A court in the state of Tennessee obliged a U.S. woman, who sent her adopted son back to Russia, to pay a financial compensation of some $150,000 in damages, child support, and legal fees, local NewsChannel5 television reported.
Torry Hansen was living in Tennessee in April 2010, when she put Artyom Savelyev, then 7, on a flight to his native Russia unaccompanied, with a note saying she did not want him as he was “psychotic.” She had taken the boy from a Russian orphanage in 2009.
Hansen, who now resides in the state of California, was sued in March for unpaid child support by her adoption agency, World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP).
A judge in Tennessee ordered “Hansen to pay her adopted son $58,000, the adoption agency $29,000 and attorney fees of nearly $63,000 as well as $1,000 a month in child support,” NewsChannel5 said.
Russian lawmakers repeatedly expressed discontent with what they called “soft punishments” for adoptive parents in the U.S. abusing their adopted Russian children. In February, a Pennsylvania court sentenced Theresa McNulty, who brutally abused her adopted Russian daughter, six-year-old Dasha, to just 23 months in jail the possibility of parole in eight-months’ time.
Children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov talks about the adopted Russian boy who came back alone from the U.S.
In another abuse case, a court in Pennsylvania sentenced Michael and Nanette Craver to 16 months in jail last November after they were found guilty of the involuntarily manslaughter of their adopted Russian son Ivan who was found dead with over 80 injuries on his body.
Russia is one of the largest sources of foreign adoptions for U.S. families. At present, about 400 Russian children are living in adoptive families in the U.S.