[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 10 (Thursday, January 25, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H857-H858]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      AMENDING TITLE XI, D.C. CODE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Davis] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak today on a bill that we 
have introduced, H.R. 1855. This is a bill that amends the District of 
Columbia Code, title XI of the D.C. Code, but basically what it does is 
it allows Dr. Elizabeth Morgan and her daughter Ellen to return to the 
United States.
  This bill is the product of my own deepest feelings and knowledge, 
and as a society, we are far more sensitive to the pain that children 
can feel than we were when I was coming of age. Legislative bodies 
across the land at every level have recognized the importance of 
listening more carefully to what children say, and the laws that we now 
pass arise from an enormous and growing body of evidence that in many 
cases of domestic stress and conflict, it is too easy to lose sight of 
who is being harmed.
  Commonsense actions to slice through the Gordian knot of pride and 
anger can often prevent permanent emotional damage and allow wounds to 
heal as quickly and completely as possible. That is what H.R. 1855 
attempts to do. That is all H.R. 1855 intends to do.
  Domestic conflict and stress can take many forms. Its victims are too 
often unintended and innocent. As a local jurist has said in connection 
with the very situation that gives rise to this bill, when elephants 
fight, the grass suffers, so I believe that I would not be true to the 
great lessons I have learned in life were I to just take the easy way 
out when confronted with a difficult situation involving a child's 
life.
  Yes, it would be easy for me to ignore Ellen Morgan, a soon-to-be 13-
year-old American child who is afraid to come back to our country, our 
country, unless this bill is passed. It might be easy for us to ignore 
Ellen Morgan, to wash our hands of her unusual and tragic situation, 
but I believe that would be 

[[Page H858]]
wrong. I believe very strongly that I owe it to this 13-year-old child 
still within me to try to intervene to break the truly vicious cycles 
that have impacted Ellen Morgan's life.
  What I want to do and what this bill does is to permit Ellen Morgan 
to be and feel free to return to the United States with no cloud of 
legal intervention over her head. She deserves to have that choice. In 
the real world she does not have that freedom now. This bill is an 
opportunity, perhaps the last chance, to heal the wounds that are all 
too fresh in Ellen's life.
  If there were another approach that Ellen could take, I know she 
would have taken it by now. We have attempted to allow the District of 
Columbia Superior Court to make appropriate motions to rehear this 
case, to revisit the situation, and as of yet they have been unable to 
do so, even though several years have elapsed since 1989, when this 
body and the other body put forward a bill that allowed Elizabeth 
Morgan to get out of jail for contempt and resume habitation with her 
daughter in New Zealand.
  If I felt that Ellen was free to return to this country unfettered I 
would not do anything about this bill, but this bill, I think, 
represents the best approach that can be taken under all the 
circumstances. The bill is straightforward. It seeks to make out only 
very minor and temporary changes in title XI of the District of 
Columbia Code.
  Under the Home Rule Act, the District government cannot amend title 
XI, and thus cannot legally legislatively affect this case. Only 
Congress can make these changes. These changes are only temporary and 
will sunset when Ellen reaches the age of majority and custody-
visitation issues would be moot.
  H.R. 1855 reflects the commonsense basic principle that the law ought 
not to compel one who has reached the age of reason from being forced 
to be unsupervised with someone by whom that person asserts they have 
been sexually abused. As a practical matter, such visitation cannot be 
enforced, and would create even greater danger if it were. Permitting a 
child of 13 and above to choose whether or not such custody or 
visitation should occur under the strict and limited strictures of this 
bill is the only sensible course.
  The basic facts which form the necessary background of this bill bear 
repeating. There is an outstanding court order for the District Court 
for the District of Columbia dated August 28, 1987, in the case of 
Morgan versus Foretich. Under that order Dr. Morgan was jailed for 
civil contempt in the District of Columbia after she hid her child, 
Hilary, now known as Ellen, and refused to give that child up for court 
ordered unsupervised visitation with her father. At that point her 
income approached $1 million a year. She gave that up to go to jail for 
2 years to protect her daughter. She spent over 2 years in the District 
of Columbia jail.
  In September 1989, Congress enacted H.R. 2136, sponsored by my friend 
and colleague, the gentleman from northern Virginia [Mr. Wolf], Public 
Law 101-97. This law limited to 12 months the amount of time that an 
individual could be imprisoned for civil contempt in the family 
division of the D.C. Superior Court. This legislation essentially freed 
Dr. Morgan from jail.

                              {time}  1245

  From there she went to Australia, where she is exiled today, until 
this legislation can pass. Mr. Speaker, I intend to do everything I can 
in the coming months to move this bill out of committee and to move 
this bill to passage.

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