Word: foretich
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...court system is already heavily stacked against the possibility of women and children receiving any kind of fair treatment in cases of rape and incest. Witness the much-publicized situation of Elizabeth Morgan, whose ex-husband, Eric Foretich, allegedly raped their infant daughter Hilary...
Medical testimony-of Foretich's abuse of a young daughter by another marriage was deemed not admissible as evidence. The judge thought there was "a fifty-fifty chance" that Foretich was guilty, and gave him unsupervised visitation rights. Defying a court order, Morgan hid her daughter away rather than return her to her father. Somehow Morgan, not her ex-husband, ended up in jail, without a trial, for more than two years...
...critics, Morgan is a paranoid liar who has invented the rape charges out of malice against Foretich; her defiance of Dixon's order, they argue, is a sign of obsession, not maternal devotion. To ethicists and legal scholars, the case raises some troubling questions: Should there be time limits on a judge's right to jail a person for civil contempt? Does a parent, where suspicions of sexual abuse exist, have a moral right to defy the courts to protect a child...
Hard cases, an old saying has it, make bad law, and this one has all the ingredients to bear out that adage: a stubborn judge, two embittered parents and a child torn between them. Morgan met Foretich in 1981, while he was separated from his second wife, former model Sharon Sullivan. After a whirlwind affair, during which Morgan became pregnant, the couple flew to Haiti, where Foretich obtained a quickie divorce. But his marriage to Morgan broke up after only five months, scarcely a week before Hilary was born...
Morgan was granted custody of Hilary, and Foretich obtained liberal visitation rights, but squabbling over the child continued after their divorce. The case was transferred to Dixon's jurisdiction in November 1985; subsequently, Morgan three times charged Foretich with sexually abusing their daughter and demanded that the court curtail his visits. Each time, Dixon ruled that Morgan's proofs were "inconclusive." She and her attorneys complain that he refused to allow testimony that corroborated the charges...