Parents vs. Father : Ordeal Like Living With Dying Child, Couple Say

Glenn and Gayle White, an Irvine couple battling to keep their 2-year-old adopted son, Christopher, from the custody of his natural father, said the past six months have been like living with a terminally ill child.

“At any minute you don’t know whether he’s going to be taken away from you and you’ll never see him again,” Glenn White said.

“It’s even worse. If you lose a child to death, you have religious beliefs and the comfort of knowing that he’s in a better place.

“But to have your child taken away and given to someone else--he’s still alive and he’s on this earth, but you can’t care for him--that’s devastating.”

The Whites, awaiting a decision by the state Supreme Court in the case known as Jaime B. v. Michael U., spoke openly of the custody battle Thursday.

Michael U., an 18-year-old San Bernardino man who fathered Christopher, is seeking custody of the child, whose mother, Jaime B., was 12 when she gave birth. Although Jaime gave the child up for adoption, Michael has sought custody since the child’s birth in April, 1983.

The Whites have cared for Christopher for all but two months of his life. They contend that Michael is unfit to be a father and that separating Christopher from them would be too traumatic. The child’s natural mother has sided with the Whites.

So far, Michael is winning the battle. Last December, an Orange County Superior Court granted him custody, and a California Court of Appeal upheld that decision. But the child remains in the hands of the Whites pending the Supreme Court ruling.

Whatever the court decides, Glenn White said he will never hand Christopher over to somebody else.

“It can’t happen,” he said. “I love that little boy so much that I would do anything for him. Over my dead body would I take that little boy and have him screaming, yelling and crying and hand him to a stranger.”

“All he knows is that we’re his parents,” he said. “I just couldn’t do it.”

This is not the first time the Whites have found themselves battling a biological father. Their adopted daughter, Cory, now 4, was the center of a dispute two years ago, involving a teen-aged father in the San Fernando Valley. That dispute never entered the courts, and after two years of haggling, the Whites eventually convinced the teen-ager to consent to the adoption in April, 1983.

When the Whites adopted Christopher from a Van Nuys adoption agency in July, 1983, they thought they had avoided another custody battle. “When we entered into the adoption, we were told it would be clean and simple, that there were just a few things hanging,” said Gayle. “We didn’t know that Michael was trying to get the kid back. So no one was more surprised than us when we realized what we’d gotten into.”

But the couple do not regret adopting Christopher. “When I first held Christopher in my arms for less than a moment, if someone had said, ‘You can look forward to a battle in the California Supreme Court in 18 months,’ I would have probably said, ‘Then so be it,’ ” Gayle White said.

Left Home

The most trying moment of their ordeal, the couple said, came when Judge Philip Schwab granted custody to Michael. “It was his right to have the child, but we were trying to get a stay granted. We just had to get away. There was the possibility that Michael might come take our baby, so we picked up the kids and left. We couldn’t be located anywhere.”

Two days later, a court ordered a stay, permitting the Whites to keep the child until the final court decision.

Since then, their young daughter has sensed that something is wrong, Gayle White said. “One night at the dinner table, out of the clear blue sky, she said, ‘Daddy, I don’t want to give my baby brother away.’ She is so aware, but it’s bottled up inside of her.”

Through tears, Gayle White said that her daughter no longer sleeps well and has frequent nightmares. “She has no one to turn to. She sees me crying, but she’s afraid to ask. There’s really a lot of sadness in this house.”

Family’s Allegations

In an attempt to show that Michael is unfit to be a father, the Whites and their attorney, Christian Van Deusen, have alleged in court that he is an unemployed drug dealer. Michael’s attorney, Winfield Payne III, vehemently denies it.

“They’ve said in court that he’s a drug pusher, but there’s no evidence of that,” Payne said. “If they say they’ve got evidence, they’re lying. They haven’t produced a shred of truth. And I’ve got a $100 bill that says they’re never going to find it.

Payne said, “In my heart, I feel he’s going to win this case. He’s won in two courts already and he’s going to win in another.”

The Whites are equally confident, despite a recent landmark ruling by the Supreme Court in the Baby Girl M. case. In it, the court said biological fathers have a right to full custody hearings, despite the mother’s wishes, and no matter how brief the relationship with the mother.

Confident of Victory

“We feel the court is going to rule on our side,” Glenn White said. “There’s a big difference between a 16-year-old boy who had no relationship with the mother and a grown man who lived with the mother and cared for her. One is a casual impregnator and one is a biological father. One should not have the same rights as the other.”

Gayle White said both she and her husband are sensitive to the father’s desire to have the baby, but they feel keeping Christopher is in the child’s best interests.

“They want me to give away my son, but I just won’t do that,” she said.