a child is always the better off in the loving family than in an institution but the question is really how many of those adopted children and up with loving families who can properly take care of their needs well i think the social science is very clear on that there have been lots of studies of adoption both domestic and international and the studies show overwhelmingly that almost all the children placed in adoption do extremely well bond with their parents and almost all the problems that those children may have have to do with being placed later in life in other words the problems they may have in adoption some of them almost always have to do with the fact they didn't get adopted early and they got damaged by the life they lived when institutions but ms bartholet isn't it also also the case that the studies that he referring to they studied adoption in general as a phenomenon rather than being

a specific study on how successful international adoption really ease because at this point at least i could find no use data on the success of foreign adoptions there is no centralized authority in your country that would keep track of those children and at this point we simply don't know how many of those children were successfully integrated into their families and how many of them were later given up for adoption and of course we would all like to believe in the goodness of human nature but i think when we deal with such a sensitive issue is child welfare we have to rely on hard data and the problem is that at this point there seems to be none i think that's wrong there's lots of hard data and i cited in my articles on my site both the studies that have been done that are absolutely specific to international adoption there have been lots of those so it is true of course that not each and every fact related to internet.

adoption has been carefully studied so that it's true that we don't have all the figures on for example exactly how many internationally adoption children have been . so-called reach home i think the real homing phenomenon is shocking and terrible but the only numbers that have surfaced so far of the number of are absolutely tiny by comparison to the tens of thousands of international adoptions that have taken place in the last couple of decades i would absolutely love to discuss the homing phenomena a bit later on but before we go there since you you say that there are numbers on the success of foreign adoption can you give a rough estimate of some percentages here and how many of those really work out sure the rate of the da of abuse and neglect in internationally adopted families is significantly lower than the rate of abuse and neglect in normal biological

families and i think if you compared the rate of abuse and neglect in adoption to the rate of abuse and neglect in russian normal biological families again you would find the rate of. abuse and neglect in adoption including international adoption phenomenally lower than the rate of abuse and neglect in russian biological families miss bartlett my point is not the extent of abuse obviously in each country that abuse is taking place but i think if we look at the domestic adoption of bulls in russia and the united states we can see that it's an extremely complex phenomenon and the rates of adoption disruption adoption of resolution a pretty high in the united states if i'm not mistaken one in four adoptions for various reasons in russia that number may be even higher than statistics here are very complicated but in the case of international adoption you have to factor in additional challenges. suggesting to new culture adjusting to new language the loss

of social context and the worst thing of all is of course that there is absolutely no way back if adoption. is not going the way it was supposed to be well i think that much of that simply isn't true the rate of disruption is significantly lower than you said with respect to adoption disruptions are almost always. linked to the adoption of kids when they're older and when they've been significantly damaged to the degree there are disruptions in international adoptions it's almost certainly because governments like the russian government and many other governments hold their kids in institutions for way too long before they're willing to free them up for adoption i also think that you have to compare you said that i've talked about the over romanticization of kids links with their birth heritage well i think you have to compare what goes on with kids when they're living and dying in institutions which is their real world alternative to international

adoption most of the time and my position is i think backed by the facts that what happens in institutions is absolutely systematic abuse and neglect of virtually every child one hundred percent the evidence is completely clear and it's scientific evidence and has been repeated in study after study you know you can see those studies you keep saying you haven't read the studies or seen studies well they're cited in my article is what i say is that i haven't seen the numbers on the success of international adoptions because those numbers in the u.s. state department that keeps track of the mastic adoptions they don't publish the numbers for international adoption and i think the that the reuters investigation. unveiled these home i recall and this whole re homing phenomenon also pointed to the fact that. there is pretty much no oversight first of all neither reuters people nor the u.s. state department are so. scientists we have social scientists many of them in this

country systematically studying with social science methodology adoption those are the people to look to if you're actually interested in what the likelihood of success in adoption is the state department is not in charge of doing social science studies and i don't think you'd trust it if it did waiters is obviously not an objective social science organization i'm not talking about qualitative approach i'm talking about numbers just keeping track of the numbers of children coming in and how many of those children stay with adoptive families two years or five years down the line and how many of them. are later given out for. institutional look at how many of them were institutionalized later or how many of them simply aged out of the system and i think this is a much more complicated phenomenon that was highlighted not only in the reuter's investigation there are many other. high profile cases of abuse that the old treat

as isolated cases but i think there is a pattern to down and if if we go to you know i've been to many blogs and websites where prospects of parents say that essentially the biggest problem with adoption dissolution or adoption failure was the lack of knowledge and their high expectations they're removed by their desire to do good. you know saw a child in an orphanage they brought him home but then they realized that they simply. were not ready to the for the extent of challenges again if you look at the studies you will see that even kids who've suffered a lot of damage tend to overcome a huge amount of it when they are adopted i also want to bring to your attention a bill pending in the united states congress it's called the children in families first. bill does say that the united states should be committed to doing

a better job than it has been doing in terms of just the kind of numbers you're talking about and i myself would love to see those figures kept better in part because i feel completely confident that if we had those figures they would help show even more than the data we have today that it does an amazingly good job of helping kids get good homes and that the numbers of a abuse and neglect of all the kids who come into this country are infinitesimal they are truly tiny compared to of course what happens. is i wonder how how could we have that data because we have the data and i've been telling. me many studies over the years what we don't have is one hundred percent perfection in terms of keeping track of every single kid who comes into this country i would like to do that but if you don't have the means of tracking every

single kid how can you even argue that your data the data you know that is proving that this whole operation is successful is there i mean if you don't have the mechanism if you don't have this central authority because in the united states it's all left up to states and individual states have different sorts of pragya lation different sorts of rules and essentially at least it's been my impression that it's all a matter of lottery once they keep crosses the u.s. border and he's essentially you know in the at the mercy of the circumstances and if he ends up with a good family that can properly take care of his needs that is not just well intended by these qualified to deal with you know the challenges of adoption it's a struggle flood but if that adoption fails there is absolutely no way back and there's absolutely no system out there that would support this kid or support the family that adopted him this is one of the. issues that many adoptive families in

the united states voice that at this point of time there is absolutely no support system for them and when they encounter those demands psychological cognitive adjustment difficulties they have absolutely nobody to turn to well none of what you just very very very long question is true so i'm not going to try to answer at all because i'm getting repetitive answering the same accusations but it's simply not true we do have a central authority it does regulate what goes on in all fifty states it does regulate all the agencies that are involved in international adoption the agencies do keep track of the kids they do keep track of the adoptive families they do supervise the families and they do finalize adoptions and we do have in the scientific studies i'm talking about sample studies that do an accurate job of sampling not looking at every single international adoption but sampling international adoptions so that we can get a fairly accurate picture overall of what happens in terms of abuse or neglect but

at a certain point there's no point repeating what i'm saying to you if you're not going to listen ok miss let us take a short break now when we come back despite the fact that the number of lunch national adoptions in the united states has been falling recently the country still remains the world leader in terms of adopting children from all around the world but doesn't really take proper care of tao once they cross the border that's coming up in a few moments on worlds apart. gentlemen i guess you almost. feel even a few hundred a day come across it honestly i'm going to miss the faces i'm getting so close to

the members of the faith we've got people coming in with criminals we've got people from it who knows where in the world this is the united states i'm very tough by the way you know to sure i was worried that they may not know why they live on mars you know mars. so we pick up things like food and ah turbans prayer rugs so when we know they do they're coming from the middle east concentration camp. concentration camp. body as the white house is not even want to disclose the fact that. a stranger. right on the street. first street you and i putting pictures.

on our reporters twitter. and instagram. to be in the know. on mom. i .

welcome back to all the parts of asia discussing international adoption of elizabeth bartholet buckle to director of the child advocacy program at harvard law school ms bartholet before the break. the investigation that was done by a reuters news agency a couple of months ago into this whole re homing phenomenon and. i think. when you look at this issue the issue of international adoption and countries who recently moved to ban or restrict american adoption those issues are very very much politicized but. in the u.s. media those cases of abuse or neglect of the hands of american families are usually treated as as isolated cases by reuters investigation. seems to point to the fact that the problem is far more systematic than previously

thought well you used the word systematic actually the number of really honed internationally adopted children was infinite test small compared to the number of international adoptions in the last couple of decades an aide to senator landrieu who introduced the bill i just talked about that's been introduced in our congress can't calculated that number of something like point zero eight percent but you know that in no way indicates that there is some significant percentage of internationally adopted kids who've been either re homed you know much less once re home. subject to any kind of abuse or neglect in the new home and just for our viewers i would like to explain that when we're talking about your home and we're talking about families who are ready to offload that kids to perfect strangers it's essentially an internet based community of people who can no longer deal with their

the challenges presented by their kids and they're ready to give them to perfect strangers without governmental oversight just a quick exchange of letters or photos and children are handed over to different caring takers but since you contested the numbers and the spread of that phenomenon let me just mention that reuters analyzed just one yahoo group and that yahoo group had more than five thousand messages offering children or new homes for them about seventy percent of the children advertise there were foreign born so it seems that there is a tendency for foreign kids to be all for it for real homie i think that's flat out untrue i think it's a tiny phenomenon compared to the number of international adoptions and i think that the people who don't like international adoption as apparently you do not and

as unicef doesn't regularly love the fact that occasionally scandals show up because those scandals can be used as a way to help shut down international adoptions you're being a bit unfair on me because i have never argued for shutting down international adoption what i'm arguing for is a more critical and more scientific approach and more systematic approach to taking care of those children and again going back to the reuter's investigation i think they cultivated. on the community board alone more than somewhere around two hundred children for all four of them they also found the child abusers convicted child abusers got access to those kids through these whole recalling phenomena and so in the. but he's arguing here that me should you know change those children to institutions but sometimes i think we need to take a bit more critical approach rather than promoting these rosy picture of international adoption and what i'm saying is overall it's an amazingly rosy

picture in that adopted kids international as well as domestic are treated better than regular kids growing up in untroubled biological families in the united states there is less maltreatment in all the studies that in which people keep track of maltreatment statistics so i'm not going to talk more about really days you can conduct the rest of the interview yourself i'm not going to conduct an interview in which we focus on a tiny you know phenomenon that has nothing to do with the sort of underlying truths of how well kids do when they're kept in institutions as compared to how well they do in international adoption now one issue that is often brought up in relation to international adoption especially in the united states is the issue of money because international adoption in your country is a for profit enterprise and you need as far as i understand anywhere between fifteen and forty thousand dollars for the whole procedure. doesn't that in itself

create an incentive to maybe be a little less rigorous or maybe a bit more motivated to promote that phenomenon placed on the part of be adoption agencies because obviously they are not their. only benefit the children they are also in that business to make money almost all adoption agency or formally not for profit they are absolutely every single one of them regulated by states and regulated by our federal government to ensure that they operate with best interest of the child first and foremost so no i don't think the fact that people often get paid. aid for their services is something that may should make us suspect the institution but in the united states there is also a large population of children eligible for adoption around one hundred twenty thousand why would america still prefer to pay so much money to struggle with

bureaucracy which is a major issue when they can adopt a child from nearby institution there are lots of americans who do adopt from our foster care system and which is where most of our kids are not in institutions they're in foster care there are americans who adopt from foster care and there are americans who go abroad to adopt and some people do both and my own belief is that the united states should not focus solely on the best interest of quote its own children i think our policy as this pending bill in congress would make our policy should be that all unpaired kids everywhere have a basic human right to get a home and i don't see why we should favor our kids over russian kids or watermelon kids well according to the institute for human services in the united states one reason why americans turn to international adoption is because they're looking for children with specific characteristics they usually prefer children who are young

children who are in good physical and psychological health and children of preferred gender and race and the supply of those children i'm sorry for putting it crudely in the united states is limited can i just respond to that that you're completely outdated factual picture of international adoption almost all the kids that americans are now adopting from abroad or older kids who have suffered significant damage who have very significant emotional and physical disabilities that constitutes almost the entire population so no in today's world americans are not going abroad to get healthy infants because actually infants are not being placed anymore kids are almost always over a year and they. almost always suffered very severe damage. yet if you look at the most frequent complaints by the american adoptive parents in relation to russian system for example they used to complain about the fact that they don't get that

fool scope of information on their kids and that they're presented with a kid seems to be four or five years old relatively house and then later on they discover all that house and psychological issues and what i would like to ask is how do we really draw a line here that's been not encouraging shopping for kids you know not encouraging parents going around and looking for a kid with their particular i color but on the other hand we do want to ensure that parents know as much as possible about the child and his potential how say she is he's psychological issues how do you really draw the line here because it's a it's a very complicated issue and many you know officials here in russia feel that parents should not be exposed too much to a child before completing that adoption well i agree with you here i think it is a complicated issue i don't think the parents should be shopping around for the

perfect child so i agree with you on that and i also agree with what i think what you're indicating that you think which is the least i think that. parents if they're going to. be good parents for a child first of all it has to be a good match they have to sort of decide and know roughly speaking what they're getting into in terms of the kinds of challenges that the child represents and secondly if they're going to be good parents they need to be prepared because they can do a lot better job parenting the child getting them to the kind of experts that the child may need if they know what kind of experiences that child has been through that might have left scars. it's not a secret that here in russia for example one of the reasons for abandoning children is alcoholism of their parents and the associated. ailments that are associated with given this major social problem assume an other countries the problem may be

different depending on the reasons that are pushing people to abandon their children i wonder if reach institution do you think should take care and be responsible for making sure the parents are up to speed and fully realize the challenge that they're. well first of all i think the the most important thing is for government policy makers throughout the world to do what they can to prevent the damage much of the damage that happens to children happens after birth and it is not necessary so right now we have government policies that systematically require that children be damaged and what we should have is government policies that seek to free up children as soon as possible after birth if they're not going to be able to be parroted appropriately by their birth parents secondly of course you're right we should be trying to prepare adoptive parents for taking care of kids for example with the you know very drastic fetal

alcohol syndrome and. she's in this country have the responsibility for doing that preparation i dumped in agencies but no not the government itself do i understand their correctly the government regulates the agencies and it's the government's responsibility to require that adoption agencies be appropriately prepared to educate the parents but yes it's the agencies that have the direct one on one responsibility to prepare the parents and i have a we have about a minute left and this is a question that he said he would. but let me mention that i wonder how being discussed everything is for discussed already if it's not the time for the united states itself to take some action to you maybe limit the extent of the international adoption into its country at least until there is

a fully functioning system to ensure that the welfare of those children is well protected because even you have recognized that there are certain problems out there there are problems in every area of human life so no i certainly don't think there's a systematic problem in this area and i certainly don't think that we should shut down adoption or limit international adoption thereby penalizing the kids who are sitting on rotting in institutions mr bartlett we have to leave it there i appreciate you joining me for this very difficult conversation on our viewers if you like the show please join us again same place same time here on worlds apart.

in two thousand and chime one of the first things released by wiki leaks was a secret video recording that actually looked like a video showing two american actually collect talk shows opening fire on a dozen people in iraq just to sort of means to live in a society images of violence become normal this is what the sense of isolation lack of empathy look like. we try and experience from place to disassociate. in body and action. activity we also have to say from certain kinds of. i absolutely am frightened of the potential games desensitize people you know they can because the military uses games as. war it is not simply shoot but it is killing and killing exacts a penalty of the killer. people for whom it is defined by the popular

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today's news on the week's top stories from r.t. international an amnesty for rioters comes into force in ukraine as the country's opposition. to western politicians. moscow once again warning that he was against taking sides in the unrest plus. children are about to die from a local boy and they threatened us with machine guns they would be doing us and killing us. party becomes the first foreign to gain access to the besieged syrian town of after reports of rebels massacring dozens of civilians there including children. additional family values take center stage in france as grounds around to protest against the policies of francois long.