The confounding case of Kelly Rutherford

You may have heard of her...actress Kelly Rutherford. A TV actress, known for such roles as Megan in Melrose Place and Lily van der Woodsen in Gossip Girl, Rutherford is garnering as much attention in real life as the vindictive mother in the custody battle over her two children, Hermes and Helena, with German businessman/entrepreneur, Daniel Giersch, who lives in Monaco.

The couple were married in August 2006. In December 2008/January 2009 the couple split up. In June 2010 the divorce was final. They have been given joint custody of the children by a Los Angeles court.

However, things became acrimonious when Rutherford wanted to move to NYC. Giersch claims New York is a dangerous place. Rutherford countered that Giersch is stalking her. She hired Edward Banach, a private investigator, to spy on Giersch. (No word on what that produced.)

It’s here that things become nasty. Rutherford is an American citizen, however Giersch is German, residing in Monaco. Rutherford, through her lawyer, contacted the US State Department to revoke Giersch’s visa. In April 2012, Giersch's visa was indeed revoked. This means that as long as the children are in the US, he can no longer see them.

Giersch files for custody in a French Court, where the children are found in 2012 (the exact date of the move is “unclear,” but Rutherford says it was “the day before school began.”). The French Court, in deciding the children should live in France, rules: “The best interests of the children will be served because the relocation plan for France is the only plan that offers the possibility of nearly equal parenting time while Giersch cannot return to the U.S.”

So, here’s a case of trickery gone bad. Rutherford tried to have Giersch completely removed from the children’s lives, and it backfired. This past week the children visited their mother in the US, and again Rutherford refused to send them back to Europe. A judge in New York yesterday ordered the children back to France.

Today (Thursday), Rutherford is going apoplectic, cursing the judge and the courts. ""What the judge did yesterday was shocking, illegal and abusive to my children," she tells PEOPLE in a statement. "Without any legal authority [Sic], a judge from the lowest ranking court in the state court system [Sic] violated the highest ranking deferral constitutional rights of my American citizen children."

She continued: "Knowing she had no authority [Sic], Judge Gesmer seized my children and their U.S. passports, and forced them to leave the United States and reside in Monaco, a country where neither they nor I, nor even their father, has citizenship," Rutherford says. "I did my best to comfort the children, but there are no words to help children understand why a judge would be so cruel, [Sic]" she adds.”

She made no mention of how her lawyer had finagled to revoke Giersch’s visa so he could not see the children in the US. Rutherford appears to feel she is above the law, and cannot be held to answer. "As for Judge Gesmer, she has to live with herself," Rutherford harangued, "and if she has a conscience, I suspect she will not sleep well, ever again."

Alas, at some point the scoundrel gives up her right to claim the victim. Everybody is wrong but her! Spoiled brat.

http://www.people.com/article/kelly-rutherford-slams-judge-sent-kids-back-monaco

Jesus those poor children!!! Living in a county that is foreign to them!!??
The judge made a bad decision actually because she didn't have the children's best interests at heart here.

The mother has behaved appallingly by removing the father from the U.S. - bad move.

If it were me I'd move to Monaco to be near my children whilst this was going on and trying desperately to patch things up with the father and asking "How can WE make this fair and ok for everyone?"

These silly bitchy spats always have a negative impact on the children.

eddie wrote:Jesus those poor children!!! Living in a county that is foreign to them!!??
The judge made a bad decision actually because she didn't have the children's best interests at heart here.

The mother has behaved appallingly by removing the father from the U.S. - bad move.

If it were me I'd move to Monaco to be near my children whilst this was going on and trying desperately to patch things up with the father and asking "How can WE make this fair and ok for everyone?"

These silly bitchy spats  always have a negative impact on the children.

Well, you are a better mother that she is. Unfortunately, her career comes first. Curious, she's not all that great an actress.

I do think Kelly's deceit affected the NY judge's decision, but it is not necessarily contrary to the best interests of the children. First, by now Monaco is the country of the children so they are not being forced to live in a foreign country. Second, fortunately the children will always be cared for. Third, the children are being taught a valuable lesson: don't cheat, and it will not come back to you; Kelly made the moves that created the situation in which the children could not see their father...now she lives with the consequences.

But my point was Quill; was Monaco a place the children had ever resided previously? Do any relatives live there that the children know and have visited?

Yes I'd bloody move there! I wouldn't have my children living that far from me in a relatively "strange" country (even if they're familiar now it was strange at first?!)

eddie wrote:But my point was Quill; was Monaco a place the children had ever resided previously? Do any relatives live there that the children know and have visited?

Yes I'd bloody move there! I wouldn't have my children living that far from me in a relatively "strange" country (even if they're familiar now it was strange at first?!)

They've been living there since 2012 - so the boy was 5 and the girl was 3 when they went there, so it's not strange to them, only to her. They were staying with their mother over the summer. They won't have formed an attachment to the US or Monaco at the age they are now, but she probably banked on keeping them until they were older and had formed attachments.

Silly woman - she should be careful she doesn't lose all her rights. She tried to keep them against a court order, so she might not be allowed to have them over to stay with her again.

What strikes me is how absurd it was from the start. They got divorced after two years, when the girl wasn't even born or barely born. Why don't people think about what they're doing more carefully? If you marry someone from another country and then get rid of them, you can expect to have trouble when it comes to custody issues.

Kelly Rutherford was interviewed this morning on ABC News, once again.  This case is being supported by ABC and its legal pundit, Dan Abrams.  Rutherford is the darling of ABC, having started her career with the 1992 ABC drama, Homefront.

Now we have ABC News actively lobbying for the very wrong it perpetuated.

Time for State Department to Help Bring Actress Kelly Rutherford's American Kids Home
Mar 30, 2015, 10:30 AM ET
ANALYSIS by DAN ABRAMS
DAN ABRAMS...MORE FROM DAN »

Anchor, Nightline and Chief Legal Affairs
via GOOD MORNING AMERICA

Of course, the elephant in the room is why can’t the father come back to America?

ABC News twiddles it’s thumbs while looking around the room:

ABCNews wrote:A quick refresher: Rutherford's ex-husband Daniel Giersch, a German citizen, was refused re-entry to the United States after a trip abroad. No one seems to know exactly why. People magazine reported he was accused of "dealing drugs and weapons," while an affidavit presented in the case accused him of fraud, but whatever the reason, he did something serious enough to immediately lose the right to remain in this country.

Yet, ABC News is bordering on lying here.  The phone call to the State Department to have Giersch’s visa revoked was made by Rutherford’s attorney, the affidavit for which I have seen.   THE CALL WAS MADE IN FRONT OF RUTHERFORD AND THE GIERSCH ATTORNEY.  ABC is apparently trying to manipulate the facts.  We all know that the facts shouldn't get in the way of a good story...but I am amazed at Dan Abrams, who is apparently a licensed attorney.  Why would he engage in such apparent 'forgetfulness'?

This is not the first time that ABC News has dabbled in (as opposed to reporting) the news.  In 2011 one Robyn Gardner went missing in Aruba, where she had been vacationing with her boyfriend, Gary Giordano of Maryland.  The case looked a lot like that of Natalee Holloway, an Alabama teen who also disappeared in Aruba, so ABC pumped the story for all it was worth.  ABC pounced on every falsehood put out by the Aruban authorities and the family.  Alas, nothing panned out and after Giordano being held four months so that ABC could dabble in the news, the obviously innocent man was released.  Now, again, we find ABC News embarrassingly cozy-close to the story it pretends to be reporting.

This morning Rutherford again hung her head for the TV cameras, claiming her chief complaint is that her children are American citizens.  Well, Kelly honey, so are they citizens of Germany and Monaco.  Is your appeal that Americans are better than anyone else? This is cheap pandering!  The point isn’t where is the children's citizenship, but where is their father…and why isn’t he permitted back into the US?  Huh, Kelly?

Her lawyer claims that the issue is the agreement that Giersch signed to send the children back to the US.  Talk about the pot calling the kettle black; Rutherford has done everything inside and outside the law to wrongfully keep the children from their father.  But Giersch didn’t breach any agreement…he simply filed in a Monaco court to move custody jurisdiction to where the children resided.  Under the Uniform Child Custody Control Act, applicable here in America, that is the proper thing to do.  That is why the LA Court said it didn’t have jurisdiction.  That is why the NYC Court said it didn’t have jurisdiction.  Jurisdiction resides where the children reside.

And that's another thing: How come all these American Courts are telling Rutherford that she is wrong?  Yet she keeps lambasting the judges as if she is a law unto herself.  Well...apparently you are above the law when you have one of the three big news outlets batting for you.

Well, you can see the intricate weave of the lies being spun here.  Ok, I won’t say it.  I’ll just quote Walter Scott:  “Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.”

She does appear to think that being an American citizen eclipses everything else. It's absurd that she's saying it's cruel to take her children off her when she tried to take them off their father.

Raggamuffin wrote:She does appear to think that being an American citizen eclipses everything else. It's absurd that she's saying it's cruel to take her children off her when she tried to take them off their father.

It's only cruel for her.  She is classically one of those me, me, me persons.  This is the classic selfish person.

Consider what she has done: she has affirmatively gone out into the world and created a situation in which another person has his children taken from him.  That doesn't bother her in the least, proving that it is not the principle for her, but whose ox gets gored.

But then her husband blows the whistle on her.  The courts (3 of them...LA, NY and Monaco) all see what a deceitful monster she is being, and they tell her so!  So, for her, it's back to her weeping and me, me, me...oh, woe is me!

What kind of a person is this?  Isn't this that bratty little kid you knew in grade school, that would have no feelings for anyone but herself?  That has no principles...no sense of right and wrong beyond herself?  Everything that is wrong in her life is someone else's doing.  And she deserves to cheat to get what she wants.

What offends me is ABC News participating in this charade.  Dan Abrams knows better...he's a lawyer, fgs.  

Here's a problem for lawyers:  There is truth.  And there is untruth.  But there is also nulltruth.  That is the void when a truth is nullified or, in human terms, neglected.  Lawyers know this trick very well: when they know something to be true, but keep quiet about it.  They are not telling a truth; nor are they telling an untruth; by failing to disclose, they are telling a nulltruth.  

Caveat emptor, says the Republican or Tory.  Let the buyer beware.  But is that fair?  It lacks principle, as well as class.

In California, there is a movement in law to make this illegal.  In California, the law in the important area of elder abuse is moving in this direction.  Laws are being written in which speaking a nulltruth is defined as fraud...it is to deceive a person by omission of the truth when a material fact is at issue.

This is the hutch in which Abrams is hiding.  He knows about the actions of Rutherford's lawyer to oust the husband from the US, yet he writes an article effectively shrugging his shoulders and saying, gosh, I don't know.  It is false that he doesn't know; that is a false nulltruth.

As an attorney, I feel that the bar association should take this up generally.  Under Canon 9 of the Model Code of Legal Ethics, A lawyer should avoid even the appearance of impropriety. There is such an appearance of impropriety every time a lawyer knows something, but does not bring it up.  A false nulltruth ought to be a violation of the Code.