Parenting ability of immigrant woman questioned in custody case
“I don’t hit my daughter, I love her,” Felipa Berrera said from the witness stand Thursday through a court-approved translator. The hearing in Wilson County Circuit Court is an appeal of a juvenile court decision temporarily stripping Berrera of custody of her daughter.
Attorneys for Berrera are asking Judge Clara Byrd to set aside a decision by Juvenile Court Judge Barry Tatum that awarded temporary custody of the child to Warren and Emily Patterson of Lebanon, a foster family who hope to permanently adopt her.
As one of the conditions to regaining custody in the case, Tatum ordered Berrera in October to learn English within six months, drawing protests from civil rights activists. It was one of two known cases in which Tatum ordered an immigrant mother to learn English as a condition of regaining custody of her child.
Last month, Tatum did not require Berrera to answer questions in English and challenged her attorneys over using the word “test” to describe his previous order. He said he did not have jurisdiction to set a trial on Berrera’s parental rights because of the separate custody case in Circuit Court.
Berrera speaks only Mixteco, a dialect spoken in parts of Mexico, and hasn’t seen or spoken with her child in more than a year, one of her attorneys, Jerry Gonzalez, has maintained in court.
Thursday’s hearing focused mainly on Berrera’s fitness as a parent.
The girl was temporarily removed from Berrera because of allegations of abuse, but her attorneys on Thursday said the allegations were lodged when the child was staying with her 18-year-old brother and his 16-year-old wife.
“It’s not a typical case. The child was not removed from the mother. The child was removed from relatives. It might be the most unusual dependent/neglect case that I’ve had,” Byrd said. 1/4
Berrera testified that her daughter lived with her own mother until the older woman died in 2001, when the girl was brought to the United States. Berrera has lived in the U.S., first in Virginia and later in Tennessee, since the early 1990s.
Attorney Amanda Crowell, representing the Pattersons, suggested that Berrera used a derogatory name in Spanish for her daughter. The word translates into bone, like that fed to a dog. Berrera seemed nonplussed.
“Yes, but I called her that because she was a little fat,” Berrera replied through the interpreter.
In her opening statement, Crowell told the judge she would introduce evidence of verbal abuse in addition to the allegations of physical abuse against the child.
Byrd stopped Berrera’s testimony several times, including once when a reference was made to the child’s absentee father. The judge allowed the hearing to continue but said the girl’s father would have to be present if a hearing on terminating parental rights is necessary in the case.
The hearing is expected to resume Monday.
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Information from: The Lebanon Democrat, www.lebanondemocrat.com