Unwanted boy adopted in US sent back to Russia

A seven-year-old Russian boy who was adopted by an American woman has been sent home on his own with a note saying he was no longer wanted. Young Artem Savelyev arrived at Moscow airport with the typed note from his adoptive mother which said he was being abandoned after only six months in her care.

Torry-Ann Hansen had admitted to having made a mistake and suggested the boy should be re-housed. "I no longer wish to parent this child," the unmarried 27-year-old nurse from Tennessee wrote, requesting his adoption be annulled.


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She accused the boy's Siberian orphanage of misleading her about Artem's behavioural problems. Hansen had placed sweets, biscuits and colouring pens in the child's rucksack before checking him onto the 10-hour flight as an unaccompanied minor, reportedly telling him he was going on an "excursion" to Moscow.

Russia media has reacted with horror to the case and foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called for all adoptions of the country's children by US citizens to be frozen. He was picked up at the airport on Thursday by a Russian man who took him to the city's education ministry, where the youngster was left.



The man told officials he had been offered $200 (approximately £130) over the internet by Hansen to perform the service. Artem has since been taken to hospital, where an examination revealed no signs of violent treatment.

But he reportedly told officials he was sometimes "dragged by his hair" by Hansen. The boy will be kept in for a week before being transferred to an orphanage, either at the foreign ministry or in his home town in the far eastern Primoriye region.