One of the top stories on the Russian TV news (here are links to the coverage on NTV, ORT, and Rossiia) the past couple of nights has been the trial of Chicagoan Irma Pavlis in the death of her adopted son, who was born in Russia. It has been called a "sensational" story, and I suppose it is, but in my opinion it's been getting an inordinate amount of news coverage here.
I hate to inform my Russian readers of this, but the story is not being covered by the national media in the US. It is being covered by the Chicago newpapers as a local story (here and here, for example), but that's about it. The reason for this is not that the United States is a nation of heartless child abusers, but simply that child abuse is a tragic fact of life in the US just as it is in Russia.
Obviously the Russian media should cover this, since it's clearly of interest to their viewers/readers. And I would like to believe that one of the purposes served by this coverage will be to increase scrutiny of the adoption agencies which make money by hooking Russian orphans up with foreign parents. The cynic in me, though, sees the story being covered in a way that paints all foreign adoptive parents - and by broader implication all foreigners - with a broad brush of suspicion and vilification.
What I object to is the tone of the coverage in the Russian media, which implies that Russian children adopted abroad are in mortal danger. The statistics often cited are 12 Russian adoptees (out of some 40,000 currently living in the US) who have died at the hands of their adoptive parents in the past 10 years or so. Certainly these are heinous crimes, and the perpetrators should be vigorously prosecuted, as has been the case with Irma Pavlis, but the implication in the reports I've seen is that the larger tragedy or outrage is not the 12 individual cases of horrible abuse resulting in children dying, but the fact that Russian children are being adopted by foreigners.
I hope I can be forgiven for suggesting that in the current climate of growing xenophobia, this looks like more of the same from state-run news programs like Vesti - "our" children should stay in "our" orphanages, rather than being adopted by "them." I don't want to sound like a shill for the international adoption "business," but the fact is that if the Russian media want to do their part to cut down on the number of Russian children dying, they should focus on the dire situation which exists in many underfunded Russian orphanages. International organizations like Human Rights Watch and the Red Cross have reported on this in the past (links are to their reports), and while the situation has probably improved in the past couple of years, I would bet that on average a child still has a better chance at a happy, healthy childhood with a foreign adoptive family than in a Russian orphanage. But instead of any mentioning of these problems, on Thursday night Vesti showed rosy footage of the orphanage in Krasnodar Krai from which Alyosha "Alex" Pavlis was adopted.
Maybe I am seeing America-bashing where none exists - all these years of living in Russia may have made me as paranoid and cynical as the people currently running the country - but it galls me to think that the Kremlin media-meisters may be making political hay out of a child's tragic death.
Hopefully some good will come out of this, and the adoption agencies (incidentally, the Pavlises used a Russian-operated agency whose fees were substantially cheaper than those charged by foreign-operated agencies) will be subjected to more stringent regulation - and prospective adoptive parents to more careful screening.
4 comments:
Could you please comment on the information in the Russian media that some organs had been taken for donation out of boy's body after he died ? Any possible sources of this information?
Thanks.
Oder K.
oder@insightbb.com
I had heard these reports and have no reason to doubt that this did occur. In keeping with the earlier coverage of the case in the Russian media, though, the tone or unspoken implication that goes along with these reports is that there is something sinister about the organ donation having occurred - i.e., that the organs were "harvested" or constituted the reason for the child having been adopted in the US in the first place. One of the reports I heard mentioned that the permission for a dead child's organs to be used is signed by the parents and was in the case of Alex Pavlis as well. Again, the implication (in the absence of information that parents would typically be called on to make this determination in the US) was that there was some kind of foul play, which is not really responsible journalism in my opinion.
Organ donation is so commonplace in the US that I doubt it would have been mentioned in any of the US media reports on this.
Americans share the horror that Russians have for what happened to Alex Pavlis. I cannot read about what happened in that family without becoming furious that they were permitted to bring home children. There were alternatives - I don't care how difficult the child might have been, or how frightened the parents were of child protective services. In the end, you had a small child and an adult; there is no conceivable way that the adult should have resorted to violence. Anyone who is adopting a child should have done the research to know what issues a child might face in making such an extraordinary transition, and the health and behavioral issues that a little one might have after spending 6 years in an institutional setting, and any adult should have known that, at a minimum, they could have called the police or an ambulance or a family member or a psychiatrist for help if they could not manage the child. Not ideal, certainly frightening and out of the ordinary, but better than staying in such a terrible situation and putting hte child at risk, certainly better than committing violence on - murdering - a vulnerable boy.
My son was born in Moscow in 2002, lived in a baby house there until late 2003, and has been home with me here in the US ever since. International adoption is an issue that raises concerns for everyone involved - why are so many children living in orphanages? Why are the orphanages so underfunded? Why are foreigners adopting so many? The payments that are made make many people feel that international adoption is uncomfortably close to baby selling - and I cannot doubt that there are people who cross that line. In any event, every adoption begins with a tragedy - a parent who couldn't or wouldn't raise a child, and that is clearly a tragedy for the child and in most cases for the birth parent as well. Adoption is the most positive thing that has ever been part of my life, and my son is the most important person in my life, but I can't forget that someday he will want to know why - why was he given up by his birth mother (who left him in the hospital without taking the time to fill out the paperwork necessary to allow him to be adopted, resulting in him remaining in the orphanage for almost 18 months), why he left his birth country, why he came to be part of our family.
I don't entirely know how I will explain all this to my son when he is old enough. Having been through the international adoption process, my concern for the orphans of Russia, the US, Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere is greater than it ever was. There are millions of extremely vulnerable children out there, and too many people who are willing to neglect or abuse them. I do not know what I can do personally to help, but I am trying - continuing to provide support to my son's orphanage, helping to get funding to improve life at others, looking for opportunities to help elsewhere.
What I do know is that my son is the most amazing boy you could hope to know. He was well cared for in Moscow, in a baby house that was materially poor but well operated and staffed by caretakers who seemed to be good and loving people and who certainly gave him enough love and care to help him grow to be a resilient and happy baby. They put him in my arms and spoke of their joy that this perfect little boy would now have a family. He came home to me, and has been the light of my life and that of my family from the day he arrived. He is growing and thriving, and I am hoping that he will have a brother very soon, and I am hoping that this brother will share his background.
If I could personally punish Irma Pavlis for what she did to Alex, I would. Having known the love of my son, and knowing how fragile and vulnerable a small child is, I find what she did unimaginable. Help - even help of a kind you don't want - is always just a phone call away. I am also angry at her, and at others who allow their anger and guilt over the fate of Russia's orphan children - many of whom are social orphans, whose parents chose not to raise them and who have not been adopted by Russians even during the 3-month period (now 6-month period) in which these children are available only to Russians - to keep other children from coming home to families who will care for them. I am all in favor of background checks, follow-ups (I do my follow-up reports faithfully, as I believe firmly that the Russian government has every right to make sure their citizen, my beautiful boy, is getting the love and care he deserves), monitoring, regulation, restrictions on fees, repeated accreditation procedures, and anything else that can help to stop adoptions from going forward when parents are not able to handle the issues involved or otherwise pose risks to their kids. But I beg the people of Russia to remember that for me and for all the other parents of Russian children that I know, the children we have adopted are the delights of our lives, that we love and treasure them, and that we will strive to deserve these wonderful kids who have been entrusted to us.
Anonymous, a most heartfelt thank you for this comment. I will post a link to this page (my post with comments) to a Russian blog where I know this case has been discussed, so that some Russian readers can also see your thoughts on this. There is absolutely nothing I can add to your comment. Thanks again for visiting this site and commenting.
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