PONTIAC, Mich. – A judge on Friday released three siblings who have spent two weeks in juvenile detention for refusing to meet with their estranged father.
Oakland County Judge Lisa Gorcyca said she’s sending the children to a summer camp, at the request of the father.
She held a hearing Friday, three days after a TV station reported her June 24 decision to put the kids – ages 15, 10 and 9 – at Children’s Village. They were kept away from juveniles who are locked up there for committing crimes.
“The court finds that is in the children’s best interests to grant the father’s and the guardian ad litem’s motion to allow the children to attend summer camp,” Gorcyca said, referring to lawyers who represent the children.
It’s not clear what will happen when the two-week camp ends.
“That’s up to the judge,” said Lisa Stern, an attorney for the mother.
The case stems from a divorce that began in 2009. The judge blamed the mother for alienating the two boys and their younger sister from their father.
The Associated Press is withholding the names of the mother and father to protect the identities of the children.
Gorcyca likened the mother’s influence on the children to the Charles Manson California cult in the 1960s, according to a transcript of an earlier hearing.
Neil Rockind, a former prosecutor not involved in the case, said it was wrong to lock up the kids.
“They are still children and learned their behaviors from one or both parents,” Rockind said. “The key point, though, is they committed no crime.”
July 10 – A Michigan judge released three Israeli siblings from juvenile detention on Friday two weeks after she sent them there for defying her order that they have lunch with their father when he was visiting from Israel, ABC affiliate WXYZ reported.
At an emergency hearing, Judge Lisa Gorcyca said the children – whose parents have been involved in a custody battle for more than four years – could leave detention and attend a camp for the rest of the summer.
“The court agrees with the children’s guardian’s recommendation as to the best interests of the children,” Gorcyca said this afternoon, reported the Detroit Free Press. “The court finds that is in the children’s best interests to grant the father’s and the guardian ad litem’s motion to allow the children to attend summer camp. Children’s Village is to facilitate the transportation.”
She had earlier found the children, ages 9, 10 and 14, in contempt of court when they told her they did not want to meet with their father.
Gorcyca had ordered them to live at the Children’s Village, a county juvenile detention center for children from troubled and neglected backgrounds, until they are 18. For the two youngest children, that would have almost a decade in the center.
A court-appointed attorney for the children and the father’s attorney had petitioned the court for different conditions from the county juvenile facility, local media reported.
“We’re happy with the outcome today, the kids are out of Mandy’s Place, they are going to enjoy a camp program,” Linda Stern, an attorney for the mother, told reporters.
“Love comes with love. You can’t terrorize someone to love, you can’t force someone to love,” the mother, Maya Tsimhoni, told reporters after the hearing.
For five years the courts have been working to build a relationship between the children and their father. The mother has said she fears her ex-husband would harm the children or kidnap them, the Detroit News reported.
Attorneys for the father, and the judge, have said the mother has damaged the children and influenced them to resist therapy and efforts to reconcile them with their father, the Detroit News said.