Russia told kids would be victims of US adoption ban

Many of them were crippled by illness and in desperate need of medical care before her agency helped organize their adoption into U.S. families, she recalls.

Children's rights campaigners say children like these will suffer most if President Vladimir Putin approves a law barring American adoptions that has been rubber-stamped by Russian lawmakers. The act retaliates against a new U.S. law that will punish Russians accused of human rights violations.

Critics of the bill say Russian orphanages are woefully overcrowded and the fate of vulnerable children should not be used as a bargaining chip in a bilateral feud.

“These children are not even offered to foreigners until they get a certain number of (adoption) refusals from Russians,” said Sigayeva, a neatly styled brunette who heads the New Hope Christian Services Adoption Agency.

“These are children with complicated diagnoses, really complicated. They are very ill children.”

She smiled as she flipped through photos of children embraced by their adoptive parents, playing with family pets and enjoying presents and other trappings of holiday cheer.

“What surprises me is that here they all look so healthy, so fantastic, but you should see what they look like when they are taken from here,” Sigayeva said.

“Some had to be carried to the border. We had a girl with hepatitis whom we helped from the emergency room.”

Both sides in the heated debate surrounding the bill agree Russia's orphanage system is overwhelmed, riddled with corruption and most failing to place children in families.

More than 650,000 children are considered orphans in Russia — though some were rejected by their parents or taken from dysfunctional homes. Of that total, 110,000 lived in state institutions in 2011, according to the Ministry of Science and Education.

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