In a few days Kelly Rutherford is supposed to return her children, son Hermes, 7, and daughter, Helena, 5, to their father, who lives in France. Kelly’s ex, German-born Daniel Giersch, obtained a judge’s permission in 2012 to have the children live with him overseas because he cannot legally return to the US. (Kelly’s lawyer has admitted notifying the State Department about Giersch’s immigration status and allegedly shady business practices, which is thought to be the reason his US Visa was revoked.) Kelly’s lawyers are trying to make a case that the family court judge in California illegally deported the children. Their efforts were shot down by a federal judge on Wednesday. Kelly has threatened to keep the children with her in NY, which would be a violation of court order. If she does that, she could be slapped with international kidnapping charges.
Amidst all this drama, Kelly has a new interview with Hamptons Magazine. She talks about staying in the Hamptons with her kids for the summer, and how she loves the area and spending time with her friends there. She also discusses her custody battle and her new charity, The Children’s Justice Campaign.
Do the children seem good? Are they happy?
They’re good, but they’re getting older so they’re much more outspoken about their feelings on the situation. They think it’s unfair: they’ve basically been told that I should move to France. I say, “Well, you guys are US citizens, and mommy’s a US citizen; your dad was living in the US when we got married and before we got married, and none of us are from France.”I can see how your kids don’t understand it, because adults can’t understand how it’s possible that these children are now living in France with a man who has basically been exiled from this country.
Correct. And we still don’t even know why he was exiled from this country. Because he’s a foreigner, he’s actually being treated better, in some ways, than the tax-paying US citizen. Every evaluator said the children should be with me as their primary parent—that was ignored when the kids were sent to France. Since then, I’ve traveled 60 times back and forth.Traveling 60 times back and forth has got to be so costly.
Basically everything I make goes to traveling. This is why I started the Children’s Justice Campaign, along with cofounder Patrice Lenowitz. It’s really to educate people about what’s really going on—if you bankrupt the mother before she can appeal and before you send her children to a foreign country, then she’s forced to just focus on trying to figure out how to see her children. To appeal a case like mine, it takes an enormous amount of time, and if there is anything even minimally wrong with the way the appeal is done, they can throw it out. Caring parents go in wanting what’s best for the kids, and are willing to negotiate, [but the way the system has been set up] is not in the best interest of the kids.
Rutherford said “we still don’t even know why [Giersch] was exiled from this country.” That is not consistent with People Magazine’s report that Rutherford actively worked to have her ex’s visa revoked. Outside the courtroom on Wednesday, she expanded on that, saying “My ex-husband got kicked out of the country and my children are with him. I’m not the one that got my visa revoked.”
Access Hollywood aired a clip yesterday of an older interview with Rutherford in which she similarly denied having a hand in her ex’s deportation. She said “I haven’t done anything personally to get him deported.” Notice how carefully she phrased that denial.
I checked out the website for Rutherford’s foundation, The Children’s Justice Campaign. While I have reservations about this case, this does seem like a worthy cause. One quote on the site from an expert stood out for me.
Although research confirms mothers make deliberately false allegations of sexual abuse less than 2% of the time, custody courts are giving the alleged sexual predator custody in 85% of these cases. This means, courts are sending a lot of children to live with their rapist. Barry Goldstein, Author and DV Expert
I don’t know if those statistics are accurate, but this really happened to a friend of mine. She lost custody of her children during her divorce after she accused her ex of sexually abusing her daughter. Her daughter told her this was happening, she had confirmation from a pediatrician that her daughter suffered injuries consistent with sexual abuse, and yet her ex’s lawyer called her crazy and the judge granted custody to her ex. You may think my friend did something to prompt this, that she must have been a bad mother in some way. I’ve known her for 20 years. I know she is telling the truth and that she is a good mother. I could tell you more about her case, but I don’t want to compromise her identity any more than I have.
So although I think that Kelly Rutherford is somewhat full of crap, I do think this is a worthy cause. So many times when parents lose custody of their children, people assume that they must be a bad parent or that the other parent must be “better” for the kids. People can be incredibly vindictive in a divorce and they often use their kids as pawns. Courts are not always fair or unbiased. I’m still not convinced that Kelly’s situation isn’t her own doing, though. There definitely seems to be some parental alienation going on. Does that mean that she deserves to have her kids live in another country? I don’t think any good parent deserves that, but sometimes things happen that way. I do wonder if there is more to this story than she’s telling us, but if that were the case wouldn’t she have made it public by now?
Photos are from 2013 (white dress) and 2011 (blue and red top). Credit: PRPhotos
Special thanks Cele Bitch
