How FAS/FAE Can Be Used Against You?

An Adoptive Parent Story

  If you ever want to know about FAE/FAS, then you might want to talk to someone like me. I used European Adoption Consultants, Inc,or EACI, an international adoption agency for my first Russian adoption.  I was not approved for my second adoption three years later because of my honesty and work to help the child I adopted.  It is my perception that the information I gave in my post placement reports to EACI on the medical information for my child, the very child I adopted through EACI, was used against me to prevent me from adopting again.  He was diagnosed at three with fetal alcohol effects.

   I have gotten my son the very best medical attention that is available in the United States, and HE WAS NOT LABELED A SPECIAL NEEDS BABY!  But within a year he required several specialists to help him attach and work toward resolving severe PTSD.  In addition to Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE), he has a plethora of other diagnosis like Reactive Attachment Disorder, ADHD, Conduct Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, Sensory Integration Disorder and “Institutional Autism” (term coined by Dr. Ronald Federici in Help for the Hopeless Child: A Guide for Families.) None of these diagnosis are unknown to international adopters.  I was warned of the possibility of any one or all of it, but I wasn’t ever told to beware that my adoption agency would have privy to this information and not tell me.  I would have never guessed it would happen to me.  But I’m not the only one. 

   My son was adopted at almost 2 years old in a village a night’s ride by train east of Moscow.  According to the medical reports I was given in the referral, the international adoption doctor said he was a medium risk adoption case.  They needed more information, and this, of course, is ridiculous to ask for.  I was told flat out, “no,” by EACI.  They gave me 72 hours to decide else lose the referral. The IA doc said they, an internationally re-known adoption and infectious disease clinic, never give a low risk rating due to the very fact that the children they analyze were institutionalized to begin with.  According to the medical information I was given as fact, my child was a medium risk adoption. 

    I only bring all of this history into the equation because EACI indicated to me in my one conversation with the social worker, upon the application to adopt another child,  that parenting another child would be too difficult for me due to my son’s condition.  Why would parenting another child be difficult for me?  Let me tell you why.  My son turned out to be a very special needs adoption.   EACI will not acknowledge that the last two pages of his medical reports from the orphanage were never translated for me.  I didn’t know the truth. 

   My son’s conditions were revealed to EACI by me in my last two post placement reports to the same EACI social worker who had deemed me wonderful for my first adoption and was now questioning rather harshly my fundamental ability to parent again.   I reported that finally one of the psychologists who treated my son, Dr. Ronald Federici, who specializes in the treatment of post institutionalized children, read the original medical reports in Russian during a consultation and had translated them to me himself.  My child had been very ill since birth.  It was all right there in black and white, but in a language I could not read.  Then, without accusation, I reported these new findings in the post placement reports for EACI to send to the Ministry of Education in Russia on my behalf in compliance with the agreement I made to send reports on my son at scheduled intervals until he had been home for three years.  I stated that I now realized why my son had needed so much help medically and therapeutically.  I assumed Russia might want to know too, that these things were happening.  I now doubt now that those sentences ever actually went to Russia.

   Here’s a good question:  Has EACI been sued for untranslated medicals by their clients before me?

   Yes.  Guess who the key expert witness was in every case?  Dr. Ronald Federici.
   I did not know this until after he read me the reports.  But I didn’t sue EACI.  So why deny me services for adoption number two?  One can only draw the conclusions that EACI didn’t want to deal with me in fear of being sued because I was associated with Dr. Federici. AND, that he was the one who had revealed to me that my medicals were not completely translated.
  “Why,” you may ask would I ever go back to an agency that would do such a thing in the first place?  There are several reasons, let me explain the two sides of this coin.  First off, I was given the opportunity to sue for damages against EACI.  I consulted with my family and an attorney, and made the decision I did not want their money.  It would never change the son I was blessed with-ever. Second, despite what the medicals revealed, I felt I was somewhat to blame for not getting a Russian doctor to see my son in the orphanage.  I was not allowed to.  The region wouldn’t even consider it.  Last, but very importantly, I believed they could get me a referral quicker than others-like I’ve said, its a business.  It would be up to me to be scrupulous over the medicals this time.  After all, getting the referrals is the hardest part, especially since I’d hoped for a girl this time, and they are pretty hard to come by in Russia in less than 18 months.

   My son’s referral and completed adoption happened within nine months. EACI has the reputation of being very well connected in Russia.  They are one of the most expensive agencies because you don’t have to do much thinking over there.  They take care of everything, setting it all up and making it happen.  I experienced this first hand with my son’s adoption. I saw so many families with EACI while I was traveling.  At that time, EACI was bringing home the highest number of children that I have ever found…  All that paperwork has to be updated regularly, and especially at the one year mark.  The immigration and visa paperwork to bring the child home is good for 18 months, a home study is worth one year, three months on complete medical profiles, police clearances, employee letters.  All the papers that compile an international dossier to adopt is time limited.  And the sheer waiting is hard, too. 
    Do I agree that what happened on their end was wrong?  Well, again, its complicated.  I know I misjudged them.  I don’t know why or exactly how it all happened because it’s hard to fathom that I was misled purposefully by so many people.  I know that if you don’t ask, the Russians don’t tell.  I thought I asked all the possible questions. I held on to every piece of paper I was given at the orphanage and from my translators.  All paperwork, legally, is to be translated from Russian to English before you leave the country with the child.  I paid and did everything on my end of the adoption in Russia by the book. The child was sick with bronchitis when I left the orphanage with him, and the ten day medical waiver was even given by the judge to get him back to US for medical treatment immediately.   Did the orphanage, courts, and agency hide his medical records thinking I would not adopt a child born with a medical that told me he was born in withdrawal from opiates and alcohol?  The paperwork was there.  It just wasn’t translated.  It was never mentioned.  I was told “no” when I asked this question directly to the Russian medical doctor at the orphanage.  Yet it was his official medical records from the hospital that the orphanage gave to me for the translators to transcribe into English-as we were leaving the orphanage on the last day of trip 2.  This was supposed to be done in Moscow by EACI staff while I was waiting for the passport.  They had three days.  Everything else was translated.  Why not the last two pages?
   I was never given any information that indicated that any orphanage staff or doctors had any records indicating he’d been exposed to alcohol or drugs, and I directly asked on trip one when I met him due to the high occurrence of fetal alcohol effects.  It wasn’t brought up in court at all because I had no reason to ask since I’d been verbally consulted on his medical condition by the orphanage doctor, social worker and facilitator.  Hard facial features of prenatal drinking, or FAE/FAS don’t show on babies like him.  So much depends on when the abuse takes place during the pregnancy as to how much it will show up externally and how effected the child’s brain will be.  To look at my son from a purely physical point of view, he is a very beautiful child with sky blue eyes and fair skin. The damage to his brain is all covered up, just like the truth about his history was. 

  The flip side of the coin, after all the debate in my head and heart, as to whether or not EACI was responsible is that, yes, they are responsible to make sure that the medicals and all information is translated into English for an American adoption by their staff.  I also know that Margaret Cole, owner of EACI, adopted her daughter in Russia independently back before Russia was agency driven.  I know she’s been in the orphanages and seen the haunting and dismal environment and future of these children. She has an entire staff in an expensive Russian hotel where I was required to stay.  I KNOW she can pat herself on the back when she goes to bed at night for creating the opportunity of a lifetime for a real family for so many Russian orphans and for us too-the adopters.  I give her my utmost respect for that.  And because of that I did not sue EACI or throw blame.  This is the first and only article I’ve ever written revealing the truth. 

    I believe that what has happened has happened with God’s rules, not man’s.   Not to say I’m a religious fanatic of any kind, but my life and my son’s life are not a lie.  Our destiny was mixed.  We’ve learned to love each other.  I wish I’d known sooner so he could have been helped sooner and not suffered so much misunderstanding and frustration.  The earlier the right diagnoses the better the prognosis.  I feel lucky to have sought help while he was still very young.  But the damage is irreversible.  It’s a permanent hangover for those with FAS and FAE.
   Being turned down by EACI to adopt another child once my own child was stable and medicated properly, all my post placements were done completely and on time, and our family was healthy and thriving really made me rethink this whole mis-information situation.  I was turned down,or denied as a client, for being honest in my post placement reports.  This is how EACI tracked our family.  I was turned down for using a doctor that had helped EACI to be sued many times, at last count, I believe EACI had paid damages to at least eight families for the same infraction at a million per family.  Adoption Agencies are a business, and to turn away clients, especially repeat clients, during an epic economy downfall made me start to pay attention.  I have the money burning a hole in my pocket, and all I want is to parent another child who is in an orphanage and they are turning people away?  That just didn’t sound quite right.  So why?  They would not answer that question which made my suspicions all the more realistic.

   EACI would not return my calls or emails all of a sudden.  While the first time around they held my hand through the whole process (except the medical translations in Russia) they were now acting as if I had the plague.  Before they realized who I was, I had already spoken with their social worker whom I had worked with on my first adoption.  I gave the same answers as the first time around except when I finally got a hold of her weeks later after not hearing back from them she said they were worried about my son.  I answered all her questions.  She said she’d call me back after she spoke to the “committee.”  I called repeatedly after waiting a month saying that I just need an answer as to whether or not I was accepted and could proceed since my application and application fee was received. 

    EACI simply refused to talk to me.   They took my application fee and kept it.  They did not bother, to this day, nearly a year later, to speak to me at all.  I asked for them to confirm that they were denying my application so that I could move on to another agency.  I had no intention of not adopting again.  I never wanted just one child.  I am completely qualified to adopt.  Some might even say that my family has given undivided devotion, attention and thousands upon thousands of dollars in medical expenses to our child.  I have invested in the culture.  We have made sure he got the help he needed because we could and because we love him.  I waited to adopt again until I was positive he was capable of the transition to having a sibling, and a sibling would be a welcome addition to our family.  I’ve sought numerous professionals for him that do not even take insurance to address all these issues, such as attachment therapy, PTSD therapy, play therapy, occupational therapy, applied behavioral analysis and hippo therapy, cognitive, psych and social evaluations to determine what he needs and make sure he gets it.  One month his medication alone was a thousand dollars. This is not to even mention the scarring in his lungs from early untreated pneumonia, chronic bronchitis and asthma that has added and maybe caused upper respiratory disease. 

    I knew he was having problems breathing in the orphanage on trips one and two, but the orphanage doctor said he just needed antibiotics, and they didn’t want to have to admit him into the village hospital.  Putting him back into the hospital is an arduous process for orphans with no financial compensation. It’s also hard on the children.  Try to imagine your baby with no loved one at all to look after him in a hospital and tuck him in, or rub away his tears of fear.
   What bothered me the most about EACI’s behavior in handling my case was how humiliated I felt by the treatment of EACI in not speaking to me.  Not that EACI’s opinion of me matters the least, but that I had advocated for them to literally dozens of families.  I gave out their fliers, attended their state picnics, and took phone calls from pre-adopters who were calling for references on EACI.  It wasn’t always easy making time for all that, but I thought I was helping a great agency to help more families.  I have half a dozen friends who have adopted using this agency.  I don’t know all their personal information on their children.  Nor have I advertised all of my son’s medical history in our local circles.  I was a firm believer that they were the best at what they do.  I can remember saying, “They can get those kids out of there.” 

   As a volunteer for our local Families for Russian and Ukrainian Adoptions, or FRUA, group for the last few years, I don’t mention EACI anymore unless I’m asked directly, but I tell people to really scrutinize their medicals and translations.  EACI is highly represented in international adoption circles because they seem to “get those kids out of there.”  But quantity doesn’t equal quality of service.  Now I emphasize to people that ask to find a professional in Moscow or the region who can be a third party to make sure your medical paperwork is accurate. 

    My son’s orphanage wouldn’t allow for me to bring in a doctor of my choice to check out my son.  After all, the director was a former heart surgeon.  Never-mind that he was now running an orphanage for babies, had a flask in one hand one night when I left visitation and a cigarette in the other–inside the children’s quarters.  The Russians just wouldn’t allow it-so they told me in the orphanage and at EACI. I never thought to hire a second translator to verify their translations accuracy.  That’s what I was paying the big bucks for EACI to do.  It’s pretty difficult to to know to look up local translators in a Russian village when you don’t know you need one and don’t even speak their language, or when you are jet lagged and emotionally cooked from meeting your future child for the first time or leaving his native land for the last.  In my case I had to leave Russia after meeting and visiting with my new son the first time after three short visits and was not invited back to attend court until four months had passed.  I had no contact.  Yet I had to decide on the acceptance of the referral based on that short amount of time and basic gut instinct.  It’s a guessing-game when they don’t tell you everything.
    There was actually no one tending to the details of checking over the paperwork in to make sure it was done legally in Russia before I left the final time.  EACI’s staff were processing a few families through Moscow, and were short-handed and rushed.  I was not given the final exit packet with the medicals and court information translated until I walked out the door to go to the American Embassy in Moscow, and then board a plane with my son.  The medical papers I got were all stapled together as a packet with the translations following each page.  The last two pages were duplicates of other pages, not translations.  They were in the same format, and no one who does not read Russian could tell this.  I saw an IA doctor upon return to the USA and showed her all the paperwork.  She had done my IA evaluation before I accepted the referral.  The mistake wasn’t caught.

  The medicals left untranslated stated that my son had been born prematurely.  They called him a preemie.  I was not told about these birth records that the Russians did, indeed, have.  He was born in “abstinence syndrome,” according to the paperwork.  He went through withdrawal from opiates and alcohol according to his and the birth mother’s blood work.  He was not actually moved to the orphanage until he was three months old.  His condition was unstable. He may have been on life-support and respirators but the Russian handwriting was so light and un-readable that this portion was not possible to translate.

   At three years old I had two independent doctors do evaluations on my son to try to figure out what was wrong.  They both came back with the exact same diagnoses.  FAE topped the list on both accounts.  At four he was given all the formal psych, cognitive, ability, social, and speech evaluations by Dr. Federici whom I read about originally from FRUA materials.  My son and I flew to Virginia for the two day appointment.  I knew Dr. Federici specialized in the most complex cases of post institutionalized children and was an adoptive father himself.  The untranslated Russian medical records clearly state that my son had been hospitalized repeatedly for pneumonia during his first year of life, and moved back and forth from the orphanage three times.  The medicals said he had low mental ability and was a sickly child from birth.  This was all a new revelation for me.
   The hospitalizations are especially disheartening to me when I think about my son because upon entering or returning to the orphanage a child is placed not in the baby room when arriving from the hospital, but in the “sick room, or holding room” for 14 days to ensure that they don’t contaminate the other babies.  So my son was moved from staff in the hospital to orphanage staff in the sick room to caregivers in the baby room repeatedly during his first 13 months of life.  I met him at 13 months.  Is it any wonder he was feral and could not attach or had severe PTSD? His unusual fears of doctors and clinics were completely founded when he came home. How alone he must have felt.  Unattached is what they call it.  He trusted nothing and no one, and he was just an innocent baby.

   A  native Russian-American doctor translated the medicals for me in writing after Dr. Federici read them to me orally.  He gave me the equivalent US medical term-a crack baby.  Brain damage, I was told.  A doctor who had been in my son’s orphanage and worked in the region I adopted from said he had no doubt that my son was cribbed, tied, and propped up to nurse a bottle from his side because these were known practices.  Then he described seeing the neglect that was/is absolutely unbelievable.  I knew because I had seen it too.  Only I didn’t know it was going to haunt me rest of my life. 

    It is heart wrenching to imagine any baby in these conditions, then I remember my vulnerable little boy covered with bug bites all over his body because they have no screens on the windows to fight the mosquitoes, or maybe it was scabies.  The poverty was apparent when I was there in 2006-lots of painted rust. Malnutrition galore caused Rickets, or the bowing of the legs outward.  The eyes of the caretakers, young and old, were hardened.  They looked overworked and underpaid, and I was told they were often orphans themselves who’d been raised in the system.  But I dare not give too many monetary tips for fear of being taken advantage of or accused of bribery.  The system is so messed up.

   The orphanage director asked me and two other families for a new suit of clothes on the day I was to take my son home from the orphanage.  A family after me said he asked them for a car.  I was afraid to say yes and afraid to say no.  I was required to give hundreds of dollars on both trips for medications for the children, which is the very least I could do.  I went to the pharmacy with the nurse, and we bought those things. I worried that if I left money as donations the staff or higher-ups would keep them for themselves.  The urgency of desperation was a pervasive vibe. 
   The babies in the newborn room didn’t cry-it was eerily silent in there.  This I saw with my own eyes and heard it with my own ears.  When I asked about it I was told that they don’t cry because they already know no one will come.  The birth mothers who leave them and expect to come back someday are encouraged not to visit and hold their babies because it only causes more distress when they leave and the babies cry.  The mindset of the orphanages is that they feel this is cruel for the babies! My son rocked himself violently for over two years as a result of this type of neglect.  His brilliant little human mind figured out a way to knock himself out by rocking his head hard side to side.  Self-stimulation was about all he got.  I cried the first night alone with him in the Moscow hotel when I saw him rocking in the crib before bedtime.  I had only read about the severe cases of neglect where the children rock and/or head-bang.  Only medication has stopped the rocking.  When he is stressed he still rocks back and forth, back and forth.  It’s highly unconscious and hard to witness.
   The insider information I was told while in-country on trip two from my translator (not to be confused with the translators who do official translations of your documents) who had worked with many adoption agencies over the years was a blessing.  I learned from another family the following year that he was fired from working with EACI due to problems with his work shortly after I left Russia. He has refused to answer any emails from me even though he gave me the information to contact him in case I wanted to come back to visit with my son in the future. Although I had that same man translate everything said to me and hire drivers for me on both my trips, and I did not see any mistakes.  He carried my son in three feet of snow about a fourth of a mile from the orphanage door to our car when we left for the last time because the stray dogs were following us.  Russia has no Humane Society.  He had known my son for a year while he translated for families from America, Germany and Italy who came to adopt.  He had been to court with literally dozens of adoptive families.  He was a father, had a college degree and was on the staff of the local university.  He was careful and somewhat guarded with some of my prying questions because he acted afraid to reveal too much.  Although some of this discrete attitude apparently is just the nature of the Russian suspicions of Americans or any foreigners that is left over from the former Soviet Union and Communism, I had to really dig for basic information any subjects of religion or politics.  The facilitator had to be drunk on our final visit to finally grant us a tour of the children’s bedrooms and daily facilities.
   Would I have accepted the referral of my son, a profoundly special needs child, if I’d been given the facts?  Sadly, I’m afraid it would have scared me away.  You see, I am a single mother.  I am a teacher and a counselor by trade.  I’m not rich.  I’ve worked with  FAE/FAS, conduct disorder, mood disordered, and otherwise traumatized children.  They often disrupt out of adoptions and need residential treatment.  I wouldn’t have believed that I could love a child that was all messed up or raise him or afford the medical bills. 

    I wouldn’t have let myself look back at that referral picture very much because it would break my heart for that “boy.”  “Poor boy, someone else who is equipped to handle that type of disability him will surely take him.”  I would said that to comfort myself.  I know because those were my exact thoughts at the pictures of my first referral from my first agency that lost their accreditation and never got it back.  “They couldn’t have completed that adoption anyway,” I say to myself. That was when I switched to EACI.  It hurts too much to look and wonder if that child ever got adopted.  I’ll never forget his face or his name.  Nikita.  Age 2.  He was wearing pink pants that were soaking wet in the referral pictures.  Boys don’t have the luck that the girls in Russia do with adoption.  What happens to the little Nikita’s?  This I will never know for sure, but the words “mother drank alcoholically during pregnancy,” was clearly stated on the medical report I got with his pictures.
   So the million dollar question (literally for EACI) is would I have done things differently if I’d known the truth about the medicals, had I been given the choice?  Well, only a power up above that is much more supreme than me can decide these things.  I was a naive first time parent spellbound with my child once I touched his face.  He captured me.  Some divine intervention came about and made what was supposed to happen occur.  Yes, I was supposed to parent the child I got.  Yes, I would adopt him again knowing his full diagnoses today.  Did EACI help me get the relationship I have with my son today?  No, they just helped me adopt a kid who’s medicals weren’t fully translated and who was destined not to grow up in a Russian orphanage. 

   Would youdecline me for a second adoption now that my son is in regular education kindergarten and functioning way beyond the capacity expected a year ago?  Would you say I was a bad prospect for business?  That’s what EACI did.  What I learned is that the relationship I have with my little Russian is invaluable, and that it was built AFTER EACI’s job was done, right here in the good old USA.     

For information about adoption agency abuse and scams, go to Yahoo groups and search for adoption agencies.  These groups moderate to allow only clients to share stories of agencies that have done things unethically or without care.  It’s a great resource for finding out what AGENCY not to use!  Yahoo Group Search