Today I had an opportunity to visit with Laura Yeritsyan, the woman in the article posted below.

What a beautiful and energetic 3 year old Hayk is. Long blond hair and stunning blue eyes.

I spoke with Laura about her experience and the details. This is just another example of the Armenian system and the abuses that still go on. Though this case had a happy ending, I suspect that there are many cases that healthy children that were deemed disabled and/or handicapped have been adopted internationally as a result of an intentional misdiagnosis. Remember that the Prime Minister has said that Armenian orphans who are disabled or are mentally ill may be adopted by non-Armenians. Hayk was one of those children that fell in that category when in fact he is not disabled or mentally ill, but was intentionally labeled such so someone could adopt this very healthy child and most probably take them out of the country.

I guess one of the saving graces for Hayk was that his mother Laura had decided prior to finding Hayk was she had planned one day to look for him and was going to do so when her 1 year old was in pre-school and she had the time to find him, bring him home if she did find him and care for her challenged child. So in her mind when she was approached to sign off her rights to Hayk, she followed that lead and found him.

When I visited with the director of the orphanage that Hayk was at a couple of months ago, I asked her about the harelip children that the British government was curing and if they planned on placing the children back with their families and the woman made mention of one child being returned (I presume this must have been Hayk), but said something along the line of parents that could give up their child are not interested in having their child back. I guess from what Laura told me today and her actions, disprove the generalization the director of the orphanage made.

I’m going to have to make a visit again to the orphanage to follow up on this story and also what efforts have been made to reunite the harelip children to their families?

I’m very happy for Laura, Vartan, Hayk and this sisters and brother who are all back together. This really was a fairytale ending to what could have been an otherwise tragic story of child trafficking that would have probably never been detected. This also tells me that there is justification to check all international adoptions of “disabled” children to see if in fact the children are what they were diagnosed as being?