This is cross posted from my Nikto Ne Zabyt (Memoriam for Russian Adoptees Murdered and Abused by their Forever Families) blog.
I need to spend today working on Illinois legislative matters, but wanted to get this out first.
A curious little piece on the Hansen family appeared Saturday on WSMV-TV, Nashville: Hansen women regularly held yard sales
When I saw the Google News headline my first thought was “stretching for a story.”
Then I read it.
Though the reporter made no connection between last week’s yard sale that featured “kids’ clothes, toys, car seats and stuff” and Artem’s quick departure for Moscow, I can’t help but see one. Can you?
On Saturday, neighbors who live beside the women in Bedford County said the family kept to themselves and hardly anyone knew them, but the women did hold weekly yard sales.
Chelby Clark said she even went to a yard sale at the Hansen’s home last week. “The kids may have been running around,” she said.
On Saturday, several long tables were still sitting in the front yard of the Hansen’s homes off Highway 41 in El Bethel.
Clark said their sale last week centered around kids’ items. She recalled seeing “mainly, a bunch of kids’ clothes, toys, car seats and stuff.”
Clark spoke to the women about a car seat. “I asked one lady if she could bring down a price and then she turned around and asked an older lady the same question. The older lady said she said she’d take it down by a couple of dollars,” Clark said.
She didn’t notice anything unusual, “But I guess they were just too themselves more,” Clark said.
According to neighbors, yard sales are a common sight at the Hansen’s homes.
Angeline Bailey said “they usually they had two a week.”
There was no activity at either house all day Friday and Saturday, and despite cars parked out front, there was no sign of the Hansens.
Neighbor Chelby Clark can’t remember for sure, but says “kids may have been running around.” If they were, that would probably be Artem and Torry Hansen’s biological son, Logan. Now, kids “stuff” is a yard sale staple, but could the Hansens have been selling off Artem’s “stuff” right in front of him? Erasing his “stuff” before they erased him?
We don’t know the date of this garage sale, but Nancy Hansen, in an ill-advised (for her ) interview with the press said that “they” decided to ship Arem to Ul. Tverskaya on Sunday after he drew of a picture of the house burning down. If the garage sale happened before Sunday it could indicate an earlier decision. If it happened after, but before he was dumped onto the plane, it would indicate that they were selling him off little by little while he watched, though innocent of his soon-to-be fate.
Either scenario is extremely disturbing.
It reminds me of the closing scenes of the “adoption film classic and to me the scariest adoption film ever made, Penny Serenade.
After…oh say…about six weeks of mourning the death by unnamed-exotic-illness of their beloved adopted daughter Trina, (and almost getting a divorce) compassionate adoption agent Beulah Bondi offers Cary Grant and Irene Dunn a replacement. As the film ends, we watch the newly reconciled and once again happy couple paint over Trina’s now empty room as if she never existed.
NOTE: For more on a local POV of the Hansens see the New York Times, In Tenn, Reminders of a boy returned to Russia. Of particular interest, since it suggests a pattern we have seen repeatedly in cases of Russian adoptee abuse, is the Hansens’ reported self-imposed social isolation:
Several other neighbors said the Hansens seemed somewhat disconnected from the community. The boy appeared to be home-schooled and the family did not go to the churches close by. It was hard to relate when so few details were known, they said, but even if Justin threatened violence, as the Hansens claimed, residents said he should have been dealt with here, not shipped home like a faulty product.
Some here said they were glad the Hansens seemed to be outsiders, or at least newer arrivals — it helped some of the longtime residents disconnect from the satellite trucks and reporters, many of them representing foreign media, that had descended on their neighborhood.
So the Russian news source that I found was right. They say that it was planned and in early March that the Grandmother had contacted a woman lawyer in Russia. The lawyer said that she was asked about returning the boy. The lawyer said that they could issue a reconsideration type paper work. That yes it can be done but takes time. That was not good enough and she never heard back again from the Hansen’s.
I also have and article about the man who picked the boy up. he has written his story and I have an article with the links if you want to have a read. It is good and the guy was very upset because the Nancy Hansen had lied to him… Lots of information.
Kyle and Svet
Thanks I’d not heard about the contact with the Russian lawyer yet. I’ll go over to your page in a little while. I do have Artur’s account and it’s going up in a view minutes. It is very touching–and makes me even more angry at the Hansens than I already am.
I’ve been looking for a picture of the Ministry building to no avail,so will go with a picture of Tverskaya in general.
Wow, BD, I had not thought of them selling off Artem’s stuff before he was gone! I had not made that connection from reading the article and it was right under my nose. I wonder if they did it to get the money to buy the plane ticket. How awful!
I still don’t understand why the grandmother has to do all of the talking, and why the two live so close together. It is really a weird situation and I wonder if both the mother and grandmother have some sort of mental issues of their own. It doesn’t excuse what they did, by any means. And where is the “grandfather” – is there one? And did Torry Hansen ever have a husband…any good father role models for Artem at all in this situation? It seems very odd and strange. (AnonJ)