ByTim Bryant
Of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Staff
A divorced transsexual father, who is now a woman, lost joint custody of her two sons Tuesday after a ruling by a state appeals court panel in St. Louis.
The woman, now called Sharon, also may not see the boys again, unless a St. Charles judge decides that the visits would be in the children's best interests, according to the 2-1 ruling.
The appeals court, at the mother's request, uses initials to identify the parents. Some stories in the Post-Dispatch have used Karen as a pseudonym for the mother, at her request, to protect the children's privacy.
One boy is 10; his brother is 7.
Karen and the boys' father met in 1982 while she was in college and he was in the Air Force. They married in 1983.
Karen has said that their relationship was always strained. In 1991, the father refused to go with his family to visit Karen's relatives. When she and the boys returned three weeks later, the father told Karen that he had spent the time living as a woman.
The couple separated in 1992. The father underwent a hair transplant, electrolysis, hormone treatments and psychotherapy. Karen filed for divorce in June 1993.
The father underwent sex-change surgery 71 days before the divorce trial. The couple divorced in St. Charles County in 1995.
Tuesday's appeals court ruling dealt with the divorce decree by St. Charles County Circuit Judge William T. Lohmar Jr. Lohmar gave Karen primary custody of the couple's sons but gave the father joint legal custody, which allowed the father unsupervised visitation for two weeks in the summer and on alternate holidays. Lohmar had said visitation could begin a year after the date of the decree.
But the children have not seen their father in four years. Karen lives in St. Charles, and Sharon lives in suburban Washington D.C.
"This is a unique situation, and it is imperative that evaluations of the parents and children are made prior to the children's face-to-face reunification with the father," Judge Paul Simon of the Missouri Court of Appeals wrote in the majority opinion.
Simon, joined by Presiding Judge Mary Rhodes Russell, gave the boys' mother sole legal custody and returned the case to St. Charles County Circuit Court for a hearing regarding visitation.
"If the trial court decides, after the hearing, that the children are not emotionally and mentally suited for physical contact with their father, then the trial court should not order visitation until such time as the parties demonstrate it is in the children's best interest to do so," Simon wrote. Efforts to reach the father's lawyer were unsuccessful Tuesday. The father can appeal the ruling to the full appellate court or ask that the case be transferred to the Missouri Supreme Court.
Karen's lawyer, Susan Hais, applauded the court's ruling.
"I think that in today's environment, when you have so many policy decisions that say gays have rights, everyone has rights, it takes a lot of courage to say these little boys have the right not to be exposed to a transsexual unless they have the capacity to handle it, regardless of the fact that this is their parent," Hais said.
In his dissent, Judge Kent Karohl noted that Lohmar had found the father "loving and caring" toward the boys, who "had a significant bond with their father."
Karohl added that he would have returned the entire case to St. Charles County for a trial on the issue of the parents' joint legal custody. When told of Tuesday's ruling, Karen cried, said Hais.
"I think she is very relieved for the boys." Related Mo. Court of Appeals Opinion/Order on this case