Turner’s Parents Barred From Hospital : Video: They leave Germany after the State Department accuses stepfather of violating son’s privacy by taping family reunion for TV.

The parents of freed U.S. hostage Jesse (Jon) Turner returned to the United States on Thursday after angry State Department officials made them persona non grata at their son’s hospital room in Germany, saying they violated Turner’s privacy by giving a videotape of their reunion to CBS-TV, which broadcast it.

Turner’s mother, Estelle Ronneburg, and his stepfather, Eugene, had flown to Germany on Wednesday for the reunion after Turner had been freed from almost five years’ captivity in Lebanon. On Thursday, they were barred from the U.S. military hospital in Wiesbaden, Germany, where Turner is undergoing tests, and from the U.S.-government-owned hotel where they were staying.

Turner’s wife, Badr, and his daughter, Joanne, 4, remained in Germany.

State Department spokesman Joe Reap said Turner had wanted privacy during his reintroduction to his family and that his stepfather violated department policy by videotaping the emotional scene.

During a layover in Chicago on the way to her home in Boise, Ida., Estelle Ronneburg said she “spent all night crying,” because she had to leave after spending just 1 1/2 hours with her only child.

She and her husband said they thought they hadn’t done anything wrong. “We asked Jon if it was OK, and he said, ‘I don’t care,’ ” she said of the taping. “We asked if he minded if we shared it with someone else. I don’t know if he realized it was for television.”

A Boise television station lent Eugene Ronneburg the video camera with the hope that he would provide them with videotape of the encounter. He said he asked Turner if it was OK to film the gathering. “I said I would release it if it’s OK with him, but apparently he didn’t understand,” he said.

Turner’s stepfather said that a State Department official in Germany came to his hotel and “read me the riot act” and used abusive and threatening language after the tape was aired Wednesday night by CBS News.

“He lit into me like a ton of bricks,” Ronneburg said. “He said I violated every rule in the book and that I wasn’t welcome. They said they didn’t want anything to do with me.”

Dick Larsen, news director for KCBI-TV, the Boise station that arranged with Ronneburg to tape the reunion, said he was appalled by the State Department’s treatment of the family.

“I consider the treatment of the Ronneburgs to be an absolute disgrace,” Larsen said. “Eugene did nothing wrong. They have brutalized him for no reason. These are gentle people. They just brutalized a wonderful, wonderful family. God, it makes you sick to your stomach.”

Larsen said the station lent Ronneburg the camera and taught him how to use it 18 months ago with the hope that he would tape the reunion for the station.

“He never asked for compensation, and we never offered compensation,” Larsen said. “We said we would provide a camera if he would shoot some footage for us during the reunion. The ground rules were that everything was his call. He’s a family member, so he would know what was best. If he came back without a single frame of video, that was fine with us.”

In New York, Joe Peyronnin, vice president and assistant to the president of CBS News, said network officials “deeply regret the way in which the Ronneburgs were treated. Following nearly five years of suffering, Mr. Ronneburg did not deserve to be prevented from seeing his stepson today after releasing this videotape.”

Harris reported from Los Angeles and Shryer from Chicago.