Legal Battle Ends but Age of Runaway May Bar Parents’ Bid : Ruling Aids Soviet Pair Seeking Return of Son
A judge Thursday removed legal obstacles preventing the parents of a runaway Soviet youth from reclaiming their son, but a lawyer said that because of his age Walter Polovchak will remain in this country.
U.S. District Judge Thomas McMillen ruled that the Immigration and Naturalization Service violated the rights of Anna and Michael Polovchak when it issued an order in 1982 barring anyone from taking their son from this country.
The legal battle began in 1980 when Walter, now 17, refused to return to the Soviet Union with his parents who were living in Chicago at the time. Instead, the boy ran away from home.
The decision means “there are no legal barriers remaining to them (the Polovchaks) to reassert control over the child and return to the Soviet Union,” said Harvey Grossman, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the parents.
Grossman said that he will contact the Polovchaks, who returned to the Soviet Ukraine in 1981, but declined to predict what will happen. “It’s now up to the parents and child, free from government intrusion to decide what they’re going to do,” he said.
However, Julian Kulas, Walter’s attorney, said that Walter “isn’t going anywhere . . . . He will go back over my dead body.”
Kulas said that Walter will be 18 years old in October and will be free to decide where he wants to live.
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