Rev Kenneth Miller may or may not have kidnapped a lesbian

[Valasca]

A Virginia pastor goes on trial this week on charges he helped a woman flee the country to avoid sharing custody of her daughter with her former lesbian partner.

46-year-old Kenneth L. Miller is a well known Mennonite pastor from Stuarts Draft, about 100 miles northwest of Richmond. The trial that begins Tuesday is expected to break new ground on a story involving same-sex partners, alleged abduction, and an international escapade.

Rev. Miller is pastor at the Pilgrim Church on the outskirts of the 9,000-person town. He's now on his way to Vermont, where his trial begins Tuesday.

Residents like Simon Schrock will be paying attention.

"And, frankly, there is some nervousness there. Because we don't know the outcome of these things," Schrock said Monday.

In 2009, Miller and other Mennonites helped move unrelated Lisa Miller and her then 7-year-old daughter Isabella from the U.S. to Nicaragua, prosecutors said. Before that, Lisa Miller had dissolved a civil union in Vermont with another woman. Prosecutors said she became an evangelical Christian, renounced the lesbian lifestyle, and broke-off visitation with her daughter's other legal mother.

Fearing the court would take her daughter Lisa Miller sought a way out, according to prosecutors. They allege Ken Miller drove Lisa and her daughter from Virginia to Buffalo, New York. From there, a report in the New York Times said the two took a taxi to Canada, then flew to Mexico City, el Salvador, and finally, Nicaragua - where they haven't been heard from in three years.

Back in Stuarts Draft, Simon said it's not the talk of the town yet... but that may change soon.

"I'm surprised that people whom we know would make international news. Frankly, we're small-town country people," Schrock said.

The trial is expected to shine new light on how the woman and the pastor met, how religion guided them, and maybe... just where is young Isabella, now?

Miller's family here declined to comment, and his attorneys did not speak to reporters in Vermont.

Rev. Miller faces up to three years in prison if convicted of aiding Lisa Miller's escape.

The trial is expected to last six days.

http://www.nbc12.com/story/19208906/...abduction-case

[AngelFire]

I clicked on this thread just because of the title. It reads like the start of a joke.

[Dakota Valkyrie]

A pastor from Virginia was convicted Tuesday of helping a woman flee the country three years ago, when she was on the brink of having to turn custody of her young daughter over to the woman who was once her partner in a Vermont civil union.

The jury issued its verdict against the Rev. Kenneth Miller after several hours of deliberations in the case, which has drawn broad attention because of the legal and religious questions it raised about same-sex unions and child custody, and because the whereabouts of mother and daughter remain unknown.
[...]

Kenneth and Lisa Miller are not related. Lisa and Isabella, now 10 years old, were last known to be in Nicaragua.

As the jury was deliberating, Jenkins filed a lawsuit against both Millers and other people associated with the case, seeking unspecified monetary damages.
[...]

"I am willing to accept the consequences of my actions," said Miller, who could spend three years in prison. "I am at peace with God. I am peace with my conscience and I give it over to God, and at the same time I respect the decision of the court."
[...]

The U.S. does not have an extradition treaty with Nicaragua. The country is not a signer of the 1980 Hague convention on international child abductions, which is designed to return children illegally taken from member countries.

Lisa Miller and Jenkins entered into a civil union in Vermont in 2000, shortly after the state became the first to legally recognize same-sex relationships. Miller conceived the child through artificial insemination, and both acted as parents.

Lisa Miller later became an evangelical Christian and renounced her homosexuality. A child-custody case went to Vermont family court in 2004, after the couple dissolved the civil union. Lisa Miller, who moved to Lynchburg, Va., was given primary custody of Isabella, with Jenkins given visitation rights.

Lisa Miller appealed the case for years, but ultimately the courts in Virginia and Vermont determined the case would be bound by the Vermont family court order. After defying visitation orders, Miller became a fugitive in 2009 when she disappeared with Isabella.
[...]

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/...4b7f005d25404f