I would love to have a lot of sympathy for this woman because I have seen and been told how hard it can be to parent a child with these difficulties, but I can't, she was at the very best naieve and stupid, but her actions in the end were unspeakably cruel.
I certainly can understand what she means when she says he was violent aggressive, we know adopters whose child has a similar background, and similar behaviours-
But the mother in the press adopted him,she signed up to an Agency, paid a fee, bought a ticket to Russia and picked him. A six year old boy, abused neglected and then removed to a Russian children's institute, with no therapy support and no key figure to attach to. Russians don't label or diagnose conditions, what is the point they can't treat them, they lack the resources and if they don't know they can't tell.
Legally he is her child, and morally he is her child. Adopting can be tough, sometimes the way to access appropriate care for your child in this country can only be done by returning them to care (where suddenly there is a budget for therapies) then you can parent from a distance, you can parent through an institution, you can do so many things when your child becomes violent or disturbed, what you cannot do is put them on a plane to Russia-do you know how long that flight must have been for the sad and lonely little boy.
The adopter was a nurse, she had a medical background she would have been acutely aware of the effects of drugs and alcohol on a developing baby, she could so easily have found out about Attachment Theory and Reactive Attachment disorders, Disorganized Attachment, she could have looked at how the brain develops and grows in the first two years of life, how this is impacted when a child is neglected, starved beaten etc.
She should have known what she was signing up to when she became that little boy's mummy. Unlike the parents whose birth children are born disabled, she had the opportunity to expect problems in his life and "stubborn" should have had her asking more questions.
Holly van Gulden is a specialist who works with adopters of traumatised children and she adopted a child who was dumped at the airport by his new adoptive family - apparently they were prosecuted for abandonment. I think this American adopter will find herself legally in a lot of trouble in the USA.
The Russians have now suspended adoptions of Russian children to American families. Sadly this case was the final straw not an isolated incident.
His little face in the picture as he is taken into care breaks my heart every time I see it.