Bitter Custody Battle for Anna Mae

June 22, 2007 — -- The state is asking a federal judge to dismiss a petition aimed at stopping the court-ordered reunion ofan eight-year-old girl with her Chinese parents in Memphis.

An American couple, Jerry and Louise Baker, have raised Anna MaeHe, now a second grader, since she was a month old and tried toadopt her over her parents' objections.

Shaoqiang (show-kwang) He and his wife put Anna Mae in fostercare in 1999 after her father lost his graduate school scholarshipat the University of Memphis and was unemployed.

The custody fight over Anna Mae dragged through Tennessee courtsfor seven years. But the state Supreme Court ruled in January thatshe must be returned to her birth parents.

The Bakers have filed a U-S District Court petition trying tooverturn the state Supreme Court decision.

State Attorney General Robert Cooper, named as a respondent tothat petition, filed a request to have it dismissed.— The Associated Press

Law & Justice Unit Follow-Up

In federal court papers filed June 12 the Bakers made another plea to overturn the Tennessee Supreme Court ruling that orders Anna Mae He returned to her biological parents. The Bakers argue for a writ of habeas corpus, that is, an order that challenges the state's custody of Anna Mae.

The Bakers said the Tennessee Supreme Court and others involved were "amputating" Anna Mae's legs and that the court's rulings "are indefensible violations of rights secured to Anna Mae by the United States Constitution."

They Bakers also called the Hes, Anna Mae's biological parents, "strangers" who "have become monsters in her world." Denouncing the court's rulings, the Bakers said: "No civilized person ever would have conceived the child custody exception as an instrument to leave this nation's children exposed to unbridled and unbridlable violation of the most fundamental and most basic and most elementary rights conferred by the United States Constitution. If we have stooped to such a level, we should re-examine if we remain a civilized society."

Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper Jr. argued in papers filed on June 18 that the Tennessee Supreme Court properly found that the Hes had never abandoned their daughter, Anna Mae, and that the district court lacked jurisdiction to hear the case.— By Lauren Pearle