A CHILD CUSTODY CASE CALLED A MATTER OF FAITH, HOPE AND CUSTODY
Sunday, February 9, 1992
The Kansas City Star
Reports on a Child Custody case
by Rick Montgomery
Staff Writer
CaseA Matter Of Faith, Hope, and Custody
The temperature on Dec. 22, 1989, hit 23 degrees below zero, the lowest ever recorded in Kansas City. Raymond Estes answered the phone that morning in his Johnson County apartment and heard his 6-year old son sobbing.
"Daddy, please don't let Momma take me" the boy pleaded.
"Take you where?"
Just before the line clicked dead, his son replied: "Door to door."
Estes recalled the story on the witness stand the following year. He testified. that hawking magazines door to door was one of the religious duties of his estranged wife, Joni Estes. She countered that she never took the boy out that cold day and that her faith was no business of the court anyway. But Johnson County District Judge James W. Bouska made her religion his business.
In a ruling That aroused warring parents and lawyers nationwide, he turned the child over to the father. Few facts in the case were indisputable. She was a Jehovah's Witness. He was not. She was granted custody of their son pending a divorce. He was determined to win the boy back. Her faith held that holidays were foolish. that the end of the world loomed, that all nonbelievers --- including her husband was ruled by Satan and doomed to turn to dust. Raymond Estes called her "a very loving mother" but a harmful influence on their child. Between them the boy rode an emotional teeter-totter. He "feels like vomiting a lot," his mother testified.
In an unusual ruling last September, Judge Bouska placed the youngster in the permanent care of Raymond Estes. Judge Bouska cited the mother's religious "environment" and the child's right to love both parents. "To grow up thinking your father is a devil, to be alienated from your friends at school, your relationship I don't think that's in the best interest of a child," said the judge, a Presbyterian in a recent interview. 'This is a little boy unable to make those choices.' The ruling has poured gasoline on legal fires surrounding Jehovah's Witnesses who wish to raise children as they see fit. "The faith was on trial here not the parents' fitness or the best interests of the child," said, Carolyn Wah, a lawyer for the Jehovah's Witnesses' Watchtower Society in New York. "What people see is a different religion-a minority religion.
That's something that ought to b protected, not ridiculed, in a court of law." "There are very clear First Amendment issues here ù not only freedom of religion, but speech, association and family privacy."
Raymond Estes, who occasionally attends a Presbyterian church disagreed: "It's not a matter of whose religion is better. It's what kind of lifestyle is detrimental to child. I had the biggest stake of my life in itùmy son." Joni Estes declined to be interviewed. "She just wants I putt this behind her," said her attorney, J. Patrick Flanigan, who called the case one of the most painful in his career. Her parenting skills never were questioned. In fact,
a child placement investigation by the county recommended to the court that she keep her son. Even Bouska said, "I feel terrible for (Joni Estes). She's sweet person. She wasn't doing anything to her son that she felt was wrong." But with the boy now settling in with his father, no onehas plan to appeal the ruling.
Witnessing and Parenting Jehovah's Witness tenets on parenting are spelled out in The Watchtower, a magazine circulated to 13 million people world wide. Among them.Jehovah's Witnesses should refuse blood transfusions for their children in emergencies. Children should avoid extracurricular activities exposing them to "morally questionable students". Athletic
competition steals time away from spiritual instruction. Pursuing a college education and "secular" success is futile. Followers should instead dedicate themselves to spreading God's word. Non-believers, even relatives, should be shunned whenever practical. "This may be difficult because of emotions and family ties," The Watchtower advises. "yet, this is a test of loyalty to God."
As in any religion, not all Jehovah's Witnesses subscribe to every code of living. Joni Estes, for, example, testified she would encourage her son to attend college and would never cut the boy's ties with his father. But the most committed followers face growing skepticism from judges in domestic cases. The Watchtower Society in 1987 decided 1,030 inquiries from Jehovah's Witnesses tangled in custody or visitation disputes.
In Pennsylvania, a father was restricted from taking his 4-year old daughter door to door during visitation.
In Colorado, the Supreme Count ruled that the beliefs of a Jehovah Witness can be weighed in custody matters if they are "reasonably likely" to harm a child.
In 1990 the Nebraska Supreme Cart upheld an order barring a witness father from preaching to his young sons anything not "consistent with the Catholic religion."The boys lived with their mother, a Catholic. Jeff Atkinson chairman of the custody committee of the American Bar Association, said such rulings were forcing Jehovah's Witnesses to choose between their faith and their children. He said "the near-universal rule" in custody cases had been for courts to resist weighing religious arguments and to allow custodial parents the freedom to decide a child's faith. "The exception is when harm to the child is present,"c he said. "But then you have the problem of distinguishing emotional harm caused by the religion from that caused by the divorce." Legal battles have become so common, the Watchtower Society offers followers a pamphlet titled "Preparingfor Child Custody Cases."
A chapter on cross-examination poses courtroom questions about Armageddon and whether other religions will be destroyed.. The suggested answer: ''Jehovah makes those judgments, not we. As for selling publications door to door, the book suggests this response: Meeting people at doors overcame shyness and lack of confidence." Parents at the other end of the fight have relied on a counterpoint manual from Witness Inc. an anti-Watchtower research group based in California. That group's director, Duane Magnani, is a former Jehovah's Witness who now testifies against the religion in dozens of cases each year. He contends the Watchtower Society encourages its faithful to fudge their testimony. "They absolutely believe the end is coming soon and then they'll be in paradise," Magnani said. "And if you firmly believe that, you'll do anything to keep your children in the faith." Joni Estes read "Preparing for Child Custody Cases" before she testified. An attentive mother The Esteses were married in 1982. He managed a muffler shop. She was a homemaker and day-care provider. ''It used to be a beautiful marriage, Raymond Estes said. "She'd even bring me breakfast in bed." Court records suggest the marriage strained in 1985, when Joni Estes became an active Jehovah's Witness. She attended church meetings three nights a week and distributed magazines up to 20 hours a month.
Raymond Estes soon developed what his wife's friends called an "obsession" to slam the faith. He bought a classified advertisement in USA Today proclaiming "I Lost My Child"to the Jehovah's Witnesses. He said more than 40 readers contacted him with advice. In court, both sides agreed that Joni Estes was an attentive mother. She bathed her son, dressed him, woke him in the morning and tucked him in at night. She met with his kindergarten teachers and took him to doctors when he was ill. The parents of children cared for by Joni Estes said she was kind and rarely discussed her religion. "Her son plays with our kids just fine," said Bruce Campbell, who is not a Jehovah's Witness. ..We've never found them reading Scripture or anything like that."
But aspects of the boy's upbringing troubled the court He talked a lot about death, at times singing, "If I tell a lie, then I will surely die," as noted in the judge's ruling. Psychologist Gerald Vandenberg, appointed by the court to examine the family, said the religion's "preoccupation of the end of the world being imminent is extremely coercive." "The small child has no way of .,fighting it, no way of critically analyzing it," the psychologist said.
Another witness was Manhattan, Kansas., schoolteacher Jai me Armendariz a friend of Raymond Estes and a former Jehovah's Witness. When he was 14, Armendariz stated, his father ordered him to leave the house because "was not following the religion strictly." In Armendariz's classroom, children of the faith talk to me about the loneliness and isolation they find themselves in, he testified. "They can't participate when we start out
In the morning, with the pledge to the flag.
His and the testimony of otherformer Jehovah's Witnesses riled Watchtower lawyer Wah." "In the Estes case, the father launched a campaign to disgrace the mother's religion," Wah said. "You had people with no firsthand knowledge of the parent testifying about the faith, as if that's relevant. It became custody b majority opinion." The boy has learned to tie his shoes now. He and his father celebrated Christmas last year with all the trimmings. His grade-school teachers. according to Raymond Estes, have commented on how relaxed the child seems in class. But wounds from the holy war remain tender. During an interview in his lawyer's office late last month, Mr.Estes paused to take a phone call. The baby-sitter was on the line. His son was throwing a tantrum for no reason, and the baby-sitter wasn't able to calm him down Raymond Estes put down the phone and snatched his jacket. "The anger that boy has bottled up," he said "It's ungodly."
I would add, this could be any religion- not just Jehovah's Witnesses. We need to be very careful as Christian parents not to harm our children in religion, but teach them that God is Love and Jesus is Savior.
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http://www.caic.org.au/jws/family/childcust.htm
There are lots more cases where Witness parents do not fool the courts.
