COMMENT: When I saw this about the "lost record" my thoughts went instantly to Nixon and Rosemary Woods and the 18 minute gap where most people presume the smoking gun of Nixon's responsibility for Watergate had been erased.

These cases which involve child custody and parental rights are very important. Back in the early years of the modern women's liberation movement historical criticism of the role of the family played a very valuable role in raising the consciousness of women and their allies.

Such criticism has led a few people to underestimate the importance of the family as ONE institution in society (one, NOT the ONLY one) for raising children. During the Elian Gonzalez struggle we saw the rightist militants in Miami, and their political allies, claim that a six-year-old child should have the "right" to file a claim for political asylum in the United States. They said that Elian's dad wasn't fit to raise him since he wanted to do so in his country of origin and birth, which is Cuba.

Here in Miami what has now become obvious is that the Florida state government is engaging in the legal equivalent of a child kidnapping.

And as I've said before, it's for cases like this (and others) that Jeb Bush appointed Fulgencio Batista's grandson chief justice of the Florida supreme court.

And we STILL haven't seen hide nor hair of the MOTHER. Where is this child's mother? Why haven't we seen or heard from her? Is she alive? Is she dead? What does she have to say about all of this? Even if she has mental problems, she may well be lucid enough to understand that she has problems, and to explain what she thinks would be best for the child, WHOSE MOTHER SHE IS. And not "birth mother", please.

Walter Lippmann, CubaNews
Los Angeles, California
Retired Child Protective Services Social Worker

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From: Karen Lee Wald <kwald@california.com> >
Sent: Aug 25, 2007 10:52 AM >
To: Cuba-Inside-Out@googlegroups.com >
Subject: VERY IMPORTANT: "Lost" record shakes up custody case

We've known all along that the children were taken from the mother without her having been adequately informed or given any meaningful legal assistance (her appointed lawyer doesn't even speak Spanish and she doesn't speak English) to help her keep the child; there is no indication she had mental problems before leaving Cuba. But Dept of Children and Families (DCF) was apparently so used to running roughshod over people's lives that they apparently felt they could get away with this without having any legal backing for taking the children away from Elena Perez.  Who knows whether the records were "lost" or never existed? After all, the DCF has lost children that they've placed in the foster system.
 

Hopefully the courts will now put an end to this whole cruel procedure by returning BOTH children to their mother (although from what appears below, the boy, now 13, is already convinced he wants to stay here -- chalk up one more successful theft for Joe Cubas).  klw 

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The Miami Herald

Posted on Sat, Aug. 25, 2007
Lost record shakes up custody case
By CAROL MARBIN MILLER AND TERE FIGUERAS NEGRETE
Three days before a controversial trial over the fate of a 4-year-old girl at the center of an international custody dispute, an attorney for the Department of Children & Families dropped a bombshell Friday: They have no records to show that the girl's mother ever agreed to give up custody of the child.
For months, DCF and attorneys for the girl's birth father and foster father have planned for a trial in which the state will seek to prove that Rafael Izquierdo, the girl's Cuban father, is unfit to raise her. The trial is expected to begin Monday.
But at a hastily called emergency hearing Friday morning before Circuit Judge Jeri B. Cohen, DCF attorneys acknowledged they have no documents to prove the girl's mother, Elena Perez, agreed to give up custody. The girl now lives with Joe and Maria Cubas, a Cuban-American family in Coral Gables.
The news infuriated Cohen, said sources who participated in the hearing, which was held in secret despite an order by the Third District Court of Appeal that proceedings in the case be open to the public. Cohen declined to discuss the development with a reporter.
The judge presided over the emergency hearing from her North Miami-Dade home, because she had vacated her courtroom Friday so that another judge could meet with the parties to try to reach a compromise.
The new wrinkle shrouds the case in uncertainty.
If DCF can find no record that the mother agreed to relinquish custody of the girl, Perez may be entitled to a trial in which child welfare attorneys must prove she, too, is unfit. Sources say Perez's attorneys are not prepared to go to trial Monday and may object to the father's trial going forward.

  [It's a crime that either parent has to go on trial to prove that they are fit, when in fact it has been well established the the Florida DCF is unfit to care for children. They are the ones -- along with Joe and Maria Cubas -- who should be on trial -- for child-stealing!]  klw
That's because much, if not most, of the evidence to be presented against Izquierdo involves actions by the girl's mom. DCF is arguing, for example, that Izquierdo should have known the child was unsafe with her mother because Perez was mentally ill, but he allowed his daughter to emigrate to the United States with her anyway.
Attorneys for Perez do not want DCF presenting evidence against the mother without her being there to defend herself, sources said.
But the stakes might be higher still: Ira Kurzban, Izquierdo's attorney, said Friday that under Florida law, the state has no jurisdiction to keep the girl from either birth parent if Perez has not already been found unfit. Kurzban said he will ask the judge to return the girl to Izquierdo on Monday if no records can be found that Perez agreed that she was unfit to raise her child.
Lacking an official order, sources said, DCF was hoping to produce a transcript of a court hearing in which Perez surrendered custody. But at Friday's hearing, DCF attorneys acknowledged they have no been able to locate that, either.
''If there is no order of dependency [for the mother] I believe the judge must immediately return the child to her birth father,'' Kurzban said. ``If this does not happen, we certainly intend to file an emergency writ with the Third District Court of Appeal.''
Kevin Coyle Colbert, Perez's attorney, who was present during Friday's emergency hearing, declined to discuss the new development with a reporter. And a spokesman for DCF in Tallahassee, Al Zimmerman, said the confidentiality of foster care proceedings precluded him from discussing the case, as well.
Alan Mishael, attorney for the foster parents, said Friday that DCF's anxiety over the missing record is unnecessary.
''What was discussed today was a clerical error that we expect the court to rectify next week,'' Mishael said. ``[The judge] has full authority to do so, and it will be a matter of course. . . . I'm not losing sleep over this issue.''
The ''clerical error'' to which Mishael referred: Months ago, amid one of the most contentious child welfare cases in Miami history, the juvenile court clerk's office misplaced much of the official record and has been recreating it ever since.
Mishael insists Perez did agree in court to a finding that she was not fit to retain custody of the little girl.
''The mother did consent,'' Mishael said. ``I'm confident that the mother entered a consent. I'm satisfied she entered a consent.''
But Perez insists she did not agree to give up her daughter.
The mother -- who had a romantic relationship with Izquierdo but never married him -- said she agreed to give up her son, a 13-year-old half brother of the 4-year-old girl. He was adopted by the Cubas family.
``In the case of the boy, I asked him during the last visit if he wanted to return [to Cuba]. I told him he had family there, his father, his grandparents. He said no, he didn't want to return. Then I said, go ahead, give me the [adoption] papers.''
The daughter's case, she said, is markedly different: ``I never gave up my daughter.''
Throughout the proceedings, she said, she has felt confused and isolated. ``I'm up in the air. I haven't had anyone on my side.''
Now she says she only wants to be taken into consideration.
DCF has consistently taken the position that Perez formally agreed to the state's dependency petition -- meaning Perez's daughter was dependent on the state because her mother was unfit. And, in a recent court hearing, Cohen recalled the mother's demeanor this way:
'She basically walked in here and said, 'I don't want my kids, ' '' Cohen said. ``She let herself be beaten down by life, and she did not want to fight for her children.''

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[But a mother who was not abusive to her children should not have HAD to "fight for her children" in a strange culture and language, a strange world she did not understand. The real question here is whether there was any meaningful informed consent...and from what we've read, I doubt that. It seems unlikely that she knew what the state's dependency petition meant; less likely that she thought she had any options.  If US courts could throw out the illegal immigration case against the wily terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles -- who certainly spoke fluent English and knew exactly what was going on -- on the grounds that the government was "deceptive" and that he had been "misled", there certainly must be ample precedent --especially in family law cases -- for overturning the DCF's removal of the child from her parent on those grounds..... klw]