NOTE: Go to Nikto Ne Zabyt for a dedicated page of all my entries on Russian adoption. This collection includes posts on all known Russian adoptees who have been killed by their US “forever families” as well as the case of Masha Allen. For those interested strictly on Dmitry Yakolev/Chase Harrison go to Nikto Ne Zabyt’s, “labels” in the right sidebar and click on “Dmitry Yakolev” or “Chase Harrison.” The same articles are archived under both names Also, for international readers, at the top of that page has a link to the Reverso translator.
Over the last couple days some commenters have observed that the Yakolev/Harrison case is not so much about adoption, but a sad commentary on American life: that a child, adopted or not, can be forgotten in a hot car and die, while parents go about their hectic lives forgetting what they did with him or her. In a general sense, I don’t disagree with this. The dead baby in the hot/cold car is largely an American phenomenon. In fact, I wrote in my previous blog:
Yet Dima, who died in part, because of the wacky American consumer lifestyle, deserves justice, which has not been served him. Privileged workaholic exburanites do not always good parents make, even with their open checkbooks.
Russia, however, doesn’t view Dima’s death as an American lifestyle dysfunction. The verdict is viewed instead as an American adoption dysfunction and a miscarriage of justice that calls into question the status and rights of adopted children–Russian citizens– in the US. For some, the argument extends to all children adopted and living in the US.
Earlier today I wrote about the Russian reaction and one implication to the verdict–a toughened post-placement policy for US adopters. But things have heated up considerably since this afternoon. Ministries and the Russian press have ramped up the attack I suggest you go to my previous blog as background and then come back here.
Here is the update.
Pravda via ITAR-Tass, under the headline US man who made adopted son die terrible death in hot car found not guilty, quotes Russian Embassy press secretary Yevgeny Khorishko:
It is an open secret that US courts often use exemption law in their practice. This is exactly the reason why Miles Harrison avoided a prison term. The Supreme Court of the State of Virginia ruled in 1930 that a person, who incidentally murders another person, even if he or she can be accused of negligence, shall not be considered a criminal if his or her negligence is not the consequence of complete disdain for human life…
We suggest the US authorities should appeal against the blatant ruling, which relieves the murderer of the juvenile Russian citizen of responsibility. The unfair verdict must be revised…
We do not understand, what was guiding the judge when he found no formal element of a crime in the actions of the adoptive father and relived him of punishment. We know how strict US laws are when it comes to the protection of children’s rights. In this case, however, we do not understand the gentleness, which the judge showed to the man, who had left the little boy locked up in his car to die a terrible death in sweltering summer heat.
Stronger criticism comes from the Russian Foreign Ministry. The complete statement does not appear yet on the Foreign Ministry English-language webpage, but excerpts were quoted in today’s Loudoun (Virgina) Times which went online tonight: Not guilty verdict of Purcellville man could become international incident
The child, originally named Dmitry Yakolev and later re-named Chase Harrison, was adopted from Russia at a cost to the Harrisons of about $80,000. At the time of his death the toddler was still a Russian citizen, according to the Russian Embassy.
“He would have remained a Russian citizen until he reached legal age, at which time he could renounce his citizenship if he chose,” said Yevgeniiy Khorishko, press secretary for the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC. “It is just awful that the person who killed this child has been pardoned,” Khorishko added.
On Dec. 18, Russia’s Foreign Ministry condemned Harrison’s acquittal in an official statement, “We are deeply angered by the verdict of the Fairfax County Court in Virginia. We consider it to be repulsive and unprecedented, even if in this case–unlike in others–it was criminal negligence thqt led to a tragic outcome, rather than deliberate ill-treatment. The decision of the judge, who did not see the crime in Harrison’s actions and released him without penalty, goes beyond any legal and moral framework,” it stated.
And here is a report from The Moscow Times, December 19, 2008: Tough new rules for adoptive US parents featuring Alina Levitskaya from the Ministry of Education and Science and State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov:
Russia tightened controls over adoptions a few years ago after several children died at the hands of U.S. parents, and Wednesday’s acquittal will lead to a further clampdown, said Alina Levitskaya, head of the Education and Science Ministry’s child welfare department. The verdict “casts doubts” on adopted children’s rights in the United States and “will lead to a tightening of requirements for the adoption of Russian children by U.S. citizens,” Levitskaya said in a statement on the ministry’s web site…
Yevgeny Khorishko, spokesman for the Russian Embassy in Washington, said U.S. authorities should appeal the “grievous court ruling acquitting the murderer of an infant Russian citizen,” Interfax reported.
State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov said he was “disturbed” by the verdict and that Russia should do everything in its power to make adoption a more attractive option for Russian families. “We need Russian children to stay in Russia,” Gryzlov told Interfax.
The article also describes domestic adoption practices and policies.
The Harrison verdict is intimately linked to adoption.
Tonight NCFA tried out some damage control: National Council for adoption calls for calm and rational response to Harrison verdict. Acting NCFA president Chuck Johnson acknowledges that it may be difficult to “accept the verdict as appropriate and just,”
but
NCFA encourages a calm and rational response to the verdict, and hopes that the Russian government will continue to work with the United States government and the American adoption community to keep the adoption process between Russia and the United States transparent, safe and successful for the benefit of thousands of Russian-born children. Those who would suffer most from a disruption of Russian adoptions are the thousands of innocent orphans who otherwise would have been adopted into loving American homes.
In other words, things don’t look too good! Don’t call us; we’ll call you!
BLOGGER ALERT: Johnson’s statement included this most hilarious quotable NCFA quote since Dr. Pierce darkened its door:
Let me assure the international community that adoptive parents in the United States have the same responsibilities to their adopted children as do biological parents to their biological children.
Dima’s death is about adoption, though Americans, too close to the issue, don’t see it.
The acquittal is fast becoming a cause celebre. Since yesterday’s verdict I’ve received hundreds of hits on both The Daily Bastardette and Nikko Ne Zabyt. Many of them from Russia (St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tula, Smolensk, Kazan, Krasnodar, Novosibirsk, Spasskova, Tyumen, Yekaterinburg,), Ukraine (Lviv, Kiev, Kharkov ,Krivoy Rog, Simferopol), Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Israel, Hungary, Denmark, and Slovenia. I’ve had over 200 hits from a Russian discussion group on Live Journal. My next project is to try to translate the discussion.
ADDENDA: December 21, 2008, 1:55 PM: I learned as per the comment below that the discussion group which I referred to is actually the blog of Russia’s most famous science fiction writer Sergey Lukyanenko, and that he has been writing about the case. I hope this blog and the same entries which appear on Nikto Ne Zabyt have been helpful to him and his readers. I’m honored! Thanks.
I folloed this case because it has been covered as local news by my hometown paper The Washington Post which announced the verdict yesterday with a front page blurb that referred readers to a fuller article in the Metro section. Earlier reports led me to anticpate a different outcome.
No doubt you have given the case careful scrutiny as indicated by your much appreciated blogs. So,I hesitate to commnet except re the Post’s December 18th article where I was left with the impression that the Post reporter played “the adoption card” by quoting the defendent’s sister who said of the deceased child that he was “happy, loving and wonderful,” and “lucky enough to have wonderful parents,” and that her brother (the defendent) “having waited so long to become a father . . .,” “jumped at it with both feet and became the best father I’ve seen.”
Joanne Wolf Small, MSW
author, The Adoption Mystique
I too fear the ‘adoption card’ played an important part in this particular verdict.
It does seem that that the more couples can be shown to have paid a high price of one sort or another to achieve (whether financially or by other means) parenthood, the more they are thought to be deserving of sympathy in situations such as this.
So that what would be normally regarded as, at the very least, serious neglect, inattention or carelessness, gets transformed by a kind of sympathetic magic into nothing more than a simple, if tragic, mistake.
“Court outcomes vary when kids die in hot cars.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20013390/
This is one of those times when the story is NOT about adoption. It is about a child. It doesn’t matter that the child was adopted, he was a helpless child who died as the result of parental negligence.
Naturally foreign governments who have misgivings about transnational adoption, as do I, want to point to this as evidence that sending a child to an American family is dangerous. Like others who are adopted I am tempted to join them in condeming the practice but NOT because of this tragic misfortune but because sending a child away from his culture is inherently dangerous to the chid’s psyche. I know a number of foreign-born adoptees, none of them are completely well adjusted, although I’m sure that some may be!
I have been led to conclude that transplanting a child from one culture to another is fraught with difficulty and no small amount of danger for the child.
I am grieved my little Dimitry’s horrible death and I’m sure his adoptive parents are as well. I’m really glad that I was not the judge who had to rule in this case.
Responding to Pennagal, very specifically this part-
This is one of those times when the story is NOT about adoption. It is about a child. It doesn’t matter that the child was adopted,
and others who feel Dmitry’s adopted status is not pertinent to the case.
I disagree completely. Adoption is INHERENTLY an aspect of Dmitry’s case.
I’ll quote some of what I wrote in my latest blog post about the case by way of explanation-
…the American audience fails to understand the important responsibilities an adoptive couple take on when they sign on to adopting a child. Perhaps the primary difference between a child in an adoptive situation and children born to their parents is that adoptive families are on some level (allegedly at least) vetted. They have agreed to take on the task of raising a child that is not biologically their own. They have had to prove that they will make “fit” parents to the child that will eventually come to be placed with them. When they sign the adoption papers, they have intentionally taken on the responsibility for that child.
Add in the international adoption component, in the case of Russian adoptees, they retain their Russian citizenship, and what you have is essentially, an American couple that has jumped through enough hoops as to agree to take on not only raising a child who is not their own flesh and blood, but is additionally a citizen of another country. This carries with it many responsibilities, above and beyond what biological parents face. Be that reporting obligations back to the country of origin, or obligations to be attentive, and to provide safety and security. Adoptive parents sign their names to promises pertaining to the ongoing disposition and welfare of the child they are adopting.
This is the key that differentiates Dmitry’s death from that of any of the number of sad stories wherein American families loose track of their kids and leave them to roast to death in the back seats of cars in the summertime.
The Harrisons had undergone a process of establishing them as “fit” parents, and taken on the responsibility of raising a Russian child. They entered into such intentionally and made the case for their “worthiness” to take Dmitiry.
This case then, is inherently about adoption. And the responsibilities adoptive parents take on not only in relation to the child, and the agency, but in international adoption where citizenship is maintained, to that country of origin.
Quoting Marley again:
“He was a Russian citizen who died of neglect (accidental or not) at the hands of a person who was deemed “responsible” enough to adopt someone else’s child by the Russian and US governments and a prominent …adoption agency.”
In light of the additional ongoing background history of Russian adoptees dying as a result of actions of their American adopters (see Marley’s Forever Family, Forever Dead case profiles on her memoriam blog for Russian adoptees abused and murdered by their forever families- NIKTO NE ZABYT — NICHTO NE ZABYTO.) Dmitry’s death did not take place in a vacuum, it took place amidst a broader history of Russian adoptees dying in America and previous calls for a full moratorium on American adoptions. Instead of Russia closing to American adopters, it instituted a series of restrictions in an attempt to maintain information relating to the disposition of Russian adoptees in America available back to the country of origin.
After Dmitry’s death European Adoption Consultants, the agency responsible for placing Dmitry with the Harrisons failed to live up to its obligation to report his death. Media reports say the Russians learned of his death from the newspapers.
The broader background and historical context his death occurred within, as well as the agency obligations have been given little to no attention in the American media reports in the aftermath.
and
…there is nothing about this that is not inherently interwoven with adoption, specifically international adoption. Dmitry’s death was an international incident from the moment information about it first surfaced.
Baby Love Child…a very good and comprehensive answer to Pennegal’s statement.
As a Natural Mother, I would want this story covered and the adoption aspect stressed. It is common practice for young, single mothers to be stereotyped as potential abusers and neglecters (whether they actually turn out to be or no)t. Meanwhile, those who adopt do not receive anything but accolades. In the interest of fairness, it should be shown that adopters are just as prone to moments of weakness as are natural parents.
Adopters are just as likely to divorce, have addiction problems such as alcoholism, abuse, have affairs, be emotionally absent…the list goes on. Yet the evidence that the saintly adopter can be cruel or neglectful to an adopted child seems to be argued at every turn.
Were I a Russian child-welfare official (or whatever they call them), I would be very concerned about the number of adopted Russian children who are winding up in the cemetary.
Thanks, BLC, for making it so clear how adoption is a factor in this case. And since this is a foreign adoption, I have to commend the Russian government for keeping track of its citizens.
As a mother who surrendered a child, I was assured that adoptive parents were superior, not just “average”; that they were more mature, more stable, just plain “better than” me or anyone else who got pregnant without a plan. That, in fact, was the whole point of surrendering a much-loved child, to give him a “better life” with two perfect parents. I used to picture them as Dick and Jane’s parents from the 50s first grade reading book!
And this is the general public’s view of adoption, it is always “better than”, it is always a step up, saving a child from a miserable existence with birthparents or in their own country.
Yet when a tragedy like this happens, due at least to negligence, how quick people are to say “oh, that could happen to anyone, adoption has nothing to do with it.”
Adoptive parents are not “anyone”. They are pre-approved parents who are supposed to be better than the average schmoe who would forget a kid in a hot car for hours. They were responsible for someone else’s kid, in this case, another country’s kid, and they failed miserably. They SHOULD be held to a higher standard and the agency that placed the child put out of businness, as they are the ultimate culprit.
The NCFA would seem to be implying that the Russian government’s hitherto response to the verdict is unreasonable.
“National Council For Adoption Calls For Calm and Rational Response to Harrison Verdict”
http://www.adoptioncouncil.org/
As if.
Thanks folks, I’m glad that helped clarify.
I’ve personally, been very concerned in that the American media (as opposed to the Russian and international coverage) has tried to fit his death into merely the broader pattern of vehicle heat related deaths.
There has been scant mention of the responsibilities the Harrisons took on (along with EAC) and so Americans are apt to view the Russian response as some form of “overreaction” when to my view (speaking as an adult adoptee) it’s anything but.
The Russians have been remarkably patient, carefully watching as the process played out and shown tremendous restraint in light of the ongoing pattern.
Look through Marley’s Forever Family- Forever Dead case profiles, look at the sentences. The number in which the adopter(s) serve ten years or less for the death of a Russian child is striking.
It’s a sad commentary on our justice system.
Are we suggesting, then, that a-parents should be held to a higher or different standard because of the additional “responsibilities, above and beyond what biological parents face”? Just curious.
Responding to Kippa in particular-
You may find my analysis of the NCFA press release, “Dmitry’s Death and Miles Harrison’s Acquittal- part III, The Adoption Industry waits with baited breath” to be of some use.
Also, responding to osolomama-
It’s not a matter of “us suggesting” a different standard for those who adopt as opposed to biological parents, it’s a matter of there is a genuinely different process and set of responsibilities for them.
Biological parents do not have to sign documents promising not to cause harm to their offspring, before being granted them as but one example.
There is no process whereby biological parents must prove they are fit before being allowed their own children. They are inherently assumed “fit” unless and until their actions prove otherwise, instigating state involvement.
Adopters on the other hand, begin with external involvement before being allowed a child.
They are not entitled to such, as there is not “right” to raise a child of someone other than your own.
Legally, adoption is a privilege, not an inherent right.
As it is a privilege, it falls under a different standard, that of having to prove “fitness” before being granted (someone else’s or some other country’s) children.
“This is the key that differentiates Dmitry’s death from that of any of the number of sad stories wherein American families loose track of their kids and leave them to roast to death in the back seats of cars in the summertime.”
All parents, adoptive or not, assume the moral and legal duty to provide safety and security for their children.
What I perceive as the difference between the death of Dmitri and any of the other scores of kids killed due to negligence is that he has become a privileged object through adoption, even in death. If he had been the biological child of Harrison, left in a car and killed, we wouldn’t be blogging about him. If he had died in a Russian orphanage, where his chances of doing so are twice that of Russian kids raised in Russian families, the Ministries wouldn’t be making international statements decrying its own negligence.
Even the argument that, as an adoptive parent, Harrison assumed a responsibility greater than mere biological parents assumes that Dmitri was bigger boon than a biological child and therefore the punishment for his death by neglect should be more than that for the death of a biological child. It’s the flip side of the “sympathetic magic” Kippa mentions as a rationale for Harrison’s exoneration.
The process of vetting or screening prospective adoptive parents is a ritual masked as a social science intended to confer the privilege of parenthood. There are many ways to critique this process, and as adoptees many of us have done so from the perspective of personal history. That is why I am dubious of utilizing this flawed process as a measure to weigh Harrison’s actions. If I don’t believe in the magic of as-if parenthood, then why would I expect a wave of the magic wand should put Harrison in jail? And again, this magical thinking is more likely to hand a Get Out of Jail Card to Harrison than bind him in chains.
This comment has been removed by the author.
I know there’s a different standard for proving fitness. I didn’t ask that. I was asking if it was being suggested that adoptive parents should be held to a different standard when it comes to issues of care or neglect. Is that where your argument is going because adoption is “a privilege and not an inherent right”? Also, is it the case that every act of abuse by an adoptive parent is inhenently about adoption because of this? By the way, I am not in any way condoning the verdict in this case–I think it’s an outrage.
“There is no process whereby biological parents must prove they are fit before being allowed their own children. They are inherently assumed “fit” unless and until their actions prove otherwise, instigating state involvement.”
Just so, the state reserves to itself the right to judge “fitness”, whether of adoptive or biological parents, through its fluid deployment of parens patriae, which can ooze anywhere, with or without action as a trigger. Simply being marginalized has historically triggered state intervention, if you were a single woman, for instance, the assumption was you were unfit to raise a child.
So instead of adoption mimicking biological parenthood, the as-if fantasy, in reality biological parenthood had become regarded by the state as a condition one could define as conditional parenthood. The state, having given itself the ability to create families, regards biological parenthood as suspect, or at best, a privilege.
Adoption creates a network of interwoven discourse, one thread of which connects to the expanded discourse of “fitness”. This discourse calls into question a presumed inherent right of biological parenthood and assumes that only the state and its organs may decide who is, and who is not, “fit”. This discourse has no need of screening (or actions, for that matter), for it assumes that no parent is intrinsically “fit”, only unjudged or unanalyzed, and that all questions may be answered in their own good time.
Once again BLC gets to the core of the issue. “Adoption is a privilege, not a right.” Exactly. Much as this burns prospective adoptive parents, who find it unfair that others can just have kids naturally with nobody’s scrutiny or approval. Why can’t they just be handed a kid, no questions asked, because they desperately want one?
Why? Because life is unfair, and it is someone else’s kid that they are being entrusted with. The state or the agency or the adoption provider is morally bound to look out for the good of the child by seeing that he or she is placed with fit parents, not just anyone who wants a kid and can pay. The adoption industry fails miserably at this task, mostly because money talks.
Yes, adoptive parents are held to a higher standard than natural parents, like it or not, because someone is supposed to look out for the welfare of children whose natural family cannot raise them. It is not “just like giving birth” no matter how much adoptive parents might wish it were, or how it feels to them. Laws are not about feelings. And adoption is about law before anything else, it has to be, or kids would be in even more danger than they are now.
” Responding to Kippa in particular- You may find my analysis etc . . . to be of some use.”
Not particularly.
I don’t think you quite got my drift.
But thanks anyway.
The NFCA is as usual trying to cover their a$$es.
The bottom line is their bottom line bad publicity creates countries that don’t want to meet the supply of babies for U.S. and Russia is such a good supplier of white babies it would hurt their cash cow.
NFCA makes me sick ALL they care about is protecting themselves, hell with the dead children, its all part of collateral damage,in adoption.
Sometimes, those forever homes, just don’t seem to be forever.
“It’s not a matter of “us suggesting” a different standard for those who adopt as opposed to biological parents, it’s a matter of there is a genuinely different process and set of responsibilities for them.”
Legally speaking, that’s not true, since the end result of the ritual of “fitness” confer the state’s idealized sets of the rights and responsibilities of biological parenthood on propsective adopters, deeming them as-if they had given birth to a child. After the fact, again legally, adoptive parents and biological parents stand equal before the law, with a few statutory glitches (for instance the dual citizenship of Russian adoptees, but even this is a dubious codicil with little binding over the lowliest county family court judge. Russian adoptees who are removed from US adoptive homes don’t get sent to the Russian consulate, they get tossed into the US child welfare salad).
An argument could be made that adoptive parents take on a greater moral responsibility than biological parents, but morality and legality are not the same thing, and although they may dance, the state acts as the chaperone holding a ruler between them to insure their loins don’t touch.
” . . . although they may dance, the state acts as the chaperone holding a ruler between them to insure their loins don’t touch.”
Totally adorable. Love it to bits.
From BB –
“Legally speaking, that’s not true [that there are genuinely different process responsibilities for a-parents], since the end result of the ritual of “fitness” confer the state’s idealized sets of the rights and responsibilities of biological parenthood on propsective adopters, deeming them as-if they had given birth to a child. After the fact, again legally, adoptive parents and biological parents stand equal before the law, with a few statutory glitches. . .”
This is the crux of the issue. Once that child is signed over to the a-parents, they are treated by law as “parents,” with responsibilities identical to those of natural parents. That is why the judge in this case could not consider adoption a factor. His job was to judge for criminal intent, which he did not, irrespective of the child’s origins.
I personally am not persuaded that this situation in inherently about adoption. I think the Masha Allen case is, as well as many others documented here because in each instance criminal activity was facilitated or precipitated by adoption. As for Harrison, he did something monumentally stupid that otherwise competent natural parents could do and have done. It’s an equal-opportunity fuck-up. They should all be punished in some way.
“Intimately linked to”. I think inescapably so.
“Inherently about”. Not.
Big diff.
It also seems to me that in this case manslaughter would be far a more appropriate word to use than murder.
But I guess it just isn’t as conveniently inflammatory
Joanne–it’s all about baby saving. Much of the discourse goes along the lines of Miles Harrison is devestated by what he did, so we need to give him a break. The response to Dima’s death and the acquittal reek of class and privilege. If Miles Harrison were a single mother or a working class dad, the prosecutor would have indicted on lesser included charges or built a strong care, Peter Greenspun wouldn’t be the lawyer, and Miles wouldn’t have walked. The fix was in from the beginning. I am not saying the Harrison fixed it by a long shot. It’s just how privilege operates. I really thought he’d be found guilty and given a symbolic sentence. But being a adopter and a Somebody won the day. Anything less would have been an assault on adoption as an institution.
BB wrote:
Adoption creates a network of interwoven discourse, one thread of which connects to the expanded discourse of “fitness”. This discourse calls into question a presumed inherent right of biological parenthood and assumes that only the state and its organs may decide who is, and who is not, “fit”. This discourse has no need of screening (or actions, for that matter), for it assumes that no parent is intrinsically “fit”, only unjudged or unanalyzed, and that all questions may be answered in their own good time.
I respond:
BB, you’re talking in the abstract here, which is OK when you’re theorizing at the teaparty. All parenthood is conditional due to the long arm of the state, but very real shit is coming down in AdoptionLaLaLand. Something very new has crept into the discourse that is larger than simple marginalization that you mentioned earlier: the downgrading of biology (and let’s face it, science) in the American psyche.
We see it in sealed records, baby dump laws, closed adoptions, the treatment of putative fathers. In a little broader sense: high tech repro, hinky birth certificates for the kids of gays and lesbians, the destruction of families through Draconian immigration laws, Real ID, the de-certification of citizenship via rejection of certain kinds of birth records. It’s simply a continuing pattern–the 18th-19th century reinvention of Americans starting with the Industrial Revolution, the break-up of communities, and urbanization. I won’t even get into the whole bloody simulacra of US life. I think it will hit tilting point soon, where biology with its messy connotations, will be demoted to low class phenomenon or novelty. We’ll have an outsourcing of biology. It’s already here through surrogacy and snowflakes and the like, but the playing field is growing. So, increasingly, adoption and non-reproductive family building trumps biology, no matter how good the biology and how bad the adoption et al.
The American “family” is defined by statute and it will be anything the state wants it to be or doesn’t want it to be. The state is shaped by its privilege holders in courts, legislatures, policy machines, and think tanks, and the more people are divorced from biology, the easier it is to hoodwink the public into buying The Privileged’s scam.
Adoption = privilege.
We see it in the Harrison case, with Harrison being exonerated by many for simply being an adoptive father. We are expected to “forgive and forget” due to the cultural status and iconography of adopters. I’ve seen this in much worse cases than the Harrison case, where at least (to me) the baby died of a stupid thoughtless accident.
Invariably, churches gather around adopters charged with abuse and death. They are fine people. It was an accident. He didn’t mean anything. He just lost his temper. It’s all about the redemptive role of adoption—adopting a child is like being born again. I’m speaking here of persona created by the media and the public, not anything most adoptive parents would do purposefully. Adopters and their adoptee(s) are almost like holy objects in some circles. This strikes me as something relatively new, and linked to the never-ending abortion/adoption myth. My adoptive parents did not consider themselves baby savers nor did anyone treat them like St. Mark’s thighbone.
As I wrote elsewhere, I’m not interested in Harrison serving a huge sentence, though I believe some jail time is appropriate. I think the Russians might have been satisfied with even a symbolic sentence or community services Anything, than what they got.
If this case were a stand alone, the Russian government would probably not have become so outraged and involved. But there is a 12 year history here for abuse, molestation, and murder with little justice for the kids who are victimized. Patrice Hagmann walked Laura Higginbotham had a brief stay in the slammer. Sadistic pricks like the Mattheys did 5-6 years. Masha Allen can’t get her hands on the money she was awarded in court.
Outside of Gary and Amy Thompson. the Merrymans, and Peggy Sue Hilt the punishment these “parents” received can be done standing on their heads. Monsters like the Lindorffs will be out in a couple years; the Mattheys already walk the streets. The Mattheys, btw, already had 4 bio kids when they adopted Viktor and his twin brothers. Brenda Matthey was a SAHM home schooler and Robert Matthey earned $25,000 a year as a mechanic. Who in their right minds passed them on for adoption of 3 institutionalized Russian kids? Well we know in part: Bethany Christian Services and the Adoption Alliance.
Dima was a Russian citizen under the protection of the US government. Remember, he wasn’t even finalized. At least 8 of the other deceased children were in the US for 6 months or less, making it unlikely their adoptions had been finalized, too. They all held dual citizenship until the age of 18. . Obviously, the Russian government cannot be relieved of all blame. It, after all, has permitted these people to adopt. But the fact is, all these people were vetted by supposed ethical and competent US adoption agencies and to some extent by the US government, too. The Russians, imo, have been very patient. If it were 15 American children adopted by Russians who had died in the Russian Federation at the hands of their forever families, all hell would be breaking loose.
I will add that Harrison verdict IS something to watch closely. Adoption is a soft foreign policy issue, which is something I need to write about, but hasn’t had the time to think about it much in exact terms.
We’ve seen the pressure agencies put on the State Department via their paps when the heat turns up. Keeping adoption open in Romania was an arm-twister (unsuccessful in the end) when that country was trying to get into NATO. As in, you won’t get in unless you send us your children. “Nothing official,” of course, but paps raised holy hell at State. More recently there was Vietnam with agencies getting their paps to demand “their” children. And then there’s NCFA and JCICS banging the drum at the White House and running off on foreign excursions to beg for product, all duded up in the American Dream.
BushCo has spent a lot of energy trying to re-heat the Cold War. There’s lot of US interference in the politics of numerous FSU countries. Georgia and Ukraine elections come to mind but there are lots of others. And let’s not forget BushCo’s hissy fit over the so-called invasion of Georgia, in which Georgia is the aggressor and attempting genocide in South Ossetia and other parts of the Trans Caucasuses. Then there’s oil, but that’s even too complicated to talk about. Mix that in with rising Russian nationalism and you’ve got a disaster brewing. This is all very serious stuff that MSM doesn’t much cover.
It’s a big quagmire, and the Harrison verdict, falls right into that mess as far as US-Russian relations are concerned. Nothing is going to happen this year, but I doubt the Obama administration intends to rock the boat. I mean, Obama told Rick Warren he’s like to see a PEPFAR type project for adoption.
For some, the Harrison case is just the way the “justice system works in the US, but to others it’s an abomination. Where adoption isn’t seen as an insure it most definitely is to the Russians and FSU countries that are feeding the US hunger for children. Anti-Americanism is on the rise, and the Harrison verdict is flaming it.
“BB, you’re talking in the abstract here, which is OK when you’re theorizing at the teaparty. All parenthood is conditional due to the long arm of the state, but very real shit is coming down in AdoptionLaLaLand.”
You know what the real shit is? I mentioned in a previous column that a child in a Russian orphanage is twice as likely to die than a kid raised by his family. In Texas a kid in foster care is four times likely to die. Adoptionland is a tiny subset of a larger discourse, and without a theoretical framework that places this in context, it’s easy to mistake the meaning of the equation adoption = privilege (with which I have no argument) and ascribe it special qualities it does not possess. Part of the privileged discourse of adoption is the assumption that adoption is special, different, and that is a very bad trap for us to get into.
Perhaps, in a moral sense, adoptive parents should be held to a higher standard than birth parents should be. From a legal standpoint, this is simply not possible. The equal protection clause of the Constitution says all people will be treated the same way.
Its a terrible tragedy what happened to this child. If Russia chooses to tighten foreign adoption laws than that is its own business.
However, the system acted correctly in this case. Mr. Harrison was charged with manslaughter and under Virginia law, he clearly was not guilty of that crime.
One of the big questions for me that nobody has responded to was why was Harrison charged only with involuntary manslaughter when there could have been a list of lesser included charges, or involuntary manslaughter all together?
“Mr. Harrison was charged with manslaughter and under Virginia law, he clearly was not guilty of that crime.”
How come you think he was *clearly* not guilty, Virginia law or no? I don’t think it’s *clear* at all.
While I understand that Miles Harrison must have been on some kind of autopilot, that doesn’t change the fact that he fell “grossly” below the standard of ordinarily expected care for an infant.
So why wouldn’t that qualify as “gross negligence”, resulting in a verdict of manslaughter?
It has for others.
“The equal protection clause of the Constitution says all people will be treated the same way.”
Like how?
“Penalties vary widely in child hot-car deaths”
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4188
/is_/ai_n19437827
“One of the big questions for me that nobody has responded to was why was Harrison charged only with involuntary manslaughter when there could have been a list of lesser included charges, or involuntary manslaughter all together?”
It’s possible the prosecutor saw no charge that would meet the burden of unreasonable doubt with a jury and a defendant with the resources to fight the charge tooth and nail.
I suppose my question is why Putin continues to allow the exportation of Russian children to the US. If Russia can suspend its participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty with no repercussions, a bunch of irate PAPs isn’t going to throw them into a cold sweat.
I’ve been looking around a little bit and there’s one similar case in VA where the father was found guilty, but given a suspended sentence. There’s probably more. I don’t have the expertise to sift though Virginia law and caselaw in an adequate manner, but I did find that Virgina’s involuntary manslaughter law is case law, not statute. I just haven’t had time to do anything with this yet.
As for Putin, I agree.
There’s a couple things though. With the fall of the old regime, easily accessible “social services” and services for women and children particularly went out the window. I don’t see that that has changed a whole lot since then. For instance, state-run polyclincs went away and thousands of doctors were thrown out of work. (I’m familiar with a psychiatrist who ended up an manicurist.)
Anyway, there is a lot of money stuffing the pockets of functionaries and orphanges. Dollars are a great dividend and keep the wolf at bay to some extent–not to mention just plain greed. I think if that bonus goes away the government knows they’ll have to spend money it doesn’t want to spend. Not that dollars are supporting the whole rotten system, but they help prop it up. And to really deal with the whole child welfare problem they’ll have to deal with widespread alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness, and mental illness. If the government won’t touch Afghan and Chechen veterans, they aren’t about to help orphans. Orphans probably need to band together and start the Orphan Mafia.