Elian: A Different Take

Monday, May 1, 2000 -- HONG KONG (AmpolNS) -- Show me a regular family that doesn't have occasional disagreements, and I'll show you a dysfunctional family. Show me an editorial meeting that doesn't explode with differences of opinion from time to time, and I'll show you a publication or media organisation that isn't trying hard enough. Well, Ampol is no different. and I'd like to think we are pretty normal. 

While I would go along with a lot of what my colleagues have had to say about the Elian Gonzalez affair, I have to state quite clearly that I was appalled at the method used to reunite the kid with his father. Having said that, I believe firmly that Elian's dad has undeniable rights when it comes to custody and deciding what he considers best for his 6-year old son. I watched the Elian saga unfold with a little more than 'professional' interest. Excuse me for allowing my personal affairs to intrude, but I think it has some bearing. Stay with me.

I followed the case as a father who is still engaged in long running trans-national court action to get access to my children from a previous marriage. In fact, I am hopping on a plane next week for yet another court appearance. To abbreviate, simplify and draw some tenuous parallels to the Elian story; my former wife's new husband believes it better to cut strings with the past and make a new life for my children - without me. His opinion - an arguably similar position taken by the Miami family, however well motivated it might be - doesn't make it right, does it? But at the moment my ex and her 'current' have custody - and possession as they say, is nine tenths of the law. And until a week last Saturday, that is how it was working for the Miami branch of the Gonzalez clan.

I don't have Janet Reno or a squad of heavily armed para-military types to go in and snatch my kids - and frankly, I wouldn't want to. Sure, Elian looks happy enough now, why shouldn't he? I hope that when I eventually get access to my kids they'll pose just as cheerfully for the camera. But I would be horrified to think that I had achieved access through the barrel of a gun and the potential threat of 'extreme prejudice'. 

In Elian's case I believe there was another way to do it. In broad daylight, with every news network invited to cover the event, the INS and the Marshalls should have inched forward - arresting anyone and everyone who blocked their passage - but in a calm and ordered way. Firm, yes. With overwhelming 'visible' force if you like. But ordered and in broad daylight. They didn't try that, they didn't simply walk up to the front door of the house and ask for the kid to be handed over. For that reason I believe the pre-dawn snatch does, in some ways, deserve to be condemned and described as 'Gestapo' tactics. 

And the insinuation that, Donato Dalrymple - the fisherman who saved Elian and who was captured on camera hiding with the boy in a closet - might be gay, well, I was surprised that some of my Ampol colleagues would allow themselves to employ the same sort of language favoured by people like Jerry Falwell. I wonder how the 'openly gay' intern at Ampol who registered the 'major gaydar' alert would react if I suggested that 'gay' and 'paedophile' were one and the same thing? They are not, and he knows it, so I have to ask all concerned: Why was the insinuation introduced into the equation? 

The whole Elian saga has been distinguished by a marked lack of common sense by all concerned - and by that I include the Miami family, Havana, Washington, and lamentably, the media.

Click here for more of Chris Gelken's An Outsider Looking In.