Dad JEAN PHILIPPE LACOMBE embodies the kind of abuser dad who uses child custody as a way to terrorize his ex-wife and child. Scamming the police to abduct your kid for you at gunpoint is not something a loving or protective parent does. Period.
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Jean Paul custody case gets new hearing
By Craig Kapitan - Express-News
Web Posted: 10/15/2010 12:00 AM CDT
A state district judge chastised the father of Jean Paul Lacombe on Thursday for making “a mockery” of the Texas court system, but also gave the father's attorneys a new chance to argue their case in the international custody dispute.
The legal team for Jean Philippe Lacombe, a dual citizen of Mexico and France wanted in the United States on kidnapping and perjury charges, had argued the father wasn't properly notified of a court hearing this summer.
In that hearing in August, Judge Larry Noll ruled that Mexican court documents gave mother Berenice Diaz rightful custody of the boy, 11.
Neither Jean Philippe Lacombe nor his attorneys appeared in court for that hearing. A week later, a French tribunal issued a similar decision.
Noll agreed to put his earlier ruling on hold after the father's attorneys argued that notice of the hearing was delivered to the wrong attorney.
No date has been set for the new hearing.
Neither parent — nor the boy — showed up in Noll's courtroom for the ruling Thursday.
Jean Paul Lacombe, however, waited on another floor of the Bexar courthouse. He wanted to meet with the judge in private, without lawyers for either side present, his mother's attorneys told the judge.
“No matter what my father pays his lawyers, I'll never go back with him,” Jean Paul Lacombe said outside the courthouse as his mother and her attorneys stood nearby. “I don't feel safe with him.”
Noll declined to immediately meet with the child, but the request is pending.
Jean Paul Lacombe mentioned last October, when deputy constables pulled him off his school bus as he cried for help, as a reason he feels unsafe with his father.
A day earlier, his father had convinced state District Judge Sol Casseb III to give him emergency custody of the boy until a hearing could be held days later to determine which parent had been granted custody by the Mexican court system.
After retrieving the boy, however, the father left the country instead of appearing in court.
The judge also angrily mentioned the bus incident and the father's disappearance throughout the hearing, which began Oct. 4.
Failure to appear “was an abuse of court systems of this state that cannot be overlooked or condoned,” Noll said as he read his ruling. “He will not be allowed to engage in a snatch-and-run episode without consequences.”
Jean Philippe Lacombe's attorneys also asked the judge to rule that Mexico — not Bexar County — had the proper jurisdiction for such a hearing. The judge denied the request, saying the father is the one who initiated the legal process in Texas.
Outside the courtroom, both sides said they were satisfied with the judge's ruling.
“Judges haven't yet heard both sides of the story,” said former state District Judge Lori Massey, who represents the father.
The French tribunal used Noll's ruling in part to reach its decision, she said. Noll's final ruling, she added, “is going to have ripple effects in France and Mexico.”
Massey said it hasn't been decided if Jean Philippe Lacombe will return to the United States for the next hearing. But attorneys can try the case without him and given his legal situation, his appearance seems unlikely, she has indicated.
Attorneys Miguel Ortiz and Steve Cichowski, who represent Diaz, said Noll will have the same facts the French tribunal did and should reach the same conclusion.
Giving the father “one more chance to come into the court and tell his side of the story ... is the best thing that could happen for both parties,” Cichowski said. “If he is serious about the best interest of this child, I would definitely think he would show up.”
Regardless, Jean Paul Lacombe said Thursday that he hopes the ordeal can end soon, and that he can stay in San Antonio.
“I just want to live peacefully like a normal kid in America,” he said.