RF doubts US ready to ensure proper protection of adopted Russian children - diplomat

MOSCOW, June 4 (Itar-Tass) - Russia doubts that the United States federal authorities are ready to ensure proper protection of the rights of adopted Russian children, Russian foreign ministry’s human rights envoy Konstantin Dolgov said on Tuesday, after the U.S. authorities closed the probe into the death of a three-year-old Russian boy, Maxim Kuzmin, who died in an American foster family.

“The decision of the Texas authorities to stop the investigation into the tragic death on Maxim Kuzmin in January 2013, regrettably, is another example of leniency of the U.S. law enforcers and courts towards American foster parents involved in acts of violence against their adopted Russian children,” he said.

“It is incomprehensible why the Shatto couple should be relieved from responsibility when the results of the preliminary investigation are so incoherent,” he stressed. “Even a non-expert can see from the materials of the case that the injuries that caused the boy’s death could not have been incurred by the boy himself.”

“But the main thing is that a child is dead and no one is punished for that but for an employee of the Texas childcare service who was fired only because she had doubted the objectiveness of the investigation,” the Russian diplomat said indignantly. “It is an exemplary fact, which speaks for itself.”

In his words, requests from the Russian Federal Council and the State Duma to both houses of the U.S. Congress demanding an independent probe into the deaths of Maxim Kuzmin and his younger brother Kirill are still unanswered.

“Generally speaking, what happed in Texas only prove our doubts about the United States federal authorities’ readiness and ability to ensure proper protection of the legal rights and interests of Russian children adopted by American citizens,” he stressed.

Maxim Kuzmin, 3, who was given the name Max Alan after the adoption, and his younger brother Kirill (Kristopher Elvin) were adopted from a children’s home in the town of Pechory, Pskov region, by Alan and Laura Shatto, who live in Gardendale, Texas, in late 2012. A court decision on their adoption was passed in October 2012, and in late December - early January the children were brought to the United States. Maxim died on January 21, less than two weeks after his third birthday. Postmortem examination revealed numerous injuries.

However, U.S. forensic experts said the boy’s death was accidental. The official cause of death was mesenterial intestine arteriorrhexis after a blunt force trauma.