Response to adoptive mother's blog about Romea.cz article
On Thursday, 3 July, news server Romea.cz published an article by Saša Uhlová entitled Adoption and foster care: "We had room at the table". That article, which was about foster care and the stories of those who decide to aid parentless children, touched on the book Year of the Rooster (Rok kohouta) by the author Tereza Boučková.
That particular part of the article has prompted a response both from Ms Boučková and her husband, Jiří Bouček. Since that response has now gone from being part of a serious dialogue and has crossed into the arena of manipulating facts (and thereby readers), Saša Uhlová and the editors of Romano vod’i magazine and news server Romea.cz are publicly responding, as follows:
The article in question is not an interpretation of this couple’s life (as Tereza Boučková writes in one of her e-mails to us). It does not pass judgment on them under any circumstances (as Tereza Boučková has written in her blog, titling the piece "Brats"), and it does not reproach Ms Boučková for (as she has written) "daring to write the novel Rok kohouta based on [her] experiences, thereby putting the finishing touches on the adversity abandoned Romani children face".
It is completely understandable that this entire topic is a very private and sensitive one for the couple, and we are sorry if they feel offended by the article, as it was definitely never our intention (as we have already communicated to them in an e-mail) to offend them. However, we consider their imprecise interpretation of the part of the article concerning the story of their two adoptive sons to constitute an attack which is disproportionately forceful and far from fair, as it manipulates the meaning of the article to an unreal degree.
The author of the article, Saša Uhlová, has already publicly apologized to the couple for the fact that some passages in the article personally offended them, as has Martina Vančáková, the psychologist and foster mother to two Romani children who was directly quoted and paraphrased in the article. To be clear, Ms Uhlová and Ms Vančáková have apologized for the fact that the wording of the article was open to interpretation and taken to mean something other than what they intended, not for what they actually said, as there is not the slightest reason for them to apologize for that.
Jiří Bouček was given room on news server Romea.cz to publish his response to the article, and the editors included a link to the original piece so readers could find it easily. In her blog entitled "Brats" published on Monday 7 July on the website aktuálně.cz, Tereza Boučková does not even mention the title of the article that has so terribly offended her and against which she has launched her attack, nor does it include a link to the original article.
The entire discussion of these passages in the article (which has unfortunately initially managed to overshadow the rest of the piece, which really is not about the story of this couple) revolves around a misunderstanding that has most likely arisen through an imprecise interpretation. This is regrettable, because what the couple consider to be an attack (or "defamation and slander", as Tereza Boučková writes in her blog), is, on the contrary, an explanation of their story, contextualizing it and providing more reasons for why it happened the way it did.
Those reasons, however, do not include any mention of this couple having personally "failed" – rather, the reasons described are the different opportunities for professional counseling that existed during communism, which were not equivalent (and could not have been equivalent) to the approach toward and level of care available to prospective adoptive parents today, as well as the role played by the early childhood trauma and emotional deprivation experienced by any child placed in institutional care. Under no circumstances does the article judge the couple, and it does not say that they discharged their roles as adoptive parents poorly.
Tereza Boučková has written the following in her blog entitled "Brats": "On the webpages of Romea.cz an article by Saša Uhlová has been published precisely in that vein. Again I have been charged with many things, e.g., with never wanting Romani children, with being forced to take them, with not working with them, with not addressing their deprivation, with not finding them professional treatment and even with responsibility for the falling number of adoptions and foster parents."
This interpretation of the Romea.cz article is incorrect and manipulative. We thoroughly object to it on the following basis:
1. The article’s claim as to what kind of children the couple did or did not want is a paraphrase of information that is publicly available, for example, from previously published interviews with Tereza Boučková. In the online discussion about this claim, Saša Uhlová has cited those direct quotes, which state that the couple did not go into the adoption process CONCRETELY or EXPRESSLY requesting a Romani child.
No one in the article claims the couple DID NOT WANT a Romani child. If the couple have read the article as stating that they did not want a Romani child, then it is understandable that they were offended and we regret that fact.
However, the author did not intend for what she wrote to be read that way. To consciously, expressly request a child who is specifically of Romani ethnicity in addition to having the specific characteristics common to all children whose biological families give them up is really not the equivalent of applying to adopt any child whatsoever.
The passage at issue focuses precisely on emphasizing that difference and does not claim that Tereza Boučková did not care to have a Romani child. She has interpreted it as meaning the opposite.
2. Tereza Boučková claims that Martina Vančáková, who is quoted in the article, has said that, to quote the "Brats" blog: "I didn’t work with them, I didn’t address their deprivation, I didn’t find them professional treatment." In the article, Martina Vančáková is quoted as explaining that Romani children have an additional specific characteristic, that of their ethnicity; that potential adoptive parents must be informed about it as professionally as possible; and that the degree of professional awareness of this today is incomparably different to what it was back then.
The communist regime decidedly did not offer the prospective adoptive parents of Romani children the kind of opportunities for professional support that are available to prospective adoptive parents today. This is an easily verifiable and generally known fact.
Nowhere in the article does either the author or Martina Vančáková blame the couple for the dismal direction in which the fates of their boys headed, nor do they claim that they worked inexpertly with them. That is Tereza Boučková’s interpretation of the text, not what the article actually says.
3. Tereza Boučková claims that the article states, to quote from the "Brats" blog, "that because of me, the number of adoptions or foster parents has fallen." The information about Boučková’s book, Year of the Rooster (Rok kohouta), having influenced the (lower) number of adoptions is presented in the article only as Martina Vančáková’s personal opinion, based on her personal experience from her own practice (she participates as a lecturer in preparatory courses for future adoptive parents and foster parents).
How can a personal opinion be untrue? Or to be more precise – where does Tereza Boučková get the nerve to claim that Martina Vančáková’s personal experience is somehow untrue?
The Romea.cz article does not doubt that the couple at issue adopted both boys in good faith with the best of intentions to provide them with the very best home and upbringing they could want, and it does not negatively evaluate the course of that upbringing or its results. The article does not attack the couple and under no circumstances did it aim to offend them.
The same cannot be said of the response from their side, in which several statements in the piece are incorrectly interpreted (e.g., "While the article is about foster family care, it takes me, that Boučková, as a deterrent example of failure in every way – and it lies. It lies about the facts of my life. Those lies concern myself and my husband. Ultimately they concern all of our children. How could she dare write that we were not interested in them?!" Tereza Boučková posted to the online discussion beneath the article on news server Romea.cz). We cannot consider this to be a serious response.
Tereza Boučková also rejects the notion that statements about her personal story can be made in a public forum ("Things are written there about ‘our’ and primarily ‘my’ life," she writes in the blog entitled "Brats"). We are of the opinion that since Tereza Boučková decided to publish a book about her life, in which she writes openly about it for public consumption, she needs to count on the public responding to it.
We definitely do not approve of public responses that are insulting or offensive, and the mention of the couple’s story in the Romea.cz article was not of that nature. Some of the couple’s attitudes, as expressed in their responses to our piece, have opened up a much more significant discussion, in particular with respect to their hints about genetic predetermination (for example, in Jiří Bouček’s response, which reads: "Yes, the early problems with the boys were certainly in large part dictated by their trauma as unwanted children and their experience in the newborn institution, but their frittering away all of their talents, their resigning themselves to never receiving recognition from those around them, their preference for an immediate experience over long-term ambition and effort – those are characteristics which, in our experience, someone is born with and then gradually advocates to a greater or lesser degree."). We will not comment further on this here.
We understand that this topic is an extremely sensitive one for this couple. However, we must stress once more that the article by Saša Uhlová was under no circumstances an attack on their persons.
We consider the discussion of foster family care to be of the utmost importance, and much of what Tereza Boučková has said and written in her public media appearances can become the basis of a very interesting, supportive debate. It would be a shame to let such dialogue be crushed by an avalanche of distorted, imprecise interpretations of what was meant by this piece.
We have deep respect for Jiří Bouček and Tereza Boučková, as we do for everyone who has decided to care for abandoned children. We believe this response from our side will contribute toward improved understanding.
