WASHINGTON — The facts of the case were gruesome: a 9-year-old boy who was hung from a pipe in the basement of his home and beaten repeatedly with an electrical cord. His arms and legs, which had been bound by wire, had deep cuts. His chest, back and face had welts “in varying stages of healing,” according to the report filed by child welfare workers in New York.
And the culprit was known. Asked to explain the boy’s injuries, his father, Floyd Karamba, told authorities: “I beat him.”
But on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court bowed to the demands of international law and politics and ordered that the boy be returned to the custody of his family.
Karamba, a mid-level diplomat in Zimbabwe’s mission at the United Nations, had diplomatic immunity in the United States and his government has insisted that American “abductors” immediately release the boy and turn him over to them.
In a one-line order issued Friday, the Supreme Court concluded, as had the lower courts, that U.S. officials had no authority to hold the diplomat’s child.
Since Dec. 11, when Terrence came to school bloodied and bruised, he has been in the care of a child protective service and is living with a foster family on Long Island.
His father was expelled from the country Dec. 21, but his wife, Lydia, has remained in New York, along with two younger children.
Terrence is said to be terrified of being turned over to his mother–who reportedly watched the beatings–or to Zimbabwean authorities. When confronted with the possibility of being handed over to his family or Zimbabwean officials, Terrence has tried to jump from a moving auto and on another occasion to escape from a second-story window, according to reports filed with the court.
Whether or not he will be forcibly reunited with his family was unclear Friday.
State Department officials have assured the courts that they will seek to “minimize trauma to the child.”
‘Medically Sound Transfer’
“This should be a medically sound transfer,” State Department spokesman Charles Redman said Friday. “It will be guided by the advice of Dr. (Don R.) Heacock,” a child psychiatrist who has examined the boy.
“The end goal,” Redman added, “is to reunite the boy with his family.”
In other statements, U.S. officials have suggested that the boy will be placed in foster care when he is returned to the nation in southern Africa.
“We believe that the boy will be placed in foster care,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Igou M. Allbray, who represented the State Department in the court proceedings. “We’re advised there will be no contact with the father.”
But Zimbabwean authorities have made no such assurances.
“Once he comes to us, he will go home with his mother,” Zimbabwean mission spokesman John Z. Tsimba told a television interviewer in New York last week. Asked whether he would be reunited with his father, Tsimba replied: “No comment.”
On Friday, Zimbabwean spokesmen in New York and at the embassy in Washington declined to comment further on the case.
‘Right to Retaliate’
While the case of Terrence Karamba has been treated as a child abuse story in New York, Zimbabwean officials have viewed the incident as an international affront. On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Nathan Shamuyarira said that his nation “reserved the right to retaliate” against the families of American diplomats unless Terrence were immediately released “from the hands of his abductors.”
In an interview before leaving this country, the child’s father said that he believes his son was “spoiled” by school officials in New York and charged that the beatings were blown out of proportion for racist reasons.
“He had been instructed at school to do whatever he wants (and) that no parents should ask his child what was happening because that would be an abuse of a child,” he told the City Sun, a weekly newspaper in New York. “It’s apparent there is a brain box behind Terrence’s story,” he said, suggesting that welfare workers exaggerated the abuse suffered by his son.
Spanking Report Disputed
But child welfare workers said that the visible wounds on Terrence could not have come from a routine spanking, as his father suggested.
They found “several linear scabs on each forearm” resulting from the wire that had wrapped around each arm to hold him to the basement pipe. On his forehead were bruises where he had been hit with a belt buckle. On his neck were choke marks, according to the child abuse report filed with the court.
“On at least one occasion that Terrence was hung from the pipe, the respondent father untied him while he was still suspended. Terrence fell to the floor on his face, sustaining a bruise to his nose and swollen lips,” the report said.
Psychologists who have interviewed Terrence say that he tries to hide–sometimes under a coat or by crawling under a table–when asked to talk about his family. On Thursday, Terrence was driven to the U.S. mission in New York for another attempted reunion with his mother but he refused to leave the car.
“This child is in a very fragile state,” said Janet R. Fink, one of several Legal Aid Society attorneys in New York who have worked around the clock since late December to try to win legal asylum for Terrence. “He would be deeply damaged if they yank him from the home where he is residing and send him home,” she said.
Hope for Protective Care
“We are hoping the State Department will keep him in protective care and insist that he not be reunited with his parents.”
Dr. Leonard Gries, a psychologist and mental director at St. Christopher-Ottilie on Long Island who has been treating Terrence for the last month, said he will advise that the boy have a chance to “build a trust” in someone who will return to Zimbabwe with him. He said he favored letting that person stay with Terrence several weeks before a move is attempted.
But U.S. attorneys said Friday that they will not allow the boy to stay indefinitely in the care of the foster care service.-latimes.com
**This article was originally published by LA TIMES on January 16, 1988. We republish in the interest of our readers.
