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Renewed calls for US adoption treaty amid new abuse charges
Published: 30 August, 2010, 08:47
Edited: 31 August, 2010, 04:14
TAGS: Children, Crime, Russia, Accident
Russia’s Foreign Ministry has expressed concern over the latest incident of violence against adopted Russian children in the US, which it says again demonstrated the need for a separate bilateral treaty on adoptions.
Andrey Nesterenko, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said Moscow insists on “signing the treaty in the coming months”.
The US press reported last week that a trial of Edelwina and Steven Leschinsky is currently underway in Larimer County, Colorado. The spouses are charged with child abuse and four other related charges. They were arrested in March this year, but the news broke only recently.
Nesterenko said Moscow he is dismayed "over the stance of American officials who did not notify the Russian side about problems in the Leschinsky family.”
Earlier, Russia’s top advocate of children’s rights, Pavel Astakhov, called “for intensified efforts for the early conclusion of a treaty on the regulation of adoptions between our two countries”, RIA Novosti reported.
According to reports, the US parents adopted three biological sisters from Russia. In January, school authorities notified police after one of the girls appeared in class with bruises.
Investigators soon discovered that the Leschinskys were subjecting their adoptive daughters to severe physical punishments that involved “literally hundreds of push-ups”, marathons and beatings. Doctors said that one of the sisters suffered damage to her hand after her adoptive parents made her stand on her knuckles on a hard floor.
The Russian ombudsman called for "a just and severe punishment" for the US couple, who are due back in court on September 7.
Russian authorities ordered a moratorium on the adoption of Russian children by US parents in April this year, following a string of incidents in which adoptive parents had mistreated, tortured and even killed their children.
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Gunman kills 7, wounds another 13 in BratislavaSeven people have died and 13 more have been wounded during a shooting in the suburbs of the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. |
There are all types of people - good and bad in both Russa and the U.S. There are many, many children waiting to be adopted. Its inevitable and unfortunate some will be adopted by bad parents. Many, many more will be adopted by overjoyed parents will love them and give them a good life. Adoption treaties do nothing to prevent bad parents from adopting children - they are political tools used by politicians to convince people they are working for them. Is it better to prevent all children from the possibility of living in a home with loving caring parents or forcing them all to live with no parents in a orphanage? The system of detecting problems worked in this instance.
A child inside a box is a symbolically fitting rendition signifying how Russian children came to be sold in the adoption market as a commodity. The best way Russia can protect its children is to keep them home. Russia needs to tighten its adoption laws and never allow citizens of a nation it does not have adoption treaty to adopt Russian children. If the Russians cannot do this for themselves why do they would expect a foreign country would provide better care for Russian children than Russia itself. As the economy inside Russia improves[despite the crisis] this problem will be significantly reduced in the meantime, the moratorium banning adoption of Russian children by the citizens of a country or countries Russia does not have adoption treaty with must be fully enforced according the letter of law.
I wholeheartedly agree with PR101. Not only can Mom Russia best protect its children but it is deeply immoral and unchristian-like to allow for an adoption commodity market to even exist! Arguments such as foreigners can sometimes better attend to Russian orphans needs is utter nonesense and giga BS. (For instance, there are tens of thousands of racial minorities in the American foster system to choose from, but, the fact of life is, and has been for some time, that those keen on adopting simply prefer white babies.) I'm sure Russia can look into the Romanian experience --which had banned foreign adoption and killed the baby market in 2004-- as well as other lands, and come to the conclusion to keep all little citizens within its boudaries. It's not just empty patriotism, national pride and demographics, it really is about THE greatest asset a country can have, that is, its citizens...