Cameroonian girl's parents blamed Pair shipped daughter despite risk, judge told September 15, 2000 <BY ERIN LEE MARTIN HelveticaFREE PRESS STAFF WRITER A Cameroonian teen enslaved for three years in Farmington Hills was first a victim of her parents, a judge was told Thursday. Prosecutors and social workers from the Michigan Family Independence Agency told Oakland County Circuit Judge Joan Young that the teen's parents should have known better than to ship their daughter across the world to live with strangers. For three years they never called or wrote, and they haven't asked the girl to come home, prosecutor Deborah Carley said. Police arrested Joseph and Evelyn Djoumessi on July 26, five months after the girl confided her plight to a neighbor in Farmington Hills. The Djoumessis are in the Oakland County Jail awaiting trial on kidnapping and child abuse charges. He is also accused of raping the girl. But blaming the parents for the crimes would be unfair, said Loren Dickstein, a Farmington Hills attorney representing the girl's father. Dickstein said social workers had made only minimal efforts to inform the parents of their daughter's plight. Since gaining her freedom and moving to a Pontiac foster home, the girl has not told her parents about the rapes or beatings, Dickstein said. The family's attempts to get in touch with her earlier may have been intercepted by the Djoumessis, he said. The girl, who said she always tried to call her parents, told the judge her letters home had not gotten through. Her father believed she was being educated and seemed surprised when she told him she was not in school in Farmington Hills during a brief phone conversation, she said quietly. "The last thing David Fru heard was that his daughter was safe, that she had a home in Pontiac, and that she was in school," Dickstein said. Betty Lowenthal, a family law attorney assigned to represent the interests of the girl, said she would like to see parental rights terminated. Becoming a ward of the state would make it easier for the girl to settle in Michigan and get an education, Lowenthal said. The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is investigating whether the Djoumessis used a forged birth certificate and fraudulently obtained the girl's green card. If it is found that the card was issued under false pretenses, it is invalid and she could be deported. Contact ERIN LEE MARTIN at 248-591-5627 or <emartin@freepress.com. _______________________________________________ Stop-traffic mailing list Stop-traffic@friends-partners.org http://fpmail.friends-partners.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/stop-traffic