Understanding a wayward parent?

There's much I don't understand about the Tennessee mother who sent her adoptive son back to Russia.

If what we've heard through the media in any way approximates the truth, that family was a in a world of hurt. I understand being afraid of an emotionally disturbed child, and I understand feeling trapped with no way out.

I don't understand how any parent can fail to see the long term ramifications of such an abandonment: after all isn't part of the point behind adoption to avoid those long term ill-effects of not having a family? I also don't see how she didn't know she could terminate her parental rights in a more responsible manner.

How could she not see that her adopted son needed help from mental health professionals? Perhaps she tried, perhaps not. How can you expect a silk purse of a child to be immediately sewn from the pig's ear of life long institutionalization in an orphanage?

The only thing I know for sure is that her callous abandonment has further damaged an already damaged child. To what end he will come is far from assured to be a good one.Taking the media accounts at face value, there had to be a better way to protect her remaining children than by abandoning that boy to the wolves.