parent him should have. She brought this boy home in September. Its only 7 months later and she sticks him on a plane back to Russia.
Look, I've been there with a kid who has serious issues and I know the amount of time and doctors and medications and therapy that it takes to start making progress. I've lived it, and frankly September to April is not nearly enough of a time investment to throw up your hands and abandon your kid. I KNOW how long it takes for you to evaluate how well a particular course of treatment, medication or therapy is working. And I know for a fact there is no way that 7 months would have been an adequate amount of time for her to locate appropriate medical and psychological care for that boy and to evaluate treatment efficacy. No way. Our quest for diagnosis and treatment took years to make progress. And it evolves constantly. Is this working? How about that? Medication dosage appropriate? How long are her cycles? How consistent is our structure?
There is nothing acceptable in my eyes about how Ms. Hansen handled this situation. At the very least, if he was being violent and she could not control him, she should have gotten an emergency hospitalization, which would have led to serious evaluation and possible long term residential treatment. No emergency room would have refused care to her, even if she couldn't pay. She could have notified the agency of the issues they were having. Even if it was the right decision to make that she wasn't equipped to parent him, she should have worked with them to reach a solution.
Putting a seven year old boy on a plane by himself to a foreign country with the equivalent of a note pinned to his shirt is NOT an appropriate solution.
Ultimately, whether karmic justice is served, the story is more sad than outrageous. Artyem is still a little boy who needs a family. I'm sure that with the amount of attention his story has received that he now has a better than ever chance of getting one, but who can say how much hurt his young heart can overcome? How much worse will his chances of overcoming his issues be because of what Torry Hansen did?
There are lessons to be learned here, I hope the world is paying attention.
