Russia to seek adoption payment, annulment

MOSCOW, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Russian authorities say a U.S. woman who put her adopted son on a plane back to Russia alone is "trying to avoid" paying child support.

Eight-year-old Artyom Savelyev arrived at a Moscow airport in April with a note from his adoptive American mother, Torry Hansen, saying she did not want him because he was "psychotic," RIA Novosti reported Tuesday.

Hansen is now claiming the boy wanted to go home, Russian children rights ombudsman Pavel Astakhov said.

"Ms. Hansen is trying to prove that she did not reject Artyom. 'He wanted to go back to mummy and she let him go,' her lawyer says," Astakhov wrote on his Twitter account.

Hansen "is trying to avoid paying child support," Astakhov said.

"We will seek justice with regard to Artyom," he wrote. "(We will) demand child support from the American adoptive mother and annul the adoption."

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had called the incident "a monstrous deed," RIA Novosti said.