Adoptive Mom Here Searches for Birth Mother in Ethiopia

News of the seven-year-old Russian boy, Artyom [Justin] Hansen returned via one-way ticket back to Russia by her American adoptive mother, Torry Ann Hansen, and her mother, Nancy Hansen, has been filling the news hole on adoption lately. I refrained from talking about it because I did not feel like slamming the Hansen women, or adoptions from Russia, or discussing alcohol-fetal syndrome, which may be at play here. A letter in today's New York Times (4/14/10), however, points out what's been on my mind:

...the dirty little secret in New York State is that the placement of a child in foster care or an expensive residential treatment center after adoption (either domestic or international) is a fairly common occurrence.

While most children who are adopted do very well, some who have endured abuse or neglect behave in very challenging ways that bring their adoptive parents to their breaking point.

The tragedy is that good services and support can keep families together. But, unfortunately, New York State continues to hide its head in the sand while these families fall apart. And its taxpayers carry the far more expensive burden of government “parenting” of these children.
Sarah Gerstenzang
The writer is a foster and adoptive parent and the executive director of the New York State Citizens’ Coalition for Children.

But instead of focusing on the little Artyom, once called Justin here in America where he is a citizen, by the way, I have a good adoption story to report. And it's about one of the troubled hotspots in adoption, Ethiopia. Through FaceBook, a women contacted me about the queasy feelings she has about the little girl she and her husband adopted from Ethiopia. She wrote: 

"I am trying to locate information on reuniting our adopted Ethiopian child with her birth family. We have located the family and my oldest daughter is traveling there tomorrow on a mission trip and will be meeting with them. I don't know at this point if we will help her to return, a lot is based on the meeting and whether or not her birth family was deceived in this whole situation.

"We have had her here a little over a year, she is 6, probably more like 8 or 9, and she is a precious child. She has not given us any problems, she has been very brave with what she has gone through. But, she loves her birth family and desires to be with them. From what she tells me, her life was pretty good and she was perfectly happy. I suspect that her family was maybe lied to about what was really happening.

"We will only return her if her birth family has deep regret and was deceived. If we do return her, we will continue to support her and her family. But, I didn't know how this process would work, or even if it would. I have not contacted our agency yet because I don't have a high trust level with them, especially on the ET (Ethiopian) end and I am waiting to see how the birth parents feel. We should know in a week which way to start going with this. The easiest thing for us would be to just keep her here, but in our hearts, we feel we have to do everything we can to reunite her. She feels like she has been abducted because nobody told her what was happening. We set out to give an orphan a family and home and was given a child who has two healthy parents whom I think love her very much, but this meeting will tell. Anyway, this is basically why I am trying to connect with you. All in all, we want what is best for the child and this is what we are seeking. Blessings!

Wow, what a story, I thought, and what a good woman and good family. I couldn't wait to hear what her daughter learned in Ethiopia. 
To be continued....