TIMOTHY APPLEBY
>From Saturday's Globe and Mail
When 13-year-old Russian-born Masha Allen testified in Washington this
week at a House of Representatives subcommittee investigating child
pornography, she described five years of Internet-distributed sexual
torment at the hands of the American pedophile who adopted her from an
orphanage — a chronicle of abuse that left her audience shocked.
But in one key regard, Masha's ghastly tale is not unusual, shedding
light on a gaping rip in the safety net that is supposed to govern
international adoptions. And so worrying is the gap that some of the
home countries have periodically blocked adoptions entirely, often when
the process is midway through.
After Masha arrived as a five-year-old at the Plum, Pa., home of Matthew
Mancuso in 1998, no social worker or government official ever stopped to
check on her, she recounted, even though regular visits and follow-up
reports were part of Mr. Mancuso's adoption agreement with the Russian
authorities....
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