ACLU asks Georgia Appeals Court to dismiss jail sentence for lesbian
mother
From the Southern Regional ACLU Offices
ATLANTA – The American Civil Liberties Union today urged the Georgia Court
of Appeals to dismiss a county judge’s contempt order and jail sentence
against a lesbian mother. Earlier this year, Wilkinson County Judge John
Lee Parrott ordered that the child Elizabeth Hadaway hopes to adopt be
taken away for three months because Hadaway is a lesbian, and now Hadaway
is battling an order from the same judge that she spend as many as ten
days in jail.
“I just want this nightmare to be over so that Emma can have the security
of knowing we aren’t going to be torn away from each other again,” said
Elizabeth Hadaway, a 28-year-old paramedic who first took in the little
girl when the child’s biological mother asked her to raise and adopt the
child. “No parent should be treated the way I’ve been treated by the legal
system, and no child should be taken away from her home and sent to live
with strangers because she has a parent who’s gay.”
Hadaway has been caring for seven-year-old Emma for over a year and the
child calls her “Mommy.” Last winter, Judge Parrott was on the verge of
granting Hadaway’s request to permanently adopt Emma but abruptly changed
his mind when he noticed in a home study that Hadaway was living with her
lesbian partner of seven years. Judge Parrott then denied the adoption,
ordering that Emma be sent back to her biological mother. Hadaway met with
the biological mother at a truck stop to hand over the girl. After
accepting custody, the biological mother saw how distraught Emma was over
the separation and again insisted that Hadaway should raise the girl.
Hadaway, who had ended her relationship with her partner and moved with
Emma to Bibb County before the adoption denial, again applied for custody
in her new home county with the biological mother's full consent. Shortly
after that, Parrott issued a contempt order against Hadaway and ordered
the little girl be taken from her home to live in foster care in spite of
the biological mother’s wishes. Judge Parrott also sentenced Hadaway to
five to ten days in jail. Almost three months passed before the Wilkinson
County Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) decided that the
biological’s mother’s wishes should be honored and allowed Emma to go home
with Hadaway in May.
“Judges should treat all citizens who come before them fairly, but Judge
Parrott appears to have acted out of anti-gay bias in the way he treated
this little girl and her mother,” said Ken Choe, a senior staff attorney
with the ACLU’s national Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project who
argued the appeal this morning. “We hope that the Court of Appeals will
agree that Elizabeth Hadaway has done nothing wrong and dismiss this
charge that has been hanging over her head so that she can concentrate on
taking care of Emma.”
Hadaway is represented by Choe and James Esseks of the ACLU’s national
LGBT Project, and cooperating counsel Dan Bloom of Pachman Richardson, LLC
in Atlanta and Amy Waggoner of Aussenberg Waggoner, LLP in Alpharetta.
