Man Who Killed His Molester Won’t Be Deported

Dutch immigrant Joeri DeBeer, who killed his pedophiliac guardian in Dana Point in 1985 but was granted leniency by judge and jury, won another court battle Friday, ending a four-year effort to deport him and opening the door to U.S. citizenship.

“This feels great,” said DeBeer, 22, after embracing his attorney, John Alcorn, former juror Patricia de Carion and his teary-eyed fiancee, Pat Nguyen.

DeBeer and Nguyen, a Vietnamese immigrant who passed her own citizenship exam Wednesday, had to endure a 2 1/2-hour hearing before U.S. Immigration Judge Brian H. Simpson gave DeBeer virtually everything he had asked for.

Over the objections of U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service lawyer Beverly Phillips, Simpson lifted the deportation order against DeBeer and granted him permission to leave the country under a status known as voluntary departure.

DeBeer lives in the East Bay community of Dublin. Although he must return to Holland within 90 days, he will be free to marry Nguyen as soon as she is sworn in as a citizen. When that happens, he will be able to return to the United States as quickly as a legal permanent resident. Had the deportation order remained in effect, he could not return to this country for at least five years, even if he married a U.S. citizen.

DeBeer was 13 years old and living with his mother and stepfather in Saudi Arabia when he met Philip A. Parsons, a Bechtel Corp. engineer who promised to sponsor the boy’s promising motorcycle-racing career if he could take him back to the United States.

Unaware that Parsons had a 30-year history of sexually abusing young boys, DeBeer’s mother let her son go. On April 9, 1985, after DeBeer and Parsons argued over Parsons’ sexual demands, DeBeer shot him in the head, set their Dana Point condominium on fire, carried the body out to Riverside County and set it ablaze.

A jury found DeBeer guilty of manslaughter and arson but pleaded for leniency, and a Superior Court judge sentenced him to time served and three years probation.