Which Mother for Isabella? Civil Union Ends in an Abduction and Questions
2:06 pm - 07/29/2012
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Lisa A. Miller and her daughter, Isabella, started their fugitive lives here in the fall of 2009, disguised in the white scarves and long blue dresses of the Mennonites who spirited them out of the United States and adopting the aliases Sarah and Lydia.
“We wanted to have a family and spend the rest of our lives together,” said Janet Jenkins, whose former partner, Lisa A. Miller, underwent a born-again conversion to conservative Christianity and took their child to Nicaragua.
Now 10, Isabella Miller-Jenkins has spent her last three birthdays on the run, “bouncing around the barrios of Nicaragua,” as one federal agent put it, a lively blond girl and her mother trying to blend in and elude the United States marshals who have traveled to the country in pursuit.
She can now chatter in Spanish, but her time in Nicaragua has often been lonely, those who have met her say, long on prayer but isolated. She has been told that she could be wrenched from her mother if they are caught. She has also been told that the other woman she once called “Mama,” Ms. Miller’s former partner from a civil union in Vermont that she has since renounced, cannot go to heaven because she lives in sin with women.
Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, “between two diametrically opposed worldviews on parentage and family.”
Isabella was 7 when she and Ms. Miller jumped into a car in Virginia, leaving behind their belongings and a family of pet hamsters to die without food or water. Supporters drove them to Buffalo, where they took a taxi to Canada and boarded a flight to Mexico and then Central America.
Ms. Miller, 44, is wanted by the F.B.I. and Interpol for international parental kidnapping. In their underground existence in this impoverished tropical country, she and Isabella have been helped by evangelical groups who endorse her decision to flee rather than to expose Isabella to the “homosexual lifestyle” of her other legal mother, Janet Jenkins.
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I only posted the first part of the article here because it is quite long. You can read the entire thing at the source
“We wanted to have a family and spend the rest of our lives together,” said Janet Jenkins, whose former partner, Lisa A. Miller, underwent a born-again conversion to conservative Christianity and took their child to Nicaragua.
Now 10, Isabella Miller-Jenkins has spent her last three birthdays on the run, “bouncing around the barrios of Nicaragua,” as one federal agent put it, a lively blond girl and her mother trying to blend in and elude the United States marshals who have traveled to the country in pursuit.
She can now chatter in Spanish, but her time in Nicaragua has often been lonely, those who have met her say, long on prayer but isolated. She has been told that she could be wrenched from her mother if they are caught. She has also been told that the other woman she once called “Mama,” Ms. Miller’s former partner from a civil union in Vermont that she has since renounced, cannot go to heaven because she lives in sin with women.
Isabella’s tumultuous life has embodied some of America’s bitterest culture wars — a choice, as Ms. Miller said in a courtroom plea, shortly before their desperate flight, “between two diametrically opposed worldviews on parentage and family.”
Isabella was 7 when she and Ms. Miller jumped into a car in Virginia, leaving behind their belongings and a family of pet hamsters to die without food or water. Supporters drove them to Buffalo, where they took a taxi to Canada and boarded a flight to Mexico and then Central America.
Ms. Miller, 44, is wanted by the F.B.I. and Interpol for international parental kidnapping. In their underground existence in this impoverished tropical country, she and Isabella have been helped by evangelical groups who endorse her decision to flee rather than to expose Isabella to the “homosexual lifestyle” of her other legal mother, Janet Jenkins.
___________
I only posted the first part of the article here because it is quite long. You can read the entire thing at the source
WHO DOES THIS TO A CHILD?
Isabella was 7 when she and Ms. Miller jumped into a car in Virginia, leaving behind their belongings and a family of pet hamsters to die without food or water.
Oh.
She has been told that she could be wrenched from her mother if they are caught.
But it was fine the first time. >_>
WHO DOES THIS TO A CHILD?
this reminds of when my mom told 10 year old me I'd never see my dad in heaven because he killed himself and ~it was a sin~
I just do not understand how a parent could do that to their child. It's so hurtful.
Even if the mother who should have her gets her back she's gonna need so much therapy and de-conditioning from the bullshit the one who kidnapped her has been spewing. And just as terrifying, plenty of people in this country (in the world really) would agree with the reasons for the abduction, and it makes me hesitate to even consider having kids someday.
also, ime, a lot of religious groups and cults try and exploit lgbtq people because we already have the internalized homophobia, we've already been raised in a culture that says we're sinners and disgusting and immoral and child abusers and going to hell. so yeah, while i'm not excusing what's she's done, i've known people who were manipulated like this because they were terrified that they were inherently sinful, dirty people because they were attracted to other women. i am LIVID at the individuals who helped her and reaffirmed that hateful worldview, and i'm pissed that with all this you had the gall to bring up mental illness.
it's the jumping to "she must be mentally ill to do that" that i'm objecting to. even if she is, it may not have been a serious contributing factor. and even if it was a serious contributing factor, the constant conjecture about how criminals must be mental is both deflecting from larger societal problems that influence behaviour, and harmful to those of us living with mental illness.
I reaaaally disagree. Honestly to me, the idea of not being able to live with yourself for the rest of your life for letting a couple of hamsters to die is pretty ridic, and I care about my pets a lot. It's a shitty thing to do, but also something that plenty of sane people have been doing for forever and not exactly some unimaginable atrocity.
Also, I'm bisexual so you can sit the fuck down with that.
and yet, related or not, the press is going to plaster headlines like MENTALLY ILL KILLER because drama and exaggeration sell better than serious inquiry into contributing factors.
but there are a lot of other potential reasons for her actions including oh idk, homophobia. imo it detracts from larger societal issues by focusing on how anyone who does that must be crazy. "They're just crazy" is a great deflector from talking about larger issues of homophobia, hate crimes, racism, gun control, classism, etc.
also, on a more personal level, it's hard enough coping with news like this without the added slap in the face about mental illness.
& how does you being bisexual change any of what i said?
& thank you for the apology
So am I. I'm also mentally ill, and have never, in twenty-one years of life, kidnapped and brainwashed a child.
and this somehow magically makes you incapable of ablesim
*Which is a fucked up as all Hell thing to do and I can't imagine why anyone would want to worship any God that did that. WTF. If a child is in danger you don't save the child so long as her parents accept your terms. For being the supposed source of human morality, God sure is an immoral bastard.
A lot of radical religious groups are damn good at manipulating people -- not 'mentally ill' people specifically, just people. It's something of a specialty. Someone who's totally neuro-typical can be a victim of their internalized self-hate, especially if it's coupled with isolation (isolating from other 'influences' is often a key strategy) or comes during a difficult time (personal tragedy, unemployment, whatever).
Really, I get to feeling like people are so quick to label all criminals as 'mentally ill' that they'll overlook criminal behavior closer to home because "It's okay, my neighbors are *normal*."
I grew up evangelical. By your logical reasoning here, a fuckton of people in the United States are mentally ill. Stupid, yes, but not mentally ill.
Ugh. Breakups are awful and working out clashes in values as separate parents is hard enough. Essentially, by kidnapping the child she's ended any possibility of any kind of dialogue, or allowing Isabella to make up her own mind. GOD FORBID YOU PRESENT DIFFERING VIEWPOINTS AND ALLOW CHOICE.
I was lucky that I was able to adopt our 2nd child because we lived in a progressive city that allowed step-parent adoption. To live with the risk of losing your child and having no legal recourse...I can't imagine.
I think that, if nothing else than for the sake of her own relationship with her daughter, Lisa Miller needs to turn herself in immediately. It doesn't matter how much Isabella loves her mother or how staunchly Christian she is, if she grows up and finds out about all of this, she is going to feel incredibly betrayed and it is going to do irreversible damage to both her faith and her relationship with Lisa. I can't imagine many better ways to turn a child off of your faith forever than to kidnap her in the name of it.
Then I take a deep breath, step back down from Action Movie Fantasy Land, and still wish I could be the Uber Bounty Hunter.
Just fuck them.