A legal battle is being waged to allow a Jewish woman to keep her son in a traditional home in Israel – and not to have to return him to the U.S. to his non-Jewish father, whom she accuses of rape.
Leading the international struggle are Rabbi Yosef Aharonov, head of the Chabad Youth Wing, Ukrainian Chief Rabbi Moshe Asman, and the European Rabbis' Association.
The woman, who lives in northern Israel, maintains that the six-year-old boy was born of a rape by the father, with whom she underwent a very torturous relationship. She took part at the time in a support group for victims of sexual harassment, but was afraid to actually turn to the police.
Her attorney, Nechama Tzivin, told Israel National News, “We have a letter from a sex-abuse help center in her city affirming that she participated in 27 sessions for physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Many women in her situation are afraid to go to the police, and turn to these help centers instead.”
Until the boy was about 3 years old, the agreed-upon custody arrangements between the parents – who were never married - stipulated that he would spend three weekends a month with his father, and the rest of the time with his mother. However, the mother then left for Israel, without her son’s father’s consent, and began raising her son as a full-fledged Jew. The boy has been in a religious nursery/kindergarten for the past two years.
Around two weeks ago, the woman was stopped by police in Kiryat Shmonah during a routine traffic check. When her name turned up as wanted for “kidnapping,” she was arrested and placed in jail for two days, then kept under house arrest for a week. Finally, after her son was transferred to local welfare authorities, he was returned to his mother.
“It turned out that an order to have the boy sent back to the U.S. had been pending for two years,” said Atty. Tzivin, of Mordechai Tzivin and Co. Law Offices in Tel Aviv, “but the mother didn’t even know about it! She was living openly under her real name, without trying to hide anything, and curiously, the father apparently did not pursue the matter either.”
Following the mother’s arrest, the father did arrive in Israel for a few days to try to reclaim the child. He was unsuccessful, however, as Attorney Tzivin rushed to court to have the order suspended. “We explained that it would be emotionally and physically harmful to the child to be forced to return,” she explained. The matter will be heard in court in two weeks’ time.
The mother then filed a police complaint of her own against the father for rape, and both Interpol and Israel Police are investigating it. Though Tzivin asked police to investigate the father on these charges, he left abruptly on Saturday night before they had a chance to do so.
The father is scheduled to return in two weeks for the custody case, but “we will not be surprised if he does not show up,” Tzivin said. “His demands for custody can be heard even in his absence – so why should he want to return and be questioned for rape?”
The father claims that the Hague Charter states that “kidnapped” children must be returned to their country of origin, and that “there we will adjudicate the final custody arrangements,” in his lawyer’s words.
The mother, of course, demands the right to keep her child, based on extenuating circumstances as outlined in Clause 13b of the relevant Hague Charter conventions. Lawyer Tzivin says that the boy does not know his father, who “is not suitable to raise him, because of his previous record of verbal and physical violence towards both the mother and the son, according to the mother. In addition, the father had a previous child whom he sold for adoption – and he does not deny this.”
Observers close to the case say it is very reminiscent of the famous Yossele Schumacher story of the early 1960’s, which pitted secular parents against religious grandparents in an international kidnapping case. Both the Chassidic religious community and the Israeli intelligence service spared no efforts in trying to keep the boy religious and return him to his parents, respectively. Mr. Schumacher today lives in Samaria as a secular Jew, on good terms with everyone who had a role in the story.