Teen-Age Custody Battle : A Father at 16, Youth Wages Fight for Right to Raise His Son

On an August afternoon nearly three years ago in the small conservative town of Wrightwood, Calif., 16-year-old Michael got 12-year-old Jaime pregnant in his mother’s bedroom while the mother was away at work.

Jaime, who said the sexual encounter was her first, was shuttled off to her aunt’s house in a nearby town in the San Bernardino Mountains. There, she would wait out the pregnancy and give the baby up for adoption.

Michael, now 19, is bitterly resentful that Jaime was sent away, and the baby he fathered is growing up in another home with other parents.

Michael wants custody of 2 1/2-year-old Christopher, and so far he is winning his legal battle.

Court Grants Custody

In December, 1983, an Orange County Superior Court granted him custody, and a California Court of Appeal upheld that decision last October.

But the child remains in the custody of Glenn and Gayle White, the adoptive parents who have cared for Christopher for all but two months of his life. Everyone involved in the case is awaiting a decision by the California Supreme Court in the case known as Jaime B. vs. Michael U.

Adoptive mother Gayle White also finds the long legal process a strain.

“It’s like living with a terminally ill child. You don’t know how long it will be with you,” she said.

After the legal setbacks, the Whites, who also have a 4-year-old adopted daughter, Cory, left their Irvine, Calif. home and fled in panic. They stayed with friends in a mountain area until their attorney received an order staying the decision until further court action.

Fear Is Constant

The fear of losing Christopher is constant. “Every time the phone or doorbell rings, there’s a jump,” Gayle White said. She remembered one night when Cory said, “Daddy, don’t let them give my baby brother away.”

The Whites contend that Michael is unfit to be a father.

Jaime, now 15, agreed. “He never called me when I was pregnant,” she said. “And now he wants (Christopher). I never heard from any of (Michael’s relatives) until after the baby was in a foster home.

“I don’t care what happens; Mike will never have that baby. I’ll take it if I have to.”

“The kidnapers,” as an angry Michael calls the Whites, “have no legal right to live with that baby. I have the custody. . . . I’m totally different than I was at 16.”

He acknowledged that he rarely saw Jaime during her pregnancy, but said he was fully prepared to marry her and to raise their son together. Michael said he wanted to contact Jaime at the time, but “no one would tell me where she was.”

Didn’t Know Her Age

Asked about the relationship nearly three years ago, the teen-age father said he would never have had sex with Jaime if he had known that she was only 12.

“She wasn’t a normal 12-year-old. If she had been, she’d been playing with Barbie dolls, not out listening to rock ‘n’ roll,” he said. “I thought she was older. I guess I never asked her age.”

Michael, who does part-time construction work and recently married a 16-year-old, said he has not seen Jaime in about a year and has not seen his son since a few days before Christopher was given to the Whites.

“They handed me the papers (at the adoption agency), and when I refused to sign, that was the end of the visit,” he said.

Jaime said she never considered abortion. With her mother’s encouragement, she turned the baby over to a Los Angeles adoption agency a few days after it was born on April 27, 1983.

Obtained Order

About the same time, Michael’s mother, without notifying Jaime’s parents, obtained a temporary guardianship order from a San Bernardino County Superior Court judge.

But when she went to the adoption agency with the order, she was told that the child had already been been placed with the Whites.

Legal precedent is on Michael’s side.

In a similar case last fall, the state Supreme Court ruled that natural fathers, no matter how brief their involvement with the mother, have the right to a custody hearing before the child can be adopted.

A judge, the court said, could stop the biological father from gaining custody only if it decided that placing the baby with him would be “detrimental” to the child.

Trying to prove that Michael is undeserving of the child, the Whites and their attorney, Christian Van Duesen, have alleged in court that he is unemployed and is a drug dealer.

Denies Allegation

Michael conceded that when he was arrested a few weeks ago for failing to appear in court on a traffic ticket, authorities seized a small amount of marijuana. But he said he was not a drug pusher.

Michael’s attorney, Winfield Payne, declined to discuss the case. He also instructed Michael’s mother not to talk to reporters.

Jaime’s mother, Laura Weierman, is less reticent. “I think Michael is very confused and lost,” she said.

“He wanted her to have an abortion,” Gayle White said, “and put the girl through nothing but torment, and now he wants custody.”

Losing Christopher “would be devastating to the whole family. . . . I have a hard time believing that he loves a child he’s never really seen,” she said.

“I’m different now,” Michael said. “I’m ready for the responsibility.”