No Crime Committed by Batey, Judge Rules

Betty Lou Batey, the Pentecostalist who disappeared with her son for 19 months rather than let him live with his homosexual father, left court a free woman Monday, cleared by a judge of charges of felony child-stealing.

San Diego County Superior Court Judge Douglas Woodworth, throwing out the charges against Batey before they could be considered by a jury, ruled that she had her son’s safety at heart when she took him underground, rather than any criminal intent, so she could not be found guilty of a crime.

“I have a deeply rooted respect for the rule of law and our legal system,” Woodworth said as he put a dramatic end to the latest chapter in the turbulent saga of a family shattered by contradictory life styles. “Occasionally, however, any system designed by the mind of man can run amok, and I think that may be what happened in this case.”

The ruling drew shouts of “Hallelujah!” and “Praise the Lord!” from Batey’s supporters in the courtroom.

Disappeared with Son

Batey stole away with her son Brian, then 11, in August, 1982, after a San Diego judge shifted custody of the boy from her to his father, Frank Batey, an acknowledged homosexual. After a nationwide FBI search, she surfaced with the boy in April, 1984, and spent two weeks in jail on civil contempt charges for defying the custody order.

Later, another judge dismissed the criminal charges against her, holding that criminal proceedings would place her in double jeopardy. But the San Diego County district attorney’s office fought successfully in the appellate courts to have the charges reinstated, contending that child-stealing merits criminal penalties and that there should be serious consequences when court orders are ignored.

In a weeklong trial before Woodworth, however, every significant ruling went against the prosecution.

Over Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Boles’ objections, Woodworth allowed Betty Batey’s lawyers--supplied by the Concerned Women for America, a right-wing lobbying group headed by fundamentalist activist Beverly LaHaye--to present a defense based on the assertion that Batey’s concerns for Brian’s welfare justified her violation of the law.

The decision, Boles acknowledged, allowed Batey’s lawyers to turn the focus of the trial away from her admissions that she had spirited the boy away.

Life Style in Question

Instead, the proceedings centered on Frank Batey, the homosexual life style he adopted after abandoning the fundamentalism he had practiced when the couple was married, and his ex-wife’s beliefs about the dangers to Brian in his father’s household. She claimed that Brian told her he was exposed to alcohol, drugs and homosexual activities at his father’s home in Palm Springs--allegations Frank Batey denied.

The two parents, in fact, were the only witnesses in the case, and the charges and countercharges they exchanged were the same ones that had fueled years of custody hearings since their divorce in 1975.

Brian, now 16, refused to testify, telling Woodworth in a closed hearing that he did not want to harm either his father or his mother. Frank Batey retains custody of the teen-ager, although Brian regularly visits his mother and plans to spend the summer with her.

When the trial was over Monday, Brian told his mother he loved her and left the courthouse with his father--but only after stepping between his parents, his arms outstretched, to keep them apart when they began to quarrel in a hallway outside the court.

“I was hoping this would happen, in all honesty,” he said of the judge’s decision clearing his mother of all charges. “I was just hoping to get it over with.”

Tearful Testimony

Betty Batey had finished her often tearful testimony early in the day, explaining that she had vowed to a frightened Brian during the 1982 custody fight that she would rescue him if he was placed in his father’s care.

“Brian said, ‘Mother, if I have to go live in that, will you promise me you will take me out of there?’ ” she said. “And I had an obligation as a mother to protect him, because he was so young and vulnerable.”

Prosecutors have contended that some of the youth’s descriptions in the past of events at the home his father shares with a homosexual lover were the product of suggestion from the fundamentalists who surrounded Brian while he was in hiding with his mother.

Asked outside court Monday about the allegations, Brian said only, “I was kind of looking for things I didn’t see.”

In the courtroom, Woodworth listened to arguments from Boles and defense lawyer Michael Farris on a defense motion to dismiss the felony charges, took 10 minutes to collect his thoughts and then announced his decision.

“I feel compelled to do my duty as a judge and put an end, now, to the anguish and torment being suffered by all three actors in this protracted tragedy,” Woodworth said. “I find the defendant not guilty.”

Batey stood and hugged Farris. Her friends and family, who filled the half of the courtroom gallery behind the defense table, applauded.

Her father, Lester Rose, began to pray. “Hallelujah, hallelujah,” he said quietly. “Jesus saves, Jesus saves.”

Pastor Maurice Gordon of Denver, the minister who helped hide Betty Batey during part of her time underground, jumped to his feet and shouted, “Praise the Lord!”

The jurors left the courtroom first. One of them, Cheryl Huff of San Diego, said she had reached the same conclusion as Woodworth--that Betty Batey’s defiance of the law was justified. “It seemed pretty clear-cut to me that it was a necessity,” she said.

Betty Batey came through the double doors next.

“This is a great day,” she said. “I have been sustained by my faith. I would not have been able to go through what I have. God is my defense.”

Frank Batey emerged from the courtroom angry.

“Parents need some protections,” he said. “If we have recently enacted child-stealing laws that are unenforceable, it’s bad news for our society.”

He said he was disappointed with the decision, but could not blame the district attorney’s office for losing the case. “The judge did not have control of his courtroom,” Frank Batey said. “He allowed the Concerned Women for America’s lawyers from Washington, D.C., to run his courtroom with insinuations and accusations.”

Frank Batey said he had never wanted to see his ex-wife sent back to jail, but that he hoped she would receive professional counseling.

Boles--who joked before the trial that his sister, a fundamentalist, had told him she and the members of her church were praying for Betty Batey--said he was unconcerned about the message Woodworth’s ruling might send.

“We in the courtroom often think we’re all a little more important than we really are,” the prosecutor said. “Other people are not going to consider this case as some sort of license to steal kids.”

Future Cases Questioned

However, lawyers active in custody cases said Woodworth’s decision, while not precedent-setting, could be the basis for arguing in other cases that courts simply ignore acts of child stealing by parents angry at a judge’s custody decision.

“That absolves almost everybody of stealing a kid as long as they make sure their motives are clean before they come into court,” said one San Diego family lawyer, who did not want to be quoted by name as criticizing the judge’s ruling.

Allen McMahon, legal adviser to Victims of Child Abuse Legislation, a national organization of adults who say they have been falsely accused of child abuse, said many custody battles develop when a parent who has lost custody falsely claims that their former spouse has abused their child or poses a threat to the child’s well-being.

“My guess is there will be future cases where this decision will be plead as extenuation, at least, or as an excuse,” said McMahon, a Santa Ana attorney. “And, frankly, I think that stinks.”

As the hallway outside the courtroom cleared, Gordon, pastor of The Loving Way United Pentecostal Church in Denver, said the outcome of the case was evidence that Betty Batey and those who think like her are not out of touch with society and its mores.

“It’s not our fault because the psychiatric association 14 years ago voted to remove homosexuality from the ‘mental illness’ category,” the fundamentalist preacher said. “Why should Betty be persecuted, let alone prosecuted, because she was the one who was consistent?”