Jury to Hear Batey’s ‘Necessity’ Defense

It will be up to a jury to decide whether a fundamentalist Christian woman’s fears that her young son would be exposed to sex, drugs and violence in the home of his homosexual father justified her defying a court order and spiriting the boy into hiding for 19 months, a San Diego County Superior Court judge ruled Tuesday.

Overriding prosecution objections, Judge Douglas Woodworth said defense lawyers for the woman, Betty Lou Batey of San Diego, may present evidence that she had reason to be worried about how her ex-husband, Frank Batey, would treat their son, Brian, in his Palm Springs home.

In a case that has drawn national attention as an emotional, ethical and religious square-off, Betty Batey is charged with two counts of felony child-stealing for disappearing with Brian from August, 1982, until April, 1984.

“The defense’s contention . . . is that she reasonably believed there was an emergency consisting of the impending sexual abuse of her flesh and blood child if the child was permitted to go into the household of the father,” Woodworth ruled.

“If juries have any function at all in our system of justice, they should be allowed to consider a defense of this kind,” the judge said. “This is the ultimate in jury issues, as to whether the state of mind of the defendant in a case of this kind was such that she could not have committed a criminal act.”

The ruling means Betty Batey’s lawyers--who are representing her on behalf of the fundamentalist Concerned Women for America, headed by evangelist Beverly LaHaye--will be free in court to explore the environment in the home Frank Batey shares with a male lover.

But Woodworth withheld a ruling on whether the defense lawyers can call as witnesses purported experts on homosexuality and on the nature of relationships between homosexual men and young boys.

“I don’t think any such testimony has been allowed in the California courts,” Woodworth said.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Boles had sought to block the defense’s use in the latest proceedings of the so-called “defense of necessity,” saying it would turn the felony case into a trial of Frank Batey’s life style rather than Betty Batey’s conduct.

The sensitive nature of the issues to be raised in the case was clear as jury selection began Thursday afternoon. Farris repeatedly asked prospective jurors whether they knew or were related to either any homosexuals or any fundamentalists, and asked if they had strong feelings about the idea of a homosexual man having custody of a young boy.

The Bateys were both members of the United Pentecostal Church in San Diego when they were married in 1969. Brian was born two years later, and the couple was divorced in 1975. They haggled in court over custody of the boy until August, 1982, when a judge granted custody to Frank Batey.

Betty Batey then disappeared with Brian during their first weekend visit after the change of custody, resurfacing to turn herself in to the FBI 19 months later in Denver.

She was jailed for two weeks after being held in civil contempt for defying a San Diego judge’s custody order. The felony child-stealing charges carry a maximum penalty of three years in prison.