Southbound Feud : Custody: New Zealand, a potential haven from U. S. family law, is the latest battleground in the custody war over Hilary Foretich.

As classes let out at the Selwyn House private school for girls, the happy children in their brown blazers and Panama hats contrast sharply with the women pulling up in their four-wheel-drive station wagons and Jeeps.

The mothers are in a foul mood. As they quickly whisk their daughters away, some even spit out obscenities at the reporters who are staking out the school in vain hope of glimpsing Hilary Foretich.

“Leave her alone!” one passing motorist shouts.

“Hey, we’re just doing our job,” a sheepish Rick Kirkham of “Inside Edition,” who had flown in from New York City, mutters to no one in particular.

Already at the center of perhaps America’s most wrenching child custody battle, Hilary, 7, has suddenly become New Zealand’s most famous pupil, now that her 2 1/2 years in hiding have come to a pandemoniac end.

Her mother, Dr. Elizabeth Morgan, spent more than two years in a Washington jail on a civil contempt charge for refusing to divulge Hilary’s whereabouts. Her father, Dr. Eric Foretich, accused by Morgan of sexually molesting Hilary, finally tracked Hilary down to this scenic South Island city, where she is living with Morgan’s parents.

Foretich has vehemently denied Morgan’s accusation, contending it was Morgan who did the molesting.

As the focus of the nasty, long-running dispute between her divorced parents shifts here, the usually courteous citizens of Christchurch are getting more than just a taste of the news media’s excesses.

Like it or not, New Zealanders and their particular way of dispensing family justice have been thrust into the harsh limelight and both are being sorely tested.

After four appeals and $1 million in legal bills in American courts, the fight between Morgan and Foretich is being reborn half a world away.

Just as Congress and President George Bush got dragged into the squabble back in the United States, so now are New Zealand’s prime minister and members of Parliament being drawn into the escalating debate.

It remains to be seen whether New Zealand’s family court can do any better in dealing with the seemingly intractable dispute.

But the legal system appears determined to give it its best shot.

In Washington Friday, the D. C. Court of Appeals released Morgan’s passport, making her departure to New Zealand imminent. She hopes for a reunion as far away as possible from the international glare of attention that has dogged Hilary since her discovery.

“I don’t want to arrive with 1 million photographers there to watch me embrace Hilary,” Morgan said in an interview Friday. “That is not my idea of looking out for my daughter.

“This past week has been an enormously upsetting one for her,” Morgan continued. “I think the first thing that’s important for Hilary is to be allowed to get back to her ordinary life, and not to have another unexpected eruption, no matter how welcome. The best thing I can do for her is to let her life settle down and go on from there.

“Obviously, I want very much to see her, but only in a way that’s right for her,” Morgan added.

Morgan and Foretich--she a once-prominent plastic surgeon, he an oral surgeon--separated shortly before Hilary’s birth. Morgan gained custody of the child. Then came a custody challenge by Foretich and allegations of sexual abuse by Morgan.

The claims of sexual abuse were not proven to the satisfaction of D. C. Superior Court Judge Herbert Dixon Jr., and in 1987, Dixon ordered Morgan to produce Hilary for unsupervised visits with her father.

Morgan refused and sent her child into hiding. When she refused to reveal Hilary’s whereabouts, Dixon sent her to jail. She was released last September only after Congress enacted, and Bush signed, a law designed specifically for her, limiting the time a person can be jailed on civil contempt in child custody cases in the District of Columbia.

Last week, after discovering that Hilary had been living here since July, 1988, with her aging maternal grandparents, Foretich and his lawyers rushed to family court here, seeking to force his U. S. court-granted visitation rights.

But a family court judge denied that request and ordered Foretich not to contact his daughter. The judge then granted Hilary’s grandparents, William and Antonia Morgan, temporary custody of Hilary, but took away their passports.

Meanwhile, the prospect of Elizabeth Morgan’s arrival in New Zealand to take up her side of the battle clearly disturbs Foretich’s U. S. attorneys, who had hoped New Zealand would return the case to the United States.

John C. Lenahan, one of Foretich’s lawyers, said, “I feel Dr. Morgan has thumbed her nose at the court and . . . has tried to further defy (the visitation order) by going to New Zealand and seeking to litigate the case there. The parties have no business there. This is not a New Zealand case. They aren’t New Zealand citizens. This is an American case involving American parties, and it should be resolved by an American court.”

Morgan, however, said “I am very happy” at the prospect of traveling to New Zealand, and said she was prepared to stay there as long as necessary--even if it meant she might have to remain there permanently to be with her daughter.

Morgan married her second husband, federal appeals Judge Paul Michel, who waited for Morgan throughout her two years in prison, in January. Morgan said the two discussed all the possible outcomes of the custody fight before their marriage.

“We both agreed that Hilary came first,” she said.

Clearly, Morgan could have found few better havens against the American family law than New Zealand. It has not signed the 1980 Hague Convention on child abduction, which calls for the return “forthwith” of any child “wrongfully removed” from his or her home jurisdiction.

The family court here is not bound by any of the actions of U. S. courts in the case.

New Zealand’s child custody laws instruct judges here to “regard the welfare of the child as the first and paramount consideration,” which often translates into allowing a child taken to New Zealand to remain, if the child appears settled in the new environment. Since Hilary has been here 19 months, Morgan and her parents may be able to meet that criteria easily.

Unlike the American courts, the judge here also appointed a lawyer to represent Hilary. That attorney, Isabell Mitchell, is conducting her own investigation and has hinted she may even look into earlier allegations that Foretich had molested another daughter from a previous marriage. Hilary is said to have already undergone a psychiatric and sex abuse evaluation.

In keeping with New Zealand law, all the proceedings are taking place behind closed doors.

“They do things completely differently in New Zealand,” Morgan said. “My understanding is that the court has taken control of Hilary’s welfare. In completely closed hearings, they will review whatever requests are made, and will probably listen most to Hilary’s lawyer and the (child abuse) expert that Hilary’s lawyer is consulting.”

According to Patrick D. Mahony, New Zealand’s chief family court judge, cases such as this will unfold in stages, with attempts at reconciliation and mediation preceding any formal hearing.

Since making his only public declarations on the matter--at a contentious meeting with some 30 reporters, a session he terminated abruptly--Mahony has ordered everyone involved to clam up.

Foretich has declined to speak with reporters since his arrival in New Zealand last week, saying he intends to respect the wishes of the New Zealand authorities. Similarly, the elder Morgans, who granted several candid and graphic interviews shortly after they were found here, took the warning to heart and abruptly terminated their contacts with the media.

And Elizabeth Morgan, in Washington, warned that she will cease talking to the press once she lands on New Zealand soil. “I just cannot take any chances by talking to anyone once I get there,” she said.

Mahony also warned the media that disclosure of family court proceedings could lend them in jail under the Guardianship Act of 1968.

Neither Mahony nor anyone else would say when the proceedings might get under way, although experts earlier speculated that they could be weeks off.

“The New Zealand court has to decide in their view what is best for this child in these circumstances, and they are the ones who decide, not somebody else,” declared Prime Minister W. Geoffrey Palmer.

Palmer ordered Immigration Minister Annette King to reconsider granting Hilary’s grandparents’ application for permanent residency, lest their current visas expire next week.

A member of Parliament, Philip Burdon, also has petitioned the Immigration Ministry on the Morgans’ behalf.

But even a decision on that will not be announced, said a Ministry spokesman.

All this has left reporters from around the world idling about Christchurch. The judge’s stern caution appears to have had an effect, turning front-page saturation coverage in local papers into inside stories by week’s end.

Last Thursday night, the country’s High Court granted an injunction sought by Mitchell, Hilary’s court-appointed attorney, seeking to ban a scheduled showing of a BBC documentary on the custody battle called “Hilary in Hiding.”

Former Principal Family Court Judge Peter Trapski said he was “sickened” and “appalled” by the scores of journalists who have desended on New Zealand.

The comment that seemed to resonate the most with the public came Wednesday night at a rock concert here, when Elton John dedicated a song, “Sacrifice,” to Hilary.

From a piano top, he lamented that she was being “surrounded by the worst type of media” and urged the public to “run the bastards out of town.”

His comment--and the roar of approval from the audience--were broadcast Thursday night as the lead item on New Zealand’s network news.

Chen reported from Christchurch; Cimons from Washington.