Chinese immigrants and foster parents fight for 5-year-old

MEMPHIS, Tennessee Armed with baby pictures and tearful indignation, the two couples come to court each day with their lawyers and supporters aligned on either side of the cherry-paneled chambers.

For five years, Jack and Casey He and Jerry and Louise Baker have been tussling over custody of a child who was born to the Hes, but who ended up with the Bakers for what both sides initially agreed was a temporary arrangement.

The Hes say their daughter was "kidnapped by white Christians" who have been using their wealth and the courts to their advantage.

The Bakers say the birth parents are unstable and abdicated their parental rights by failing to provide child support or to visit their daughter for months on end.

Although the couples signed papers describing the setup as temporary, the Bakers said there had been a separate verbal agreement giving them permanent custody of the child, a contention the birth parents deny. "Why would we visit our daughter every week if we wanted to give her away?" Casey He asked tearfully.

The Hes, who are Chinese immigrants, face a deportation order for unrelated reasons, but have been allowed to stay in the United States until the custody dispute is resolved.

The Bakers' lawyers say that what ultimately matters is the welfare of 5-year-old Anna Mae He, who has seen her biological parents only once in more than three years as a result of a court order.

"What kind of quality of life is the child going to have in China?" asked Larry Parrish, a lawyer for the Bakers. "Common sense dictates that to take a child out of an environment where she's firmly attached and settled is the ultimate devastation."

But in this case, common sense may be a matter of debate. The trial, in its second week, has exposed a chasm between American and Chinese cultures, conflicting notions about what defines a good parent and the extent to which the legal system can become a wedge between parents and their children.

Each day dozens of Chinese from the Memphis area flock to the Shelby County Courthouse wearing yellow ribbons and buttons demanding the family's reunification. Although the case has received little notice outside Tennessee, it has been closely followed in the Chinese-language news media, inflaming passions among Chinese-Americans and drawing concern from the Chinese Embassy in Washington, which has sent a representative to the trial.

Cecilia Lin, who comes to court each day and helps serve Chinese food to spectators during breaks, said Asians could not understand how the Bakers' material wealth would trump blood ties between mother and child.

"Some Americans think they can provide better environment for children because of money, but Chinese think love and enduring care is more important," said Lin, 62, a Taiwanese-born painter in Memphis.

The Hes' troubles began in 1998, soon after the pregnant Casey He arrived in the United States. Jack He, a doctoral candidate in economics at the University of Memphis, had only recently met Casey in China through an arranged marriage. Casey He, 35, a store manager in China, spoke no English and still struggles with the language.

Soon after her arrival, Jack He was accused of sexual assault by a fellow student. Though eventually acquitted, university officials suspended his scholarship and student stipend, the couple's primary means of support. Jack He's student visa was revoked and immigration officials began deportation proceedings against the couple.

As their financial and legal problems deepened and Casey He's pregnancy advanced, a friend suggested that they contact Mid-South Christian Services, a private adoption agency in Memphis. In their testimony this week, agency employees said the couple, who had no health insurance, were seeking a foster family of means to take care of the child while they sorted out their finances. Legal documents they later signed spelled out the arrangement as temporary.

What the couple say they did not understand was that the word "temporary" was not what it seemed: regaining custody required the blessing of the Bakers and the consent of a judge. Agency and court employees and a Chinese-language translator have testified that no one explained the complex nature of the agreement. The couple, they said, was not advised to hire a lawyer.

Until the child's second birthday, the Hes made weekly visits to the Baker home. Tensions increased after Anna Mae's first birthday, when the Hes asked a judge for custody. Though they had found work at Chinese restaurants, the request was denied because they lacked financial stability.

Both sides agree that the discord surrounding the visits reached a peak on Anna Mae's second birthday, when the Bakers refused to allow the Hes to take her out of the house for a family portrait. The Bakers called the police, who, Jack He said, warned them to stay away from the Baker home or face arrest. Fearful of further trouble with the law, Jack He says he complied. What he says he did not know was that under Tennessee law, a four-month lapse in visits can be construed as abandonment.

David Siegel and Richard Gordon, lawyers for the Hes, argue that the Bakers planned all along to keep Anna Mae. They cite their foster-parent application to the agency, which mentions their desire to adopt a child and raise him or her in a Christian home.

Louise Baker also kept a secret journal titled "Visits from Jack and Casey," which Siegel contends shows the Bakers' true intentions. The entries document Louise Baker's distress over the bonding of mother and child and growing frustration as the birth parents demanded more time with their daughter.

"To me, if Casey truly loved her daughter, she would leave her with us," Louise Baker said. She added that a life in China, where female babies are sometimes deemed inferior to males, would be a hardship.

A circuit court judge, Robert Childers, who has been hearing the custody case 12 hours a day, weekends included, is expected to issue a ruling in the coming weeks.

Also from AP

By WOODY BAIRD Associated Press Writer

March 2, 2004, 9:59 AM EST

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- A 5-year-old Chinese-American girl at the center of a custody fight has bonded with the American couple who raised her from infancy and should stay with them, a court-appointed guardian said.

Guardian Kim Mullins also testified Monday that she believes the girl, Anna Mae, would face gender discrimination if her birth parents are allowed to take her to China.

"She is a Baker in her mind, from what I can see," Mullins told Circuit Court Judge Robert Childers.

Jerry and Louise Baker, who became foster parents of Anna Mae in February 1999, are trying to adopt her over the objections of biological parents Shaoqiang and Qin He, and are suing to terminate the Hes' parental rights on grounds of abandonment.

The Hes, facing legal and financial hardships, put Anna Mae in foster care less than a month after her birth in Memphis.

The Hes say they were tricked because of their ignorance of American law and thought the foster care was only temporary. They want to move back to China with her and their two younger children, also born in Memphis.

Mullins said a book titled "The Lost Daughters of China" helped convince her that Anna Mae would face gender discrimination in China. The book details the historical and cultural prejudices against women in China and the issue of abandoned baby girls there.

The Bakers have four biological children, including a daughter close to Anna Mae's age, and the two young girls are particularly close, Mullins said.

Anna Mae's father was a graduate student at the University of Memphis when the school canceled his scholarship in 1998 because of a sexual assault charge for which he was ultimately acquitted. The Hes face possible deportation since his student visa expired when he was expelled.

The Hes last visited their daughter at the Baker home in January 2001. An argument broke out and police ordered the Hes to leave.

"They weren't available to (their daughter) when she was forming a primary attachment of her life, for whatever reason, and because of that, and because they weren't available, she made herself the child of the people who were," Mullins said.

If the judge rules for the Bakers they can continue with adoption. If he rules for the Hes, other court proceedings will be needed to decide custody.

David Siegel, a lawyer for the Hes, said an appeal is likely no matter what Childers decides.

The custody fight has draw the attention of other Chinese immigrants as well as the Chinese embassy in Washington. Two embassy officials have attended sessions of the trial as observers. Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

And one guys' online opinion ...

Letter from Michael G. Ryan Michael G. Ryan is a professional writer living in Seattle, WA. His interest in the He case sprang from a USA TODAY article in January 0f 2002, which made evident the injustice being dealt to the couple, and he's been involved in the case ever since. In that time, he and his wife have had their own child, a son, which reinforced his desire to see the Hes reunited with their child. Ryan and his wife are both adopted. May 10, 2002

To Whom It May Concern:

I continue to be horrified and outraged by a situation going on in Memphis, Tennessee, that might be better set in Melrose Place or Beverly Hills, 90210. It’s a ridiculous affront to decency as I watch an immigrant couple constantly manipulated by a legal system meant to protect them and psychologically abused by an alleged “well-meaning” Christian couple and their overly aggressive lawyer who have, for all intents and purposes, kidnapped the immigrant couple’s child.

I first learned about the custody battle over a little Chinese girl through a newspaper article in the daily USA Today newspaper. The reporter, Bob Davis, took a fairly neutral stance, but he didn’t need to editorialize to outline the injustice he had uncovered: Jack He and Casey Luo, a Chinese couple living in Memphis, had found themselves under great financial hardship after the birth of their daughter, Anna Mae, in January of 1999. They sought out a local Christian aid agency for help, and the agency linked them up with Jerry and Louise Baker, an upper-middle-class couple from Memphis. The Bakers agreed to take care of Anna Mae for Jack and Casey until the Chinese couple was able to get back on their feet.

When Jack and Casey were ready to bring Anna Mae home again one year later, the Bakers refused to give her back. And by then, they had sucker-punched the Hes by convincing them that the Hes needed to sign over legal custody to Anna Mae in order for the Bakers to cover her with their health insurance.

Bob Davis’s article was the tip of the iceberg for me—my wife and I were both outraged to realize that the Bakers had no moral right to the child they had offered to care for. It was painfully obvious that the Chinese couple had been willing to own up to their side of the story for the newspaper, yet the Bakers hid behind their lawyer, Parrish, and refused to justify their actions. Instead, they introduced stealth tactics to maintain their false claim to Anna Mae: they used the INS like attack dogs on the Chinese couple (turning up nothing of substance), they used scare tactics to intimidate the Hes’ employers into firing the Hes and severing the hamstrings of the Hes’ finances, and they redirected the moral finger-pointing from themselves to the Hes by demanding a paternity test from Mr. He (a grave insult to the Hes’ fidelity) and proof that the Hes were even married in the first place.

I could hardly believe the circumstances I was reading about, but when I decided to become involved and see if I could help the Hes—financially or emotionally—I discovered I knew almost nothing. I heard the rest of the story, a soap opera of injustice that has yet to be resolved. I spoke to Mr. He who, for a man justifiably at the end of his rope, is extremely polite and patient. He enlightened me to what Paul Harvey called “the rest of the story.”

And the rest is a maddening kaleidoscope of double-crossings, legal maneuvering, and staggering impropriety. The Bakers showed much less Christ and much more Judas in their subsequent tactics to keep a grip on Anna Mae He. They lied to the Hes even after the biggest lie (that they would give the child back) had become apparent—they suggested that the child would be returned upon the birth of the Bakers own child, which didn’t happen. Mr. Baker made a backroom offer to Mr. He to buy the child, which didn’t happen.

The Bakers have been equally merciless in their efforts to control the circumstances surrounding Anna Mae’s future. Some of their actions border on insanity:

They’ve called the police to keep the Hes away from their child, They’ve repeatedly sought to have the Hes deported, and when that hasn’t worked, they set in motion their own plans to move away from the area When it became apparent that they might lose the custody case in juvenile court, the Bakers filed a petition in chancery court to terminate the Hes’ parental rights, thus avoiding the original judgment To further compound the confusion swirling around the case, the Bakers argued that the Hes had abandoned their child, as evidenced by their absence in the child’s life for four consecutive months (a legal guideline in Tennessee to establish abandonment). But the Bakers themselves established that status by informing the Hes they would be arrested if they attempted to make contact with Anna Mae, essentially holding them at bay until the obligatory four months had passed As an additional roadblock, the Bakers first cut the Hes’ financial resources out from under them by subpoenaing their employers and arguing that said employers were hiring illegal immigrants, and then filing a motion with the chancery court to have the Hes deposit $15,000 with the court. When the Hes were unable to meet this new obligation, the Bakers argued that this was further evidence of the Hes woeful financial state and their inability to care for Anna Mae When it became apparent that bad press (like the USA Today article) might hold sway in the court of public opinion, the Bakers sought—and were granted—a gag order on the case, ensuring that few would know just how horribly they were treating the Hes And all of these horrors are just the overview—the nuts-and-bolts of this debacle are not only terrible; they’re infuriating. In a country in which birth parents are allowed to crawl out of rehabilitation clinics to lay claims to children they abandoned to the foster-care system years earlier—and win these children back from adoptive parents desperate to love these abandoned children—it is amazing to me that the Hes don’t yet have their child back. This is viciously lopsided battle: citizens versus immigrants, rich versus poor, system-savvy versus trusting naivete. The Bakers have pulled out no stops to take advantage of their money, their connections, and their status as American citizens to effectively kidnap another couple’s child.

I am so repulsed by this obvious travesty of justice that I’ve elected to involve myself, though I don’t personally know any of the participants. I’ve spoken with Mr. He, his attorney, and various media representatives to be sure I knew the story fully before passing judgment—after all, I would not wish to become emotionally invested in seeing the Hes reunited with their daughter only to discover that they’re not the victims I thought they were. But at every turn, I discover more and more than the Hes are, indeed, victims. They’re helpless in the face of a court that is, in turns, indifferent and then dismissive. The current judge in the case has zeroed in on the Hes as scapegoats in this case, going so far as to confiscate their passports, demand the deposit of their marriage license, insist on the $15,000 deposit, issue a no-contact order with their daughter, order a psychological evaluation for Mr. He (on no grounds other than a motion from the Bakers’ attorney), and demand the impoverished Chinese couple pay for a variety of fees associated with secondary distractions brought forth by the Bakers, like the DNA test to prove paternity and the psych fees. And the Bakers? They’ve been held accountable for nothing. They’ve resisted depositions (even offering to “influence” the court’s mandates in exchange for avoiding said depositions), and when Mrs. Baker was finally interviewed for said deposition, their lawyer took the line of inquiry out into left field by ridiculously implying that Mrs. He was somehow associated with terrorists.

This whole fiasco would border on comical, like a bad late-night made-for-TV movie, if it weren’t for the fact that a little girl’s future hangs in the balance here. The Hes want their child back; they’ve wanted her all along. And while I understand that the Bakers want her, too, they are not entitled to her. They are withholding her from her natural parents who are being railroaded by the system and those who know how to tweak the system for their own benefit.

In a simple sentence: What’s happening to the Hes is horribly unfair and unjust.

I hope that this letter will provide you a basis for beginning to look into this matter. These people need help, from anyone who can provide it. I am trying to do my part with this brief overview of what I’ve been witnessing for the last four months and what has been going on for the last two years. I’ve written letters, donated money, and worked as best I can with the He family to provide them comfort as they live in the eye of the storm raging around them.

I’ve included a sheet of contact information for some of those involved. Don’t hesitate to contact me; I’m glad to share what documents I’ve obtained and what other information I have. I am not bound by the gag order in any way.

Please get involved… if not for the sake of the adult Hes, then for sake of the three-year-old little girl who, deceptively taught by the Bakers, was abandoned by her parents.

Sincerely,

Michael G. Ryan Seattle, WA michaelgryan2@msn.com

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