Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 17, 1993 TAG: 9308170159
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Knight-Ridder Newspapers
DATELINE: DETROIT LENGTH: Medium
Sixteen-year-old Iesha Murray said Monday she wanted to return to the place she considers home and the people she considers family.
"I have learned how to trust them. They are more a part of my life than anyone else," she said of foster parents Diane Robinson and Tony Patterson.
"We spend a lot of time together. We go places - bowling, out to eat, to the movies. They're understanding, I can tell them anything. And they take care of me."
Murray was ordered out of the Robinson-Patterson home July 28 by Kalamazoo County Probate Judge Donald Halstead, who was presiding over a hearing to terminate the parental rights of Murray's father, Isaac Murray.
Iesha Murray wasn't at court that day. But when she learned of the judge's order, she placed a frantic telephone call to Halstead to try to talk him out of it. He wouldn't budge, she said.
"He told me that because they weren't married, he doesn't feel it's a suitable home for me to be growing up in. When I told him I had been living there for three years, he said it wouldn't have mattered if it was 15.
"I asked him if he was concerned about my feelings or my well-being, and he said the decision wasn't up to me," Murray said.
Halstead could not be reached Monday for comment.
The ACLU of Michigan filed an appeal of Halstead's order Friday.
"Our position is: We question the wisdom of the judge's order. This is her family. She loves her foster parents and wants desperately to return to them," said Mary Delehanty, the Kalamazoo lawyer handling the case for the ACLU.
"We want her back," said Robinson.
The state Department of Social Services has recommended that Murray remain with Robinson and Patterson, who have another foster daughter and a daughter of their own, according to the ACLU.
"She has had a very disruptive life already. This is the only stable life she has known," Delehanty said.
The department, which licenses foster parents, does not prohibit unmarried individuals or couples from taking in foster children, spokesman Chuck Peller said.
Murray has not seen her father since she was 12. Her mother's parental rights were terminated several years ago. Before she lived with Robinson and Patterson, she spent time in another foster home.
"The DSS supervisor and the DSS lawyer say this is a successful family. Number one, they've got her on track to go to college. Number two, they'd like to begin proceedings to adopt her, so put this in the context of how hard it is to place a teen-ager," ACLU Executive Director Howard Simon said.
"It is another example of Judge Halstead imposing his personal narrow moralistic views and disregarding the laws."
by CNB