“Psychopath” or not, that’s a pretty terrible thing to do to a 7 year-old boy. I’m pretty hard-hearted, but I’m also a parent of a 7 year-old girl and a 5 year-old boy, which has made me more compassionate about stuff like this, I guess.
Based on the track record of your fellow Tennesseans and graduates, I think we will pass on handing you anything potentially dangerous. 
Yes, no pointy objects allowed!
I have yet to hear about any reports from outside sources(social workers, police, school etc.) concerning all the problems the grandmother supposedly had with this child.
It’s possible they aren’t allowed to disclose anything to the press due to privacy rights etc. But you’d think one of those agencies would be able to say “Yes, we have been to that residence.” Would that fall under public record?
That poor child. I can’t imagine what he could have been feeling on that long flight back to Russia, alone.
He probably hated them so much he hoped their house would burn down.
I’m amazed at the people who think this woman should be brought up on criminal charges. In any rational and compassionate universe, these unwanted kids would have been culled long before they grew up unloved and unwanted. I find it especially amusing that the Russians are acting so self-righteous about all this. What the hell is wrong with your country that you have so many of these damaged children in the first place, Russia? Is abortion legal and available in Russia? Birth control? The Chinese may have a lot of shady business going on with their orphans (including not actually being orphans), but as far as I know there isn’t a problem with them being psychologically damaged.
At what point is a person allowed to say “I must cede responsibility for this other human being before he/she ruins my life?” This girl may have been naive (and I agree, nobody in their 20s should be allowed to adopt a child unless the child is related), but any amount of care she provided to such a thoroughly cast-off child was a blessing.
Maybe because some of us think that parenting standards should aspire to higher than any amount of care? This is not a toy or a pet or an item you purchase. This is a child. Once you assume responsibility for a child you don’t do what she did.
If this were the woman’s biological child would you be okay with her putting him on a long flight with no one but strangers greeting him at the other end?
FYI, I am sending my own seven year old daughter on a three hour plane ride this summer supervised only by a flight attendant only. However she’s going to be greeted on the other end by her beloved grandparents (who she speaks to every week) who plan to spend three weeks spoiling her rotten with trips to Disneyland, homemade blueberry pancakes and days at the beach.
The Russians clearly failed this poor child. But this woman did him no favors either.
Of course I wouldn’t be fine with her treating her biological child this way. But she took a chance on adopting a child, presumably with good intentions, only to find out that she was lied to and the child was psychologically damaged, and you think she should be doomed to having this millstone around her neck because of “parenting standards?” Easy for you to say.
MOIDALIZE–I agree that if she honestly couldn’t care for the child that perhaps it was best not to continue to parent him. But the way she went about it–just putting him on a plane and arranging for someone to meet him over the Internet–was wrong. I don’t disagree with someone’s right to give away a cat or a dog. Or even have it put down if the animal cannot be rehomed or cared for. But there’s a difference in letting your dog out of a car and driving off and giving it to another family or even having it put down in a humane fashion.
How does your **brilliant **analysis change if this is a biological child with severe mental/emotional/developmental disabilities?
Dump Mongo on the the next flight to Shangri-la and pretend nothing happened? You’d be charged with a crime immediately.
Kill him?
You’d be charged with a crime immediately.
Neglect him and ignore him?
You’d be charged with a crime immediately.
Do everything humanely possible to help the child that you are responsible for? Possibly institutionalize him if you can’t do it yourself?
Ding ding ding. We have a winner.
Same thing goes if you adopt a child - why do you think it should be any different?
edit - I see you think that because an adopting agency may have committed fraud/concealment, that entitles said adoptive parent to dispense with the child. Do you not see how that may not be the best policy? Perhaps charging the adopting parent(s) with some degree of due dilligence may be better?
If you adopted a dog that turned out to have some condition that made it constantly vomit and snap at people, you might decide to care for it anyway, and you’d be a saint, but I think many would have it put down. We can’t do that with human beings, but what’s the alternative? Are we going to allow a normal, productive person to be dragged down with them?
In the article needscoffee linked, that couple got screwed bad, to the extent that the wife had to quit her job and live in fear of those kids, and the state was complicit. Doesn’t the mess made of their lives outweigh any benefit to providing care to such damaged children? Did society truly benefit from their sacrifice?
Barring the availability of institutionalization/government help or help from your social/family safety net… yes.
It’s part of the risks of choosing to have or adopt a child.
What are you going to do if a perfectly normal baby winds up having a horrific accident at age 10 which renders them mentally retarded, emotionally insane, or incapable of feeding/bathing/tending to him/herself? Euthanize it? Put it on a plane to Guantanamo?
I’m not saying you’re a bad person for putting the dog down. I’m saying that if your idea of putting the dog down is to let it out on the highway or starve it to death, that would be wrong. Similarly, not taking care of a kid by responsibly turning it over to the proper authorities is one thing but putting the child on a plane and arranging for a random guy over the Internet to meet him is another.
Any chance her only opportunity to adopt was through some shady agency? Any chance, when you go through a shady agency, the only child they can get access to are the ones that are otherwise unadoptable due to psychological damage?
If she’d attempted to return the child herself, to Russia, I expect she’d be cooling her heels in a Russian jail right now. Same for the anyone she sent, I suspect. I think she consulted the lawyer to avoid being prosecuted in any way, and, it would appear, successfully.
I have no doubt that, from time to time, a child gets adopted that is well and truly beyond anyone’s ability to help or reach. I totally empathize with anyone in such a situation.
I’m not certain, if she’s had him 6 months, and he’s only 7 yrs old, that anyone can say yet whether this child can be helped. Doesn’t seem like much of an investment to write someone off, especially one so young. I’d feel a lot better if I knew someone, other than the family, had diagnosed this child as being severely mentally ill.
Suppose the Russian’s are right, this kid’s difficult and stubborn but not damaged in any other way. And that these two just found it too difficult to manage two orphans at once, one a really challenging, willful child. They’d have to say something, if they want to dump him. He ‘threatened us, had a hit list, tried to light a fire’, all seem to be easy accusations to make. to win sympathy, yet have to produce no real evidence.
I have to believe there is more to this story. I feel sorry for all of them at this point.
Every single time you give birth you take the chance the child won’t be perfect. I got pregnant knowing I was taking that chance. Good people learn to live with it. Not so good people do what she did.
Oh and I think it’s disgusting to refer to a seven year old as a millstone around someone’s neck.
If you view kids this way then don’t get pregnant or adopt.
This is not a dog. This is a seven year old child. I have one in my house sitting down next to me right now playing with my hair and reciting her times tables.
To compare a child – any child – to an animal is well . . . I don’t have the words.
She made a choice to be a parent. If you can’t accept the responsibility involved in such a choice you shouldn’t make it at all.
Of course, all the “poor, lied-to family” speculation is only speculation. I have yet to see any info from outside the family that any of the claims are true, and there is still the small problem of the adopted children never being registered for school, and grandmama sending him off alone to another country with a bag of sweets and no spending money to meet a stranger.
So’s the idea that he was a psychopath, at least if his adoptive mother did not have him evaluated by a mental health professional of some sort. From the article in the OP, it sounds like she talked to psychologists, but didn’t take him to see one. I doubt a decent psychologist, psychiatrist, or therapist would diagnose someone as psychopathic (or anything else) without seeing the person first.
For that matter, it doesn’t smell right that she didn’t take him to a therapist or psychiatrist or enroll him in school.
To clarify my previous posts, which also made the animal comparison, I want to say that I agree. I don’t mean that I think that it’s OK to give up a child…just that if you honestly can’t care for it to the point where you’re going to abuse/neglect the child, or if the child is as destructive as kids mentioned in other posts (threatening to hurt/kill you, other members of the family), then you have to do what you have to do. But you still have to be responsible about it. I mean, we do have safe haven laws for young infants up to a certain age. I don’t think I could judge a parent who drops their kid off. You have to do what you have to do, but there’s a difference between giving your child up in a safe manner so that the proper professionals can care for it and just abdicating your responsibility the way this mother did. I mean…it’s an agonizing decision. It’s not like you can just decide, I’m done now.