Lisa Miller, who was charged with kidnapping when she fled from the U.S. to Nicaragua with her 7-year-old daughter in 2009 rather than share child custody with her former partner Janet Jenkins, has returned to the U.S. and been arrested.
Jenkins and Miller had a civil union in Vermont before having their daughter Isabella in 2002, and although the girl was born in Virginia, the family moved back to Vermont and lived there until the women’s relationship ended. Miller, the biological mother, then moved to Virginia with Isabella. Shortly afterwards, she began to identify as a born-again Christian, said she was no longer a lesbian, and obtained legal counsel from the conservative Christian legal group Liberty Counsel. A series of court battles determined that Vermont had jurisdiction in determining child custody, and that while Miller had primary custody, Jenkins was granted visitation rights.
Miller was repeatedly held in contempt in both states for failing to enable Jenkins’ court-ordered visitation. Ultimately, the Vermont court ordered in 2009 that Jenkins be granted sole custody because of Miller’s ongoing refusal to allow the girl even to visit Jenkins. Jenkins, however, was willing to allow Miller to continue visitation. The judge felt that giving Jenkins custody was the only way to ensure Isabella would continue to have contact with both parents.
Miller then fled to Nicaragua in 2009 rather than show up at the court-appointed time to transfer custody of Isabella. She was aided by Philip Zodhiates, a conservative Christian businessman who runs a direct mail company serving anti-Semitic newspapers, and several of his contacts.
Jenkins filed a civil lawsuit in 2012 against Miller, Zodhiates, and others accused of assisting in the kidnapping, but the case was put on hold in favor of criminal prosecutions against some of them. In 2014, a federal grand jury in New York found Miller and three co-conspirators guilty of international parental kidnapping and conspiracy: Zodhiates and Mennonite pastors Kenneth Miller and Timothy Miller. (None of the Millers are related.)
In 2016, the U.S. District Court in Vermont allowed her civil case to move forward, with Jenkins also suing the organizations and attorneys who allegedly helped her ex-partner kidnap their daughter: Liberty Counsel, Liberty University, and Liberty Counsel lawyers Mat Staver and Rena Lindevaldsen. Liberty Counsel has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The VTDigger, a project of The Vermont Journalism Trust, reported Monday that “Miller turned herself in to authorities in Nicaragua, and was listed Monday afternoon as an inmate at a federal detention center in Miami.” It is not yet clear why Miller turned herself in. Scott McCoy, interim deputy legal director with the SPLC, noted in a statement, “We expect that she will be prosecuted for kidnapping to the fullest extent of the law.”
Isabella, now 18, is believed to still be in Nicaragua. Sarah Star, Janet Jenkins’ family attorney in Vermont and SPLC co-counsel, said that Jenkins “was relieved to learn of her daughter’s whereabouts but concerned that she remains in Nicaragua and did not return to the U.S. with Lisa Miller.” Star added, “When Isabella was born, Lisa and Janet named her Isabella Ruth Miller-Jenkins, after Janet’s mother, Ruth Jenkins. Grandparents Ruth and Claude Jenkins, as well as Isabella’s aunt and godmother, Linda Jenkins Garcia, are overjoyed by the thought that they will be able to see their beloved Isabella again. The Jenkins family wants Isabella to know that they have always kept prayer lists going for her, and she has never been out of their thoughts. The family longs for Isabella’s safe return and want her to know that they still celebrate her birthday and that her childhood bedroom is ready and waiting for her.”
Jenkins, who was kept from watching and helping Isabella grow from a 7-year-old into a young woman, said through her lawyer, “I just want Isabella to know that I love her very much and that I have never stopped loving her. Isabella has a family and support system here who will always welcome her home with open arms.”
This case made headlines, but it is only one of many (many, many) cases over the decades in which a biological parent in a same-sex relationship has attempted, after the relationship’s end, to withhold child custody and/or visitation from the nonbiological parent. The fact that so many children had to grow up without the love of both of their parents is one of the great tragedies of our country’s queerphobia. One would hope that today, with marriage equality the law of the land, such cases would be rarer. Not all couples choose to marry, however—and some jurisdictions, like Indiana, may continue to press (so far unsuccessfully) to discount the nonbiological parent, even within a marriage. May we all continue to work, not only to counter laws that refuse to recognize our families, but to commit ourselves to doing better should our own relationships dissolve. Need some guidance? The National Center for Lesbian Rights’ publication “Legal Recognition of LGBT Families” is a good place to start.