Oh, Those Crazy Straight Parents!
May 3, 2006: In Florida, a breeding ground for anti-gay hatred and the only state in the Union that explicitly bans LGBT people from adopting, we see another example of the kind of ugliness that is engendered by those who spread lies about our lives. In this case, a woman who sounds like she was vulnerable due to mental illness, was moved to kidnap her own son because she feared he was going to be gay. This is what happens when people are raised to fear and despise us.
This is from the Miami Herald, read the whole story here:
Caren MacDonald, the mother charged with snatching her 11-year-old son and fleeing the country, told a judge Monday that she feared her gay ex-husband was trying to ‘’turn'’ their son gay.
MacDonald, who made the statement when the jury was out of the courtroom during her third day of trial, has admitted that she abducted her son from a Broward prep school in 2001 and fled with him to Costa Rica.
An artist now living in Key West, she defended her actions by alleging that she did so because of her ex-husband’s gay lifestyle.
The jury was removed from the courtroom as the judge decided what portions of her testimony, including details about her ex-husband’s sexual past, would be heard by the jury.
Later, when the jury returned, MacDonald talked about how, during their marriage, she suspected he was gay, describing how he started wearing ‘’tight-fitting'’ clothes and “looking a little gay.'’
‘’I didn’t understand how somebody could be straight and then be gay,'’ she said, shaking her head.
MacDonald, wearing a crisp blue business suit and her hair pulled back in a clip, in court described for the jury how her son told her about a man in his father’s home cooking pancakes for breakfast while wearing pajamas.
At first, her son liked her father’s lover, Carlos Diaz, MacDonald testified. But she said that later, her son told her that he hated Diaz and that Diaz had massaged him on his buttocks several times.
The allegation became part of the custody battle, and a courtroom guardian for the boy in 2001 recommended that Diaz not have contact with the boy — but also suggested that the the boy spend more time with his father than with his mother.
Investigators could not substantiate her allegations, and the boy testified last week that he was not molested or touched inappropriately.
Custody decisions continued to go in the boy’s father’s favor. A court-appointed psychologist described Caren MacDonald as ‘’mentally undone, delusional, bipolar, just about every mental illness in the book,'’ she said skeptically on the stand.
Ultimately, the judge ordered her to have no physical contact with her son during the summer of 2001.
‘’I can’t even talk to my son, I can’t even say goodbye to him,'’ she testified, recalling how the judge ordered her to hand over her son to her ex-husband.
A few months later, she took her son from North Broward Preparatory School in Coconut Creek.
BOY DENIED CLAIM
The boy, whose identity is being withheld by The Miami Herald because of his age, testified last week that his mother forced him to lie about being molested because she felt it was unfair that he lived with his dad. He said the only touching involved a shoulder rub he asked for from his dad’s partner.
The boy, now 16, lives with his father in Colorado.