BEACH COUPLE'S OVERSEAS ADOPTION DERAILED WIFE OF GEORGIA'S PRESIDENT WANTS TO STOP BABY EXODUS

ATE: Thursday, July 17, 1997               TAG: 9707170450SECTION: FRONT                   PAGE: A1   EDITION: FINAL SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH                    LENGTH:  179 lines

BEACH COUPLE'S OVERSEAS ADOPTION DERAILED WIFE OF GEORGIA'S PRESIDENT WANTS TO STOP BABY EXODUS.

Mark and Tammie Soccio had already chosen a name for the baby they had hoped to adopt: Lucas Alexander.

They had his clothes picked out. They set up a nursery for him. They passed around his photograph - mailed from an orphanage in the country of Georgia - to so many people the edges of the picture frayed.

In the Soccios' minds, the brown-eyed, 7-month-old boy in the little red sleeper was theirs.

He wasn't.

In December, the Georgian government issued what some have called an unofficial moratorium but what a U. S. Embassy official termed a stoppage in processing foreign adoptions. The delay left the Virginia Beach couple without the boy they had already made ample room for in their lives.

``In my heart, this child was ours,'' said Tammie Soccio, who with her husband had been through four years of infertility treatments after failing to conceive a child.

``We had connected with him,'' Mark Soccio said. ``He was more than a name on paper. He had become part of our lives.''

The Soccio couple was one of an estimated 16 American families who got caught in the lurch while trying to adopt babies in Georgia, which was once part of the Soviet Union.

The adoptions are expected to be one of the first matters U.S. officials raise with Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze, who arrived in the United States on Wednesday.

The dilemma reveals the struggle between the often desperate desire for children that sends Americans to look abroad, and the anxiety of countries troubled by the exodus of their youngest citizens. Americans seek to avoid the legal entanglements they've seen in many high-profile domestic adoptions and the slow process of adopting children here; parents in countries overseas have often been forced to abandon their children because they can't afford to care for them.

Timothy Richardson, vice consul for the U. S. Embassy in Georgia, said the number of adoptions that office was processing stopped abruptly in December, after steadily increasing over the past two years.

The reasons have been pieced together through news reports, correspondence from the Georgian Parliament, and adoption workers in the United States and in Georgia.

The Soccios say adoption workers told them that citizens of Georgia, particularly Nanuli Shevardnadze, the wife of the president, had voiced concern about the rush of Americans adopting Georgian orphans. The first lady had accused adoption agencies of exaggerating medical problems in order to whisk healthy babies out of the country. She pledged to find families in Georgia to adopt the children.

From October to December, there were 22 adoptions by Americans. During the 1995-96 fiscal year, there were 80 adoptions, 28 more than the previous year. There has been one adoption since December.

American embassy officials are doing everything they can to urge the Georgia government to at least process the couples who have already had children assigned to them.

``We've continued to speak to the Georgian government almost daily, trying to facilitate these families' adoptions,'' said Richardson. ``They have done everything in accordance with Georgian law, and we deeply sympathize with these families who have waited so long for children.''

For many of the 16 or so families waiting for their assigned children - Richardson said the embassy is still trying to get an accurate count - the adoptions may yet come to fruition.

But for the Soccios, it is already too late.

Two weeks ago, Tammie Soccio received a phone call saying the boy who had been assigned them has been adopted by a Georgian couple. He is now 14 months old.

``It was like I was struck by lightning - a jolt went through my body,'' said Tammie Soccio, 33, who works as a massage therapist in the same office where her 34-year-old husband works as a chiropractor. ``I could barely finish the conversation and thank the man for letting me know.''

Similar foreign adoption scenarios have been replayed throughout many Eastern European countries, particularly in the countries that formerly made up the Soviet Union. Foreign adoptions in those countries soared after the collapse of communism. In many cases, parents in those countries abandoned their children at orphanages because they could not afford to care for them.

Romania and Russia imposed temporary moratoriums after Americans adopted thousands of children in the early 1990s. Both countries have since introduced legislation to curb foreign adoptions.

Many would-be parents from America turned their attention to Georgia during moratoriums of other Eastern European countries.

Now, Georgia is going through a similar process; a preliminary vote to restrict foreign adoptions passed two weeks ago.

``They're in a transitional period in their democratization,'' Vice Consul Richardson said.

Most international adoptions go smoothly. But prospective parents are always at risk of laws changing, especially in countries in political turmoil, said Amy May Musselman, who helps arrange international adoptions for Catholic Charities of Hampton Roads.

``I can give a workshop on international adoption on one day, and by the next day, the laws will be different,'' she said.

Often, residents of the countries in question begin to resent the onslaught of American families who arrive in hopes of ``saving'' the children many parents there have been forced to give up because of poor economies. Gradually, more and more restrictions have been added to many countries' foreign adoption laws, such as requirements that only children with medical problems be adopted internationally.

For the Soccios, the change in the laws in Georgia could not have come at a worse time.

The couple first started looking into adoption in early 1996, after four years of trying to have a baby. Tammie Soccio researched many adoption agencies, and the couple settled on Hawaii International Child Placement.

In February 1996, they began submitting reams of paperwork, including a home study. The paperwork was delivered to Tblisi, Georgia, in June 1996.

In October, an adoption worker told them there was a little boy who had been born in May 1996 who would be available for them to adopt once he was 6 months old.

``We told them not to show us any photos or tell us anything more until we were sure as we could be,'' Tammie Soccio said. ``We told them to wait until he was 6 months old.''

When he turned 6 months last November, the couple received a video of the boy, taken at Infant's Home in Tblisi, and a handful of photographs.

``We took one look at this kid and we were sure this kid was meant to be in our life,'' Mark Soccio said.

``He even looked like Mark,'' Tammie Soccio said.

They were told it would take a month to six weeks to process the adoption.

The couple put together a nursery, and bought baby-blue clothes for the boy. Tammie's family threw her a baby shower, with toys and booties and bottles. The couple even hung a Christmas stocking with ``Lucas Alexander'' emblazoned at the top.

``Their adoption was not finalized, but it was very, very close,'' said Manana Ramdadze, the Hawaii International adoption worker who handled the case. Then, in December, Georgian adoption workers started saying, ``little bit later, little bit later,'' Ramdadze said.

Gradually, they all realized something was amiss.

``We were told it was all coming from the first lady, that she was against foreign adoptions,'' Ramdadze said.

Ramdadze said she had arranged 11 adoptions from Georgia since 1994, which all went smoothly, so she knew the delay was out of the ordinary.

Next she was told by adoption workers in Georgia that a Georgian family had come to the orphanage at the request of Nanuli Shevardnadze. The child assigned to the Soccios was adopted by the family. Ramadadze said that information was later corroborated by the U. S. Embassy.

The Georgian Embassy in Washington did not return calls to comment on the controversy, but in a June interview with The New York Times, Nanuli Shevardnadze said she was against foreign adoption. ``Our nation's gene pool is being depleted,'' she was quoted as saying. ``No more children should leave Georgia.''

Because of the delay, the Soccios and other families began swamping the U. S. Embassy, legislators, President Clinton, and whoever else they thought might help with faxes and letters.

While the Soccios could understand the concern of the Georgian citizens to put curbs on foreign adoption, they felt that since they had already been assigned a child, the adoption should have gone forward.

``March, April, and May, we just kept faxing, right up until the week we found out we lost him,'' Tammie Soccio said.

Tammie Soccio went to the room they had set up for the boy they wanted to name Lucas Alexander, and packed up the toys and clothes in boxes with his name on them. Then she packed up the adoption paperwork in boxes as well, and put them all in the attic.

``We were only one signature away,'' she said. ``Just one signature.''

Richardson said some of the children who had been assigned to American families have since been adopted by Georgian families, and some have been reclaimed by their parents. At least one child has died in the orphanage. That was a case handled by Ramadadze.

``It's been a tragedy for everybody,'' she said.

The Soccios said they spent $6,000 on the thwarted adoption, forcing them to take a second mortgage out on their house.

They are frustrated further by the fact that the United States provided Georgia with $20 million in foreign aid last year. They hope that pressure will be brought on the Georgian first family to allow the remaining adoptions to go forward, even though the Soccios' would-be son is now with another family.

In the meantime, they will explore other ways of having a child, perhaps returning to infertility treatments.

``It seems like a simple thing to be a parent,'' Tammie Soccio said. ``It's a simple wish we have. I don't think anyone could have tried harder. After all these years of trying, and after being so close, we are not really any closer than we ever were.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

VICKI CRONIS/The Virginian-Pilot

Tammie and Mark Soccio, at left, stand in the room they had prepared

for the infant, above, whom they planned to name Lucas Alexander. KEYWORDS: ADOPTION SOVIET GEORGIA