[NYTr] Unusual issues define Cuban girl's custody battle Date: Fri, 3 Aug 2007 20:19:41 -0500 (CDT) Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit [This story is ongoing. Since [the July 21 article in the Miami Herald which follows below after the Progreso Weekly piece], the little girl has shown some bonding with her father despite all the efforts of her wealthy Cuban-American foster parents in Coral Gables and their lawyers. Bear in mind that the father has a home in Cuba with family there. The little girl in Coral Gables has a half-sister in Cuba; the father is not destitute or homeless or any such thing. For months the father was denied a visa to get into this country to contest the foster parents' claims to his daughter. The mother reportedly agrees that their daughter should be with her father. -JF] St. Petersburg Times 7/28/07 via Progreso Weekly - Aug 2, 2007 http://progreso-weekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=76&Itemid=1 Orig URL: http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/28/news_pf/State/Girl_is_caught_betwee.shtml Girl is caught between nations In a case reminiscent of Elian Gonzalez's, a Cuban father seeks custody of his child By Meg Laughlin MIAMI - Who will get the little girl? That's the question creating a buzz in Miami and swirling memories of the Elian Gonzalez case. A hearing Thursday was about the girl: how she was faring with her real father and how she was faring with the people temporarily in charge of her. It was about whether she was moving happily toward reunification with her father or clinging desperately to the people who have cared for her for a year. It was also about tensions over Cuba and its government. And whether the child will leave the mansion on the bay in Coral Gables, with the yacht and pool out back, to go live in a small farmhouse 200 miles east of Havana. Many Cuban exiles in Miami strongly believe she'd be better off staying here. Her father says she belongs with him. Which side will Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen back? Will it be the wealthy exile Cuban family, or the father from Cuba who has come for her? Mother, father agree According to transcripts, both the mother who has given the child up and the father who has come for her agree that she should be with the dad. Normally, it is the goal of the Florida Department of Children and Families to reunite a child with a fit parent and honor the parents' "fundamental liberty interest in determining the care and upbringing of their children." But in this case, because Cuba is involved, the DCF is putting an inordinate amount of lawyering behind making sure the father is fit. This need for reassurance includes lawyers' trips to Cuba to talk to relatives and neighbors, as well as a videocamera focused on the father much of the time he is with his little girl in Miami. The child, a blue-eyed, redheaded 4-year-old, was not found floating in an inner tube at sea like Elian Gonzalez, who was at the center of an international custody dispute seven years ago. But there are still uncanny similarities between her situation and Elian's: Her parents divorced in Cuba. The mother left Cuba in 2005 with a new man, bringing her daughter and son, who has a different father, to the United States. Her dreams of opportunity immediately fell apart. The new man abandoned her at the Miami airport with her two children. After months of struggle, the mother called 911 and asked police to come get her kids because she was nearly suicidal. They went to live with cousins of the man who had left, until a well-known businessman stepped in and whisked the children off to a mansion on the bay to live with his family. He and his family already have adopted the girl's half brother, now a preteen. Cohen has made it clear that for the children's protection she does not want them identified. Judge to decide soon The wrench in the works has been the girl's papi in Cuba, a farmer in Cabaiguan who fishes the local rivers and takes a third of the profit from a government plantain and malanga farm. Not wanting to give his daughter up, he petitioned for a humanitarian visa to come to the United States to take his child, who had not seen him for 2-1/2 years, back to Cuba. During the Thursday hearing, the businessman stood up and said the children are "encountering the possibility of separation" and having "2,000,000 percent fear." His attorney, Alan Mishael, said the boy would petition the court to keep his sister here. Right after, a call came from the court-appointed psychologist who was with the little girl and her father when he called. He said the child was showing "comfort and spontaneity" with her father, and they appeared to be "bonding." He also said that she was about to go swimming with her 6-year-old half sister, who is visiting from Cuba. Cohen said she was concerned about keeping the siblings together, referring to the half brother. The father's lawyer, Ira Kurzban, protested, "But there's another sibling." But, countered the judge, this was not the brother with whom she had lived. Kurzban responded: "I hope you don't think a 12-year-old half brother should have more rights than the father." Next week several of the attorneys for the DCF plan to go to Cuba to question more people about the father's fitness. On Aug. 13, the dependency hearing will take place, and Cohen will decide who gets the little girl. [Times news researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report.] *** sent by Jane Franklin - Aug 2, 2007 http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/jbfranklins The Miami Herald - Jul. 21, 2007 Unusual issues define Cuban girl's custody battle BY CAROL MARBIN MILLER His 4-year-old daughter needs to go to the bathroom. In a public park. He doesn't want to let her go alone. But he doesn't want to go into a women's restroom, or take the girl into the men's room. Fathers face such predicaments every day. But to this man, it's more like a test, and he can't afford to fail. A child welfare caseworker, who will help decide whether he's fit to rear the girl, is watching. The entire visit is being videotaped. To complicate matters, he's a Cuban national whose country has spent almost a half-century telling tales about the evils of American life. He's been in Miami six weeks. His daughter barely knows him. ''Of course I know what to do with my child,'' he said in Spanish at a court hearing this week, ``but in my country.'' The case, which held its first public hearing Wednesday after a year of closed-door sessions, is filled with cultural nuances and political overtones. At the center of the dispute: a girl whose caseworker says cries at night, gnashes her teeth, and sneaks into her Cuban-American foster parents' bed out of fear she will be taken from them. At age 4, her only memories are those of the well-heeled Coral Gables family that has raised her for more than a year. The names of the girl, her father, and her caregivers are not being revealed in this article to protect her privacy. The picture of the girl emerging in court is that of a happy, even precocious child who has never doubted that her caregivers, and their children, are her real family. She goes bike riding with them. She attends summer camp. She is petrified her life will be upended. ''She does not want to go to Cuba,'' said psychologist Miguel Firpi, who is working with the girl. ``She becomes very, very hyper. She grinds her teeth at night. She wakes up with nightmares.'' Said Julio Vigil, another psychologist in the case: ``When [her birth father] tries to give her a kiss, most of the time she rejects it.'' Anita Bock, who oversaw Miami-Dade's child welfare programs in the 1990s, said heart-wrenching custody battles are not rare, though they are seldom easy. This dispute, however, includes some real curveballs: * A Department of Children & Families lawyer, Rebecca Kapusta, told the judge the state would not be asking to terminate the father's rights to his daughter -- an action akin to the ''death penalty'' in custody disputes -- and that the father had been given a ''reunification case plan'' that would allow him to regain custody. But when asked by the judge what was the state's ''goal'' for the girl, Kapusta said the state wanted the girl to live with the caregivers in a ``permanent guardianship.'' * The presiding judge's desire to protect the girl -- and the Miami community -- from details of the case was so strong she closed all hearings to the public and issued a gag order prohibiting insiders from talking. The judge even threatened to jail courtroom participants who violated her secrecy order. After The Miami Herald filed a complaint, an appeals court forced the hearings open. * For months, the U.S. State Department refused to grant the birth father permission to enter the country to fight for custody -- until the Miami judge pushed to get him a visa. Yet in court, DCF has accused him of ''abandoning'' his daughter because he didn't arrive sooner. * A psychologist recently insisted that the Cuban man tell his daughter, with whom he's had only supervised visits, that he is her father. When the news made her yell and cry, a caseworker complained the father's visits were emotionally harmful. Following the harrowing visit, the caseworker, Maria Zamora, said she asked the child why she appeared so angry. ''She told me she only had one father, and it's [the caregiver],'' Zamora said. On the drive home from the visit, psychologist Firpi said, the girl tore up a toy her father had given her. The girl, who has been described in court as mature and insightful, entered the country legally in March 2005 with her mother and older brother -- who has a different father. The tug-of-war began that year when the girl's mother was hospitalized after a suicide attempt. The Gables family, given formal custody by DCF, decided they wanted to adopt both kids, and neither the children's mother nor the boy's father objected. The girl's father, however, refused to surrender his rights. After a protracted battle with the State Department -- which Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, who presides over the case, said she helped resolve -- the father was allowed into the country about six weeks ago. Hearings in the case have been closed to the public for a year. Wednesday's, the first that was open, unleashed hostilities among all parties, with red faces, finger-jabbing and shouting. Some people have drawn parallels to the EliC!n GonzC!lez case, but the difference is that the girl's case has gone to child welfare court, while EliC!n's did not. The key issue before the judge is the father's fitness to care for his daughter, and lawyers with both DCF and the Miami Guardian-ad-Litem Program have visited Cuba to observe the father and his living conditions and interview family and neighbors. Sources say child welfare administrators view such visits with a jaundiced eye, fearing they are manipulated by the Cuban government. For the most part, a parent who has committed no egregious offense, such as severe physical abuse, is given a ''case plan'' with tasks he or she must complete in order to gain custody. The ''goal'' of the case plan typically is the reunification of parent and child. But the DCF's stated goal in court Wednesday of permanent guardianship for the Gables family seems to conflict with the agency's decision to offer the birth father a chance to win back his daughter, several observers said. Bock, who oversaw foster care in Miami, said her former agency's reunification plan might be ``a fiction.'' ''If there is no credible evidence this father has abandoned his child, either at birth or later in life, and no evidence he abused the child, there ought to be a sincere effort at reunification,'' she said. In 1995, in one of Miami's most controversial cases, Bock overruled caseworkers and lawyers and asked a judge to allow the relatives of ''Baby J'' to adopt her, and foster mother Kathryn Reiter, who had cared for the girl for two years, absconded with her for 25 days before surrendering. ''These cases are very complicated,'' said Bock, a lawyer who is now deputy clerk of the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. ``The emotions on either side are so raw.'' Jess McDonald, who headed the Illinois Department of Children & Family Services before retiring in 2003, said Illinois caseworkers occasionally would require parents to complete plans they knew were impossible. ''You have to wonder if the case plan is really a case plan, or just a series of hoops unrelated to correcting any conditions'' the father may have, McDonald said. ``Let's see if we can prove the guy can't jump through the hoops.'' ''I wonder if it isn't, in fact, a little bit of a setup,'' McDonald added. Andrew Lagomasino, the Cuban father's therapist, described DCF's actions in the case in precisely the same language in court Wednesday: ''It is a setup for failure,'' he said. ''It's wonderful that so much attention is being paid to the anguish of this child,'' Lagomasino said. ``But I don't see any attention being paid to a father who did nothing wrong but could lose custody of his child.'' * ================================================================= .NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems . Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us . .339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org . List Archives: https://blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/ . Subscribe: https://blythe-systems.com/mailman/listinfo/nytr =================================================================