By Michael Miner
Kirchner loses the early rounds, but eventually the Illinois Supreme Court grants him custody of his son. In April 1995 the four-year-old boy is separated from the Warburtons and their biological son, who’s seven years old. The Kirchners take him home, and he becomes Danny Kirchner. In January 1997 Otakar Kirchner moves out, leaving Danny with Daniela Kirchner. In June Daniela, with the support of her estranged husband, petitions the court to void the consent she’d signed in 1991 surrendering her son. In July she attempts to withdraw her petition, but Circuit Judge Gay-Lloyd Lott says no.
Unfortunately Tempo is printed a day before the paper it appears in, and because of this delay Greene’s column was out of date by the time it hit the streets. The Metro section of the same edition reported that the Illinois Supreme Court had already intervened, asking Judge Lott to explain in writing why he hadn’t allowed Daniela Kirchner to withdraw her petition. The home visit was postponed. (This week the court reversed Lott, allowing Daniela to withdraw her petition and canceling the home visit.)
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“‘I think,’ he said in court Monday, ‘when you put this case back in court, you put everything back on the table.’
The next day editorial columnist R. Bruce Dold jumped into the Baby Richard tangle like a cane cutter swinging a machete. Chop–the boy should have stayed with the Warburtons. Chop–the supreme court ruling giving him to the Kirchners was terrible, and James Heiple’s petulant opinion made it even worse. Chop–Otakar Kirchner has acted like a “lout.” Chop–but the boy’s lived with the Kirchners for two years now. Chop–like it or not, the old arguments for leaving him with the Warburtons are now arguments for leaving him with the Kirchners. Chop–so let the boy get on with his life. “The courts have played cruel tricks on Danny Kirchner, and the courts can’t undo the damage.”
Anyway, Dold’s wasn’t the last word. Last Sunday psychiatrist Bennett Leventhal and psychologist Lauren Wakschlag of the University of Chicago contributed an essay to the Perspective section. Both had been involved in the Baby Richard case early on, opposing his transfer from the Warburtons to the Kirchners. “Richard lost the first round,” they mourned, describing his change of households as a “full-fledged catastrophe.” Now they had a suggestion to make: “We can only guess how well he might have coped with his torture. But it might not be a bad idea to check.”
