A Virginia Mennonite pastor accused of helping a woman flee the country with her child rather than share custody with her former lesbian partner was convicted Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Burlington.
Jurors deliberated for less than four hours before returning the guilty verdict.
Afterwards, a group of Mennonites, both adults and children, formed a choir outside the federal building and sang.
“We’ve got the power in the name of the lord,” the choir sang. “The Satan rages. We will not be defeated.”
The Rev. Kenneth Miller was charged with aiding in international kidnapping for helping Lisa Miller and her daughter leave the country in September 2009, a month after a judge indicated he would turn custody of the girl over to Janet Jenkins of Fair Haven if Lisa Miller continued to defy a series of visitation orders.
Kenneth and Lisa Miller are not related. She and her daughter, Isabella, now 10, last were known to be in Nicaragua.
The case has drawn broad attention because of the legal and religious questions it raises about same-sex unions and child custody, and because the mother and daughter remain at large.
Prosecutors said Kenneth Miller, 46, of Stuarts Draft, Va., arranged for another person to drive Lisa Miller and Isabella from Virginia to Buffalo, N.Y., where they crossed into Canada and were picked up by an Ontario Mennonite who took them to the airport for a journey to Nicaragua.
After they arrived in Central America, the two were apparently cared for by American Mennonites who felt they needed to protect Isabella from what they considered to be a sinful lesbian lifestyle.
Lisa Miller and Jenkins entered into a civil union in Vermont in 2000, shortly after the state became the first to legally recognize same-sex relationships. Miller conceived the child through artificial insemination, and both acted as parents.
Lisa Miller later became an evangelical Christian and renounced her homosexuality. A child-custody case went to Vermont family court in 2004, after the couple dissolved the civil union. Lisa Miller, who moved to Lynchburg, Va., was given primary custody of Isabella, with Jenkins given visitation rights.
Lisa Miller appealed for years, but ultimately the courts in Virginia and Vermont determined the case would be bound by the Vermont family court order.
After defying visitation orders, Miller became a fugitive in 2009 when she disappeared with Isabella.
In brief but emotional testimony, Jenkins gave an overview of her relationship with Lisa Miller and a history of some of her visits with Isabella between the time the two split up in 2003 and Lisa Miller and the girl left the country.
Jenkins last saw Isabella in January 2009 and was looking forward to a late September visit.
“I was going to go to Lynchburg and pick my daughter up for the weekend,” said Jenkins, who runs a day-care business. But when she arrived to pick up Isabella, no one was home.
http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/viewart/20120814/NEWS02/308140017/Man-convicted-civil-union-child-custody-dispute
