MEDIA: Montana Ranch Helps Troubled International Adoptees
Daniel and Elizabeth Case
Marando/Kolarick don't need more publicity for their 2nd Hand kid program.
Ranch raises hopes for adoptees
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-adopt_rubinjan06,1,7830290,full.story?coll=chi_mezz&ctrack=2&cset=true
Youths so troubled that parents weigh giving up find friend in remote haven
By Bonnie Miller Rubin | Tribune staff reporter
8:47 AM CST, January 6, 2008
EUREKA, Mont.
At first glance, the children saddling up the horses look like they were
cast by Hollywood to play wholesome, athletic, all-American kids. But
appearances don't tell the whole story.
One has molested a sibling. Another has tried to kill the family pet. Lying,
stealing, vandalism and fire-setting round out the list of transgressions.
Because their parents no longer can manage them at home, the 24
youngsters -- almost all international adoptees -- have ended up on a
special ranch in this remote, rugged corner of northwest Montana.
Related links
· For adoptive parents, options are limited
This is the final stop. Most already have logged countless hours in
psychiatric units, wilderness programs and residential treatment centers,
searching for answers to their disturbing behaviors. The goal is that
through intense intervention and structure, their conduct will improve
sufficiently so they can go home.
But a handful will never return, moving on to new families. They are victims
of an expanding phenomenon known as adoption disruption -- the official term
for when parents attempt to return their adopted children.
"Some parents just can't do it anymore; they're done," said Joyce Sterkel,
who runs the Ranch for Kids, a therapeutic boarding school. "It's tragic ...
and everyone is a victim."
No one appears to keep data on adoption disruption. While still a
statistically rare occurrence among the approximately 20,000 foreign-born
children adopted by Americans each year, such relinquishment is happening
with increasing frequency, experts said.
One Ohio adoption agency reports receiving as many as five calls a day from
parents about disruptions, up from just one or two a month a couple of years
ago.
"No one knew the magnitude of the problem," said Sterkel, 60. "The horror
stories just keep on coming."
While dissolutions of domestic adoptions are not unheard of (a decade-long
study of 5,750 Illinois children adopted from foster care through the
mid-1980s found a rate of 6.5 percent), it is among the international
population where experts are seeing a troubling spike.
Experts blame the jump on a confluence of factors.
First, as Americans adopted more children from overseas -- the figures have
almost tripled since 1990 -- the number of children with despairing
behaviors grew, and these children are now hitting adolescence, when their
rages are more dangerous.
Moreover, many parents were unprepared for the challenges, in part because
agencies glossed over their charges' complex medical histories -- or omitted
them altogether. "Now, they're out there all alone ... living in a constant
state of crisis," said Amy Groessl, a therapist with the Children's Research
Triangle in Chicago, which serves high-risk families.
Problems lurk beneath surface
While some adoptive parents may undertake parenthood with unrealistic
expectations, more typically they are merely ill-equipped to cope with
profoundly damaged children. Due to one or more of a variety of reasons --
among them fetal alcohol syndrome, mental illness, abuse, attachment
disorders -- the youngsters can't function in a family, though they show no
outward signs of disability.
"These kids are the victims of every kind of abuse you can imagine --
sexual, physical, emotional," said Sterkel, who runs what may be the only
therapeutic school exclusively for adopted children.
Parents receive no hint or preparation for the tumultuous road ahead, she
said: "They thought love was enough."
So when the nuclear family melts down, parents must grapple with a
heartbreaking choice: "Do we remove this child ... or do we all go down?"
Sterkel, a nurse and mother of three grown children, knows the struggles
personally as well as professionally.
She witnessed threadbare orphanages when she lived in Russia for two years
in the early 1990s as part of a humanitarian relief effort.
After returning to the U.S., Sterkel couldn't shake the image of Katya,
suffering from years of abandonment and neglect. She adopted her in 1996 at
age 10. Two years later came a 14-year-old Russian boy, Sasha.
The oldest of four, Sasha and his siblings were first adopted by a Colorado
family, an arrangement that quickly unraveled. Sasha moved on to a second
household, also in Colorado, while his two sisters and a brother were split
up and placed in several other states.
Soon after, Sasha tried to poison his new mother -- slipping crushed pills
into her sandwich. Charged with felony assault, he was sent to juvenile
detention.
"My new mother told me that I should forget them [his siblings], but I
couldn't," the 23-year-old said recently, sitting in the ranch's cozy
kitchen. "I went nuts."
When Sterkel heard his story, she decided to rescue him. The adoption was
finalized in 1999. Today he helps out on the ranch, connecting with angry,
hard-to-reach kids like he was.
"I still have a lot of trust issues ... especially with women," said Sasha,
his blue-green eyes narrowing. "But life is a lot better now. Of all the
families I've had, this one is the best."
There would be one more son -- Michael, now 20 -- bringing the brood to six.
Ranch built on word of mouth
Meanwhile, the word ricocheted around the country that this Montana woman,
who speaks conversational Russian, and her husband, Harry Sutley, could
offer a respite to parents in crisis. The phone would ring, and before you
knew it, the Sterkel-Sutley clan was caring for a dozen or so troubled
children.
The wind howls across the craggy landscape here, 5 miles from the Canadian
border. There's plenty of physical activity and virtually nowhere to run. In
the early days, Sterkel didn't have much of a treatment plan beyond keeping
the kids busy and nurtured.
Today the program employs 15, but the youngsters -- most between the ages of
12 and 17 but some as young as 4 -- live in the same Spartan dorms, with
their meticulously made beds and family photos on their nightstands.
The blueprint is unchanged: The route to self-esteem is through teamwork and
productivity.
The first half of the day is devoted to academics (a former convenience
store serves as a one-room schoolhouse), followed by chores. On a ranch,
cows always need milking, ditches digging and fences mending. It's a bracing
change for socially isolated children more accustomed to finding
companionship with a TV or computer.
The most coveted time, though, is spent with the horses -- also known as
equine-assisted psychotherapy. Push a horse and he'll push back, while hefty
doses of kindness, patience and respect will usually yield results. It's a
way to connect with aggressive, angry children and nudge them toward new
insights.
Traditional counseling, meanwhile, is available, but only at a parent's
request.
"Here, everyday life is therapy," said Bill Sutley, Sterkel's 35-year-old
son, an electrical engineer by training and an affable wearer of numerous
hats, from ranch manager to math teacher. His Soviet-born wife, Elena, also
works with the children.
The typical stay is 6 months to a year, although some students stay longer.
Tuition ranges from $2,950 to $3,500 a month, for room, board and school.
Since 2004, about 150 kids have cycled through, with only six booted out --
all within the past year. One severely ill girl lasted just four days, after
swallowing a fistful of batteries. Her parents and insurance already had
spent more than $900,000 on treatment, with no end in sight. (Unlike
special-needs kids adopted from the U.S. foster care system, no federal
subsidies exist for children from overseas.)
"It takes a lot before Bill and I will cry 'uncle,'" Sterkel said. "But we
have the staff to think about."
From here, about one-third will return home, while another third -- mostly
those 16 and older -- will move on to Job Corps, an education and vocational
training program run by the U.S. Department of Labor.
The remaining third will discover that their parents are relinquishing their
rights.
Preparing parents-to-be
Sometimes the task of telling a child that he or she will be joining a new
family falls to Bill Sutley.
"I just say: 'This is not your fault. You have a screwed-up brain.' And then
I do my best to explain why the current situation isn't working. I tell
them, 'Take something from this. Learn from your experiences.'"
He rarely judges those adoptive parents who arrive at this painful
conclusion. Sure, one couple sent a one-paragraph e-mail ("just incredibly
lame," Sutley said). But for the most part, such families are held
hostage -- especially when adoptees act out sexually or falsely allege abuse
by their adoptive parents.
"Sometimes, parents have no choice ... otherwise they risk losing the rest
of their family."
When all efforts have failed, Sterkel starts a new placement process with a
call to A Child's Waiting in Akron, Ohio -- one of the few adoption agencies
that works with youths they did not originally place.
Children are listed as green, yellow and red, based on the difficulty of
finding replacement families for each.
Their numbers have risen so dramatically that A Child's Waiting plans to
build transitional housing specifically to accommodate that group, said
Crissy Kolarik, co-director. "The red kids have the most significant issues,
such as sexual predators," she said.
To help prevent future disruptions, agencies are emphasizing more
preadoption training and postadoption support for international adoptions.
Some are telling prospective parents they should assume their children were
exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero.
For one north suburban Chicago mom whose foreign-born daughter is at the
ranch, the warnings came too late.
Often accused of abuse, she said police and DCFS knocking on her door have
no framework for dealing with such an impaired girl. Her short-term
solution? To never be alone with the child. She is still undecided about the
long term.
"All I can tell you is that we grieve for what might have been."
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