Deportation Hearing That Clouds Youth’s Future Is Delayed : DeBeer Recalls Confused and Anguished Past

Joeri DeBeer sat nursing a cup of coffee in the government building cafeteria and reflected on the man he shot to death after enduring years of sexual abuse.

“He could be a real neat guy. I still feel bad about what happened. I haven’t got to the point where I feel I really miss him, but that point will come.”

The 18-year-old native of the Netherlands was convicted last May in Orange County Superior Court of manslaughter for killing the guardian. Then, in an extraordinary scene, he was released on probation when the jury that convicted him appeared at his sentencing to appeal for leniency.

Now, he and his new guardians are battling government attempts to deport him.

What brought him to San Francisco Thursday from the East Bay community of Oakley--where he now lives with his new court-appointed guardians, Syd and Jenny Ward--was an appearance before San Francisco immigration judge James Vandello. Vandello agreed to postpone deportation hearings until Nov. 20.

The Immigration and Naturalization Service has charged that DeBeer is in violation of his nonimmigrant student status for committing “crimes of moral turpitude.”

Appearing Under Real Name

The youth is appearing in U.S. Immigration Court here under the name Joeri Rietveld, his real father’s family name. DeBeer is his stepfather’s name.

After the hearing, DeBeer, joined by Jenny Ward and his lawyer, talked to a reporter in the cafeteria. DeBeer--looking like a Southern California surfer with his short, blond hair, broad shoulders and Reebok shoes--said he sometimes feels angry at the INS for trying to take him from the only normal family life he has known for years. Yet in a resigned voice, he said he also understands: “They’re just doing their job. For them I’m just another immigrant who’s not supposed to be here.”

John R. Alcorn, the Irvine immigration attorney representing DeBeer, said he hopes during the 30-day stay to persuade the INS to withdraw the deportation order on “humanitarian grounds.”

INS agents confiscated DeBeer’s passport at his guardians’ home on Sept. 30. One day later, DeBeer surrendered at the INS office in San Francisco, where he was arrested and later charged with being in the country illegally. The INS held DeBeer in the Oakland city jail until Oct. 3, when Patricia de Carion, one of the jurors who testified on his behalf, put up the $5,000 bail bond to secure his release.

David N. Ilchert, district director for the INS in San Francisco, said Thursday that he has “no lack of compunction in proceeding against this boy. He’s committed horrible crimes.”

On April 9, 1985, DeBeer shot his legal guardian, Phillip A. Parsons, then placed the body in a van and drove to Riverside County, where he doused the body with gasoline and set it afire. He returned to Parsons’ Dana Point apartment and also set it on fire. DeBeer said he shot Parsons, a convicted child molester, after Parsons tried to sexually assault him.

Met Parsons in Saudi Arabia

Parsons, an electrician, met DeBeer when the youth was 13 and living in Saudi Arabia with his mother and stepfather. Parsons offered to bring the boy to the United States and make a motorcycle racing champion of him. In court, DeBeer testified that once in the United States, Parsons began to “use him” sexually four to five times a week.

Torn by the boy’s nightmare descriptions of emotional and sexual abuse, sympathetic jurors who had convicted DeBeer of manslaughter in May begged the sentencing judge in June not to send the youth to jail. Judge Robert Fitzgerald agreed, sentencing DeBeers to three years’ probation plus the 14 months he had already served in Orange County Juvenile Hall.

Since then, DeBeer said, all 12 of the jurors have kept in regular contact with him. De Carion is paying his fees at a community college.

In the interview Thursday, DeBeer described memories of Parsons tinged with bitterness, guilt and confusion.

“I keep asking myself the question: Why did he love me--for myself, or what I am?” he said.

“I was just a kid,” DeBeer said, recalling Parson’s repeated sexualabuse. “You don’t know that what’s going on is crazy and wrong. At that time and at that age you always do what adults tell you to do.”

Parsons drove the boy hard to succeed at motorcycle racing, said Jenny Ward, who met the electrician at races where Ward’s sons competed. “He was like an Army drill instructor,” she said. “Phil really used to push him, standing alongside the track and yelling. He had a need for Joeri to excel.”

DeBeer said that at one motorcycle training run, Parsons insisted that he clear a double jump. DeBeer said he sustained a concussion. But a week after his release from the hospital, he said Parsons insisted that he enter another race.

“I broke my collarbone,” DeBeer said. “Phil pushed me. My confidence dropped after each crash. I wasn’t afraid to try things like double jumps. But kids need to be able to make decisions that they are comfortable with. Decide for themselves.”

DeBeer said Parsons invested $40,000 to $50,000 in motocross racing equipment. At one time Parsons owned 12 motorcycles, DeBeer said. “All I wanted was a bike and to race,” DeBeer said. “Whenever I didn’t win, he would blame me and I’d feel bad. He’d say he’d given me everything I wanted.”

Like a lot of other 18-year-olds, DeBeer would like to buy a car. “I fell in love with this ’67 Chevelle!” he said, his voice rising in excitement. Then he paused, “But we’ll have to wait and see what happens here.”

If the INS allows him to stay in the United States, DeBeer said he hopes to finish college and study law at UC Berkeley. “But it’s hard to plan ahead,” he said, “when you’re living one day at a time.”

DeBeer said that he hasn’t heard from his real father in more than six years and that now he feels estranged from his mother and her family in the Netherlands. If deported, he said, it would be like returning to a foreign country.

DeBeer said his mother visited him once in the United States before his trial. “I felt as if she should have been there for the whole thing,” DeBeer said over coffee. “I’m still hurt and disappointed. I try not to think about it. It bothers me a lot.”

Jenny Ward said that after DeBeer’s release the youth slept with the family’s golden retriever, Whiskey, in his bed every night. “Joeri needed all the affection he could receive,” she said.

For the first 12 days after his release, DeBeer said he couldn’t eat indoors. “I was finally outside,” he said. “I didn’t like it in (Juvenile Hall). I still can’t stand places with no windows. The whole thing made me claustrophobic.”

Describing Jenny Ward, DeBeer put his arms around her, smiled and said, “She’s kind of everything. My mom, my secretary, my driver.”

He shares a room with the Ward’s younger son, Chris, 18, a high school senior.

“I don’t really have my close friends, right now,” DeBeer said. “A lot of my old friends have changed. Not for the better. They don’t really do much with their lives. On weekends the only thing they want to do is party, drink beer and get drunk.

“When you walk up to someone and ask what they think of life and they say ‘easy,’ that tells you something about the caliber of that person,” DeBeer said, in a suddenly lowered, more serious voice.

At the end of Thursday’s interview, DeBeer pulled from his jacket pocket a biblical note he said he had written to himself. It read: “No weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you. This is the heritage of the servants of the lord.”