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贺梅抚养权案 |
Chinese
Immigrants Appeal to Get Daughter Back
The girl, 6, remains with foster parents after her mother and father lost
custody in a ruling that some say was colored by cultural bias.
By Ellen Barry, Times Staff Writer
LA Times,
JACKSON, Tenn. - Lawyers for a Chinese immigrant couple on
Wednesday
appealed a judge's ruling that last year stripped them of parental rights
to
their daughter, Anna Mae.
Jack and Casey He had put the girl, now 6, into the care of foster parents
when she was 3 weeks old because, they said, they could not support her.
Jerry and Louise Baker, a white couple from suburban Memphis, had sought
to
adopt Anna Mae, after the Hes went to court to get her back.
In his May 12 ruling, Circuit Judge Robert Childers sided firmly with the
Bakers; he found that the Hes had legally abandoned Anna Mae by not
visiting
her or paying child support for four months.
David Siegel, the Hes' lawyer, argued before a three-judge appellate panel
Wednesday that the couple were never told that leaving Anna Mae with a
foster family could be perceived as abandonment or threaten their parental
rights. He said the Hes had always regarded the arrangement as a temporary
one, and were shocked when the Bakers began to limit their access to the
child.
"There is not a scintilla of evidence that ever, at any time, has
Mrs. He
ever expressed an interest in adoption," Siegel said. Records of the
couples' communications about Anna Mae are "replete with 'temporary,
temporary, temporary, temporary,' " Siegel said.
Anna Mae was born when her parents were going through a difficult time.
Her
father, a doctoral student, had been charged with sexual assault and had
lost his stipend and his student visa. He was later acquitted of the
charges. Unable to afford health insurance, the Hes arranged 90-day foster
care placement with the Bakers through a local agency.
When the term ended, both couples agreed to continue the arrangement, and
the Hes signed papers agreeing to grant the Bakers custody. By the time
Anna
Mae was 2, the families were in open conflict over the child; the Bakers
contend there was an agreement that they would raise her to adulthood.
Some have charged that Childers' decision-making was colored by cultural
bias. In his ruling, the judge described the couple as duplicitous people
whose fight for their daughter was motivated by the fear that they would
be
deported.
He said Casey He's courtroom tears were "calculated" and
speculated that she
had hidden her ability to speak English. He also echoed the Bakers'
concerns
that Anna Mae's life would be endangered if the Hes took her back to
China,
citing a high infant-mortality rate for girls and the nation's
"one-child-rule."
In a friend-of-the-court brief, the Seattle chapter of the Organization of
Chinese Americans argued that the court "may have been a victim of
its own
sublimated anti-foreign and ethnocentric biases." The brief said that
Childers had used cultural stereotypes in his assessment of the Hes'
character and had failed to take into account traditional Chinese views of
children, family and government that could have explained their actions.
Richard Bergeon, a spokesman for the organization, said arguments about
cultural bias may be useful if the case moves to a higher court of appeal.
"By entering this brief, we put race on the docket," he said.
Larry Parrish, a lawyer representing the Bakers, argued Wednesday that the
Hes had destroyed their credibility through erratic, destructive behavior.
He described one encounter in which the Hes asked the Bakers for their
daughter back, explaining that they planned to give Anna Mae to a personal
injury lawyer who had agreed to "take the baby in exchange for the
fee." The
Bakers warned them that doing so would be illegal, Parrish said.
Jack He said that account is unfounded.
In an interview, Parrish dismissed charges of cultural bias as "a
complete
and premeditated sham."
"If there was any cultural bias here, it was a bias against the
Bakers by
virtue of bending over backward to be deferent to the fact that the
biological parents were Chinese," Parrish said. He described Jack He
as "a
con artist par excellence."
A second friend-of-the-court brief, written by lawyers at Vanderbilt
University, the University of Memphis and Loyola University, argued that
Childers had erred by comparing the Bakers with the Hes without first
establishing that the Hes were unfit parents. The Hes have two other
children, ages 2 and 4.
"It's not the job of the court to find a better set of parents for a
child,"
said Christina A. Zawisza, associate professor of clinical law at the
University of Memphis. "The state doesn't have the right to
second-guess
parents unless the child would be in danger."
The Hes and the Bakers were in the courtroom Wednesday, as was a small
group
of Chinese onlookers and a representative from the Chinese Embassy in
Washington.
Jerry Baker, a banker, said Childers was a "fair and honest man"
who had
heard hours of testimony and reached the right conclusion.
"Personally, I think a lot of these friends of the court are just
friends of
the Hes," Baker said. "We feel like as long as they're allowed
to remain in
the United States, there's going to be appeal after appeal."
Jack He said he and his wife were horrified by Childers' ruling. During 91
hours of testimony, He said, he and his wife had been impressed by the
judge's politeness. When they read the decision, he said, "we
couldn't even
speak. We couldn't even breathe."
The case has drawn together Memphis' small Chinese community - many of
whom,
like Jack He, came to America from mainland China as graduate students,
said
Jinliang Cai, president of the Greater Memphis Chinese Community.
"There are some people who feel we need to be assertive, we need to
assert
our dignity to protect the weak, and people who get taken advantage
of," Cai
said. Others, he said, "are humiliated, because it is very uncommon
for the
Chinese to give their children away, and they feel like it's
unforgivable."