SubGenius Mother Loses Son
A heartbreaking custody case that has been in litigation for years has ended in tragedy. Rachel “Rev. Magdalen” Bevilacqua’s son was absconded while on a visitation to the child’s father, and subsequently she was barred from all contact with her son after photos of her at an adults-only Subgenius event were submitted by her son’s father as proof that she was an unfit parent. The original judge in the case called Bevilacqua “perverted” and “mentally ill” before stepping down under a growing scrutiny of his actions, and the father drew out proceedings for as long as possible in hopes of wearing Bevilacqua down. Now an appeals judge has ruled against Rachel Bevilacqua, giving custody to the father.
Rachel Bevilacqua with her son.
“After originally being scheduled for June 22, the decision of the appeals court in the case of Rachel Bevilacqua (Reverend Magdalen) has been announced. In a brief two-page announcement, the court has awarded custody of her son to the father. Stating that the father “deserved” custody of Magdalen’s son, the court declared that the father’s home would be his primary residence, and the matter is being referred back to family court to arrange for visitation rights for Rachel. The decision cancels a number of paragraphs of the decision of Judge Eric Adams, in January 2007. However, it does not remove Judge Adams’ order for Rachel to remove all SubGenius materials from her home. Even though her son is no longer in her custody, she still cannot keep any SubGenius materials in her own home, except for a specially designated ‘office’.”
It is unclear what will happen at this point, Bevilacqua is mired in over 70,000 dollars in legal bills (click here if your interested in helping her out with those bills), and she may not be able to afford appealing to a higher court. No official statement by Bevilacqua has been made at this time.
Whatever the final outcome, this case has been emblematic of the ongoing issues Pagans and other minority religions face in divorce and custody cases. Often what a judge doesn’t understand (or approve of) will be used against a parent in court, leading to situations like Bevilacqua’s. The only real recourse in cases like these is to slowly educate the public, form coalitions, and fight like hell to be given equal treatment under law. Until then, we are left with mockeries of justice like this custody case, where a mother in punished for her associations.
11 responses so far
From what I know about the situation (which admittedly is mostly public secondhand reporting symathetic to Rachel’s POV) this is the wrong result.
I don’t think it would be right to deprive her of custody because of her SubGenius activities, as long as she could show that those activities were not harmful to her son’s development. I’m assuming that she did try to show that and should have prevailed in her showing, and that the court must have wrongly believed that her SubGenius involvement was harmful to the child.
However, if I had been in her situation, and if the legal system however wrongly were giving me clear signals that I could continue my association with an ironic parody “religion” or I could continue to enjoy custody of my son, but probably not both, I would have made a diffeent choice.
Well, now that I’ve read the family court judge’s decision and the appeals court decision, I’m not persuaded that the Church of the SubGenius was a significant factor in either the family court’s original award of custody to Rachel or the appeals court’s reversal. The family court judge who ruled for Rachel seems to have treated it only as a bizarre oddity, while the appeals court that ruled against her didn’t address it at all. I don’t see where a claim of religious dicrimination against her would arise.
Fausto,
I think that the entire proceedings has been tainted by her belonging to the SubGenius. The two most recent decisions, while better than the previous ones, still prohibit her from displaying or talking about the SubGenius with her son if she wants visitation rights.
Goddess, I was a single mom and I cannot imagine the pain of being separated from Son due to my religion. Luckily, that was never an issue w/ the first-ex-Mr. Hecate. America has such a shadow issue w/ religion, doesn’t it?
If it was indeed a religious reason for separating Rachel Bevilacqua from her son… this country was founded on religious freedom. The fundie Christer right has gone too far. I’m writing the judge and newspapers etc.
Why would she have talked about or displayed SubGenius materials to or around her son to begin with? It IS an over 18 group, for a reason. Much of the art is of a pornograpgic nature. The art that isn’t, and is satirical, puts the father’s religion is a negative light, so she would be wrong if her son viewed that. The court takes not speaking badly about either ex’s religion very seriously.
Not done looking through all the documents, but this looks less and less like religion had anything to do with custody.
Cara
Cara,
First off, the whole of the SubGenius material isn’t “over 18″. Unless you are saying that a “Bob” head is somehow adult content. Secondly, if you read through all the court documents you can see the husband twice used her affiliation with the SubGenius as a reason to award him custody. The fact is that this entire case has been tainted by introducing pictures of Rev. Magdalen from an adults-only event her son didn’t attend as “proof” of her unfitness. The fact that she is still banned from displaying anything SubGenius related in her home (except in a locked office) if she wants her son to visit points to discriminatory behavior right there.
Also, several faiths (including Christianity) put competing faiths in a “negative light”, yet I don’t see custody cases where this is brought up as a reason to affect custody. Nor do judges tell parents not to read sections of the Bible to their children that contain incest, rape, and mass-slaughter, and yet it happens all the time.
It may be that you are assuming an equality of belief within the court system that just doesn’t exist.
Yesterday Rev Stang posted this to alt.slack: http://tinyurl.com/35wm3p
“The last news I heard about the case, which from yesterday afternoon,
is that Mag’s lawyer will be filing an appeal immediately and isn’t
going to take “no” for an answer.
“I learned that what’s really behind a lot of this custody “battle” is
that the biological dad has for some time been telling the little boy
(now almost 12), “IF YOU GO BACK TO YOUR MOTHER, I’LL KILL MYSELF.”
Saying he’ll kill himself is apparently how he has managed to get
everything he wants so far. Magdalen was the one person who told this
guy, “I don’t believe you, and even if you do kill yourself, I DON’T
CARE.” And she was right. But the government and his mom believe he’ll
kill himself if he doesn’t get his way, and because of that, he’s
never had to work, or be anything but a whiney asshole. Amazing. I
should try that tack. “If you don’t buy my DVD, I’ll KILL MYSELF.”
There. I can just see the sale rolling in.”
Jason, you said,
The two most recent decisions, while better than the previous ones, still prohibit her from displaying or talking about the SubGenius with her son if she wants visitation rights.
Given the mature nature of the material (and not only sexually, but also cognitively), that doesn’t bother me. The decisions didn’t ban her from participating, only from exposing her son to it. The judge who imposed the condition also awarded her custody, after all. The appeals court that awarded custody to the father did so on the grounds of expert psychological testimony concerning the child’s emotional development, not for reasons having anything to do with her SubGenius activities.
I’m alarmed at the willingness of UUs lately to see oppression and persecution in so many places where it doesn’t really exist. It makes us seem unnecessarily strident and paranoid and harms the validity of our legitimate religious message. It’s a personal tragedy for Rachel to lose custody of her son, and it was a low tactic for the father to raise her SubGenius involvement, but after the first whackjob judge (who obviously was prejudiced) was removed from the case (because his unfair bias was rightly recognized), it appears to me that the religious angle to the case was handled fairly.
I should add that I don’t mean to imply that I agree with the result. The father certainly sounds like a total loser, and “Rev Stang”’s comments about him may be entirely right, and Rachel may well deserve custody (or perhaps not, if she’s been telling the boy that she doesn’t care if his father dies, or worse), but that issue is unrelated to the SubGenius issue.
Jason,
I’m still looking at documents which will take a while.
You are correct in saying that not all of the SubGenius material is of the “over 18″ type. But much of it is. It is a reasonable compromise that she keep the art in an area the child does not have access to. At least until he is older.
I could point you to many, many cases where custody was modified because the other parent was openly hostile, mocking, etc of the other parent’s religion. That is seen as damaging the parent/child relationship and is a big no-no. Likewise if one parent is really trashing another parent in front of the child.
Do parents get away with such horrible behavior? Yes, if they have a crappy judge.
I will throw out there…the judge did seem to put a large amount of weight on the child asking to live with the dad and not the mom. That, more than anything, seems to be what tipped the judge in the father’s direction.
as to equity of belief…most judges just plain don’t care what you believe or what you are into. They just want the parents to be adults. Judges hear so much wild stuff – things you can’t believe. One guy who wanted custody admitted in court to screwing his cows. He got custody because he was the better parent, if you can believe that. It didn’t even really phase the judge too much. But that is a generalization of judges. There are some great ones, mostly ok ones, and some bad ones.
Cara