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Ex-model's nightmare
18/09/2006 11:47 - (SA)
Sonja Carstens, Rapport
Pretoria - Former model Linda Berger, 36, has been ordered by the Pretoria High Court to take her son Liam, 3, back to California in the US, within 30 days.
The court found that she would have to continue with divorce and custody proceedings in the US, where Liam was born.
If she does not go back, she has to give her son to a family advocate within 24 hours who will take him to his American father.
Berger described her son as "her life" and said she had no more tears left.
'This is a nightmare'
"This is like a nightmare from which I can't wake up," she told Rapport tearfully.
"I know my husband loves our son very much, but this is all about ruining my life by taking my child."
The beautiful woman is involved in a bitter legal fight with her husband Howard Berger, 46, to get custody of Liam, who understands and speaks little English.
Her husband, also known as Hall, has spent the last couple of months in SA where he is being watched over by bodyguards, who have been helping him understand his Afrikaans-speaking son.
He claims his wife kidnapped his son when she came back to SA in January 2005, with a one-way ticket and $42 in her handbag. Liam was 14 months old at the time and they went to stay with her parents on their game farm, Evangelina Game Ranch, in Limpopo.
Counting against her, is the fact that she did not take all her clothes when she left the couple's home in Los Angeles.
According to her husband, she would have returned to the US in April. He says he allowed her to stay on in SA as she had just suffered a miscarriage.
Marriage counselling
He called on the Hague Convention against the international kidnapping of children, which SA recognises.
Counting in his favour, is an earlier ruling by the Constitutional Court that in the long term, it is in the child's best interest that the country where the child was born, should decide its fate.
Linda Berger said her husband knew she was not coming back to the US. She said proof of this was that he took her and Liam off as dependants on his medical aid and did not keep his word about settling the family in SA.
"I wanted my marriage to work. During his visits in SA, we went to a marriage counsellor where he promised me the moon and the stars. But every time he went back to the US, the story changed and he denied having an agreement with me," she said.
She was first to file for divorce in SA. She claims he tried to avoid being handed the summons, hired a private detective to stay at her parents' game farm and then went back to the US, where he filed a separate motion for a divorce.
This started the legal battle about which court should hear the divorce matter and should decide about the child's future.
'Ruining her parents'
The Pretoria High Court has decided Linda and Liam must go back to the US, but her husband has to pay her legal fees, accommodation and maintenance until the case has been resolved.
"For every dollar he has, I need R7. It is busy ruining my parents (Johan and Dora Volschenk)."
"For him this is about power and he must be the winner. For me, it is about my child, my life, which he wants to take away."
"He forgot long ago, that it has to be about what is best for Liam. At the moment my parents and I look after Liam while he plays carefree on a game farm. My husband would rather have a nanny look after his child while he works long hours."
Her last hope is an appeal against the latest court ruling.
- Rapport
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