It’s a true story. It took place in Russia and goes back to 1998. Glenn Hammet, an American, adopted three-year-old Renat from an orphanage in Ulyanovsk, afterward, he took another boy and brought the children to London. Thus, a new family was formed in England. The photo shows foster parents Glenn Hammet and his civil partner Keith Millay being happy, but there was no harmony in the family. A British Gay Couple Who Took In Two Russian Toddlers Fears to be Killed by One of Them. The article with this headline featured Hammet and Millay complaining about their eldest son. They claimed that 21-year-old Renat threatened them with a knife and a screwdriver, beat them, and even tried to strangle his younger brother, at first, and then his adoptive father Glenn with a dog leash. Our lives have turned into a nightmare. We are physically, emotionally and financially destroyed.
The tragedy took place in a common apartment in a fashionable London district of Islington, where the family moved a few years ago. The young man is accused of crashing walls, breaking furniture, computers, and a television, and inflicting losses amounting to 60 thousand pounds sterling, in addition to the threat of physical violence. The family conflict went so far that they even had to call the police. As a result, the eldest son was prohibited from visiting his foster home. The reasons for such behavior leave much room for speculation.
After a scandalous interview to a British newspaper, the family refuses to comment on anything. 64-year-old architect Keith Milli refused to answer our questions. He resorted to his right for privacy. Why don’t you want to tell us anything? It is clear that this is a serious story for us. The children are from Russia. Nothing that serious happened, everything is fine. You have nothing to worry about. Glenn Hammet and his foster children also keep silent. We asked several British organizations representing sexual minorities to give comments. There was no result.
Meanwhile, according to the only newspaper article on the issue, the rebellious young man said that the sexual orientation of his adoptive parents was his problem. Some of the children bullied me because I had two dads and no mom, and it drove me crazy. I took it out on Glenn and Keith because I felt it was their fault. I went through a homophobic phase. I think gay couples need to be aware of the consequences before they adopt. People in the UK have long had a tolerant attitude towards sexual orientation. The country allows same-sex marriages. Since 2005 gay couples have been legally allowed to adopt children. The most famous gay couple in the country, singer Elton John and his husband David Furnish, are raising two sons, who were born by a surrogate mother.
According to the British NGO New Family, last year, every tenth foster child in the United Kingdom was adopted by same-sex partners. This approach is considered modern and is strongly promoted. In the community of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, it's fervently argued that sexual orientation of parents doesn’t matter to the children. Even the simplest medication is thoroughly tested before being given to people. Here, we are making a social experiment. And it concerns children, the most vulnerable members of our society, those who should, on the contrary, be especially protected. In 1998, when taking three-year-old Renat from the orphanage, Glenn Hammet came to Ulyanovsk alone, concealing the fact that he had a homosexual partner, although at that time there were no restrictions in Russia for adoption by foreigners. There was no interest for Renat's further fate either.
In Ulyanovsk they didn’t even know that the child was taken to England. According to the records, which we have in the record book, Glenn Edward Hammet was a citizen of the United States of America. Address: Carmen Street, San Francisco, California. That is, according to the records, he went to the United States of America. Two years later, the same adoptive parent adopted another child from here, Max, and again no one knew where he took him. Glenn Hammet works as a teacher in a prestigious primary school in London's Hampstead.
The excellent reputation of this school was overshadowed by a terrible scandal several years ago. One of the graduates wrote a book of memoirs, where he accused four of his mentors of pedophilia. The scandal was hushed up a long time ago, and Glenn Hammet had nothing to do with it. But this does not mean that the question who checked the potential adoptive parent and how they did it is inappropriate. According to the newspaper article, the British social services also didn’t show much concern, even when 15-year-old Renat stopped attending school, didn’t spend the nights at home and was repeatedly detained by the police, although in the UK, they willingly intervene in family disputes, and it often comes to the deprivation of parental rights.
Now that Renat became an adult, his adoptive parents say that it is dangerous to stay in the same apartment with him and that he needs psychiatric treatment. Whatever the real cause of the conflict is, no one wants to figure it out because, even given the maximum degree of tolerance, this adoption story can’t be called a happy one, and this contradicts the local officially accepted system of moral coordinates.
