Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has blasted a U.S. couple who sent a 7-year-old adoptive boy back to Russia claiming he was "psychopathic."
The boy, Artyom Savelyev, adopted in September and renamed Justin, flew in to Moscow on April 8 alone after being accompanied to the plane in the United States by his adoptive grandmother. He brought a note in which his adoptive mother said she will not take care of him any longer because he is "mentally unstable."
"It is a monstrous deed on the part of his adoptive parents, to take the kid and virtually throw him out with the airplane in the opposite direction... [It] is not only immoral but also against the law," Medvedev told ABC News.
The story has been widely covered by news media and caused fury in many people who pitied the boy. The activities of the U.S. adoption agency World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP) that assisted in the U.S. couple's adoption of Savelyev have been suspended in Russia.
"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," 33-year-old adoptive mother, Torry Hansen of Shelbyville, Tennessee, said in the note the boy brought to Russia.
"I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability," she added.
The Russian foreign minister said Friday that Russia could freeze child adoptions by U.S. citizens until the countries sign an intergovernmental agreement on adoptions.
Sergei Lavrov told Rossiya 24 news channel that the agreement should include the conditions under which the Russian authorities can allow adoptions and the obligations of the adoptive parents.
Medvedev also told ABC News that Artyom "fell into a very bad family" and added that he was alarmed by the negative tendency regarding American couples adopting Russian children.
The issue has become controversial in Russia in recent years, following the deaths of two children in separate incidents in the U.S. state of Virginia.
In 2006, Peggy Sue Hilt was sentenced to 25 years in prison for beating to death a 2-year-old girl from Siberia she had adopted.
Two years later, a 21-month-old boy died of heatstroke after his adoptive father left him in his car for nine hours in the hot sun.
Miles Harrison, 49, was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter of Chase after a court accepted that he had forgotten the boy, born Dmitry Yakovlev, was in the car and driven to his office without dropping his son at daycare.
U.S. Ambassador to Russia John Beyrle denounced the incident with the returned boy. He said he was "deeply shocked " and "very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted."
The Investigative Committee of Russia's Prosecutor General Office said Friday it would carry out a thorough investigation of Savelyev's adoption by the U.S. parents.
Artyom's biological mother was deprived of parental rights on August 1, 2008. The boy, who has no other relatives, was sent to an orphanage in Partizansk, in the Russian Far East, in September 2008.
Artyom is currently staying at a Moscow clinic. A decision on his future is to be taken within a week. Russia's ombudsman for children's rights Pavel Astakhov told RIA Novosti that a Russian family wants to adopt the child.
MOSCOW, April 10 (RIA Novosti)
