Posted on 12/01/2008 7:48:21 AM PST by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
The court would have had a helluva time asking a 2 year old what she wanted, don’t you think ?
Ok, so you want what’s best for the child? Let’s see how this little scenario plays: Say you have a child, but you’re a redneck living in a cabin in some remote area. You are really struggling. You’re not well educated. Your prospects are not good. In fact, they’re downright bleak. You’ve been accused of a crime you didn’t commit, too. So you put your child in foster care and she was sent to me for a year.
I am an Ivy-educated Boston Brahmin. I am rich and powerful. I have a loving wife and children, beautiful home, too. I want your to keep your child when you want to claim her after the year is up. And I have the resources to tie you up in the court for years, trying to get her back.
Well, certainly I can provide better for your child than you can! So the courts should turn your child over to me. After all, the opportunities I can provide are what’s best for your child. You wouldn’t mind making that sacrifice, right?
I remember this story from a while back. The girl’s biological parents essentially abandoned her to the American family who raised her, then showed up again wanting her back.
Now they’ve abandoned her again in China to a “boarding school.”
They never bonded with this kid. They never wanted her. Put her back on a plane to her home in America where she has a family who loves her.
I’d prefer that court said “screw it” and just did what was right.
Really I could give a piss about the “law” in this case, when the “law” results in something awful happening to a poor little girl it is wrong.
Each case is different.
I’m in Shanghai. If we could locate this girl, we would appeal for permission to keep her in our home. We have Chinese students living with us. Our own children are bilingual. We could at least help this gal to adjust.
Her parents cast her off.
And now again in China, they love her so much they send her off to boarding school. She might as well be in America then as far as they’re concerned.
Really I could give a piss about the “law” in this case, when the “law” results in something awful happening to a poor little girl it is wrong.
that’s what the dims say. The law doesnt matter. We do what FEEELs right. Of course it is my feeling right that counts, not yours.
So if I feeeel I am a better mother than you, why dont I just petition the court to take your children. Why not?
Through a lawsuit against the foster parents the child will obtain redress through her bio parents. What the fosters did was a terrible thing to her. They got their needs met at her expense and the expense of her family. What bullies.
But they’re not Shanghaied out of the country.
She went to the country of her parents. She was not shanghied out of the country she went home to her cultural and parental homeland.
“I feel sorry for the child. but it still was a stupid thing for the foster family to do. They never had a legal leg to stand on and they did the baby a diservice by not returning it immediately when the birthparents requested the child back. This is not an issue of being civilized. This is an issue of case law.”
Most kind you care for the child. It’s in an alien country absolutely foreign to her upbringing. HER rights were totally trashed in an effort to “right” a wrong of long ago.
Tousands of children arrive on this shore every day from exotic places and are expected to cope.
Two evils do not make an appropriate redress. She did not deserve to be victimized in such a heinous manner. If her birth parents cared about her, they’d wish her to remain in her home. Certainly arrangements could’ve been made and facilitated by the courts for their immigration to this country so they could be united HERE.
YOu are right, the fosters victimized her and thought that they would win. But they didnt and she got burned. It is easy to say that she should have had a middle class American life, but that is not what her parents WANTED for her and they are the are the determiners of her life, just as I determine my own childrens’ lives. We do not have the right to good parents, as hard and gut wrenching as that may be.
“Parents get their kids unless there is a compellling reason why THEY should not have the kid. Not whether there is a compelling reason why the kid should stay where it is.”
There was a compelling reason. She was a complete alien to the culture for which they were seeking to return her to, for which her rights aren’t recognized. As I said, there’s a big difference between an infant vs. a child old enough to be caused enormous damage by such an unconscionable repatriation.
AS I said earlier, children are repatriated all over the world. Happens all the time. Several are my acquaintences and friends came to the states between 5 and 18.
There is nothing that can be done about the law or the little girls predictament. Perhaps freepers here can start a fund to help with her college expenses when she is of age. People are hurt all the time when the law is enforced. Little kids lose their parents to prisons and deportation. Fact of life. Our work is to help the hurting. So what can you directly do about this particular girl that is on your heart?
Start a fund?
Write to her?
Go to China and visit here?
Or are you just having an emtional moment and getting your needs met?
I’m a man so I hope you’re a better mother than me. ;)
When the law is not just it is my enemy.
Um, did you read the article ? The child is 9. She's not a toddler.
"Ok, so you want what’s best for the child? Let’s see how this little scenario plays: Say you have a child, but you’re a redneck living in a cabin in some remote area. You are really struggling. You’re not well educated. Your prospects are not good. In fact, they’re downright bleak. You’ve been accused of a crime you didn’t commit, too. So you put your child in foster care and she was sent to me for a year."
"I am an Ivy-educated Boston Brahmin. I am rich and powerful. I have a loving wife and children, beautiful home, too. I want your to keep your child when you want to claim her after the year is up. And I have the resources to tie you up in the court for years, trying to get her back."
"Well, certainly I can provide better for your child than you can! So the courts should turn your child over to me. After all, the opportunities I can provide are what’s best for your child. You wouldn’t mind making that sacrifice, right?"
Tactics aside, the child WOULD be better off with the family that could provide them the most advantaged life. And, yes, if I were the aforementioned family, if I cared about that child's well-being, I WOULD make that sacrifice. Wanting that child returned to me under such dire circumstances when I could have them grow up under better conditions wouldn't speak well to me as a parent. Again, we can argue the foster family's tactics were questionable, but giving the child the best upbringing possible was not.
Thank you.
Her biological parents are the ones ruining her life. If they cared at all, that child would be back safe and sound in her home in Tennessee.
Not her country. Her home is Tennessee.
"She was not shanghied out of the country she went home to her cultural and parental homeland."
She was Shanghaied to an alien nation for whom she has no ties beyond a genetic donation.
"Tousands of children arrive on this shore every day from exotic places and are expected to cope."
HERE, not a child RAISED in the United States as an American and forceably Shanghaied to an alien, Communist totalitarian nation.
"YOu are right, the fosters victimized her and thought that they would win."
Bull$hit. Convo's over. I'm not arguing with a *uckwit.
There are several problems. First, people who believe the law exists to glorify itself and not as a means to justice. Second, people who believe children are commodities to be bought, sold, traded, controlled and killed as those more powerful than them see fit. These attitudes lead to a disordered way of thinking which is becoming more prevalent in society.
The American family is playing this just right. The article states they’ve kept in contact and are planning a visit. The biological mother, who does not work but still can’t be bothered to take care of her own children, is talking about returning to the U.S. It is within the realm of possibility she could allow Anna to return to the Bakers or as a condition of manipulation, have the entire family return to America. I think the Bakers are mature enough and wise enough to play this situation correctly for the best outcome for Anna. Their actions show they are the best parents for her.
I can only hope that child ultimately ends up back home on American soil with the people who raised her. I have very little respect for parents that put their own selfish needs and desires ahead of their children. Once you bring a child into this world (or adopt), it’s their needs that become of paramount importance and come secondary to yours. As you well put it, they’re not (or should not be) commodities and they’re not neato accessories, as we’ve seen from the Hollyweird crowd and other “tres chic” folks. I’ve unfortunately seen close-up what happens when selfish parental desires trample what’s best for the child in the long run. The damage can be crippling and permanent.
We disagree.
Her biological parents are the ones ruining her life. If they cared at all, that child would be back safe and sound in her home in Tennessee.
Her biological parents made a choice about THEIR daughter.
I’m a man so I hope you’re a better mother than me. ;)
When the law is not just it is my enemy.
I am a really good mother. Once more though, I certainly understand the limits of the law. There is no law that is completely just. And one thing that I do know, is that at this time, in the United States of America, no child can be taken away from its bio parents without their consent unless there is a pressing issue about the parents that would be unsafe for the child.
I bank on that issue as a mother and so does every other mother in the country, adopted or bio. When a pretend (foster) parent pretends that they have rights to someone who belongs to their bio parents they do a disservice to the child and all parents.
Maybe YOU should read the story. I did. For the record, Anna is 9 NOW .. the suit dragged on in court for seven years, she returned to China a year ago .. do the math.
I am going to assume you haven’t yet had a child of your own or your views might be tempered by that life altering experience. I know several childless families with resources far superior to my own who would have loved to have had any of my children as their own. They would have had an easier time getting that rifle out of Charlton Heston’s live and fighting hands.
The Hes may not be the ideal family, but after all those years in court, no ‘lack of fitness’ was established. At what point do our courts become the arbiter of what financial and other advantages are best for a child, and award the child to the most financially advantaged?
Do we really want to become a nation whose laws pronounce that money talks and BS walks when it comes to children? The beauty of the American judicial system is that we are a nation of laws and not of men. In the eyes of the laws, a Chinese immigrant family is equal to Bill and Melinda Gates. Our laws state that absent abuse, physical or psychological, or other disqualifying behavior by the biological parents, the courts will send the child to the same family God chose to send her to.
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