WASHINGTON, March 1 (RIA Novosti) - An American woman pleaded guilty of murdering her adopted two-and-a-half year-old Russian daughter in court Wednesday.
At a court session in Manassas, Virginia, Peggy Sue Hilt, who was facing a charge of second-degree murder, confessed to having killed Nina Hilt.
The child, originally named Viktoria Bazhenova, had lived in an orphanage in the Siberian city of Irkutsk before the adoption.
Hilt, 33, now faces a prison term of 5-40 years. The court will announce the verdict on May 25.
On July 2, 2005, Hilt was with Nina, visiting her friends in Manassas where she had arrived from North Carolina. She called an ambulance and said the child had stopped breathing. The autopsy showed that the girl had died of heavy blows to the stomach. Hilt then admitted having flown into a rage against the child.
According to the case materials, Hilt first shook the baby and then threw her to the floor and started beating her in the stomach. She then picked the girl up and continued the beating.
Hilt was president at a computer firm, Hiltech, owned by her husband Christopher, who, police said was not involved in the murder.
Medical examinations showed that Hilt was perfectly sane, including during the lethal beating.
Olga Savinova, the head of the local adoption center, said the Hilts had adopted the girl from Irkutsk's Orphanage No.1 in January 2002 when she was 15 months old. The couple was described positively in the adoption papers, and had already adopted a girl from Ukraine.
Savinova said the couple had sent reports with photographs, in which the girl looked well, 6 months and 12 months following the adoption.
The Hilt incident is the latest in a string of tragic occurrences involving Russian children adopted by foreigners. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, 12 Russian children with foreign foster parents have died from abuse since 1991, with 11 of these cases being registered in the United States.
On May 4, U.S. citizen Irma Pavlis was found guilty of manslaughter of a child, adopted in Russia, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. Following this, Russian prosecutors cited numerous law infringements by foreign citizens involving adoption.
The U.S. does not have a system of oversight bodies for international adoptions either on the federal or state level. Therefore, it is left to Russian consulates, private adoption agencies, and to a certain extent the U.S. State Department, to monitor the living conditions and upbringing of adopted children from Russia.
"One of the major problems for us is that under U.S. legislation on adoption passed in 2000, children adopted abroad become U.S. citizens immediately after crossing the U.S. border on the way to their foster homes," Alexander Demkin, Russia's vice consul in New York, said. "We consider them to be Russian citizens until they reach 18, although when we make inquiries with their foster parents we often hear the answer, 'Talk to our lawyer, please. Our child is an American citizen'."
"Russia allows independent adoption, which gives foster parents the right to adopt children on their own. Sometimes in these cases the necessary medical examination, including a psychological evaluation of potential foster parents, are not conducted," Galina Tseikin, a doctor with the Bridge of Hope adoption agency said. "Only two out of 13 adopted Russian children, who died in the last 15 years in different circumstances, had been adopted through special agencies, whereas the rest of the children were adopted independently."
