Elizabeth Morgan case

The Elizabeth Morgan case was a local and international child custody contest between Elizabeth Morgan and Eric Foretich over their daughter, Hilary Antonia Foretich. It lasted from 1983 to 1997. The custody contest took place in Washington, D.C., and later in Christchurch, New Zealand. It cost the parties over $4 million in legal fees. The trials created more than 4,000 pages of transcripts. Over 1,000 news, magazine and legal articles about the case were published.

Custody struggle
Hilary Antonia Foretich (born 1982), later known as Ellen Morgan, was at the center of this well-publicized international custody case. 

Elizabeth Morgan had alleged that Foretich had sexually abused their daughter, an accusation that he has denied and that has never been proved in court.

In 1987, Hilary's maternal grandparents took her to New Zealand, defying a court order that Hilary have unsupervised visitation with her father, Eric Foretich. Her mother, plastic surgeon Elizabeth Morgan, spent 25 months in detention from 1987 to 1989 for contempt of court in Washington, D.C., for refusing to reveal Hilary's whereabouts.

Morgan was Foretich's third wife. Foretich's second wife had also accused him of sexual abuse of their daughter, Heather (born 1980). Foretich denied those charges and has repeatedly said the two women have acted in collusion.

Rep. Frank Wolf of Virginia introduced the bill that became the District of Columbia Civil Contempt Imprisonment Limitation Act in 1989. Elizabeth Morgan was freed after 759 days by an Act of Congress, the District of Columbia Civil Contempt Imprisonment Limitation Act, in 1989 and joined her daughter and parents in New Zealand.

In 1992, the story of the case was made into a television film and released as A Mother's Right: The Elizabeth Morgan Story. Foretich sued ABC, which paid him a settlement related to how he was portrayed in the film.

Foretich searched for and found "Ellen" in Christchurch, New Zealand, then traveled there and attempted to gain some custody of his daughter. But the courts there maintained the status quo, and Foretich claimed that he could no longer financially afford to pursue the matter.

Return to the United States
In 1996, Congress passed the Elizabeth Morgan Act, which permitted Hilary, who by then called herself Ellen Morgan, to decide whether or not to see her father. Rep. Wolf again involved himself in the case when he supported the bill that became the Elizabeth Morgan Act.

The 14-year-old "Ellen" returned with her mother to the United States, but declined to see her father.  Foretich sued in 1997, and the law was overturned as a bill of attainder by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in 2003. But this had no practical effect on Ellen, who was by then 21 and could choose for herself whether or not to see her father.  Hilary Foretich, who had gone by the assumed name Ellen Morgan while in New Zealand, started calling herself Elena Mitrano, the surname her maternal grandfather had before he changed it.

References

Cited texts

Category:Trials in the United States
Category:20th century in law
Category:20th century in Washington, D.C.
Category:20th century in New Zealand