Last February, I wrote about Shaoqiang He, a Chinese citizen and former graduate student at the University of Memphis who was expelled in 1998 after a woman student accused him of fondling her. When He lost his graduate stipend, he and his wife could not care for their baby daughter--so they placed her (temporarily, they thought) in foster care while they worked jobs in Chinese restaurants and awaited He's trial.

He was acquitted at the trial--the accusations made against him were found to be baseless. But that did not mark the end of his nightmare. Having been denied due process by UM, he remained expelled from his graduate program. Worse, his daughter's foster family decided to begin formal adoption proceedings. Fighting the foster family for custody in turn became the only thing between him and deportation.

Now the custody battle is over, and the foster family has won. The Hes have been declared unfit to raise their daughter, and no longer have any parental rights. They are to return to China soon and will most likely never see their daughter again.

The case itself sounds like a complicated one--the Hes do not appear to have proved themselves to be the most stable or honest of people, at least according to the article linked here. But it is worth remembering that whatever the courts may have determined about their "fitness" (whatever, in other words, the foster family's lawyer managed to do in the way of tactical smearing), the issue of parental fitness would not have been raised without the false accusation that sent the He family into a financial and emotional tailspin six years ago. The hell the Hes are living now was created by the combined, corrupt efforts of the woman who accused He of something he did not do and the university administrators who denied him due process when they took her accusations as evidence of his guilt.

More and more colleges and universities are setting up sexual misconduct policies designed to facilitate this very process. In the name of encouraging self-identified victims to come forward, and of making them feel safe and supported when doing so, schools are writing policies that give accusers way more credit than they are due while denying the accused the most basic components of due process (the right to face their accuser, the right to a fair hearing, the right to be treated as innocent until proven guilty). So invested do students, faculty, and administrators become in such policies that attempts to bring them into line with basic principles of fairness--not to mention individual rights--can meet with strenuous resistance. Case in point: Harvard, where a revised policy requiring that accusers actually be able to corroborate their claims caused a massive outcry and even drew a lawsuit. Another case in point: Duke, where the sexual misconduct policy was recently rewritten with the express purpose of increasing the number of sexual misconduct cases that are filed each year at the school.

The He's case is an extreme instance of a much larger pattern of malfeasance, one that is being wilfully enabled by administrators eager to prove how progressive their school is when it comes to fighting violence against women. The Wachowski brothers really should make a movie about it all.

Thanks to Steven Den Beste for the tip.

Call me mean-spirited, but I think most foreign students aren't worth the time or trouble. At least one graduate dept. at CalTech has stopped admitting anyone from China because of the rampant cheating and false transcripts.
I think the court was wrong about the baby, but I doubt that the school will miss this guy.

The baby has been with the foster family since she was 3 weeks old? Huh? WHo decides that a 3 week old baby is too costly to keep? And even though this guy has a bunch of degrees in business, the best he can do is working at a chop suey joint? Something is wrong here.
I think that too take the little girl away from the only family she's ever known and send her to China would be traumatic in the extreme. It's horrible for the Hes, but think how distressed Anna Mae would be.

In terms of jobs, the guy probably had visa problems - he'd be on a student visa, I imagine. And when one is looking for good jobs, it doesn't help much when one is a foreign student who was expelled for misbehavior (whether he did it or not).

Erin, I don't think this story was about false accusations ruining Jack He's life. The social worker at the time the child was put into foster care was under the clear impression that the Hes did not want her. The judge, looking at the timeline, believed that the Hes started making noises about custody every time deportation hearings were scheduled. This was a tough case but I think the judge made the right call.

Laura,

I am not passing judgement on the judge's call. Among other things, at this point the child has lived with the foster family for so long that it is the only family she has ever known, and it would clearly be hugely disruptive to take her from it. What I am interested in with this post is the domino effect commenced with the false accusation. The precise nature of the dominos are secondary, and vary from one case to the next--Adam Lack (falsely accused at Brown in the mid-1990s) and David Schaer (falsely accused at Brandeis in the late 1990s) have different stories with different dominos. But their lives also entered the twilight zone when someone on campus played fast and loose with accusations of sexual misconduct.

"He was acquitted at the trial--the accusations made against him were found to be baseless."

The fact that he was acquitted doesn't necessarily mean that the accusations were "baseless." It just means that the proof was not strong enough to convict on. College students are often disciplined based on evidence that would not necessarily be up to the "guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" standard. For example, I'm sure there are plenty of academic integrity cases where, though the charges are not "baseless," the evidence (the TA or prof sees a kid looking at his neighbor's paper, his word against the kid's) might not convince a jury.

Perhaps the charges against He were baseless, but none of the articles I've seen so far have commented on the specifics of the charges, nor on the evidence offered to support them. Although legally everyone is "innocent until proven guilty," you can't really make a FACTUAL assertion of innocence or "baseless"ness without knowing the facts. That being said, if I missed something in the articles, feel free to point me to it.

"What I am interested in with this post is the domino effect commenced with the false accusation."

Well, I'm not so sure it did. Jack He might be shotgunnning every reason he can think of. I don't see the connection between a false accusation and voluntarily giving up a child at 3 weeks of age to a foreign government. To put it bluntly, I would die first. I can't believe the Chinese culture is so different. I know it's different, but I don't believe it's that different.

OK, I had to dig back to find this. If you want to read the article you'll have to register, but you know you can go to www.bugmenot.com and get a username and password.

"An adoption agency official testified Thursday in a bitter custody case that a new Chinese mother was hesitant to give up the child for adoption, although her husband seemed willing.

"Diane Chunn, executive director of Mid-South Christian Services, said her agency arranged 90 days of free foster care for Anna Mae He after her birth in January 1999.

"Anna Mae's birth mother, Qin Luo 'Casey' He, did not want to go forward with adoption. So in June 1999, Casey He and her husband, Shaoqiang 'Jack' He, privately gave temporary legal custody to suburban banker Jerry and Louise Baker, the foster parents they had met through Mid-South."

...

"Chunn said the Hes approached her agency in late 1998 asking about possible adoption. Jack He, then a graduate student at the University of Memphis, wanted to place the baby for adoption because he felt the infant might have suffered ill effects after his wife was injured during an assault late in her pregnancy, Chunn said."

http://www.commercialappeal.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_2686984,00.html

Well, if he planned to go back to China, I'll bet he figured on having a boy the next time. Baby girls are abandoned in the streets in China, and while I'm not suggesting that this man had that mind-set, but his actions don't seem to be those of a delighted new father.

Another mouth to feed when you are on dire straits - I don't think displeased is too harsh a word. However, that does not necessarily mean that the child is not welcome to a family. In fact, the mother wishes to keep the child, while the father wasn't so keen. It is easy for those who have lived well to critise those who have to live without.

It is should also be pointed out that it is a Chinese custom that sometimes if a young family find it difficult to cope financially, the child is "given" to a family for care until they are able to look after their child again. The child will recognize both parents.

In Australia, there has been a movie made about Aboriginal children forcibly adopted into foster homes, who finally escaped and walked 500miles back to their families. I can't see this case in any different light.

The little girl will one day want to know how the cost to her identity and her religion could be justified - because a judge decided that the country she was returning to was not fit for her. China may not be the greatest country in the world today, but who says it will not overtake the US by the time she grows up?

If the Bakers had truely the best interests of the girl at heart, they would have let her lived with their real parents, and given some financial support for them in China. It costs much less, and the money will go a long way. The girl will remain Chinese and identify as a Chinese.

ps. to "mean spirited". I don't think you are worth the time or trouble.

From what I've read so far, I think the Hes should be allowed to stay in this country as compensation for the hell they have endured at the hands of the so-called justice system.

Yes, I agree that it would be too traumatic to the child to tear her away from the only family she has ever known, but whose fault is it that the custody battle dragged out until she was 5? She should have been returned to the Hes as soon as they tried to get her back, 4 years ago.

Some of the things cited as evidence of the Hes' parental unfitness were hair-raisingly bizarre. The father lied about his income on a form. Oh my. Let's take the kids away from everyone who's ever done that. The mother became hysterical when she saw her child in a public place with her adoptive parents. How dare she!

At the moment I am considering writing about this case. Erin, is there any way to find out what happened at trial, and on what kind of evidence the university dismissed He? I can understand that a person can be dismissed on the kind of evidence that wouldn't necessarily prove their guilt in court, but given the state of "feminist" fascism in many universities today, it is entirely possible that the case was bogus.

Like another poster, I also don't understand part of the language in this: "...--the accusations made against him were found to be baseless." Perhaps they were baseless, but I too don't see how this follows from an acquittal, which is all I get from reading the links, and which may mean nothing more than in a he-said, she-said situation the jury could not find guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. As for the custody case itself, the articles are also a little short of material to base a fit or unfit judgement on, but what is presented seems a rather weak basis, to say the least, for terminating someone's parental rights, especially since the couple appears to have two other children, and there is no suggestion they are unfit to raise them. Just from what is written it also seems to me the university acted improperly. Some of the other comments here do not seem very relevant. But I will say that the language used to report this story is typical PC media nonsense -- someone who surely came here on a student visa (?) is said to be an "immigrant", then we are told later his "visa" has been revoked and he is to be deported. Lastly, I recall reading not all that long ago an article in a major newspaper telling how more than 90% of Chinese student visa holders never bother to return to China.

Dr. No,

I have deleted your comment, recorded your IP address, and banned it. Nasty and insinuating comments about my private business are not welcome on this site, nor are you. You are clearly someone connected to Penn English. Based on the style of your email, I have a very good idea of who you are. So, if you have something you want to say to me, stop playing immature anonymous games and say it under your own name, in an appropriate forum.

I'll be interested to see the final paper someone does on this.

BTW, it appears that Philosophy programs differ a little from humanities.

http://webapp.utexas.edu/blogs/archives/bleiter/001241.html

You want to read about PC in business:

http://themonkeyboylovescheese.mu.nu/archives/027459.html

It also is (or used to be) common Hawai'i for children to live with extended family members. I was told some years ago that there is even allowance for this in the insurance industry.

I am an american living in China. I think what I have published about the he family trials speaks for itself.

Here are URL's for 4 articles I have publishedhttp://www.biblicalrecorder.org/content/opinion/2004/8_6_2004/th060804what.shtml

http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2004/0701/vo2-1.html

http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2004/0722/vo2-2.html

http://app1.chinadaily.com.cn/star/2004/0805/vo2-2.html

On June 11th a discussion of the case that I took part in aired on China Central televisions flagship discussion program Dialog.
It can be used by going to the following webpage, rightclick on the camera icon and open using realplayer.
http://www.cctv.com/program/e_dialogue/20040811/101666.shtml

Thanks
Bob Lackman
Ocean University of CHina computer science PhD foreign expert teacher since August 1998