Nataliya Derkach just wanted a husband. In 1998, she was a 26-year-old college student in Kiev, divorced and disenchanted with the Ukrainian dating scene. Then she met Natasha Spivack, a Russian-American who runs Encounters International, an Internet matchmaking service that caters to American men seeking Russian and Ukrainian brides. Spivack had just the catch for Derkach: a handsome, successful businessman named James Fox. Derkach married him two months after they met in the United States, moving to Virginia and taking his last name. But James soon began beating her, says Fox. And when she turned to Spivack for help, Fox says Spivack told her that all American men were "crazy," and to deal with it or risk being sent back to Ukraine. Fox did as she was told, until one night in the summer of 2000, when Fox says her husband beat her as she breast-fed the couple's infant daughter. Fox wound up in the emergency room with her face bruised and swollen and a human bite mark on her hand.
Fox escaped to a women's shelter, then got radical: she sued Spivack and Encounters International, becoming the first to win a case against an Internet bride service. In December, a jury awarded her $433,500. The verdict rattled the murky, often un-regulated world of international matchmaking, shining a spotlight on some of its practices. The case "puts companies on notice," says Fox's lawyer, Randall Miller. "They can't operate in the shadows anymore." The court found that Spivack failed to tell Fox about a provision in the immigration law that protects foreign women from deportation if they leave abusive husbands. The jury also held Spivack liable for assuring Nataliya Fox that her husband had been carefully screened. Spivack denies wrongdoing. Her lawyer argues that any responsibility she might have had ended when the Foxes wed.
Each year, hundreds of Internet bride services recruit thousands of women--mostly from Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia and other economically depressed parts of the globe--to marry their American clients. Matchmaking Web sites feature glowing testimonials and pictures of smiling couples. The sites play off old stereotypes of foreign women as subservient, "traditional" wives. For $1,850, Spivack, still in business, promises to connect clients with women who will "follow their husband's lead, and stick with the marriage even when times get tough and things stop being 'fun'." Many Internet brides settle into happy relationships; Encounters International claims a success rate of 86 percent, just 35 divorces out of 257 marriages. But Layli Miller-Muro, a lawyer who runs the Tahirih Justice Center, an international women's rights group based in Virginia, has tracked problems in the foreign-matchmaking industry for years. When she surveyed 175 legal-aid groups in the United States, more than half reported clients who'd been abused by men they'd met through marriage brokers. In 2001, Miller-Muro was looking for a test case when she met Fox. Miller-Muro turned to Randall Miller, a lawyer at Arnold & Porter, the powerful Washington law firm, who agreed to represent Fox free of charge.
Spivack and her company weren't Fox's only targets. She also sued her ex-husband, who settled the case for $115,000. During Spivack's trial, James testified that Nataliya had attacked him. He had earlier been charged with attempted murder in the beating that sent Nataliya Fox to the emergency room, but that charge was later dropped. An assault charge was expunged from James's record after he completed an anger-management class. His lawyer, Thomas Peter Mann, told NEWSWEEK that his client had done nothing wrong and acted only in self-defense.
Miller-Muro predicts more lawsuits. "Our work on this issue has really just begun," she says. But Nataliya Fox hopes to put it all behind her. James Fox divorced her in 2001, then married another (Russian) Internet bride. Nataliya now lives in Virginia with her daughter, and works as a civil engineer. She also has a new boyfriend. She met him the old-fashioned way--in person.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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