Caught in the Middle: Bitter Custody Battle Tears at the Heart

May 4, 2007 — -- One of the most bitter, heartbreaking child custody battles in recent memory has reached a fever pitch in a courtroom in Tennessee. At stake is the future of 8-year-old Anna Mae He -- raised since she was 3 weeks old by Jerry and Louise Baker of Memphis, Tenn.

The Bakers say a court order returning Anna Mae to her biological parents is tearing the child apart -- and may even cause her to have a nervous breakdown. In a dramatic, last-ditch bid to retain custody, they've filed emergency motions with the court, along with a journal kept by Louise Baker that describes, in heart-wrenching detail, how the little girl with the almond eyes is spinning dangerously out of control.

"Our sweet loving little girl is full of anger and hatred," Baker writes in the journal. "She is always crying and yelling that nobody understands her."

The court filing contains a drawing by Anna Mae showing dead flowers and a wolf. "My favorite color... is black,'' she writes, according to court papers obtained by ABC News' Law & Justice Unit. "This color makes me feel like a wolf."

The attorney for Jack and Casey He, Anna Mae's biological parents, said the filing is a desperate attempt by the Bakers to avoid giving Anna Mae back. "I think the Bakers are going to do everything they can to sabotage this reunification," said attorney David Siegel. "If the Bakers truly love this child, they will put down their weapons and allow this transition to continue."

A Tale of Two Families

The Bakers and the Hes have been at odds on almost everything to do with Anna Mae for nearly as long as she's been alive.They first met in 1999, when Anna Mae's parents, who were having financial difficulties, say they asked the Bakers to care for their infant daughter until they could straighten out their affairs.

At first, the relationship was cordial and everything seemed fine. But when the weeks stretched into months, the Bakers said they could no longer care for Anna Mae unless they were her legal guardians. The Hes say they agreed to let the Bakers have custody of Anna Mae -- but only on a temporary basis until they could get back on their feet financially.

That custody agreement would become the basis of litigation that would last for seven years.The Bakers claimed that the Hes had abandoned Anna Mae and were emotionally unstable. The Hes said the Bakers tricked them into signing the agreement and never intended to give their daughter back.

"The Hes were asking for their daughter back at an early age," said Siegel. "They were trying to get her back within that first year of transfer of custody. If the Bakers had given her back then, we wouldn't be having this conversation."But time after time, the courts sided with the Bakers, terminating the Hes' parental rights.

A Stunning Reversal

Then, this past January, the state Supreme Court reversed the lower courts, ordering that Anna Mae be returned to her biological parents, despite the Bakers' claims that doing so would cause Anna Mae substantial harm. "Here, the only evidence of substantial harm arises from the delay caused by the protracted litigation and the failure of the court system to protect the parent-child relationship throughout the proceedings," the court wrote. "Evidence that [Anna Mae He] will be harmed from a change in custody because she has lived and bonded with the Bakers during the pendency of the litigation does not constitute the substantial harm required to prevent the parents from regaining custody."

That doesn't sit well with Larry Parrish, attorney for the Bakers.

"Why should this child suffer substantial harm for anything?" Parrish told ABC News. "And yet she pays the penalty for the Supreme Court not doing its job in supervising the courts."

Substantial Harm

In the new filing, Parrish claims the court's January 23 ruling is causing "a clear and present danger to the health, safety and welfare of [Anna Mae He]." He argues that the court has caused Anna Mae to "suffer inhumanly," and has denied her fundamental human rights and constitutional rights and has failed to consider the best interest of the child.

"The question here," asked Parrish, "is how much harm can an 8-year-old child be forced to suffer to give biological parents with whom there is no relationship the opportunity to have custody of her?"

Even though the court has already denied his appeal, Parrish is asking the court to reconsider its decision once again in light of new evidence that Anna Mae is being substantially harmed.

That new evidence is Louise Baker's journal, which begins on Feb. 23, exactly one month after the Supreme Court's decision.

On that day, Baker writes:

"We have noticed Anna's level of agitation is getting worse... After the [bedtime] prayer, she started screaming to the top of her lungs that her whole life has been ruined. She started screaming she will never have another normal day ever, ever again."But the Hes attorney says the Bakers are trying to circumvent the clear orders of the court.

"Why are the Bakers even in a position to claim substantial harm?" Siegel asked. "It's because they have kept the child, they have refused contact with the Hes, they have protracted this litigation, and now they seek to capitalize on their own protracted litigation by showing that the child is hopelessly attached to them and should not be reunited with Mr. and Mrs. He. And the Supreme Court was very clear: 'We are not going to allow that to happen.'"

Siegel said the new filing is a desperate move by the Bakers to garner public sympathy. "I find the journal highly suspicious and probably very contrived," he told ABC's Law & Justice Unit. "It's self-serving and it appears to be in direct contradiction to the reports we're getting from the professionals who are monitoring the process themselves."

The First Visit

According to the Hes, almost all the visits with Anna Mae have been "peaceful and quiet." But Louise Baker's journal paints a completely different picture of Anna Mae before and after the visits.

On March 15 she writes:

"Anna started crying and fussing before we even left the house that she didn't want to go and meet them. She starts hitting me with her fist on my arm that she doesn't want too [sic]. She says that if we make her go visit the Hes that she will hop in the driver's seat when I get out and will drive off and take a whole bunch of wrong turns so she said that she will get lost and no one will ever find her."

After the 90-minute visit, which was monitored by a court appointed psychologist and guardian ad litem, Baker writes: "We get in the car and ask her if she is OK. She starts screaming to the top of her lungs to never, never make her do that again. She is crying and screaming the whole way home."

But Jack He, Anna Mae's biological father, describes a very different scene. He told ABC News that during the first visits, "Anna Mae gave me a hug and gave Casey a hug. She was also hugging her little brother and sister. They played games together. They looked in the mirror and the three of them noticed they looked alike. I said 'This is your little brother and sister.' She answered, 'I know.' At the end of the second meeting we asked her, 'Did you have a good time?' And she said, 'Yes I had a good time today.'"

Classic Symptoms

We asked Dr. Donald Saposnek, a clinical child psychologist who has handled over 4,000 custody mediations, to read Louise Baker's journal and provide some insight into Anna Mae's behavior.

"All the behaviors described in this exhibit are classic cases of what kids do when they're cornered. This is classic, high-conflict stuff," said Saposnek. "Anna clearly has strong attachments to her foster parents and appears to have none to her biological parents. So she's being threatened with being pulled away from her basic stability in life and being cast off to whom she perceives as strangers. And she's reacting primitively, because her emotional survival is at stake."

According to Saposnek, Anna Mae is desperately trying to escape a reality she can't handle. Unfortunately, he said, there is almost no way to make the transition less painful.

"The slower the better until she stops fighting so hard. But it's really like subduing a wild animal. If you do it too quickly she's going to experience profound abandonment and if you do it too slow it drags out the pain."

A Mother's Heartbreak

Louise Baker said what's happening to Anna Mae would break any mother's heart.

"[Anna] tried to bite me in the face when I was trying to get her out of the car at a visit," Louise Baker said in an affidavit attached to the filing. "She tries to slap at me. She has NEVER in her life raised a hand, and she now holds her hands up to slap at you when something is mentioned or you're trying to make her do something she doesn't want to do."

And week after week, the journal entries continue -- each more painful than the last.On March 21: "[Anna] is screaming, holding on to doors and door frames. I get her to [name deleted] office and she has a grasp on the door. Jack was standing at the receptionist desk. I could not get her loose from the door. I was physically worn out by the time I got her in."

According to Siegel, the psychologist and guardian ad litem who monitor the visits filed a report with the court on April 11 that was overwhelmingly positive -- saying the transition was going smoothly and that Anna Mae was adjusting well to the initial visits. ABC News has not been able to obtain a copy of that report or confirm the findings.

'My Favorite Color Is Black'

It's a picture of a black wolf with bared teeth standing next to two dead flowers. Black clouds dot the sky. In a child's block letters, Anna's explanation: "My favorite color day is black. This color makes me feel like a wolf. On my black day my feeling are most of the time mad."

"She has used the words die and kill a lot lately," writes Louise Baker in a journal entry dated April 16. "She has never used it before. She kept screaming no one loves her. Nothing I said would calm her down. She got in the house and she was still screaming. She was on the couch flipping her body everywhere."

On April 19, another entry: "Anna started saying things like that she was moving to Antarctica so that no one will find her there. Jack told her they just want her to be happy. She made statements that her heart and her brain have moved away and are all gone now. She was drawing on the etch-a-sketch stairs steps saying that was her heart and brain going up in the sky on a plane."

"Whenever Anna Mae feels she had a good time, the Bakers are not happy," said Jack He. "Whenever Anna Mae says she did not have a good time, they are very happy. They tell the court that they are trying to make the transition as easy as possible for Anna Mae, but they are fighting to prevent the transition from going smooth."

But Saposnek said the Bakers are right to be worried. "It's a myth that all children are resilient and can bounce back from emotional trauma," said Saposnek. "So many negative responses over an extended period of time suggest that she isn't that resilient and that she will retain this whole thing as a major conflict for many, many years -- maybe her whole life. She may feel abandoned and betrayed by the Bakers and feel a profound sense of powerlessness and anger that has potential lifelong consequences."

The Final Chapter

If the Bakers have their way, they will fight for Anna Mae all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Parrish has notified the court that he plans to file an appeal there -- even though based on practice, policy and precedent, it's extremely rare for the court to hear cases related to family law.

"This is a critically important issue for every adopted child and every child in foster care in the United States," said Parrish. "The constitutional right of the Hes to have custody of Anna violates her constitutional right to be free of inhuman treatment."

On May 16, both the Bakers and the Hes will appear in juvenile court for a status conference. On that day, the judge will review recommendations by the psychologist and guardian ad litem who have been monitoring the visits.

The Hes plan to ask the judge to issue a timetable for full custody of Anna Mae.

And as for the Bakers, they are hoping against hope that the judge will grant their emergency petition to get Anna Mae her own psychiatrist.

"Anna has got to have help," Louise Baker said in the court affidavit. "This is not a normal child. This is not the same child we had before Jan. 23... She's going to have a major breakdown if she does not get help."