Chapter
Twenty-Two
Where
Did All That Money Go?
–The
Talking Heads
While
Alysha visited her new son and daughter at the orphanage everyday, she was able
to speak with the orphanage director privately about the orphanage and its
operations.
On Jan. 17, Alysha steered the conversation towards donations and the
amounts solicited for the orphanage by Tatyana and Amrex.
Had Ludmilla really received the
$1,000 or even the $6,000 per child that Denise Hubbard said they must pay to
the orphanage?
Alysha
posted this to the FRUA Blagoveshchensk/Amur thread the next day, on Friday,
Jan. 18. This was to cause quite a stir
and have Tatyana go through the stratosphere as she printed out every page.
Hello
everyone…I am in Blagoveschensk and for all your informational purposes
yesterday the orphanage director struck up a conversation with me about
Tatyana.
It
just so happens [Ludmilla Ivanova] wasn’t aware of many things.
She told me that the largest orphanage donation in 10 years was
10,000 rubles, which is about $325. It
is on the books and she said I can bring the proof of this back with me to
Moscow for the authorities…
It
is possible to adopt independently from this region, but at the moment, I
wouldn’t start up with Amrex …due to the orphanage director not being
too pleased with Tatyana’s actions.
For
those of you traveling…make sure to give your $1,000 donation in cash and
in person with the director being the recipient.
I promised her I would convey this as it was very upsetting for her
to learn that she was also in the dark on this subject.
She is a very kind woman and she is ready to help rectify the
problems here.
Well,
that was a stunner to the board, especially those who had already adopted and
couldn’t believe that their agency foreign fees weren’t going towards their
“intended” purpose. Surely this
ABTOWELL was just posting this to stir up trouble for hard-working Tatyana in
Amur.
ACHI CP
popped in. He and Alysha had been
corresponding privately and he had asked her to tell the orphanage director that
his daughter was doing well.
He was stunned to learn that the money he had deposited with Tatyana’s
help in December had not gone towards the orphanage.
Alysha wrote on Jan. 25, 2002: “CP I told the orphanage director about
your daughter and she was pleased although Tatyana …left no donation for your
child so the director was very pleased with your gifts.”
CP was
incensed. On Jan. 25 he shot off a
quick post: “BUT …now one thing is really bothering me…are you telling me
that a RAT and/or offspring …pocketed the orphanage donation??? I am really
pleased to hear that the orphanage director is making their address and phone
numbers public. During our
adoption, we had a (nameless RAT) person keeping the same info topsecret.”
On Jan. 31, CP described how
he had donated the money towards the orphanage with Tatyana’s help:
Tatyana
took me to a building to deposit our orphanage donation.
I don’t know the address, but I do remember being taken through the
back entrance. The hallways
were old, dimly lit and the floors were uneven.
I asked her where we were and she said it was the City Health
Department and that is where the orphanage donations were accepted.
I
was led into a small room where there were a couple of ladies and a man
making some type of entries, by hand, in some ledgers.
Behind them was a small window with bars on it. I
handed a lady the donation in rubles, she counted it and gave me a receipt
and then handed it back to the person behind the bars.
Tatyana
asked what name the donation should be under and I started to tell her which
FRUA chapter and she said, “Never mind. We will just put it in your
name.” As we were leaving that room, a lady stopped us so I could
sign some papers. These were
the inventory sheets of the clothing and vitamins we took to the orphanage.
I
know I had seen the lady before in what appeared to be her own office back
in the orphanage. She was a
medium height, young, blonde and very well dressed.
That was
all fine and dandy; Alysha’s advice seemed to be percolating to some of the
readers and lurkers out in Russian adoption land; some who posted were ready to
travel and categorically stated that they would definitely hand the cash over
directly to the orphanage director.
From a
freezing Internet café in Blagoveshchensk, Alysha followed up on Jan. 26:
Yes
CP I am telling you someone pocketed your donation along with mine and too
many others to mention. I am
sure now you understand why I am so furious.
I think all adoptive parents who have lived through this process must
be at least 98% wonderful people. To
have someone do this to the children who suffer and are left behind makes me
livid…you can understand my need to expose them to the government so
something can be done. I am trusting that the agencies back home know
nothing of this in this region as this would be even more appalling.
All
of this info I have gathered over the past 2 years has been…upsetting but
being here and having it confirmed to me makes it all the more real.
I beg all of you who come after me, please, for the sake of the
children who wait, bring your orphanage donation in hand.
Do not give it to anybody but the orphanage director…Please do not
give it to anyone else.
There
are too many untrustworthy people here and we must cut their greedy hands
out of the loop. I will stop at
nothing to quit this cycle.
Ask
the director when you are here is there something they need that you can
shop for. She will give you a list.
I bought a huge stack of underwear the other day for it was needed
badly.
Tatyana,
reading this from her fortress in Amur, was hopping mad at being called a rat.
Her good name and honest reputation of being a caring, helpful woman were
at stake! How would she keep duping
all these stupid Americans and maintain her highflying lifestyle by selling her
countrymen?
Alysha
and CP had a point. I came across an
adoption account (scroll down until you come to “Journey of Love” by
Alison B. Harbour) by a woman named Chrystal Tapp, who worked as a software
engineer for Microsoft.
In March
1999 she signed on with an Amrex agency named Heritage Adoption Service, Inc.
out of Portland, Oregon. That August 1999
she received a referral for a baby boy in Blagoveshchensk, Amur.
That
December, Chrystal and her father, along with three other Amrex families from
Miami, Atlanta and New Jersey, traveled to Amur to adopt seven children, six of
whom were at the Amurskaya Oblast Baby Home in Blagoveshchensk.
Chrystal
told the reporter how, when her 18-month old son was first brought out to her,
she was shocked at his small size and thinness. He
could not stand unassisted. She mentioned
that the diet he was fed consisted “of a watery form of mush and cookie styled
crackers” — almost exactly what Alysha had described.
This
adoption took place in December 1999. Alysha
traveled in January 2002, two years later. Not
much had changed in Amur with Amrex, had it?
Chrystal
was allowed to see her son for five days, an hour each day.
She gave
“gifts” of shampoo, conditioner, pens, scarves and other small clothing
items to the orphanage staff. The gifts were not mandatory, but “encouraged” by Heritage
Adoption Service, Inc. Chrystal also
“gave” (allegedly ... I do think the reporter got this amount wrong) to the
Ministry of Education $15,000 for her son’s adoption.
One
startling thing this article mentioned was that three children adopted from Amur
that December had rickets, including Chrystal’s son.
A boy being adopted by the Atlanta couple had “treatable non-contagious
tuberculosis.” One of those seven children would be dead by October 2000, and
he and both his brothers also had rickets.
With all
those American dollars flowing into Amur, carried by adoptive families or sent
in by their agencies, where had the majority of it gone?
Amrex and its member agencies crammed children from Blagoveshchensk into
the pipeline. If each family was paying
Tatyana and Svetlana $6,000 or more, why hadn’t that money been used for the
orphanage?
There is
no excuse for rickets and the poor diet the children were still being fed.
The only stomachs being filled were those of the facilitators and their
intermediaries.
Alysha
was relentless. Her next post on Jan. 27
was a classic.
To
the person who asked about Tatyana. No
I do not deal with Tatyana or Svetlana while I am here.
You must understand they are part of the problem and I wouldn’t
befriend them if I had to. I do
have an address for Tatyana at home and I will get it to you when I get
back. But God only knows why
anyone would want that witch’s address and phone number for anything other
than to ask what in the world did you do with the orphanage donations?
BTDT
again popped in, adamantly stating that their funds had gone to the
orphanage director and directly into the bank. BTDT
never came out and said that they were an Amrex family, so I am willing to
believe what she says about the donations.
On Jan. 29 she posted:
I
personally know of many couples that have given their donations directly to
the orphanage within the last couple of years, ourselves included.
We went with an orphanage representative to the bank and saw that our
money was deposited directly into the orphanage’s account. These donations that I speak of have all been well over $325
and there are receipts to prove it. There
were no foreign fees involved in these adoptions, so no money was kept by
the faciliator. The latest
couple to make a donation directly to the orphanage left Blago just before
you arrived.
Alysha,
in her response to this thanked BTDT for the info about the bank.
But she asked, “Were the couples you speak of taken to the bank by
Tatyana? I asked the orphanage director
if the people at the bank were suspects also …By the way BTDT, I have a
receipt for $6,000 donation from the bank but, no, the orphanage didn’t get my
donation either.”
On Feb. 1
BTDT responded, this time not as positive as she was in her previous post.
I
don’t have an actual address before me.
I would have to locate receipts and then have it translated, or talk
to the other couple that just went. It is possible that we went to the same
place CP went, although we were
told it was a bank, not the Health Department.
I suppose many of the buildings look the same, but this one did have
bars at the teller windows. If
there were ‘rats’ involved in this transaction, then they were all
throughout the building. Everyone
knew why were there and a number of people were involved in our transaction.
Of course, this was two years ago.
We saw Ludmilla before we went and she was well aware of the donation
we were making. She never said
anything later about not receiving the donation, so we ‘assumed’ she did
get it.
Publicly
Alysha continued to admonish the Blago/Amrex adopters to keep quiet and that
categorically Amrex and their agencies were, to some extent, circumventing
Russian adoption laws. She cautioned them they would be told what a bad person she was by
Tatyana, so to be prepared.
She again
begged them to make the donation in person. On
one of her last posts from Amur, Alysha told people simply “Adoption in Russia
is free. I hope one day that many people
will be able to adopt for the true amount it takes to do this and that Americans
won’t be robbed blind by agencies and red tape.
If we do have to fork out ridiculous amounts of money that orphanage will
receive it, not a bunch of greedy rats.”
Greedy
rats, greedy agency directors, sick, malnourished children — it’s a
nightmare that never seems to end.
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