MSNBC
January 27, 2000
 
 
Nun: Best for Elian if he stays

                         MIAMI BEACH, Jan. 27 —   The host of the meeting
                         between Elian Gonzalez and his grandmothers
                         said Thursday that while she first believed the
                         boy should be returned to his father, she felt
                         after the reunion that the 6-year-old would live
                         in fear and without freedom if he were sent back
                         to Cuba. The grandmothers, for their part,
                         echoed Cuba’s claim that Sister Jeanne
                         O’Laughlin was not a neutral host, and said they
                         had found “a completely different boy” in Elian.
                                “We want to have the same boy we used to have,”
                         said maternal grandmother Raquel Rodriquez after a
                         meeting with members of Congress.
                                “Our grandson is a completely different boy,” echoed
                         Mariela Quintana. “He has changed completely. We have to
                         save this boy as soon as possible.”
                                “We told him we wanted to bring him back to Cuba.
                         He nodded his head yes,” she added.
 
                         HOST: ‘FEAR-FILLED’ MEETING
                                Back in Miami Beach, where the reunion was held on
                         Wednesday night, O’Laughlin told a local TV station,
                         WSVN, “I’m going to take the side of what I feel the child
                         right now needs, and that is freedom.”
                                “I do not think that that child will be able to live without
                         fear if he goes back,” she said.
                                O’Laughlin told MSNBC that she was disturbed by
                         how “fear-filled” the meeting was. Cuba accused her of
                         undermining the visit and suggested she allowed “spies” to
                         monitor it.
                                At times trembling and in tears, the Dominican nun said
                         she planned to go to Washington Friday to meet with
                         lawmakers and Attorney General Janet Reno to explain her
                         concerns.
                                 At the same time, O’Laughlin said she was
                         hesitant because she didn’t “want to enter into a kind of
                         game” being played by the Cuban government and Cuban
                         Americans opposed to Fidel Castro.
                                “What I felt originally (was) that the law was clear and
                         that the child should go to the father, and that we were a
                         law abiding people. But the kind of fear I felt yesterday
                         makes me wonder if, in this case, man was not made for the
                         law, law was made for man, and perhaps we have to take
                         another look at that in this case.”
                                O’Laughlin, president of Barry University in Miami,
                         had been selected by Reno to host the reunion. Earlier, she
                         told NBC’s “Today” show that she felt the Cuban
                         government and and Cuban Americans opposed to Castro
                         were “instilling fear.”
                                O’Laughlin said the Cuban government, in particular,
                         was distorting what took place and suggested it was
                         pressuring the grandmothers. “There was not a freedom
                         (during the meeting),” she said. “I am a wiser woman today
                         and I understand how blessed we are to understand what it
                         is to be free and not full of fear.”
                                “I believe that there are people with political agendas
                         that take the child as a pawn, and perhaps the grandmothers
                         also,” she added. Asked to elaborate, she mentioned “the
                         Cuban government, who, I understand, has said we were
                         not nice to the grandmothers, that we had spies. This is just
                         not true.”

                         FORMAL CUBAN PROTEST
                                The reunion was the first time the grandmothers had
                         seen the 6-year-old boy since he fled Cuba in November
                         with his mother, who drowned along with 10 others after
                         their boat capsized.
                                Cuban officials told NBC News that they had
                         protested to the State Department that the grandmothers
                         were prevented from maintaining phone contact with Cuba.
                                 O‘Laughlin acknowledged that a nun took a cell phone
                         from Quintana, the paternal grandmother, after it rang.
                                Quintana told reporters that “we were talking
                         with the father by phone and they came in and took
                         the phone.” A spokesman for the grandmothers said
                         nuns came into the room and told them that the cell
                         phone was not permitted under an arrangement made
                         for ground rules for the meeting.
                                Police officers then took the phone, the spokesman
                         said, adding that the grandmothers did not believe there was
                         a no-phone agreement.
                                The Immigration and Naturalization Service, which
                         ordered the meeting, had earlier insisted no third party
                         intervene during the visit.
                                Cuba’s Communist Party, in a statement, claimed the
                         grandmothers endured “deceits, lies, tricks, betrayals,
                         humiliations and an inhuman and despotic treatment” at the
                         meeting.
                                “The Dominican nun, in whose ‘neutral’ residence the
                         meeting took place,” the statement said, “and the person
                         there from the INS told lie after lie and could not give a
                         coherent and logical explanation of that uncivilized and cruel
                         action.”
                                O’Laughlin is a friend of Reno, a Florida native. But
                         Reno’s department has backed returning Elian to his father.
                                Cuba also complained of numerous interruptions during
                         the meeting by people bringing juices and snacks. And
                         O’Laughlin, the statement said, behaved in an overbearing
                         manner in her house, a “prison” for the grandmothers.
 
                         MIAMI RELATIVES REACT
                                Elian’s Miami relatives, for their part, tried to capitalize
                         on the meeting by having the boy talk to a radio station as
                         they drove him back to their home.
                                “Tomorrow they’re going to make me an American citizen,”
                         Elian told Spanish-language Radio Mambi. He was referring to
                         the fact that his Miami relatives went to Washington Thursday
                         to lobby for legislation that would make Elian a citizen. That
                         legislation is in the works, but no vote is expected before
                         next week.
                                And, when Elian returned to his Miami relatives’ home,
                         a crowd outside roared with approval. Elian’s great-uncle
                         Delfin Gonzalez faced the crowd while holding a crucifix
                         above his head.
 
                         JUSTICE DEPT. FILES PAPERS
                                Elian was rescued Thanksgiving Day after floating in the
                         ocean for two days and has been in the center of an
                         international custody battle ever since.
                                His Cuban relatives and father want him to return to
                         Cuba. Elian’s Florida relatives don’t want him returned to
                         communist Cuba and have filed suit in federal court
                         challenging the INS ruling that he should be reunited with his
                         father.
                                The Justice Department early Thursday filed papers in
                         the case, arguing the federal judge should dismiss the claims,
                         either on grounds the court lacks jurisdiction to review the
                         immigration decision or that Lazaro Gonzalez lacks standing
                         under federal law to speak for Elian.
                                It said a victory for the Miami relatives would “ignore
                         accepted international practice in cases involving a sole
                         surviving parent located in the United States, where we
                         would expect the foreign country to immediately return the
                         child to the surviving American parent.”

                         MISTRUST AT MEETING
                                The U.S. government ordered the Miami relatives to
                         bring Elian to the neutral meeting site after plans for a
                         reunion Monday foundered over where it should took
                         place.
                                The tension was still evident Wednesday: The reunion
                         did not go as long as originally expected and a plan to have
                         the Cuban and Florida families sit down to dinner was
                         abandoned.
                                The grandmothers and Elian spent part of the
                         100-minute meeting looking at a family photo album. The
                         two women, who helped raise Elian, broke down crying
                         after he walked out of the room, O’Laughlin said.
                                “It took him a little while to warm up, but after a little
                         bit he became very animated,” said Sister Peggy Albert,
                         who watched the reunion.
                                The grandmothers did not comment as they left the
                         house and were driven away to a helicopter. They later got
                         on a plane to Washington, where they have been lobbying
                         Congress not to make Elian a U.S. citizen. That would
                         make it harder for the father to claim custody.
                                O’Laughlin said both sides were so nervous and
                         mistrustful about the meeting that she had to show them
                         “that windows couldn’t be opened, that doors couldn’t be
                         opened, that there were no disappearing trap doors.”
 
                                The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to
                         this report.