Artyom Saveliev was 7 years old when he was adopted by an American women named Torry Hansen. She picked him up from an orphanage in Russia and took him home to the US to start a new life.
Less than a year later, Hansen decided she didn’t want Artyom anymore. She put him on a plane to Moscow – unaccompanied – with a note, which read said ‘I no longer wish to parent this child’.
She said it was because of Artyom’s behavioral problems that she did not want to be his mother anymore.
“He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues/behaviour. I was lied to and misled by the Russian orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability,” she wrote.
Last week, Hansen made her first appearance in court. She lost her bid to keep from paying $150,000 in child support and other damages, which are to be held in a trust for Artyom – who now lives in a group home in Moscow.
Criminal charges were never filed, but the Seattle-based adoption agency she used, the World Association for Children and Parents, sued her last year for child support.
Ms Hansen, who now lives in California, went through a string of lawyers as she contested the child support and never responded to summonses to appear in court or at depositions. After Circuit Court judge Lee Russell ordered her in May to pay $US150,000 in child support, she hired a new lawyer, former federal prosecutor Edward Yarbrough of Nashville.
In court on Friday, Ms Hansen told the judge her previous lawyers did not keep her informed about the case and advised her she did not need to come to court. She also said that she gave birth to a daughter last year and could not come to court because of the pregnancy.
Hansen told the court her son was “very violent” and that he said “he wanted to kill me and he tried to kill my sister”. More from News Limited:
She said that the boy threatened to stab her mother to death. She started to tear up when describing how the threats of violence sent her mother to the emergency room in Shelbyville.
She said it was her parents’ decision to put the boy on a flight to Russia, but she was aware of the decision and acquiesced.
Artyom apparently spent six weeks in a psychiatric hospital after he returned to Russia because of the trauma he experienced. According to the UK press:
Anatoly Vasilyev (The director of the home where Artyom now lives) said Artyom ‘tries to forget about his life in the States’, and that was the reason why the orphanage was not allowing the media to see him.
He added that he gets along well with other children and has almost forgotten English, preferring not to speak it.
Torry Hansen’s mother Nancy recently said she did not believe Artyom was traumatized by being sent home alone on the flight to Russia.
