Couple Accused of Beating Daughters Tell of Adoption Ordeal
Couple Accused of Beating Daughters Tell of Adoption Ordeal
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
In Moscow one night in May, Richard and Karen Thorne watched one of their newly adopted daughters tuck her doll under the covers, whack it on the head with a shoe, then calmly straighten the covers. It seemed just part of her routine, like a good-night kiss. Only it was a good-night smack.
The Thornes were alarmed. They worried aloud, they recalled, that the girl had learned such behavior by being abused herself. Her birth mother, they had just discovered, had been an alcoholic who left the girl in an orphanage when she was 18 months old. The mother later hanged herself.
But of the two 4-year-olds they were adopting, the Thornes say they worried more about the other, the blonde. She had done nothing but scream from the moment she met them in the same orphanage, where she had lived since she was found as a baby on the street.
Still, it hardly mattered. The Thornes, who had gone through years of unsuccessful fertility treatments, were determined to adopt the girls and complete their family.
''It doesn't matter what people tell you or how much you think you know,'' Mrs. Thorne said. ''You expect that Christmas-card photo. You have stars in your eyes.''
The Thornes provided such snapshots of their adoption odyssey in their first in-depth interview since they were arrested May 28 and accused of beating and verbally assaulting the girls on a plane ride from Moscow to New York. They have been separated ever since from the girls, who are now in their fifth foster home.
While other adoptive parents tell hair-raising stories of struggling with out-of-control children on the way home, adoption experts know of no other case in which the parents' behavior led to their arrest. And while the Thornes have minimized their actions as a single slap, a Queens judge said last month that they were lying and found them guilty of neglect.
Still, whatever the truth about their behavior on the plane, the Thornes' account offers a vivid picture of their adoption experience and may provide a cautionary tale of a path to parenthood that more and more Americans are choosing.
Russia, which offers white children in a relatively short period of time, has become an increasingly popular source of adoptions for Americans. In 1992, the first year that Russia legalized out-of-country adoptions, Americans adopted 324 Russian children, according to the United States State Department. In the 1997 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, Russia provided Americans with 3,800 children, making it the leading source of international adopted children and surpassing China, which provided 3,500 children last year. Children adopted in Russia tend to be older and to have spent some time in institutions.
But the Thornes' story is not just an adoption story. At a time of heightened sensitivity about child abuse, it underscores the ambiguities and uncertainties involved in drawing the line between discipline and abuse in an emotionally freighted situation.
A Childless Couple Look to Russia
Richard Thorne, 49, and Karen Thorne, 43, who were married in 1985, own and operate a distribution warehouse on the cactus-studded outskirts of Phoenix. They drive to work in a white van that they outfitted for their daughters with a television and videocassette recorder. Their van is as immaculate and orderly as their computerized offices, and as pristine as their home, with its white rugs, showcase of ceramic figures and sparkling pool.
The Thornes said that when they gave up on having biological children, they briefly considered adopting in America but turned to international adoption because they worried that an American birth mother could reclaim the child. They sought a child under 3 years old.
Their adoption agency, Hand in Hand of Mesa, Ariz., told them in January of two unrelated 4-year-old girls who needed a home, and the Thornes said they quickly accepted the idea. Mr. Thorne, who has two grown children from a previous marriage, said they also started seeing the advantages of older children. ''No diapers,'' he said.
In addition, they had known several people who had adopted one child from Russia, then gone back for a second. Mr. Thorne said they decided that getting two at once would ''be more economical.'' And they liked that the two girls would have a shared experience.
Soon, pictures of the girls arrived, as did sketchy medical forms. (The New York judge has ordered that the girls' names not be disclosed.) The forms said the girls had brain damage. But like many other adoptive parents, the Thornes dismissed this as a necessary maneuver by the Russian authorities to help get the girls out of the country. A study of Russian medical forms for adoptees, published in September in the Journal of the American Medical Association, found that such forms frequently say neurological problems exist when they do not.
''We were told that if they put on the form that these were healthy, wonderful children, they wouldn't let them go for foreign adoption,'' Mr. Thorne said.
The Thornes also received a videotape of the girls. ''It just showed us that they could run and play like normal kids,'' Mr. Thorne said.
The day before the Thornes left for Moscow in mid-May, they received a fax from their agency's Moscow coordinator saying one of the girls was fine, but the other ''will be reserved and will be harder to adjust and she was not real happy about the adoption.'' The Thornes thought that meant the girl would be shy.
''We knew there was a possibility there would be problems,'' Mrs. Thorne said. ''But my attitude was, when you give birth to your own children, you don't know what conditions they'll have. We figured that whatever happened, we'd deal with it. We didn't really think there was anything that wouldn't be fixable or treatable.''
In mid-May they arrived in Moscow -- like other adoptive parents, with thousands of dollars in crisp bills strapped to their bodies. They were met by an interpreter, who joined them for the 12-hour train trip to the orphanage, in the rural village of Voronezh, about 290 miles southeast of Moscow. Apart from their own luggage and clothes for the girls (they had to guess at their sizes), they lugged a suitcase and cardboard box stuffed with ''gifts'' that Russian intermediaries instruct prospective parents to bring for the bureaucrats and facilitators who arrange their adoptions.
At the Orphanage, Signs of Trouble
As they approached the orphanage, a house in the woods, they heard screaming. Once inside, a little girl with dark hair greeted them chirpily and boasted that she was going to America with them. The screams they heard came from another room and grew louder when the door opened and an orphanage worker emerged with the blonde, who would not let go of the worker.
The Thornes, who went through 35 hours of child-rearing classes in preparation for the adoption, in addition to detailed criminal and financial investigations, are reluctant to criticize those involved in the adoption, as they are still trying to gain custody, but Mrs. Thorne did say: ''We should have known that the child wasn't reserved but that she was hysterical.''
The Thornes said they were confused and hurt by the girl's rejection. But the orphanage workers told them that if they did not take the girls, they would be sent to another orphanage, where they would get less attention. The workers said the girls would be fine once they got over the shock of leaving the only caregivers they had known.
The parents proceeded with the adoption, completing it in court, processing a score of documents and taking the train back to Moscow with their new family.
But there, the dark-haired girl became aggressive, kicking strangers in an open-air market. The blonde continued to scream. During a routine medical check, which typically focuses more on infectious diseases than a child's psychological state, a Russian doctor in Moscow told them: ''It's not too late not to take them.''
Mr. Thorne said that things can seem so bad, running away ''is a thought that crosses your mind'' but that he was repulsed by it. ''That's almost like aborting a child,'' he said.
In the end, the Thornes said, they decided to press on.
''We decided, we had come this far, we're not going to give up on her,'' Mr. Thorne said.
''She had absolutely no future in that country,'' Mrs. Thorne said.
By Everyone's Account, A Bad Flight Home
By now they were dreading the flight to New York. The Thornes said they asked Moscow doctors for sedatives for the girls but were refused. They said that they also asked their agency's coordinator for a Russian-speaking escort from Moscow to Arizona, but that they were turned down.
Margot Matthews, the administrative director and social services director of the adoption agency that arranged the Thornes' adoptions, said that the Thornes had indeed been offered an escort, but rejected one.
In any case, the Thornes said, the plane ride was a nightmare. In the Queens courtroom, two flight attendants and three passengers later testified that the couple had abused the girls. The Thornes testified in court that they had each hit the girls once, but not on the face, and that although they were angry, embarrassed and exhausted, they had not crossed the line to abuse. But both said that their discipline had quieted the girls, at least for a while.
Ms. Matthews said that her adoption agency, which has completed more than 2,600 adoptions in 23 years, counsels strongly against corporal punishment. Since the Thorne case, she said, the agency has added to its pre-adoption training a session called ''Airplane 101,'' and also hands out a list of ''Suggestions for what to do when your child is going berserk!!'' They include using coloring books, headsets and music and feeding the children snacks.
The Thornes said that they had tried most of these techniques. But the best respite came in an unexpected way -- when the blonde poked her hand through the seats and reached for the woman in front of her. The woman took the girl's hand, and the girl stopped crying. They held hands for nearly an hour, never speaking or looking at each other.
''I didn't do anything to pull her away,'' Mrs. Thorne recalled, embarrassed at relying on a stranger but grateful for the relief.
''I never saw the woman's face,'' Mrs. Thorne said. ''I don't know if she was an old woman, a young woman, Russian, American, French.''
Whoever she was, the anonymous woman provided the girl with comfort that the new parents could not. And she illustrated a characteristic often found among children who have been institutionalized for long periods -- an inability to ''attach'' to their parents and an indiscriminate ease with strangers.
That, said Ms. Matthews, who observed the girls recently, is what she noticed most about them. ''They're not attached,'' she said. ''They didn't seek affection from anyone.''
And she worried that, even more than most children, these girls would repeatedly test the Thornes' limits. ''They are constantly going to be saying, 'How far can I push you before you get rid of me, because everybody else has?' ''
Five Months Later, An Empty Bedroom
The Thornes are still trying to gain custody of the girls and are due back in Family Court in Queens on Nov. 7. The girls, still under the authority of New York City's Administration for Children's Services, are now here in the foster care of Mrs. Thorne's brother. The Thornes say that physically the girls seem fine, but they are pondering how to develop their relationship with them beyond playmates and gift-bearers to something less artificial.
In their house, the door to the girls' room is kept closed. Inside, the beds are crisply made, the animals precisely arranged, a doll -- one blond, one dark-haired -- on each pillow.
The girls have never spent a night with their new parents since arriving on American soil more than five months ago. But their lives have moved relentlessly forward as they learn English, celebrate birthdays and grow, still orphans.