By Jeanne Malmgren (Contact)
Independent Mail (Anderson, South Carolina, USA)
Four days ago, I was in a New York City courtroom. Marble floors, elaborate carved wood ceilings, tall windows overlooking the noisy, chaotic streets of Manhattan. You can imagine.
There, I was witness to a sad tableau.
At opposite ends of a 50-foot-long table, flanked by opposing teams of lawyers, sat two people. A man and a woman, once in love with each other, now fighting each other over a 4-year-old boy.
That boy is named William. He was born in Cambodia, as were my children. His adoption documents are identical to my youngest daughter’s. That’s why I was there. To help. And to try to ensure that one Cambodian adoption — and, possibly by extension, my daughter’s and hundreds of other adopted Cambodian kids in the United States — would not be declared invalid.
William’s father is a prominent New York doctor and author of a book about a cellulite cure. His lawyers asked me to testify on their client’s behalf. William’s adoptive parents, who never married, are warring over whose adoption of the boy is more valid. It’s a messy affair. Each adopted him separately, as a single parent — the father first, in 2003, before the couple broke up. The mother, who now has custody, went to Cambodia in 2006 and obtained documents naming her as the sole adoptive parent.
When I arrived in the courtroom, William’s father introduced himself and thanked me for coming all the way to New York to help someone I’d never met.
Then he showed me Polaroids of him with the boy.
“I haven’t seen my son for 15 months. She won’t let me near him,” he said.
He told me his former girlfriend is a multimillionaire, heiress to the fortune of a huge family business. If I told you the name, you’d find it on nearly every cleaning, personal hygiene and first aid product in your cabinets. She has owned several condos in the luxurious Trump Tower and is now selling — for $15.9 million — the Greenwich Village townhouse she bought last year from Meryl Streep.
Serious, serious money.
I looked over at her, sitting quietly at the far end of the conference table, cleaning her eyeglasses.
Several other adoptive parents had flown to New York — at the doctor’s expense — to testify about the validity of their adoptions. Both sides also had flown in legal experts and translators from Cambodia.
All for the love of a 4-year-old boy.
After I testified, I took a late flight back to GSP. When I finally got home, it was past midnight Thursday. The kids were asleep. I crept upstairs and lay down beside my daughter in her bed.
Her black curls, damp with sweat, were splayed all over the pillow. As usual, she had rolled around in her sleep and become wrapped in her pink blanket.
As I eased the blanket from under her, she woke slowly, saw me and smiled.
“Did they win the case, Mommy? Does the little boy get to have his Daddy back?”
I don’t know yet, I told her. But I hope so, honey.
There, I was witness to a sad tableau.
At opposite ends of a 50-foot-long table, flanked by opposing teams of lawyers, sat two people. A man and a woman, once in love with each other, now fighting each other over a 4-year-old boy.
That boy is named William. He was born in Cambodia, as were my children. His adoption documents are identical to my youngest daughter’s. That’s why I was there. To help. And to try to ensure that one Cambodian adoption — and, possibly by extension, my daughter’s and hundreds of other adopted Cambodian kids in the United States — would not be declared invalid.
William’s father is a prominent New York doctor and author of a book about a cellulite cure. His lawyers asked me to testify on their client’s behalf. William’s adoptive parents, who never married, are warring over whose adoption of the boy is more valid. It’s a messy affair. Each adopted him separately, as a single parent — the father first, in 2003, before the couple broke up. The mother, who now has custody, went to Cambodia in 2006 and obtained documents naming her as the sole adoptive parent.
When I arrived in the courtroom, William’s father introduced himself and thanked me for coming all the way to New York to help someone I’d never met.
Then he showed me Polaroids of him with the boy.
“I haven’t seen my son for 15 months. She won’t let me near him,” he said.
He told me his former girlfriend is a multimillionaire, heiress to the fortune of a huge family business. If I told you the name, you’d find it on nearly every cleaning, personal hygiene and first aid product in your cabinets. She has owned several condos in the luxurious Trump Tower and is now selling — for $15.9 million — the Greenwich Village townhouse she bought last year from Meryl Streep.
Serious, serious money.
I looked over at her, sitting quietly at the far end of the conference table, cleaning her eyeglasses.
Several other adoptive parents had flown to New York — at the doctor’s expense — to testify about the validity of their adoptions. Both sides also had flown in legal experts and translators from Cambodia.
All for the love of a 4-year-old boy.
After I testified, I took a late flight back to GSP. When I finally got home, it was past midnight Thursday. The kids were asleep. I crept upstairs and lay down beside my daughter in her bed.
Her black curls, damp with sweat, were splayed all over the pillow. As usual, she had rolled around in her sleep and become wrapped in her pink blanket.
As I eased the blanket from under her, she woke slowly, saw me and smiled.
“Did they win the case, Mommy? Does the little boy get to have his Daddy back?”
I don’t know yet, I told her. But I hope so, honey.
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