Arrest Made in Custody Flight Involving Former Lesbian Partners
Lisa Miller failed to comply with a court order to surrender custody of her daughter, Isabella, to her former life partner, Sally Jenkins, last year. Instead, she and Isabella disappeared.
More than a year later, a man has been placed under arrest for allegedly helping Lisa Miller flee to Nicaragua with the child. The Associated Press reported on April 22 that Timothy David Miller was taken into custody in connection with the case.
Mr. Miller was detained on charges of "aiding in the removing of a child from the United States, and retaining a child (who has been in the United States) outside of the United States with intent to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights," according to the criminal complaint filed in a U.S. district court.
The complaint noted that Mr. Miller is "associated with the Christian Aid Ministries (CAM) organization in Managua, Nicaragua."
The complaint cited a number of emails that indicated knowledge and participation of Mr. Miller in Lisa Miller's flight. The emails also indicated knowledge of Lisa Miller's flight among a network of individuals. One email, evidently signed by Mr. Miller, warned those in the know to keep details secret: "Sorry, folks, the Lisa subject should currently not be a topic of discussion or emailing," the message read, according to the complaint.
The document also indicated the Mr. Miller had taken a hand in arranging Lisa Miller's travel with an eye to circumventing U.S. jurisdiction.
"Records provided pursuant to a Grand Jury Subpoena from TACA Airlines... provided the following verbatim customer service notes including that, '... Timothy Miller called from Nicaragua: They have to leave Can. tomorrow and... Cant go thro U.S....' According to the records provided, the date of the communication of Timothy Miller with TACA Airlines appears to be on or about September 21, 2009."
Lisa Miller's court-ordered surrender of custody was to take place on Jan. 1, 2010.
A third individual was cited as having paid for the tickets. No evidence of return flight tickets having been purchased was found, the complaint noted.
The complaint also stated that it appeared Lisa Miller and Isabella had both assumed new names, with Lisa Miller going by "Sarah" and Isabella being re-named "Lydia." An email from Mr. Miller's account related, "We were planning to have a special birthday party for Lydia as her birthday is the 16th.... The more children the better. Sarah every year has gotten a pi�ata for Lydia, so she has been planning on that... I feel dearly for these 2 dear people. And I can see it would mean a lot to them in this rough first year of their stay in Nica. I would love for Lydia's birthday to be very special and remembered long. She is going through a lot, and her future looms greatly in front of her right now...."
Another email from Mr. Miller's account seems to indicate that individuals associated with Christian Aid Ministries also had knowledge of Lisa Miller and her daughter's whereabouts.
"Another big thing right now is CAM higher ups say she may not even go to CAM any more for the protection of the organization," the email reads, according to the complaint. "That's pretty sick. The isolation is driving her and little Lydia crazy.... Please keep this e-mail to yourselves about Sarah and CAM...."
The complaint also linked a wealthy individual allegedly associated with Liberty Counsel to the case. Liberty Counsel provided support and representation to Lisa Miller during her legal cases. The group is affiliated with Christian school Liberty University, which operates a law school. The complaint said that Sally Jenkins' lawyer had received a tip via telephone that included several tidbits of information.
"...Philip Zodhiates is a wealthy man and a 'Liberty Leader' who has a beach house in Nicaragua," the complaint said the caller told Jenkins' lawyer. "Lisa Miller and Isabella Miller have been staying at the home of Zodhiates."
The complaint continued, "Victoria Hyden is the daughter of Zodhiates. Zodhiates asked Hyden to disseminate a request to get Lisa Miller supplies.... The 'Faculty/Staff Directory listed within the Liberty School of Law website lists 'Victoria Hyden' as an 'Administrative Assistant' within the 'Admissions and Financial Aid' section."
A special agent with the FBI submitted the criminal complaint against Mr. Miller.
A Long Legal Saga
The arrest is only the latest twist in an ongoing legal saga. Lisa Miller and Sally Jenkins entered into a civil union in Vermont in 2000. Two years later, Miller gave birth to Isabella after having conceived via artificial insemination. When the two mothers broke up the following year, in 2003, Miller moved to Virginia and claimed to have become "ex-gay." The women then engaged in legal battles that set precedents in same-sex family law.
Their custody dispute went all the way to the state supreme court of both states. Vermont's Supreme Court recognized Jenkins' parental relationship with Isabella, and the Vermont state Supreme Court found--despite a Virginia law that excludes same-sex families from any legal recognition--that while Miller would receive custody of Isabella, Jenkins would retain visitation rights.
When Miller was ordered to share custody of Isabella with Jenkins, she allegedly sabotaged the arrangement, leading to a court ruling that transferred custody of Isabella to Jenkins.
Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen ruled that the change of custody was necessary because the dispute had the capacity to harm the child more than a change of custody would. Wrote Judge Cohen, "Ms. Miller's interference with the relationship between (the child) and Ms. Jenkins have become so pervasive that it now outweighs the potential harm that could occur to the child by a chance of custody."
Miller then disappeared with the couple's daughter.
Parental custody cases in the United States are complicated by the fact that there is no nation-wide legal recognition of same-sex couples and their relationships to their children. That means that even run-of-the-mill parental disputes can quickly become much more involved--which is essentially what happened in the case of Miller and Jenkins.
Miller's claim to have renewed her Christian faith and renounced homosexuality made her custody battles a focus for anti-gay Christians, who held up the court's decision to award Isabella to Jenkins as a moment calling for a "line in the sand."
Miller's lawyer in the case, Mat Staver, is also the founder of Liberty Counsel. Staver was one of two sources quoted in a Nov. 25, 2009, article posted at CitizenLink, a Focus on the Family-affiliated Web publication. The other source quoted in the article was a professor at the right-wing Christian Liberty University School of Law.
Said Staver, "This judge in Vermont ultimately ruled that he is going to switch custody from Lisa Miller, and take her own biological daughter Isabella and move her from Virginia and put her into an activist lesbian household up in Vermont with a person she really doesn't know, who's not her biological mother, and frankly who's not acted as a parent."
Staver claimed that Isabella responded negatively to Jenkins' so-called "lesbian lifestyle," saying, "Every time that the visitation actually occurred, Isabella had violent reactions, because Janet exposed her to the lesbian lifestyle." Staver claimed that Jenkins "tried to convince her that she has two moms and even tried to scare her by saying that she was going to be taken from Lisa and transferred to Vermont."
The article painted Miller's refusal; to comply with the court-ordered custodial arrangement due to the "violent reactions" that Isabella allegedly exhibited to spending with Jenkins. However Jenkins painted a much different picture, saying, "[M]y daughter completely knows me. We were together ten months ago. I mean, she adores me. She calls me Mama."
Cohen's ruling was also denounced by Liberty University School of Law professor Rena Lindevaldsen, who told CitizenLink, "To have the first reported decision in the country stripping a biological mother of her child, solely because she has refused to give visitation to a legal stranger, is shocking."
Added Lindevaldsen, "There's a lot of talk nowadays about drawing that line in the sand and understanding that government can't order certain things. When you're ordering a child to be stripped from her biological mother, you've got to wonder, has the court overstepped its bounds?"
Staver cited the case as illustrative of the perils of granting same-sex families full legal recognition, telling Newsweek in a Dec. 6, 2008 article that, "Lisa Miller's case illustrates two things in regards to same-sex marriages. First, one state cannot adopt same-sex unions without affecting the sister states. It's simply impossible. Secondly, these cases are about real people, and children are particularly caught in the tangled legal web of same-sex marriage, and Isabella is a classic example."
In that same article, however, Jenkins offered a glimpse into what the case has meant for her. "I did not divorce my child, I divorced my partner," she said. "Yet I've missed out on my child's kindergarten graduation. I'll never get that back. I don't even get to talk to my daughter on the phone. It's heinous what has transpired."
Jenkins issued a statement upon Timothy Miller's arrest in connection with Lisa Miller's disappearance with Isabella.
"I'm grateful to everyone in law enforcement for working so hard on finding my daughter, as well as to my attorney, Sarah Star," Jenkins said, according to a news release from Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), which represented Jenkins in Vermont.
"I know very little at this point, but I really hope that this means that Isabella is safe and well," Jenkins added. "I am looking forward to having my daughter home safe with me very soon."
"It is clear that the government has been working hard on this," Jenkins' lawyer, Sarah Star, said. "Janet is very pleased and we are both hopeful that this will be a step in the right direction of bringing Isabella home. At this point we need to let law enforcement do their work, and recognize that there are still steps to go."
The GLAD release said that Mr. Miller was due to appear in U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont on April 25.