It's so fucked up, what happened. It's so unnecessary.
I think I feel so tensely about because I know what you missed,
and you don't.
NUCLEAR FAMILY Episode 2
August 1991
I remember vividly. Tom and Milton came over to my house.
Tom said "I'm serving Robin with a lawsuit for visitation of Ry".
And I was completely shocked.
That meant he had figured it out,
he had gotten a lawyer, he had drawn up papers.
I said that is the worst idea I have ever heard in my life.
And I said, "Tom, do not do it".
"You will destroy this relationship and it will never recover."
He said, "I'm her biological father. They can't deny me visitation."
It's just so hard to fathom that all of...
- Why he did it, why he sued... - They thought they would win.
But still, why would you sue?
He didn't want to have to ask our permission. He said that.
"I'm tired of asking your permission".
It was, like, "excuse me? That's the deal."
He kept saying the situation's changed.
- Did he deny the original agreement? - No.
No. Yes, that's what we agreed, but then it changed.
His feelings for me changed?
They liked you and wanted to plug you into their life as they wished.
You were a great kid.
He was thinking "I've had this fight with them, but five months ago,"
"I had a wonderful time with Ry, everything was perfect."
"Two weeks from now, I'll see her again, and we'll resume."
I said "I don't care what the law says, Russo will never allow this."
"Even if you win legally, you will never win this."
"I'll see it on TV. She'll be up in the loft"
"with a shotgun aimed at the marshals"
"who are coming to pick up Ry. That's what's gonna happen."
"I don't think you'll ever see her again."
"But you will never have what you had if you do this."
You're looking at the Manhattan family court,
where the famous Salt case was decided back in 1975.
Until then, judges routinely decided in favor of mothers
if they were believed to be the more fit parent.
Now judges review relative fitness in order to make their decision.
So, if a father is not deemed unfit, he may win, and the mother may lose
even though she's been the primary caretaker of the children.
Harriet Cohen,
president of the New York City chapter of the State Women's Bar Association,
says a mother's good track record may not help.
Father perhaps has more money. Or more intellectual stimulation...
Even though I was a lawyer, I didn't know anyone in family law,
but someone recommended Harrie Cohen, and I called Harriet Cohen.
- And she told us what to bring. - Photographs, any checks.
It was, like, a Friday night. We went up to their office.
They said, "Tell us your story."
And it was a lot like this. We just went through our story.
My associate, Peter Bienstock was there.
And we met two marvelous women who were life partners.
Single sex marriage was illegal in New York or anywhere then.
People were just beginning to wrap their heads around the fact
that same sex partners have committed lives together.
So, it was unheard of for a family like yours
to be fighting a paternity lawsuit.
It was a very difficult legal landscape for a case like this.
Custody is a tough enough issue in heterosexual families.
Lesbian custody rights. That's the focus of this special edition.
The legal system didn't contemplate the existence of two mothers
or two fathers or many of the family versions that now exist in the US.
The courts and society has taken a very protective role
of preserving the heterosexual nuclear family.
Did you lose custody simply because you were a lesbian?
The first cases we saw in the courts about lesbian mothers
were women who had been in heterosexual marriages
coming out as lesbian and fighting for custody of their kids.
And in many instances, they lost.
MaryJo Wisher wept uncontrollably. The jury had decided
that her nine-year-old son should live with his father instead of her.
- Is this the end of it? - No comment.
We're in the home of Carol Parrot in Sonoma County.
The judge told me he won't allow me to have my children
unless I change my ways.
Then in the late 1970s,
we started to see lesbian couples having children.
Because at the time, two women could not adopt a child,
the biological mother would obviously be considered the mother,
but the partner would not be considered a parent.
That could lead to numerous problems.
When we went to court to have a hearing,
the judge said there can't be two mothers.
The lesbian mother constantly fears she's going to lose her children.
- We fought two and a half years. - A homosexual home damages the child.
- What's the children's best interest? - It affects children's environment.
They would not be granted custody of their own children.
Do you think having a gay mother will affect justice?
What is normal is for a man to live with a woman
and for children to know both their biological parents.
This is 1991, which doesn't seem like so long ago,
but in terms of LGBTQ rights, it was centuries ago.
So your moms were terrified by the lawsuit.
My name is Ellen Gesmer. I was Tom's first lawyer in this proceeding.
I'm now an appellate judge in New York State.
The first time I met with Tom,
I was very impressed with him. I liked him a lot.
He was very smart, personable and easy to talk to.
And he was in great pain because of not being able to see you.
And so he wanted to figure out a way to reestablish that relationship.
PETITION FOR PATERNITY AND VISITATION
It was really horrible, and I was young.
It was jarring, confusing, scary and sad.
STINSON BEACH MARCH 1986
That's Ry, with the brown hair, and Cade there with the blue shirt.
It's hard, because I had fond memories of being a little kid,
like going to the beach with him, going on vacations.
He would come to New York sometimes and stay.
Take me out to fancy restaurants, buy me nice dresses, stuff like that.
And then it's this weird contradiction.
'Cause I was also very angry at him because of the whole lawsuit.
And I was, like, do I love him?
I mean, I care about him. I guess I love him as a friend,
but it's not the way I love my parents. He's not my parent.
I wanted to have everyone know that and realize that it would be
like, twisting the family into some horrible, disgusting knot,
by adding him.
Tom demanded summer visitation. Immediate visitation before Labor Day.
Labor Day you were gonna go back to school.
On his end, there was a huge urgency. We must take this to court now,
and the court must tell these women it's over.
Your joyride is over. Now I have rights.
So we had to find a way to slow the thing down.
What surprised me was that they denied you were born
as a result of Robin's insemination with Tom's sperm.
I heard from Tom they were denying paternity
and that they were taking you to get a DNA test.
I remember calling Russo and Robin and saying, "What are you doing?"
"You are taking a 10-year-old to get a needle in her arm"
"to prove what you already know?"
And Russo said "Nobody knows what we know. Maybe he's not."
"This is gonna put it off for months."
When you're fighting in a litigation, you want to use everything you have.
How easy it would be if it turned out that the sperm was not Tom's?
- The sailor. - The sailor.
Maybe it was the sailor.
On the night of the insemination, Tom came to the house
with this handsome, strapping guy wearing a sailor shirt.
And they went into a bedroom to create the sperm
and then came down with the "gift".
There was always some question of whose sperm did I get?
It was highlighted by the fact that Tom was tall and willowy.
This guy was a hunk.
And you were, as a kid, sort of a hunk.
You were like a big, beefy girl.
- But I'm Tom's biological daughter. - Yes.
But why would we admit yes, he's definitely the biological father
when we had a little whisp of uncertainty ourselves?
You'll do anything to save your kids, to stop a threat like that.
You'll lie, you'll cheat, you'll steal, if you have to, and this was...
Mother lioness protecting cubs. That's the mode we were now in.
A lawsuit like this, there are inspections of homes,
so I said to your moms
"I need to see your house before anybody else."
Harriet walked in the door. She was opening drawers and walking around.
She was really going through it as if she was a social worker.
She was in the back room at one point, opened the door to the closet...
And it was raincoat.
We said, Tom left this here.
She handed it to Russo and said, "Throw it out."
Get rid of it.
I looked around.
I saw pictures of the family along with the sperm donors,
and I said, "Get those pictures off the wall."
So, we kind of staged the house.
We needed all the help we could get. We were very worried
that unless everything was perfect, we were gonna lose.
And the next person who came into our house was Bonnie.
- And she looked around too. - Right.
And we held our breath.
I'm Bonnie Rabin. I'm an attorney.
I was assigned by the court to represent you.
Back then, we were called law guardians, and we represented kids.
What kind of cases did you get? What does "representing kids" mean?
I was representing subjects of abuse and neglect proceedings,
adoption proceedings, termination of parental rights,
custody cases, paternity cases,
anything that had to do with a child as a subject. I'd represent the child.
- What did you think of Bonnie? - We didn't know anything about her.
In fact, I mad some phone calls to...
- Who is she? - Who is she?
We had no idea what side she was on or if she was on a side.
I met Bonnie when she was assigned. She looked at me, and she said,
"I don't want you talking to my client."
That's right. Because I didn't know where your head was at all.
Maybe you were pining for him. I didn't know that.
I didn't want you pressured like that or questioned by another lawyer
when you now had an attorney of your own.
The first meeting was just the two of us,
and you knew you were the focus. And it was hard.
I had this burden on me because it was all whatever the child wants.
Whatever's best for the child. And I knew that.
And I knew I was the child.
And I knew clearly that my family was my mothers and my sister.
When you read custody statutes,
they talk about the best interest of the child.
But you can't pretend that parents don't have rights
or adults don't have rights. They do. And so it's always kind of subjective.
The standard in litigating is supposed to be the best interest of the child.
My view is that a trial about the child is never in the child's best interest.
Almost any settlement is better than litigating it in a courtroom.
Did you recommend that Robin and Russo settle?
Did I recommend? No, I tried to settle them.
I made a number of telephone calls. I wanted to stop it. For you.
And I wanted to think about you at nine,
at 12,
at 15, at 25,
and, you know, at 40.
I wasn't just dealing with you right then in that moment.
I knew that whatever we did, was for a really long time.
There always is a moment it seems in every case
when the lawyers can contemplate compromise.
Peter and Harriet were leaning on us that we were gonna lose the lawsuit,
there was no predecent for us to win. There was precedent for us to lose,
and that we had to settle.
We came up with some suggestions
for how you'd spent time with him for the next couple of years.
- And we kept saying okay. - Maybe.
I think everybody has this fantasy that it can work out,
you know, why do they have to be rules or...
But my phone calls went nowhere.
And Tom started taking a very hard line.
He wanted us to accept he'd get an order of filiation,
meaning he'd be declared your legal father.
And that was an absolute no for us.
Why?
Because once you're a legal father, you have all kinds of rights
to petition the court for custody and try to expand your rights,
change what you want.
You can delve into all these different areas of the child's life.
- I don't want her going to that school. - Right.
I don't want her seeing that orthodontist. It's huge.
He was asked, "Will you ask for custody? He said, "It depends."
That's terrifying.
So, we had to fight paternity, or we'd risk losing you.
Your moms were saying they wanted to be able
to protect the integrity of your family.
And the wall was very black and white.
You either were a parent, or you weren't a parent.
If you are, you have all the rights and responsibilities of a parent.
If you're not a parent, you are a legal stranger.
I called Cris, and I said,
"You could exert moral influence on Tom if you wanted to."
She said "I don't want to. I care for you both."
I said, "I think you should settle this lawsuit."
It was clear they thought I was on Tom's side. But I wasn't.
I was, in the sense that I thought you should continue your relationship,
I didn't think he should bring that lawsuit.
I remember we were in the country house in our bed.
You were talking to her. I could mostly just hear your end,
and I was going like this to you. Say cut it, 'cause I could hear.
She was in his camp, it was over. You can't talk to this woman anymore.
Don't give her any information. We're in litigation, shut the fuck up.
People were either with us, or not. There was no room for ambiguity.
We couldn't tolerate it emotionally, never mind it legally.
Harriet said, "She's not your friend."
So, that was that.
And they never talked to me again.
I was furious and I had no respect for her, and it was over,
but it was still a loss of a very important friend.
But I finally said to our lawyers,
I want my kids to know I fought for them.
I didn't just lie down and agree.
In the end, I want them to know, even if we lose,
how much we fought.
The trial began in March.
Our basic argument was Tom was the biological father
and that more importantly, with your moms' encouragement and consent,
he had developed a very special relationship with you
that deserved protection and fostering. And therefore,
the court should acknowledge he was the father
and consider some form of visitation.
But he could only be defined as a parent if Russo wasn't.
So they made the distinction between Russo and Robin as parents,
where Robin was an actual parent because she gave birth to you,
and he was an actual parent because he had contributed genetic material.
And because this was in family court,
he sought to keep Russo out of the courtroom.
Tom's side took the position that Russo was not a party to the lawsuit.
So, Russo spent every day of the trial
sitting outside the courtroom.
Russo is formidable, but she is not tall.
There was a glass window into the courtroom.
Russo found a little stool,
so that she could stand on it and look into the courtroom.
They had put paper or something over the window,
but there was still a little place she could try to peek in and see.
That was outrageous.
It's all about her life, her family and her children.
They're all being threatened by this guy.
And she's out there by herself. It was really, really painful.
When Tom took the stand, it was the testimony of a divorced father.
That's what he was gunning for. I'm the father, Robin's the mother,
and we have this child together.
Now Robin is being very difficult and won't give me access to the child.
So, I have to sue.
The law that he was steeling with in that case
was way too narrow and really didn't allow
for a nuanced position that I think Tom wanted.
Which was to have some connection, some right to a connection.
But the law didn't allow for that kind of emotional argument.
So, Tom took on a lawsuit,
knowing the law he was going to have to use was an abomination.
He knew the law he'd have to argue wasn't law that he agreed with,
but I think he felt he had no choice.
He had a psychiatrist testify,
who said Robin and I suffered from lesbian fusion.
Lesbian fusion, which is this out-there theory.
That lesbians can be much closer and intimate with each other than men
because they're women.
That women have a greater capacity for intimacy.
So, if you put two women together... It's not good. They become fused.
Fused!
- They become fused, and they start... - Like they're becoming one unit.
- They think the same. - And they don't let anybody else in.
And you know what? You and Cade have it too!
"Is it your view the fusion process would also include the child?"
"Yes. They all become peers."
And we hate men.
Yeah. We're man-haters.
And here we are now giving it to the kids.
The psychiatrist went on about every girl needs a dad kind of thing.
And the dangers of growin up as an illegitimate child.
They used the old models that were so destructive to women for many years
in all those other lesbian cases.
What is normal is for a man to live with a woman...
Tom's lawyers leaned on the old Heterosexual, anti-gay models.
What an atrocious attack on your lesbian family.
I don't really know what to say about the trial,
but it was the most terrifying thing I have ever had to go through,
and hopefully will ever have to go through.
It was horrendous. It was like a big nightmare.
Tom used to call my house all the time and hang up.
It was very strange and scary.
If you pick up the phone, you wouldn't hear anything,
and then you'd hear the click.
And we knew it was him.
It was so bad we got a second phone number for you and Cade to use.
I first thought he hoped you'd answer the phone, and he could then...
But it became clear it was harassment. He wanted to know where everybody was.
I was worried that when I was walking with my friends to school,
he'd and try and talk to me,
tell me how much he loved me and be on his knees and all that.
We were concerned.
He seemed to have little connection with the person we had known.
We notified the school not to ever let the children go with anyone.
The school had his picture.
Security at school had his picture. That was passed around.
We just didn't want to be stupid.
It was such a hard time.
It was living in fear that at any moment...
A judge could play god.
I remember, because I bore witness to it,
explaining to people that Tom had gotten into this relationship with you
on an invitation. And that he had walked through that door
with his heart in his hand.
And that the terms of engagement then were changed on him.
He told me he didn't want to be erased.
And being cut off from you, to him, felt like an erasure.
The courts had honored biology throughout the years.
This idea that biology was destiny,
and that those who had a biological relationship had greater rights.
And so our argument in court was the deal was the deal.
A sperm donor is not a father. A father is different.
- It's my hammer. - Do you like it?
I always have.
Nothing is gonna break up this team.
A father is involved in a child's life.
- I'll move back in. - I love you, angel.
A father is a person who provides financial and other support.
I can tell you what to do. That's my job. Now go upstairs.
A father is a decision maker...
- Got to give him somebody else. - Can I bring Billy?
And Tom was never supposed to be a father.
A father was the furthest thing from what your moms wanted.
He latched onto the idea of being a father.
Was there a possibility of a relationship? Maybe.
But because Tom Steele insisted
on having the role of father,
there could be no compromise.
The kids were so terrified.
We tried to protect them from it,
but they were ordered by the court to see a court appointed psychiatrist.
We said to our attorneys
we're not gonna let them go to see the court appointed shrink.
It's too harmful to them. They're too upset by it.
And they said, "You have to. Or you're gonna lose."
Now, someone was going to be appointed by the court
who was going to delve into your family.
You don't know anything about their biases, or their own histories.
And he's going to have an opinion.
Dr. Miles Schneider.
He would sit there with his huge yellow legal pad.
He'd ask you questions, you'd talk, and he'd be taking notes.
He'd ask me questions about my life with my family, my home life,
and my relationship with Tom, with Jack and with my sister.
One of the scariest questions he ever asked me was...
What if policemen knocked down the door
and took you away to go live with Tom? What would you do?
That was my greatest fear. I really thought that would happen.
That I would be forced to go live with Tom.
And I felt like my life as I knew it would be ending.
I'd begun to refer to him as the evil one.
It felt like he was destroying my family.
I was having trouble falling asleep.
So, Russo would sing to me at bedtime, and rub my back like when I was little.
She'd sing me "Stewball",
a song about a racehorse nobody bets on.
But the horse ends up winning in the end.
I always thought the song was from Russo's life before she had a family.
It reminded me of all her struggles throughout the years.
The song felt like part of a lineage that came well before me.
And at the time, it made me feel like we could all get through it,
just as Russo had.
Tom called me and said he wanted me to testify, and I said "No."
But he subpoenaed me.
Then I just tried to be clipped, in the testimony.
I was truthful, of course, but I didn't elaborate.
She had firsthand knowledge, so she was a strong witness for him,
and I think she emphasized the closeness
that Robin and Russo had allowed Tom to have with you
and deemphasized all of the boundaries to that.
I didn't want to really go against Russo and Robin,
but I'm the one who found the idea, I found the donors,
I talked to them, I brought them in...
And we all felt like we were making a new and different kind of family
and it was really working.
We talked about it.
A new kind of family.
That we had to think about family in a different way.
THE WITNESS: Jacob Estes
Jacob was an amazing witness.
He clearly had no axe to grind. He was just honest and delightful
in describing your relationship with Tom, and Cade's relationship with Tom.
I said I considered Tom to be my father,
and I considered Ry to be his daughter.
And therefore if you're asking me do I think Ry is my sister,
then the answer's yes.
Then when he was cross examined,
Harriet, our lawyer, asked him all kinds of questions.
Did he know your birthdays? Had you ever sent a birthday card?
Had he ever called either of you? The answer was no.
What came out was that yeah, he'd met you guys three times.
And you'd all had fun together. No one disputed that.
But he was not a brother, and it was not a family relationship.
Do you remember how many times I saw Jacob?
He described it as pretty often, but I don't have a clear sense.
- It was three. - It was only three times?
- Three times in my entire life. - But he remembered it lovingly.
And more than anything else, during the trial,
it was probably the best description of Tom being a parent to you.
Nobody in the lesbian and gay legal organizations
believed that a family had to consist of two parents and nobody else,
because by definition, some contribution from another human being
was needed for a same sex couple to have a child together.
And I think many people felt there was always the possibility
for something more expansive than a two parent family.
There was this weird notion
that if it's a gay family, it had no boundaries.
The whole community should be part of raising the child
because it was a lesbian family, so somehow it wasn't as worthy
of those chosen boundaries.
Once we involved people like Cris and Tom,
they decided somehow that we're creating a new reality,
new family dynamics and structures,
and isn't it exciting to the lesbia and gay community?
But that was not our view. That's not what we wanted.
We wanted a family, children, that we would love and care for.
We were a nuclear family. It was always what we wanted.
That was what we had agreed to with Tom. And it all made sense.
We were creating this family, and everyone had lived by it.
Until suddenly, nine years later, he's suing us.
That trial was brutal on your family. It was all encompassing
while you were two young kids just trying to go to school.
And so much of it was focused on you.
But while all that attention was being paid to you,
none of us paid enough attention to what it was doing to Cade.
This is the part where I'll cry.
Cade was also a little girl.
And fighting for her family,
and seeing her family be tortured in this way about you.
She wasn't part of that fight. Tom didn't really recognize her
as a legitimate member of whatever he was calling family.
Tom was suing for Ry.
But also in suing for Ry, and in trying to prove
that he had this unbreakable bond with her,
he had to disprove that he had a relationship with me.
There was a photograph that Janice, his secretary, had taken,
of you guys both with him. And we had seen the photograph.
He introduced this photograph into evidence.
It was the photograph, except Cade was somehow cropped out of it.
So, it could look like he had this relationship with Ry
and didn't have one with me.
It was so betraying that he didn't understand
that we come as a unit.
We had to over and over again in many different ways explain
why our family was a family.
Cade had some quote with the shrink.
He was asking about her family
and she said we're like a house on the water with four stilts.
And if you took a piece of it away the house would fall.
Each of us is a necessary piece.
And Tom was trying to create a myth.
Tom felt he had a relationship with you and he knew that because he lived it.
And you didn't remember your real relationship with him anymore.
He thought if he saw you again, he could recapture that.
Tom was pushing to have a meeting with you.
Our lawyers fought it, 'cause we didn't want it.
We thought it would be really hard on you.
He and his lawyers pushed, and then finally the judge ordered it.
It was just awful.
So, we all went to the courthouse.
We were there with you.
And then Bonnie came.
Bonnie said "Okay, we got to go." We gave you a kiss and a hug
and told you to do whatever you wanted. You were your own person.
And then Bonnie took over.
By that point Bonnie felt safe to me.
I felt she was an adult that I could trust.
It's one thing when you have a divorcing couple.
This was different.
This was about being asked about what your family constellation is.
How you view this person in your life.
It's a lot to put on a child.
I remember coming with Bonnie and walking into a little shitty room
with the court psychiatrist there. Just him and me.
And Tom walks in and sits down.
I won't look at him. I'm turned like this.
I refuse to look at him. 'Cause I don't want to let him in.
Then I remember he said "I want you to come to California with me."
"I want to see more of you."
"Do you remember all the good times when we used to play together?"
And I felt very tense and very tight.
And then I remember he called me sweetie,
and I said, "My name's not Sweetie."
And then I said, "Bug off."
And I left.
And that was it.
Yeah.
His lawyer after that wrote to the judge saying that we want another meeting,
this was a total setup.
Ry is a very nice child. No child who behaves well would walk out like that.
Tom's side attributed your personality to brainwashing.
In every case when a child speaks up,
and one side doesn't like what the child says,
that side generally says this child has been brainwashed.
That was their argument.
I'm not saying it was intentional. Nobody was acting in bad faith.
But alienating behavior is often not intentional
and is often done all in good faith.
But it may have had that effect on you of making you feel
that the only way you could be safe was to get angry with Tom.
- Did he argue I was brainwashed? - Yes.
He'd say you wanted to be with him, you enjoyed being with him,
that you did things with him.
That you were happy to be with him, and now you weren't happy.
He didn't understand the reason you weren't happy with him
was because of what he was doing to you. He didn't understand that.
He was angry with your moms...
In some ways I thought he was unable to have empathy for you.
I don't think Tom grasped the core of who you are.
Your sense of self.
You were really very brave and strong.
You were resolute.
And then we just kept waiting for the judge's decision.
I remember I was in the eighth grade.
Robin picked us up from school.
We drove home.
I was in my room.
Russo called the house and Robin picked up,
and Robin said "Guys, pick up the phone."
I picked up the phone, but you were in the bathroom.
I said "Ry can't pick up the phone right now. What is it?"
And Russo just said, "You guys, we won."
I went running to find you in the bathroom.
I gave you a big hug on the toilet and I said we won.
It is a precent setting ruling because in many similar cases,
sperm donors have won on the basis of biological ties.
But in this case, the judge was swayed
by Ry's strong feelings about her mothers.
I feel great. I love it.
They're happy because judge Edward Kaufmann has just ruled
that 11 year old Ry's biological father has no parental rights to the girl.
This is the family.
Robin and I and our two children. And that's all our family.
"Court Reject Sperm Donor in a Bid for Parental Rights"
Biology is not a control. Biology is not destiny.
Some judges are very cautious.
But Judge Kaufmann was brave,
and he wanted what was best for you and your family.
The court got it completely.
The decision was based on the reality of what your family was.
How they functioned,
who raised you, who fed you, who diapered you...
The decision was great.
The court saw your family from your point of view.
And that was extraordinary,
because the argument that a child needs a mother and a father
was so pervasive that the judge's willingness to say
"Actually, this child doesn't need a father."
"This child is just fine with her family of two mothers and her sister",
was really an extraordinary validation of your family,
and by extension, of the families other lesbians were forming.
I felt devastated that I lost this friend.
These two friends, but especially Russo.
But I also felt like you had a really important relationship with Tom.
You don't want to call it a parental relationship.
I don't need to characterize it that way.
But you loved him, and he loved you.
And you had this much time left to be with him.
Maybe you could talk a little bit about what it's been like to be HIV positive.
It's been very hard.
It's been particularly hard
because I feel like my time is limited,
and I'm afraid that I'll never be able to develop a relationship,
or to reestablish a relationship with Ry.
And that's one of the most painful things
about the shortness of time that I fear is left.