Child’s Ties to Her Biological Parents Severed

Clutching pink mums, 11-year-old Jenny Yang hugged the woman she considers her mother after a judge ruled Friday that she never again has to see her biological parents.

“That’s where I belong,” the sixth-grader said at a news conference. “I’m looking forward to returning to a more normal life with my family and friends.”

For nearly all of her life, Jenny has been involved in a custody dispute between her birth parents, Long Han Hong and Phan Hue Ong, and the couple with whom she has lived since infancy, Mike Seng Yang and Tuyet Trieu.

When a state Supreme Court ruling last fall opened the way for her birth parents to regain custody, Jenny sued on her own behalf, seeking to stay with the Yangs.

Legal experts say Michigan is only the second state where a minor has been given legal standing to sue in a custody dispute.

Two Florida children, 13-year-old Gregory Kingsley and 14-year-old Kimberly Mays, severed ties with their biological parents earlier this year after judges ruled that they had legal standing to be heard in court. An appeals court later upheld Gregory’s “divorce” from his parents but overturned the lower court’s ruling that gave him the right to sue on his own behalf.

Despite protests from the Hongs that they believed they were giving the Yangs only temporary custody of Jenny in 1982, Circuit Judge Robert Benson said testimony showed that both couples intended for the arrangement to be permanent and eventually lead to adoption.

Benson also said he believed Jenny’s allegations that the Hongs had hit her and sworn at her during weekly court-ordered visits. He ruled that the Hongs were unfit parents for Jenny and ended the court-ordered visits.

“At no time on the witness stand did the Hongs express any love for Jenny, nor did they express any desire to have Jenny come live with them because they could better her life or give her more love,” Benson said.

“Living with the Hongs would subject Jenny to long-term severe emotional harm,” Benson said.

The Hongs have denied abusing Jenny. They were not in court Friday for the ruling.