Pity the Child
MOSKOWITZ, LAWRENCE A.
Pity the Child Hilary's Trial: The Elizabeth Morgan Case By Jonathan Groner Simon & Schuster. 280 pp. $21.95. Reviewed by Lawrence A. Moskowitz Family law specialist; author, "Unfair...
...Groner invites the conclusion that the girls' belief that their father abused them resulted more from maternal brainwashing than from what actually happened...
...One might be tempted to conclude that had a judge ruled solidly for Foretich early on, Morgan would not have had either the opportunity or the inclination to eventually hide Hilary...
...The implicit question is: Who was the real abuser here...
...the child is subjected to numerous physical and psychological examinations, and the evidence is ultimately inconclusive...
...Those efforts fail, but there is no question about her impartiality or her determination to do something good for Hilary...
...indeed, it seems to have had more spin-offs than All in theFamily...
...Thus we learn that at the same time Foretich was fighting Morgan over the custody of Hilary, he was fighting his previous wife, Sharon, over the custody of their daughter, Heather (born in 1980...
...Both the complaint and the countersuit were rejected by the same jury...
...Crying at all is not allowed, Not in my castle on a cloud...
...Holman appears to have been more genuinely concerned for Hilary's welfare—and more understanding of what the child needed from her parents—than anyone else, relatives and mental health professionals included...
...As Jonathan Groner convincingly demonstrates in Hilary's Trial, a carefully researched, thoughtfully written history of the Morgan v. Foretich child custody case, young Hilary Foretich also has reasons to dream of castles on clouds...
...Where the factual is followed by personal comments, he tends to weaken his underlying argument that Foretich, like Hilary, was Morgan's victim...
...Generally, partial victories leave each party feeling just satisfied enough not to make more trouble, and just unhappy enough to be disinclined to go back to court soon...
...What sets this case apart, Groner contends, is that both parents can be seen as potential abusers...
...Although Groner is careful to state that no one will ever know whether Foretich (or his parents, accused as well) really committed the acts Morgan complained of, it is apparent that the author is quite skeptical...
...He was acquitted...
...If Hilary's primary interest was in having the effects of the divorce on her minimized, the answers to the above questions cannot be encouraging...
...Benedek, perhaps the wisest and most prescient of the many experts brought into court by both sides, cautioned that the protracted litigation, and the repeated examinations and evaluations accompanying it, would cause Hilary to become "progressively more disturbed...
...This is especially true when the stubborn litigant has money —something Morgan seemed to have in large supply...
...The weakness of Groner's position is that he was not present during those visits...
...That is not to excuse Morgan's photo sessions with Hilary, her defiance of the court orders granting Foretich unsupervised visitation, or her agenda (formulated, Groner establishes, before the abuse issue was introduced) to completely sever the relationship between father and daughter...
...Thenardier, the vile innkeeper and his wife...
...He points out, for example, that family law judges rarely rule entirely in favor of one side or the other...
...Superior Court) took this tack...
...Will Hilary ever develop an interest in reuniting with her father...
...Eric Foretich was accused of sexually abusing Hilary by Elizabeth Morgan— his wife for less than seven months who left him several days prior to the birth of their daughter...
...In many respects, the Washington, D.C...
...By the end of the book, one begins to think that foster parents, the bane and torment of Cosette's life, might have been an improvement for Hilary...
...Holman is the most heroic figure in the book: She steers a reasoned middle course between the parents, now supporting Morgan, now Foretich, as she attempts to get to the bottom of the abuse allegations...
...Or has she finally reached the place "where no one's lost, where no one cries," now that Foretich appears to have given up and the battle is over...
...Morgan brought forth a platoon of experts in support of the charge, and Foretich arrayed his own platoon in rebuttal...
...In the Morgan case, the judges involved (particularly Judge Herbert Dixon of the Washington, D.C...
...In his Introduction, Groner quotes from the testimony of ElissaBenedek, a nationally recognized child psychologist and custody evaluator, who testified for Foretich...
...Will Elizabeth Morgan dominate her as successfully as she has dominated Eric Foretich in the struggle for the little girl's heart and mind...
...He tells us that shortly after Morgan initiated the legal proceedings in March 1983, she took Polaroid photographs of Hilary with crayons inserted into her vagina, ostensibly to show what the infant had learned while visiting with her father...
...he must rely on the statements of Foretich and people sympathetic to him...
...No wonder she dreams of her child's paradise...
...Will her life be as filled with turmoil as that of her mother...
...The performance of Hilary's courtappointed attorney, Linda Holman, affords another glimpseof reality...
...Think of all the college and postgraduate education, trips to Europe, clothes, toys, books, and investments that could have been purchased for the two girls in lieu of attorneys' fees and court costs...
...Because custody orders are modifiable, a clear-cut victory for one party is often the other party's cue to attempt to sabotage the ruling through both legal means (such as incessant motions for reconsideration) and extralegal means (such as abduction...
...In the musical Les Misérables, young Cosette imagines being away from M. and Mme...
...Well, not so fast...
...father denies the allegations...
...Hilary, at book's end (early 1991), is nine years old and is living in New Zealand with her maternal grandmother and mother, who was released from jail pursuant to an act of Congress in 1989...
...He was awarded supervised, then (later on) unsupervised visitation, and in more than seven years of litigation no court ever made a formal determination that any sexual abuse occurred...
...Child abuse is hard to prove...
...The book describes, too, the subsequent concealment of Hilary from Foretich for two and a half years, and Morgan's spending most of this time in jail for contempt of court...
...author, "Unfair Tactics in Matrimonial Cases" I know a place where no one's lost, I know a place where no one cries...
...Meanwhile, the case involving Sharon and Heather Foretich was on a juggernaut of its own...
...After Morgan was held in contempt, there were endless appeals and proceedings for a writ of habeas corpus in the Federal courts in Washington, D.C...
...The purposes of the law are to minimize the already emotionally disruptive effects of the divorce on the child and to provide as "normal" a life as possible for the child...
...In effect, Groner maintains that Morgan was willing to deny Hilary both a mother and a father in order to deprive Foretich of his court-ordered visitation rights...
...One hopes that Hilary is still healthy enough to at least dream of a castle on a cloud...
...Groner succeeds admirably, though, in explaining domestic relations practice and procedure to the lay reader, and in the process vividly illustrates many of the realities of custody cases...
...Groner notes the parallels between the two cases: the inconclusive evidence despite repeated investigations and evaluations, the numerous legal proceedings, the similar court decisions...
...The Foretiches countersued for intentional infliction of emotional distress...
...In fact, it was Heather who first told authorities of alleged abuse by Foretich...
...My own experience with litigants of the Morgan stripe suggests otherwise...
...A former Federal prosecutor turned journalist, Groner is at his best when he sticks to straight narrative reporting...
...Cosette's life is one trauma after another: She is poorly fed, made to work hard for long hours, and verbally abused...
...Each side usually gets a partial victory...
...A former boy friend of Morgan's, Alan Alkire, was charged with assaulting Foretich and went to trial on the charge...
...It is simply to note that Morgan is given less credit for possibly being right about Foretich's behavior than she is entitled to...
...What will her relationships with men be like as she grows up...
...Like rape, it usually takes place with no witnesses around...
...The law of most American states encomages, in the words of the California statute, "frequent and continuing contact" between a child and both of his or her divorcing parents...
...Hilary's Trial makes much of Foretich's claim that, on the advice of an attorney friend, he anticipated his ex-wife's strategy and was careful never to be alone with the child before the abuse charge was made and afterward...
...But they come from the people who are supposed to love her the most and treat her the best: her parents...
...Hilary's Trial also offers some fascinating sidelights to the Morgan case that received little media attention beyond the Beltway...
...What they did not reckon with was the extreme willfulness—and finally lawlessness— of Morgan...
...custody battle was no different from many others of the past decade: Mother accuses father of child abuse and asks for either limited, supervised visitation or no visitation at all...
...A second point of interest is that Morgan-Foretich generated a lot of non-custody litigation...
...His telling account of the coldly efficient way Morgan, her parents, and various other allies spirited Hilary out of the country—and out of Foretich's life—is scrupulously free of any editorializing...
...She has no contact with her father...
...Morgan filed a suit for damages against Foretich and his parents based on their allegedly having abused Hilary...
...In each instance, Foretich's right to visitation depended less on whether he committed any acts of abuse than on whether his daughters believed he had doneso...
...She lives with the Thenardiers because her father has abandoned her mother, who cannot afford to raise her...
Vol. 74 • May 1991 • No. 7
