The adoption agency World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP), which handled the adoption of Artem Savaliev, also called Justin Hansen, has filed a petition Tuesday in Bedford County, Tennessee, asking the court to investigate whether his abandonment (in his case, being sent back to Russia alone on a plane) constitutes abuse or neglect. The agency said in its petition that the adoptive mother Torrey Hansen and her mother Nancy Hansen had inflicted “severe emotional injury upon this minor child who has now been abandoned twice, by his biological and adoptive parents”. (The boy’s biological mother’s rights were terminated in August 2008 and the boy was placed in an orphanage, where he lived for a year until his adoption by Torrey Hansen.)
The Associated Press reported yesterday:
“The agency is not asking that criminal charges be filed. It wants a civil court to appoint the agency as a guardian for the child and appoint a lawyer to investigate whether he was either abused, neglected or abandoned by virtue of being put on a plane back to Russia. It also is asking that the lawyer for the child make a finding of whether the woman’s parental rights should be terminated and order her to pay support for the child that is still legally hers.”
As I mentioned in my last blog, there is some question over whether the abandonment was actually in Tennessee, or in Washington where his grandmother left him, or in Russia where he landed. This could make filing criminal charges difficult.
The boy turned eight years old earlier this month and was feted with gifts from the American Embassy in Moscow as well as from Russian officials. Initially three families in Russia came forward offering to adopt him. I am unaware of the status of those offers. It is common after a newsworthy event, such as this abandonment or a disaster that orphans many children, like the earthquakes in China and Haiti in the last two years, for many people to come forward with offers of adoption. Adoption does take time, however, for a homestudy to be done for the adoptive parents and to make sure the children are truly free for adoption. Perhaps this will increase Russian’s awareness of adoption and lead more Russians to adopt domestically. Russia, like other sending countries such as Korea, have been trying to boost their rate of domestic adoptions in recent years.
Meanwhile other news sources are reporting that the adoptive mother, Torrey Hansen, was pursuing a second adoption, this time from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. The second adoption was reportedly in progress at the time of Justin Artem’s abandonment. Hansen was reportedly using a different agency after WACAP refused to handle another adoption so soon after Artem’s.