Elizabeth Morgan case

The Elizabeth Morgan case was a series of local and international child custody trials in the USA and later in New Zealand between Jean Elizabeth Morgan (b. 1946) and Eric A. Foretich (b. 1942) over their daughter, Hilary Antonia Foretich (b. August 1982). It lasted from 1983 to 1997 and was located in Washington, D.C. and later in Christchurch, New Zealand. It cost the parties in legal bills over $4 million. The trials and hearings generated more than 4,000 pages of transcript and a large number of paid therapists and expert witnesses for each side were involved. More than 1,000 news, magazine and legal articles about the case were published.

Background

Both of Elizabeth Morgan's parents are trained as clinical psychologists. Her father, William J. Morgan (b. 1911, d. March 2, 1996) was a clinical psychologist and former member of the Central Intelligence Agency staff who had written about his World War II years as a soldier and member of the OSS as a spy trainer. He published a book in 1957 entitled "The O.S.S. and I." After serving as a psychological strategy specialist with the White House under Harry S. Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, Mr. Morgan, who had worked with children in Rochester and the Bronx before the war, went into private practice with his British-born wife in Merryfield, Virginia, counseling and testing thousands of private and public school children in the Washington, D.C. area.^[1]

Morgan's mother, Antonia Morgan grew up in Britain and was an activist for women's rights. Antonia Mary Farquharson Bell (b. October 5, 1914, d. April 3, 2006) was born in Twickenham, near London. She was a survivor of the 1918 flu pandemic at the age of 4 and she was home-schooled until she was 10. As a senior at the Wimbledon School for Girls, she won full academic scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge on the same day. The couple met in England during World War II and were married in 1946. The couple separated in 1980 and divorced in 1986.^[2][3]

Their daughter, Jean Elizabeth Morgan did her internship at Yale and did her residency at Cambridge, England. She was a medical advice monthly columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine from March 1973 to March 1980. She considered herself to be a pioneer in the field of female surgeons. In 1980, she published a successful book titled ”The Making of a Woman Surgeon”, which recounted the rigors of her training in this predominantly male profession.^[4] The publication of the book was covered by Reader’s Digest. Morgan wrote the ”Reader’s Digest” article, “Give the Lady a Knife”.^[5]

Morgan first met Foretich in 1981 at Fairfax Hospital where they both were on the staff. Foretich’s second marriage was breaking up at the time; after dating Foretich for two months, Morgan became pregnant, and the two flew to Haiti and were married. When Morgan moved in with Foretich in his house, her mother Antonia came along. In July 1982, Morgan and Antonia left Foretich's house and Hilary was born one week later.

Custody struggle

Hilary and Foretich's daughter by his second wife, Heather, had visitation with Foretich and his parents, Vincent P. Foretich and Doris Foretich, when Hilary was less than a year old. Vincent was a retired shipyard supervisor and Doris was a housewife and former art teacher.^[6] In the summer of 1983, Morgan received a call from Heather's mother who expressed concern that the girls were possibly being abused during visitation periods with Foretich and his parents.^[7]

In 1984, Elizabeth Morgan had alleged that Foretich had sexually abused their daughter, an accusation that he has denied and which has never been proven in court.^[8]

In November 1985, Morgan arrived in the D.C. Superior Court of judge Herbert B. Dixon.^[9]

Morgan published in 1986 a book entitled Custody: A True Story, about her initial custody struggle with Foretich.^[10][11]

In late 1986, Morgan filed one of her several motions to appeal for an earlier decision about a closed hearing.^[12][13]

By 1987, Hilary had attended 84 treatment sessions with therapist Mary Froning, who believed that sex abuse had occurred.^[14]

In August 1987, Hilary's maternal grandparents, William and Antonia, remarried and then took Hilary out of the United States and to three other countries and ultimately to New Zealand, defying a court order that Hilary have unsupervised visitation with Foretich. Morgan refused to reveal Hilary's whereabouts and on August 28, 1987, judge Dixon sent her to jail for contempt of court.^[15][16][17]

Morgan was Foretich's third wife. Foretich's second wife had also accused him in 1990 of sexual abuse of their daughter, Heather (born 1980). Foretich denied those charges, and has repeatedly said the two women have acted in collusion.^[18][19]

During 1988, Morgan received a growing amount of public support while Hilary remained in hiding.^[20][21]

Support for Morgan continued to grow through early 1989.^{[22][23][24][25]}

Rep. Frank Wolf introduced the bill that became the District of Columbia Civil Contempt Imprisonment Limitation Act, H.R. 2136, in 1989.^{[26][27][28][29][30][31][32]}

Elizabeth Morgan was freed by this Act on September 26, 1989, after spending 759 days in jail and eventually joined her daughter and parents in New Zealand.^{[33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48]}

Foretich searched for and, around February 23, 1990, the authorities found his daughter with her grandparents in a motel room in Christchurch, New Zealand. He traveled there and attempted to gain some custody of his daughter but the courts there maintained the status quo and Foretich claimed that he could financially no longer afford to pursue the matter.^{[49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]}

In 1992, the story of the case was made into a television film in 1992, and released as A Mother's Right: The Elizabeth Morgan Story; Foretich and his parents, sued ABC, who paid the Foretichs a settlement related to how the Foretichs were portrayed in the film.^[67][68]

Return to the United States

In 1996, Congress passed another act, the Elizabeth Morgan Act, which permitted Hilary, who by then called herself Ellen Morgan, to return to the United States and then to decide whether or not to see her father.^[69]

The 14-year-old "Ellen" returned with her mother to the United States in 1997, but declined to see her father. Foretich sued the United States in 1997, and the Elizabeth Morgan Act was overturned as a bill of attainder by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2003, but it had no practical effect on Hilary, who was by then 21. The cost to the U.S. government of overturning the Elizabeth Morgan Act was about $1 million.^[70] Hilary Foretich, who had gone by the assumed name Ellen Morgan while in New Zealand, started calling herself Elena Mitrano.^[70][71]

In 1997, Morgan published another book, "To Save My Child: The Elizabeth Morgan Story", about her decade-long ordeal.^[72]

The legal costs of the Elizabeth Morgan case to both parties was about $4 million.^[73][74]

After Morgan returned to the United States, an organization calling itself "The Friends of Elizabeth Morgan" emerged. It later changed its named to the "Alliance for the Rights of Children" (ARCH).^[75] In advising Janie Webster who was planning to flee the United States as a result of her custody struggle, Morgan wrote "Go to jail to protect your daughter."^[76] Morgan also became involved in the Elsa Newman case.

Mitrano recorded a music CD in 2008 entitled Rescue Me and made some music videos to its tracks. ^[77][78] As of 2005, she works for Johnson & Johnson in electronic manufacturing in the greater Los Angeles, California area. As of 2015, Morgan works in Atlanta, Georgia, and describes herself as an "an internationally known plastic surgeon".^[79][80] Foretich married again and had two more sons. As of 2016, he was continuing his oral surgery practice in McLean, Virginia.^[81]

See also

• Catherine D. DeAngelis
• Gloria Vanderbilt
• Stephen H. Sachs
• Terri Schiavo case

References

Cited texts

• Creeden, Sharon (1999). In Full Bloom: Tales of Women in Their Prime. August House. ISBN 0874835763. 
• Groner, Jonathan (1991). Hilary's Trial: The Elizabeth Morgan Case, A Child's Ordeal in America's Legal System. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0671691767. 
• St. Joan, Jacqueline (1997). Beyond Portia: Women, Law, and Literature in the United States. UPNE. ISBN 155553306X. 
• Sanger, Carol (2007). Family Law Stories. West Academic. ISBN 1628107324. 
• Webster, Janie (2010). Fingernail Moon: The True Story of a Mother's Flight to Protect Her Daughter. Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 0307553299.