Global Rumblings: 73 year-old Grandmother needs our Help and Prayers!

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/061607/met_177802646.shtml

What a nightmare for her - and her family! Her grandkids call her "Mom" because she's had custody of them for a long time, now she's been separated from them and thrown in jail and now has no funds to resolve this. Her social security is cut off, her house is verging on foreclosure now.

deexxoo

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Last modified 6/15/2007 - 11:58 pm
Originally created 061607

An extended European vacation with her grandkids has become a nightmare.
By Dana Treen, The Times-Union

YULEE - Years ago as one half of the famed DeJohn Sisters, a young Mary Ann Barcaro shared the stage with Dick Clark, Kenny Rogers and Ed Sullivan.

Barcaro has kept the letters her grandchildren have been sending to her.

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Now at 73, she shares a room inside the Nassau County jail with drug users and check kiters. She has been there two months for taking her grandchildren to Europe to see their father and not bringing them back. She has had custody for years and said she notified the authorities of her plans in advance.

Two weeks after she left, the children's mother, Lisa Barcaro, filed a complaint. She said her former in-laws violated terms of visitation rights, which called for hour-long supervised visits at least once a month. Mary Ann Barcaro returned to the U.S. alone - nearly a year later - to answer the complaint and an ensuing warrant. She said she could not afford to bring the entire family back at that point.

That resulted in charges of absconding with the children and fleeing the United States, and she was ordered held without bail until the children are returned.

How long she will remain in jail comes down to two choices: Either the judge will have to change his mind or Barcaro will have to change hers and bring back the kids. She remains adamant, though, that she will leave them in France with their father and grandfather so long as there's a danger of them being taken from her.

Barcaro - half of a pop-tune sister act that found success in the 1950s with such hits as [My Baby Don't Love Me] No More - has been jailed since April. She said she has learned to cope with three-minute meals and solitary confinement. She sits in a red jumpsuit reserved for inmates who cannot be bailed out.

She also remains adamant she has done nothing so wrong she should be jailed with no chance of bail.

"I'm 73 years old and I'm being held hostage," she said Tuesday from behind a thick glass window in a jailhouse interview room.

Vacation gone wrong

The path to Nassau County Judge Robert M. Foster's courtroom began in May 2006, when Barcaro and her husband left for Europe, taking their 8-year-old grandson and his 7-year-old sister for an extended vacation.

The couple have had custody of the children since 2002 because neither their son, James, nor his ex-wife complied with a state plan to reunify the family, according to a case record provided by the grandmother.

Social workers wrote that neither of the parents proved they had jobs, had complied with drug testing requirements or evaluations or taken required anger management or parenting courses. They divorced, and James Barcaro eventually moved to Le Pellerin, France.

With rent income from their house on the wooded south end of Amelia Island and a mobile home in Yulee supplementing their Social Security checks, Mary Ann and Tony Barcaro flew to Rome with plans to meet with their son. She said the family had return tickets for August. Before leaving, she said she wrote child protection authorities that she was taking an extended vacation.

After the children's mother filed the complaint, arrest warrants were issued for the grandparents. Their Social Security checks were cut off. Mary Ann Barcaro said that with no money and little to which to return, they stayed in France. The children, Zachary and Melody, enrolled in school in France.

On April 9, Mary Ann Barcaro returned to Florida on a discount ticket arranged by a friend. The others stayed behind. She said she had hoped to work out an arrangement with the court, and the next morning was outside Foster's office.

"I was never able to talk to him to explain anything," she said. "Ten minutes later, they came with shackles. I did not even speak to Judge Foster."

A mother speaks out

Lisa Barcaro said Thursday she has mixed feelings about her former mother-in-law's plight. While she empathizes with the emotions of being jailed, she said the grandmother caused her own downfall.

"I feel for her because I've been in that position. I've been in jail," she said. But "she made her choice."

She also sees a more nefarious plot in the European vacation. She believes the plan was to take the children overseas and away from her permanently, something Mary Ann Barcaro denies.

Lisa Barcaro said she was trying to get visitation rules changed when everything started to happen.

"Basically, what happened is she skipped out," she said.

Lisa Barcaro returned to Nassau County after her release from state prison in May 2005. She served a 15-month sentence for battery on a law enforcement official and for driving on a suspended license. She is trying to get disability for back problems and wants to see custody of her children changed to someone in her family.

In the wake, she said she fears the situation has soured her children.

"They are so mad at me, that I put their grandma in jail," she said. "I didn't put their grandmother in jail."

Losing everything

Foster, the man who did put her in jail, is not talking. A woman who answered the phone in his chambers Thursday said the judge would decline to talk about the case. A representative of his office did return a voice message left Friday but said Foster would not comment because of the nature of the case.

In late May, the judge refused to provide a court-paid attorney for Mary Ann Barcaro, writing "... if the children are produced, the grandmother can be released."

Barcaro said she will not return them out of fear Foster will place them in foster care.

"I will not do that unless there is no question that the children remain in my custody," she said. "I don't trust Judge Foster."

Attorney Phyllis Wiley, who briefly represented Mary Ann Barcaro, said the order keeping the grandmother in jail is baffling.

"She does not have the funds to bring the kids back, and she is losing everything," Wiley said. "The judge says she has the keys to her release, and I disagree."

Fighting for her freedom

Mary Ann Barcaro's situation has gathered support from friends both inside - where many of the other inmates call her "mom" - and outside.

"She's very tired," said Marian Simon. "She's beginning to develop a cough."

Simon has known Barcaro for about 25 years and said she is concerned about her friend's welfare. Simon's husband is pastor of Spirit and Truth Ministries in Tavernier in the Florida Keys, where Mary Ann and Tony Barcaro were among the initial congregants.

The Simons and others have raised money to keep the Barcaros afloat, this week paying the mortgage on their Amelia Island house through July. Simon said the house was within a day of facing foreclosure.

Others said Barcaro is resolute about the fate of her grandchildren.

"I'm telling you, she won't let them go to a stranger's home," said retired teacher Vicki Swindell, who has known Barcaro for three decades. "That's how long she'll stay."

Barcaro said she has come to depend on the support while she tries to resolve the situation or at least gets another judge to review her case.

"I am very needy right now and they are coming to my need," she said.

But she also acknowledges being strong-minded and said she plans to endure.

"I'm not negotiating," she said. "I want my freedom and I want my children returned."

dana.treen@jacksonville.com,

(904) 359-4091

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