US family send adopted boy back to Russia alone

Russia's Foreign Minister yesterday urged that child adoptions to the US are frozen after an American woman put an eight-year-old Russian boy she had adopted on a one-way flight back to Moscow unaccompanied.

Artyom Savelyev, who carried the adoptive name Justin Hansen, got off a flight from Washington on Thursday at a Moscow airport, the Kremlin children's rights office said yesterday.

The office said he was carrying a letter from his adoptive parent, Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tennessee, saying she was returning him due to severe psychological problems.

"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said, according to Russian officials.

The US ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was "deeply shocked by the news" and "very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted".

Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov was quoted by Russian news agencies as saying the ministry would recommend the US and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.

"We have taken the decision... to suggest a freeze on any adoptions to American families until Russia and the US sign an international agreement" on the conditions for adoptions and the obligations of host families, Mr Lavrov said, adding that the US had refused to negotiate such an accord in the past but "the recent event was the last straw".

The US grandmother of the adopted boy said the child was violent and angry with his mother in America.

Speaking from her home in Shelbyville, Nancy Hansen said her family paid a man $200 to pick the boy up at the airport and take him to the Russian education and science ministry. She said the boy was sent back to the ministry because the family thought officials there could take care of him.