Girl in U.S. custody fight adjusts to life in China

MSNBC ^

[Oyarsa]

CHONGQING, China - Nine-year-old Anna He stands quietly amid the chaos in her boarding school dorm on a Sunday night, a frenzy of little girls chattering in Chinese as they change the linens on rows of wooden beds.

Anna is an outsider here. Her parents are Chinese, but she cannot talk to her schoolmates because she grew up in America.

This small girl with watchful dark eyes was at the center of one of the longest custody battles in the U.S. in recent times, a high-profile seven-year dispute marked by racial and cultural undercurrents. On one side were the Bakers, a white family in suburban Memphis, Tenn. On the other were the Hes, immigrants scraping by with low-paying jobs before they returned to China.

The legal fight is finally over. And a new story has started for Anna.

Last year the Tennessee Supreme Court ordered her returned to the Chinese couple, and the family moved to China in February. Since then, Anna has lived in two cities and attended three schools. After her parents' marriage fell apart, she was sent to boarding school this fall and goes home on weekends.

"I really don't like living at school," Anna murmurs in English, buttoning and unbuttoning her sweater absently as the other girls flutter bed sheets in the air.

[Thumper1960]

Since when does American justice not recognize wealth and privilege? Had the "foster" parents been Bill and Melinda, said child would forever be in the United States.

[fieldmarshaldj]

The child IS 9 now, what we were discussing. You pulled out the 2. I was talking about her situation now not 7 years ago. This child was not respected in this decision, she was treated as a piece of luggage by the courts and by the birth parents, with zero consideration for what she wanted. Not was what best for her, but by selfish birth parents that are aliens to her in an alien environment to which she can't even speak the language -- indeed, ones who GAVE her away in the first place. You don't treat children like a yo-yo.

My views here would be unchanged if I had children or not. You either put what's best for the child ahead of your desires or don't have them. Your macho demonstration of what you'd do to a family that might give your children a more privileged upbringing proves that you put your own selfishness ahead of what is better for them. Congratulations.

[EDINVA]

The dear Lord knows what she’s doing in not sending you any children until you grow up yourself and maybe get a grip on what family and parenthood actually is.

FYI, I am my kids’ mother. Your thinking would have had them live with a wealthy family instead of mine where we’ve had struggles and ups and downs, but made an honestly earned living. It was not always easy because I gave up my career to be a stay at home mom who ended up homeschooling two sons through high school. That’s really macho.

So, instead of having the wealth that seems your top criteria for raising children, my poor, suffering kids had me walking them to and picking them up at the school bus every day. I selfishly enjoyed years as my daughter’s brownie/girl scout troop leader, being my sons’ soccer team mom, and local PTA president, while further indulging my own interests by serving on the local Republican County Committee and participating in an occasional FReep.

As a result of my selfishness, and putting my own interests first, my kids didn’t get private schools, tutors in Chinese, tours of Europe, dinners out at white tablecloth restaurants. Instead of being in the equestrian league, they had to make do with a few weeks at a scout riding camp.

How much more selfish could I have possibly been! What could I have been thinking? How did my son manage to grow up and join the Army, or my daughter get to grad school at Stanford, or my other son become a paralegal? They should be sitting in the corner sucking their thumbs because their parents so selfishly deprived them of wealth and all life’s creature comforts. Just damn.

[fieldmarshaldj]

I think, madam, before you open your damnable yap to make ignorant, idiotic, and slanderous comments, you ask questions first. I do not have children, madam, because I lost my fiancee. I’m sure you’re well aware of the difficulty in producing children without a partner, unless you’re one who shot out yours asexually or via immaculate conception. I would not be in a position to adopt, madam, since I do not have the health or means to raise children, nor would I choose to do so alone even if I had extensive wealth (since I, gasp, actually believe you need two parents, a mother and father, to raise a child).

What deeply offends me, madam, is that you have no moral hesistation in supporting taking an innocent child, old enough to understand her surroundings, indeed, hijack a child from the only home she knew, only parents she knew, to total strangers living in an alien culture with NO CIVIL RIGHTS, solely because she shares genetic DNA and nothing else. You ain’t shipping the kid from Norfolk to Roanoke, madam. You’re removing the young lady from Memphis to Red China. I’m sure you must’ve been a part of the same extra chromosome brigade that agreed with the Gestapo raid and forceable return of Elian Gonzales not to his father, but to his slavemaster, Fidel Castro. So, please, again, spare me your lectures on how you proclaim yourself mother of the year when you take such an immoral stance. I submit, madam, that it is you that needs to grow the hell up.

[EDINVA]

You might try to think this matter through sequentially and chronologically, dear sir. It is not I who has strewn this thread with “ignorant, idiotic, and slanderous comments.” You might yourself be viewed as speaking out of your arse on a topic of which you know nothing.

You refer to “.... an innocent child, old enough to understand her surroundings, indeed, hijack a child from the only home she knew, only parents she knew, to total strangers living in an alien culture ....”

The lawsuit was filed when Anna was between one and two years of age. Had the foster family not entangled the matter in the courts, but returned her - as foster parents know they are obliged to do when the natural parents show that they are again in a position to raise their own child -that situation would not have prevailed, would it?

You speak of moral outrage when, in fact, the foster parents did not do as they knew they must. They were not adoptive parents. Instead, they held Anna hostage to the slow and tedious court processes, while acclimating her to their lives and lifestyle for seven years. How does one ‘hijack’ a hostage? If you wish to cast moral aspirsions, and outrage, and take offense, perhaps it should be in the foster family’s direction.

And, please, get back on your meds.

[fieldmarshaldj]

Well, I can only express deepest remorse somebody didn’t abduct your children, since obviously a den of termites would’ve done a better job. You have a nice day, madam.

[EDINVA]

C’mon, get off our meds, you’ll feel better in the morning. Bitterness is sooooooo ugly!