MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — A judge yesterday heard dramatically different accounts of how a 5-year-old Chinese girl was placed in the care of an American couple shortly after her birth.
The couple, Jerry and Louise Baker, are pitted against the girl’s parents, Shaoqiang and Qin Luo He, in a bitter custody dispute. Judge Robert Childers heard final arguments yesterday on a request from the Bakers to nullify the Chinese couple’s parental rights on grounds of abandonment. The judge has a month to decide who will get the child.
The American couple’s attorney, Larry Parrish, described the Chinese couple as frauds who found someone else to raise their child. Now, he said, they want to take 5-year-old Anna Mae from the only home she has known.
David Siegel, the Chinese couple’s attorney, accused the Bakers of offering to be temporary foster parents while planning all along to keep Anna Mae as their own.
The Chinese couple say they put Anna Mae in foster care when she was less than a month old because of financial hardships.
Mr. He, a graduate student at the University of Memphis, was acquitted of charges of sexually assaulting a female student in 1998, but the university took away his scholarship and the government revoked his student visa and started deportation proceedings. Those proceedings are on hold while the custody case is resolved.
The Bakers say they had an agreement with Anna Mae’s father to raise her to adulthood. They are seeking to end the Chinese couple’s parental rights because they say they failed for at least four months to have contact with Anna Mae or provide any care for her.
The Chinese couple insist they thought they could get their daughter back when financially able to care for her. Mr. Siegel said his clients tried repeatedly to visit their daughter while she was in foster care, but the Bakers began limiting parental visits. At one point in 2001, police told the couple to leave the Baker home.
“You can’t willfully abandon your child if there are people that are trying to prevent you from developing a relationship with the child,” Mr. Siegel said.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.