Elian: International example

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

This letter appeared in the Advocate (Baton Rouge, Louisiana) on 6 June 2000.

This item may be cited as M. R. Franks, Letter to the Editor: Elian: International example, Baton Rouge Advocate, June 6, 2000, at 6B.

Dear Editor:

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals did the right thing. Let us hope they now lift their injunction and not delay Elian Gonzalez's childhood and his return home. More delay will only create a dangerous precedent that will haunt hundreds of American parents each year whose children are abducted to (or withheld by relatives in) foreign countries that feel their religious traditions or cultures "superior" to ours.

I write as a professor of family law to urge that we not embolden Germany, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Libya and dozens of other countries. If an American court on further appeal ever legitimates the question as being, "Which country is best?" rather than, "Who is the parent?" we are in big trouble. Imagine trying to convince an Algerian judge that theirs is not the finest country on the planet for raising a child. Imagine their judges saying, "We don't have drugs in our schools, and we've never had a Columbine." Hear their courts dragging out the Elian Gonzalez decision as authority for their reasoning.

Nor is this fear fanciful. Consider the case of Joseph Cooke of New York, whose wife abducted their two children to Germany and then turned them over to foster care, claiming she was too mentally disturbed to handle them. It's been seven years, and their American father hasn't been able to get them back or even to see them. If we now delay Elian's return, our State Department can hardly complain of Germany's delay in the reverse-Elian situation.

Nor does this happen only to fathers. Consider the case of Lady Meyer, wife of Britain's ambassador to America. The 47-year-old mother has seen her sons Alexander, 15, and Constantin, 13, for a total of 24 hours since her German ex-husband refused to send them home after a summer visit in 1994.

The German legal system considers any child with any trace of German blood, however remote, as entitled to German citizenship. Germany strongly favors keeping "German" children in Germany. There are more than 70 pending cases in which Germany has refused to follow the custody orders of American courts, and numerous other cases involving countries with religious traditions other than Judeo-Christian.

America expects the Hague Convention on child custody and the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction Act to be respected. We needed this decision in the Elian case to set the example by following the very laws we urge other countries to obey. Both the treaty and the UCCJA require snatched children to be returned home and decisions involving a child to be made by the child's habitual "home state." Let's not erode this victory by further appeals.

Further delay will only seal the doom not of one Cuban child but of hundreds of American children abducted overseas. If any double standard we manifest is not obvious here at home, it surely is abroad. How shortsighted that would be.

M. R. Franks, professor of family law
Southern University Law Center
2 Swan St.
Baton Rouge

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