Russia, America conclude treaty on adoption
30 March 2011
Russia, America conclude treaty on adoption
| Mar 30, 2011 21:48 Moscow Time |
| Boris Altshuler. Photo: RIA Novosti |
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The work over the Russian-American which outlines the rules of adopting Russian children by Americans is over.
Russia also plans to conclude similar treaties with France, the UK, Ireland and some other countries.
The work over the treaty was stirred by several scandalous cases when American foster parents mistreated their adopted Russian children. This work started in April 2010, when a delegation of the US Department of State came to Moscow to discuss this subject. The Russian Foreign Ministry’s statement, which was released at that time, said:
“The new treaty must provide a good mechanism of monitoring the life of adopted children both by Russian and American bodies, in order to prevent cases of violence against adopted children.”
From that time, adoption of Russian children by Americans was suspended until the introduction of the treaty.
Not long before that, it had become known that the American couple Cravers had beaten their adopted Russian son Vanya Skorobogatov to death. The trial of Cravers is not yet over. The American prosecutor is demanding that the both foster parents must be executed.
In an interview to the Voice of Russia, Russian children’s ombudsman Boris Altshuler said:
“This treaty outlines the responsibilities of both sides, in particular, the responsibility of the adopting country to provide good conditions for the child. It also foresees preliminary training of parents and some control over the foster family by relevant experts – not only control by child care services, which is often rather formal. In the US, such services are usually checking a family once in three months. That’s, I think, is too seldom. I think, first, a couple which wants to adopt a child must undergo some preliminary training. After adoption, experts must regularly supervise the family for at least one year – as a rule, the first year is the most difficult one for the child to get accustomed to the new family.”
Only such measures, the Russian children’s ombudsman is convinced, can prevent tragedies like the ones which happened recently with some Russian children in American foster families.
Now, an American court is investigating the case of Jessica Bigley from Alaska. In a TV show named “Mommy Confessions”, Jessica, on her own initiative, has shown a video where she, in order to punish her Russian adopted son for some misbehavior, makes him rinse his moth with chili sauce and stand under an ice-cold shower for a long time. Jessica made her other son film all this. After confessions of this kind, a criminal case was opened against the sadistic foster mother.