US woman to pay for sending back adoptee
NASHVILLE: An American woman who adopted a Russian boy and later sent him back to Moscow on a oneway flight has been ordered to pay US$150,000 (RM469,905) and produce an additional US$1,000 (RM3,132) a month in child support.
On Thursday, a judge in Tennessee said Torry Hansen must begin making the child support payments in June and continue to pay until the boy, who is now nine years old, turns 18.
Circuit Court Judge Lee Russell said the US$150,000 (RM469,905) that Hansen must pay includes damages for breach of contract, legal fees and support for the boy.
Hansen sent Artyom Saveliev back to Russia in April 2010, saying that the child was disturbed, violent and she didn’t want him anymore.
The incident created an international uproar and prompted Russia to temporarily put a moratorium on its adoption programme with the United States.
Afterward, the World Association for Children and Parents, the agency that helped Hansen adopt the child, filed a lawsuit seeking child support.
Hansen has since moved to California and has failed to show up at any of the hearings.
She had hired three separate Tennessee lawyers to represent her but the last one had been granted permission to leave the case, said Larry Crain, an attorney who represents the adoption agency.
Hansen filed a lawsuit last month in the superior court in shasta county, California, against the representatives of a Russian orphanage saying that the Russian Federation Supreme Court annulled the adoption.
Hansen wants the California court to recognise the Russian decision. — AP