Eureka ranch at center of debate over adoption of Russian children
By TRISTAN SCOTT
EUREKA – In the past year, the Ranch for Kids Project has come under scrutiny by top-ranking Russian government officials, who in June arrived at the respite care facility for troubled adopted children, many of them Russian, with a Moscow television crew in tow, criticizing the unlicensed boarding school for warehousing children in a remote corner of Montana.
The facility, designed for troubled adopted children who suffer from fetal alcohol spectrum disorders, as well as the effects of living in difficult conditions in orphanages abroad, also is in the midst of a lawsuit by a Montana Department of Labor and Industry board, which is challenging its exemption from state licensing requirements and fees due to its status as an “adjunct ministry.”
And, most recently, a decree banning Americans from adopting Russian children, signed last month by President Vladimir Putin, effectively stanches the procession of Russian orphans into the country, where American families sometimes find the children unmanageable due to extreme behavioral problems that are the result of gross neglect and damage caused by alcohol and drugs ingested by their mothers while pregnant.
A low-cost alternative for those parents, says Ranch for Kids founder Joyce Sterkel, is a schoolhouse and idyllic ranch located near the Canadian border in Eureka.
At her nearby home, recounting the recent hurdles while bouncing her 3-year-old adopted daughter, Lilia, on her lap, Sterkel, 65, is unfazed, if a little confounded.
“We’ve got international intrigue and controversy going on here in little old Eureka. How did all this happen?” Sterkel says with a laugh.
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Sterkel has been involved with international adoptions for 20 years. Having worked as a midwife in Russia from 1992 to 1994, she delivered hundreds of babies with fetal alcohol spectrum disorders before adopting three children of her own, two boys and a girl, all of whom have FASD and are now fully grown and independent.
The Sterkel family’s success with the children led other parents to seek assistance, and between 1999 and 2002 numerous children came to live on the family ranch. In 2003, Sterkel realized the need for a full-time professional staff and separate facility, and created the Ranch for Kids Project.
It was one of the first programs licensed by the state Department of Labor and Industry’s Board of Private Alternative Adolescent Residential or Outdoor Programs, but in 2010 Sterkel began having discussions with a local church about becoming an “adjunct ministry,” which exempts the facility from state oversight and what she says are “prohibitive fees.”
She has been operating the ranch without a license ever since.
In October 2011, after the state board sent Sterkel a cease-and-desist order, she and Jeremy Evjene, a ranch employee and the head of the Epicenter International Missions Ministry, signed a memorandum of understanding making the ranch an “adjunct ministry,” exempting the ranch from the state’s authority.
The state charges that Sterkel is using the exemption to sidestep PAARP’s fees and regulations, and argues in its lawsuit that neither the Ranch for Kids nor the religious organization it partnered with qualifies as a real church or ministry.
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Founded in 2004 by Evjene, Epicenter International Missions Ministry has no building, congregation or ordained clergy, even though Evjene, first hired at the Ranch for Kids as a construction worker, serves as a counselor and youth pastor. He has performed 14 baptisms on students at the ranch, has led more than 40 Bible studies, approximately 52 youth group counseling sessions and two church services.
In court documents, PAARP board attorney Mary Tapper wrote that Epicenter International Missions Ministry “is not a church, but the evangelical philosophy of a young man with no degree or formal theological training.”
“The exemption,” she continued, should “apply to a program having a bona fide relationship with a church, not a program seeking a loophole to circumvent the board’s licensing requirements.”
On Feb. 5, a Libby judge will be asked to decide whether the Ranch for Kids and Epicenter International Missions Ministry qualify as a church, a point that Ranch for Kids attorney J. Tiffin Hall says is indisputable.
Epicenter International Missions Ministry has been incorporated as a not-for-profit ministry in the state of Montana since June 2006, Hall said, and all of the parents who send their children there are aware of the affiliation.
The application form states: “The Ranch for Kids is a ministry affiliated with Epicenter International Missions recognized in the State of Montana. We are non-denominational. We believe that by establishing ourselves as the adjunct ministry of a church we can better serve our population of children.”
In response to the lawsuit, Sterkel submitted numerous letters of support from parents of children in the program. Randy Halpern and Peter Salomon, a Jewish couple, wrote “my husband and I are both aware that the Ranch for Kids is a ministry and not licensed by the PAARP Board,” and that “the closing of the ranch, which has been the last resort for many hurting families, would be a tragedy.”
Even if the judge sides with Sterkel and the ranch, however, it may not matter. A bill introduced in the Montana legislature calls for eliminating the adjunct ministry exemption, which would force Sterkel into licensure or close her doors.
Twenty-five to 30 children between the ages of 5 and 18 live on the ranch. About 10 are Russian, while the others come from Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Ethiopia and other countries. Parents pay $3,500 per month to send their children to the ranch, and some of the children spend several weeks or months with Sterkel before returning to their families. Others require years of respite care before they develop even the most basic life skills.
Lori Jarvis sent her adopted Russian child to the ranch in 2005, when he was 11 and prone to violent outbursts and criminal behavior. She says he benefited enormously from his time there, and is now a functioning member of the family.
“We view this program to be a great asset for Montana and children and parents across the country,” said Jarvis, who lives in Minnesota.
Jenya Davidson, 23, is a former client who now works and lives full time at the ranch performing maintenance tasks and providing some supervision to the organization’s younger clients. His adoptive mother, Gigi Davidson, is the head of a national nonprofit called FASD Communities, which is comprised of many parents from across the country who have tried to raise adopted children suffering from fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
“Closing this project would be a travesty to the children and their families,” Davidson said.
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But closing the project is precisely what Russian children’s ombudsman Pavel Astakhov and human rights envoy Konstantin Dolgov had in mind when they arrived at the gates of the Ranch for Kids in June, a camera crew in tow, and demanded access.
Sterkel believes it was the licensing dispute and the timing of the bilateral adoption agreement between the U.S. and Russia that put the Ranch for Kids on the Russian government’s radar, as well as the outrage caused by the 2010 case of Torry Hansen, who sent her then 7-year-old adopted son back to Russia on an airplane with a note saying he was violent and unmanageable.
“It was just a big publicity stunt,” Sterkel said.
Although she has invited Russian officials from the consulate in Seattle to visit the ranch before, Sterkel cast a wary eye on the requested visit by Astakhov. She turned down the request, thinking it was a political ploy to highlight problems with the adoption agreement and keep it in the international spotlight.
He arrived anyway, and was turned away at the door.
“You don’t come in and strong-arm us. This is a foreign government trying to come onto private property, into a private business in Montana,” Sterkel said. “They’re painting us as this remote location in Siberia, where we’re warehousing Russian kids in a primitive village near the Canadian border. Give me a break. We’re an open book.”
While Sterkel has been mostly transparent with regulators, media and Russian consulate officials, she also has balked at government intrusion.
The PAARP board declined to renew the ranch’s license in June 2010 after an inspection found problems, including a failure to show that the ranch’s buildings were up to code. The inspection also found that the ranch lacked a disaster plan and did not require background checks for employees. Sterkel also denied the board information about the children, according to court filings by Tapper, the PAARP attorney.
Sterkel said she’d be more inclined to cooperate if she believed the state board had the children’s best interests in mind.
“If safety was an issue, truly an issue, they would have shut us down by now. The issue is control. They want us to dance their tune,” she said.
Reporter Tristan Scott can be reached at (406) 531-9745 or at tscott@missoulian.com.