Gay fear mother found guilty of custody interference

By Staff Writer, PinkNews.co.uk • May 9, 2006 - 0:00

The boy, now 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said his mother told him to lie at the custody hearing about being molested

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A mother who kidnapped her son in fear that her ex husband would turn him gay, has been found guilty of interfering with custody of the child and breaking a restraining order.

The jury of four women and two men took just an hour to find 50-year-old Caren Macdonald guilty.

Assistant State Attorney, Anita White said: "This was about a woman who wanted to get her own way."

Ms Macdonald, who lost custody of her son after a psychiatrist testified that she was unstable, took 11-year-old child from a Florida school to Costa Rica in 2001.

They remained there until she was arrested in June 2002 by Customs officials in Houston.

She defended herself to the Florida court, objecting to her husbands gay lifestyle, she said: "'I didn't understand how somebody could be straight and then be gay."

Ms Macdonald also told the court, "I thought my son was going to get AIDS and die," and accused her former partner of massaging the boy on his buttocks, "I had a situation where my child was telling me that something was going on, I had a father who was ignoring it, I had a judge who said if I ever brought this up they would take my child away,"

The boy, now 16, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said his mother told him to lie at the custody hearing about being molested.

Her lawyer used the mother's fear of AIDs and sense of injustice with the judicial system as an excuse for her, and even cited the Martin Niemoller poem, "Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew, then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me."

Ms Macdonald had originally refused a plea deal which would have given her three years probation, but wanted to expose the injustices of the court system.

She has been remanded in custody until sentencing which is expected to be up to six years.

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