‘I’m no crusader. I just want my son.’ : Custody Dilemma Heads for a Showdown

David Thompson planned the operation carefully.

He hired an accomplice and together they staked out the target, carefully noting the comings and goings at the house in Shreveport, La.

But when they finally made their move, his mother-in-law resisted, stubbornly refusing to give up the boy, shielding him with her body and refusing to move even when Thompson’s partner, a private investigator, shouted threats.

Thompson, horrified at the turn of events, abandoned the plan to take back the boy, his son Matthew. “I just felt it was inappropriate to have a youngster see parents physically squabbling over the issue. It just was not what I wanted for my son to see,” he said.

Since that day in 1981, Thompson, a Los Angeles neurologist, has had no contact with his only child, now 9. The boy’s mother, Susan Clay, had taken him to Louisiana after the couple filed for divorce in 1979.

Thompson tried to seize the boy only after a Los Angeles judge had awarded him custody.

But three months earlier, his estranged wife had won a custody order of her own in Shreveport.

The conflicting decisions by courts in California and Louisiana have led to a widening legal battle. And last week, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear the case at the request of Thompson and the states of Hawaii, Nevada, Texas, and California Atty. Gen. John Van de Kamp.

“I got an order with no power to enforce it,” Thompson said. “I’m no crusader. I just want my son.”

A Supreme Court decision, which is at least a year away, could affect the estimated 100,000 children who are abducted by divorced or estranged parents each year. The review also could provide a definitive test of the Parental Kidnaping Prevention Act, passed by Congress in 1980 as a mechanism to peacefully settle interstate custody disputes.

“The act imposes a mandatory federal duty upon the states to give full faith and credit to sister-state child custody decrees,” according to papers filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by Van de Kamp’s office. “This case poses the significant question of whether there will be an effective means of enforcing that duty.”

Initially, Thompson and Clay, also a neurologist, were awarded joint custody.

But in December, 1980, Clay asked the court in Los Angeles for permission to take Matthew with her to Shreveport, where she had accepted a position with the University of Louisiana School of Medicine.

Over Thompson’s objections, the court approved. Thompson was granted visitation privileges the last week of each month.

But after an incident at the Shreveport airport--Clay’s lawyer, Kenneth Rigby, said it involved pushing and shoving, with Matthew in the middle--Clay went to court in Louisiana.

In March of 1981, a Louisiana court awarded her sole custody of Matthew, with Thompson receiving strictly limited visitation privileges: He could see Matthew only in Shreveport, on the first weekend of each month, for four hours a day and only under supervision.

Meanwhile, Thompson had filed for sole custody in a Los Angeles court. Three months after Clay won custody in Louisiana, Thompson was awarded custody in California. Neither party appeared in the other state to contest the proceedings.

After the unsuccessful attempt to take back his son, Thompson filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles, asking it to enforce the California custody decree on Louisiana authorities.

But the court refused, ruling that Congress may have urged states to recognize the custody decrees of each other, but it did not empower federal courts to settle disputes between the states. That decision was upheld by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.

The decision frustrates the intent of Congress, according to a brief filed by Van de Kamp’s office. “Absent correction by (the Supreme Court), child abductors will be encouraged once more to kidnap their children and cross state lines in search of more favorable custody determinations,” it said.

Clay could not be reached for comment. But her attorney, Rigby, said Thompson should have sought custody in Louisiana. Instead, he said, Thompson has “bypassed” Louisiana courts and tried to go directly into the federal system.

Thompson’s lawyer, Ronald W. Weiss of Tustin, pointed to a conflict among federal appellate courts on the question, and urged the high court to accept the case to set a uniform rule.

“It appeared then and now that the judiciary is unable to expeditiously come to grips with a very difficult problem,” Thompson said. “Here in California, I had a valid court order for custody, yet it appeared to be unenforceable.

“I felt betrayed in some ways here by the judiciary, forcing me to go through this extensive, exhaustive, frightfully expensive experience of all the weeks and months in court,” Thompson said. “Then, after all that, it seemed the courts turned their back on me and said, ‘Sorry, we’ve done the best we can.’ ”