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the business of promoting foreign women, principally from the Philippines, Russia and Ukraine, to marriage-minded men, resulting in as many as 6,000 marriages annually. Industry observers say the number of agencies has grown closer to 1,000 in recent years. Introducing the Hopkinses
In many ways, the Hopkinses could be poster children for the "international introduction service" industry. After a year-long E-mail courtship that began on one-and-only.com and included two visits by Hopkins to Russia, Katsuro-Hopkins moved to Manhattan. She left behind a dorm room in Obninsk, a small city, populated largely by scientists, not far from Moscow. Katsuro-Hopkins, 28, is a bombshell of James Bondian proportions. She's tall, blond and gorgeous, a Columbia University doctoral student of plasma physics and a helluva cook, if she does say so herself. Her American husband, while not quite 007, is charming (if somewhat eccentric). The tall, handsome 55-year-old is a former volcanologist and fashion photographer who has made his living for the last decade running Douglas Hopkins & Co., which markets a luxury perfume line. With Oksana, Hopkins says he has found "an emotional simplicity." By all appearances, the Hopkinses are a perfectly happy couple. Both claim the 27-year age difference is a nonissue. Hopkins is clearly delighted that his bride is such a looker. And if his doting attention verges on controlling, its worst manifestations appear to be correcting her English frequently and pushing her on the career front. Hopkins claims he was drawn to one-and-only.com by a friend. "One day, I was hanging out with some buddies in their 70s, and they were all still single, and I realized I didn't want to be like them," recalls Hopkins, who dropped out of Manhattan's dating scene while he was building his business. "One of them invited us to watch a mail-order-bride video of a tour in Russia. The men were losers but the women sparkled. ... That night, I went online."
Petersburg, Russia, arranged by an international marriage-tour agency. The guest list comprised 400 women and 15 men. Bob, 19 years her senior, asked Tanya out and, after three dates and lots of sign language, shocked her with a proposal. He had come to find a wife, he said, and needed her answer by the next day. As far as the agency was concerned, Tanya was one of the lucky ones. Her situation was desperate. The government had not paid her meager bookkeeping salary for months. She lived with her hyperactive 13-year-old son in a single room at a communal boarding house. She had been attending mail-order-bride parties for more than a year after a friend urged her to come along, but before she met Bob, she never really took them seriously. "I figured the worst that could happen would be I would have a threemonth vacation in America and get a break from my miserable life in Russia," she says ruefully. What she got instead was a holiday in hell. She gives this account: From the first morning in America, Bob either ignored Tanya and her son or issued humiliating demands. At parties with his colleagues, he would simply point at her and then at the place where he wanted her to stand. He said he didn't want her to eat much, so she was always hungry. Although Bob never became violent, Tanya says, his psychological abuse was unrelenting. He tracked her and the boy's behavior on a chart, doling out plus and minus signs for dozens of activities, including her sexual performance. He refused to let her call, E-mail or even write a letter to anyone in Russia. After six weeks, she says, an American-Russian couple she barely knew came to the rescue, spiriting her and the boy away when Bob wasn't home. Two and a half years later, Tanya is married to a 76-year-old American man in failing health whom she says she loves. Her son is happy and doing well as school, but Tanya is still troubled by immigration problems and haunting memories.
Horror at Home
Abuse of mail-order brides is not rare, judging by the anecdotal evidence. Leidholdt urges that more countries adopt measures similar to a 1990 Philippine rule that forbids bride brokers from operating in that country, the only such law on the books. "The mail-order-bride industry was bringing in big money to the Philippines, which is under pressure from the World Bank and the IMF to earn foreign money," Leidholdt says. "The only reason those politicians passed the legislation was because of public pressure after feminists brought case after case after case to the media of Filipino women who fled abusive American husbands they met as mail-order brides. The Philippines has seen the cost of this industry for decades. The newly independent states [of the former Soviet Union] are new to this game and have not yet seen the costs." Leidholdt believes obtaining mail-order brides should simply be illegal worldwide. "What's wrong with these men that they can't meet women over here?" she asks. Many Americans would agree with her, but impoverished Russian women are often willing to overlook these men's shortcomings if it means building a better life. And then there are the cases that go beyond marriages of convenience.