Yorkshire, England–These vicious lesbian custody cases are popping up all the time now. Mom & mom agree to have kids together or to adopt kids together, and when the relationship breaks up, one mom drives the other mom out of their kids’ lives.
In this case, mom did the international-abduction-under-the-guise-of-taking-the-kids-to-another-country-to-visit routine that I’ve seen heterosexual women do to numerous readers.
Oh, and don’t forget the spurious claim of abuse or danger (check!), and the spurious plea for the best interests of the kids (check!). Funny how mom’s definition of the children’s best interests somehow never seems to involve the partner who she chose to have the kids with.
Kudos to Justice Jennifer Mackinnon of the Ontario Superior Court for seeing through the nonsense and ordering the kids moved back. From Lesbian’s children to be returned to U.K. (National Post, 7/24/08):
An Ontario judge has ruled that a woman who fled to Canada from the United Kingdom with her two adopted daughters must return with them to allow her former lesbian partner full access to the children under what amounts to a joint custody agreement.
Justice Jennifer Mackinnon, of Ontario Superior Court, ordered Connie Springfield to return to England with her two daughters, Kita, 8, and Freda, 6, whom she adopted with her long-time partner Sarah Courtney six years ago. Ms. Springfield had spirited the two children to Canada late last year in what the judge called a “long thought out, deceptive method of her removal of the children.”
The lesbian couple had broken up five years earlier and had, apparently amicably, continued to share custody of the children until Ms. Springfield took them on what was supposed to be a visit to family members in Ottawa last December, but which she acknowledged planning for some time as a permanent move.
Ms. Courtney applied to have the move declared a child abduction under the Hague Convention governing international child custody disputes and the judge agreed, brushing aside arguments from Ms. Springfield that the move was necessary because of the children’s special needs, behavioural problems and the threat of abuse from another lesbian lover she had become involved with after splitting with Ms. Courtney.
“There is no doubt that both children have significant special needs, but the record does not persuade me that those needs cannot be met in the U.K.,” Justice Mackinnon wrote in her decision, released last week. “[And] this is not a case where the left behind parent was abusive to the other parent or to the children.”
The couple adopted Kita and her sister Freda in 2002, although because the U.K. does not allow same-sex couples to adopt, Ms. Springfield applied to be the sole adoptive parent. The couple later obtained a Joint Residence Order, which effectively recognized that they were both parents to the two little girls and lived together in the small village of Hebden Bridge, in West Yorkshire in northern England.
Read the full article here.
I’ve covered many of these types of cases–to learn more, click here.