CUSTODY COURT BATTLE
(Investigator 16, 1991 January)
Diane LeDoux gained
custody of her two children in November 1987 after her Jehovah's
Witness husband divorced her.
The
judge ruled that the husband should not expose the children to his JW
religion due to damaging effects.
Investigator published a
lettter by Diane LeDoux in January 1989 to supplement an article about
JW kids. LeDoux wrote: "My ex-husband has challenged the order."
Now,
two years down the track Investigator
received an undated, unreferenced press clipping:
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Court Affirms Religious Curbs To Shield Child
Lincoln
(AP) — When children are threatened by a religious practice,
the courts can restrict the religious activity in order to protect
them, the Nebraska Supreme Court said Friday.
In a
6-1 opinion, the high court upheld a Douglas County District Court
ruling that barred a divorced father, whose children were being raised
as Catholics, from exposing them to religious practices or teachings
inconsistent with the Catholic faith.
Judge
Thomas Shanahan dissented, saying the majority decision went too far in
restricting the father's religious freedom.
The
case centered on a child custody dispute involving the divorce of Diane
LeDoux and Edward LeDoux.
Diane
LeDoux was the custodial parent of the couple's two minor sons.
She and Edward LeDoux were married in the Catholic church. He became a
Jehovah's Witness and the two later were divorced.
Citing
testimony concerning the troubled behavior of one of the
children, having specifically to do with reactions to Edward LeDoux's
effort to involve him in discussions and activities related to the
Jehovah's Witnesses faith, District Court Judge Robert Burkhard
concluded that exposing the children to two religions would be
injurious to them.
Burkhard
issued an order directing Edward LeDoux not to "expose or
permit himself or any other person to expose the minor children ... to
any religious practices or teachings that are inconsistent with the
religious teachings espoused by...the Catholic religion by which the
children are being raised."
"When
a court finds that particular religious practices pose an
immediate and substantial threat to a child's temporal well-being, a
court may fashion an order aimed at protecting the child from that
threat," the Supreme Court majority said. "In so doing, a court must
narrowly tailor its order so as to result in the least possible
intrusion upon the constitutionally protected interests of the
parents."
The
majority said that Burkhard's order "is narrowly tailored in that
it imposes the least possible intrusion on Edward LeDoux's right of
free exercise of religion and the custodial mother's right to control
the religious training of a child."
Shanahan
disagreed.
"What
the majority has characterized as a 'narrowly tailored'
visitation order is, in reality, a judicial straitjacket, constricting
Edward LeDoux and preventing him from discussing with his children any
religious belief or practice which may contradict or conflict with
Catholic doctrine," Shanahan wrote.
"Thus,
the ... order prohibits Edward LeDoux's free exercise of his
religion in reference to his children and, consequently, constitutes a
denial of religious freedom protected by the slate and federal
constitutions," Shanahan wrote.
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Diane LeDoux seems to
have won for the present. But the result may not be final.
This can be inferred
from the tenacity with which the JW lawyers are
fighting many other custody battles. In one instance in British
Columbia (in January 1990) the Supreme Court judge ordered the JWs to
pay $70,000 costs for extending what should have been a 2-day trial
into an "oppressive" 12-day court battle.
After winning the
case the lawyer for Irene Young said: "Jehovah's
Witnesses specialize in tying up the non-believing parent in endless
litigation over custody." (The Globe and Mail, January 12, 1990, p. A9)
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