Anybody out there has bad experience with international adoption?

Question

Anybody out there has bad experience with international adoption?

Answer 1

We adopted from Russia last year after 14 months of getting the run-around, lies, corruption from our agency here in the US, and the old "bait-and-switch" from the Russian Government!

My hubby and I were supposed to adopt 2 children from Russia--and unrelated boy and girl about the same age.  We paid our money in November, 2004 sent our paperwork to our agency, had all of the required stuff done through our government and waited.  Well, Hurricane Katrina wiped out our agency and we had to go to the parent company for help when no one would respond from our agency (they had left afterward with no forwarding anything).  We had to resubmit our paperwork 2 more times after the person in Russia, who was working for our agency, took the money and paperwork for us and other families and absconded.  After a year of hassles, lies and monetary drainage, we get to Russia (this is now November, 2005), only to be told the two kids we were supposed to adopt were not available!!!  We were offered a sibling group with severe health issues (epilepsy and Fetal Alcohol Syndrome for both!).  We said NO WAY and were almost thrown out of the office of the head of the Education Department there because I went ballistic on them.  We were shown 3 other children and told we could only adopt 1.  We decided to go with one child and were told we had to wait 4 months to come back.  Again, I flipped out and I must have made quite an impression on them--we were back in Russia the second week in January.  We were told then that it would be a 5 day trip.  NOT SO!!  We ended up staying 3.5 WEEKS and couldn't even have our son with us during that time!!  We had to wait until the night before we went to the embassy in Moscow to get him.  We were VERY MAD AND VERY BROKE by the end of the trip (it's now February, 2006).  He was very ill when we boarded the plane--turns out he had a strep infection they tried to hide from us by giving him fever reducer that wore off after a couple of hours.  Also, our son is autistic, FAS, and has cerebral palsy...all things they never told us.

I will NEVER, EVER adopt from Eastern Europe again!!  The only bright spot in all of this is our son.  He's a true joy and the reason I breathe.

Answer 2

Bad experience? HA!  It was a NIGHTMARE, one of the worst experiences of our life.  I have a "tick" just thinking about it.  We adopted from Ukraine in 2003 (after having a previous failed adoption there in 2002).  The whole adoption system is completely corrupt over there.  The story is more of a book than a paragraph, I wouldn't know where to begin.

Answer 3

Unfortunately, you can check out lots of bad experiences at the following website: