Gregory Kingsley
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Gregory Shawn Kingsley was born in Missouri, USA on June 28, 1980 to Ralph Kingsley, Senior and Rachel Kingsley. The eldest of three children, he has two brothers Jeremiah (b. 1982) and Zachary. Gregory made legal history in America when he took steps to divorce himself from his neglectful parents.[1]
Ralph was estranged from his family when the three children were very young and Rachel had custodial rights over their sons. After proving herself to be a neglectful parent who was involved in drugs and who frequently shunted the children to Ralph or left them unattended, Rachel voluntarily put Gregory and Jeremiah into foster care in 1990 before she relocated to Orlando, Florida with her youngest son. Gregory ended up being placed at Lake County Boys' Ranch, a care home for boys.[2] It was here that Gregory met George Russ, an attorney volunteering at the home, and the two struck a friendship. Russ empathised with the child's plight as he himself had an unsettled childhood. In October 1991, he and his wife Lizabeth agreed to foster Gregory, bringing him to live with their eight biological children. To further highlight his disconnection from his biological parents, Gregory took on the name Shawn.
In 1992, with the support of the Russ family, Gregory took steps to legally divorce his parents after deciding he now had a settled life with his foster family and did not wish to be uprooted again. He became known in the media as 'Gregory K'. On June 9, Judge Thomas Kirk deemed that Gregory had the same rights as an adult to fight for his own interests and ruled that the child could file his petition for divorce. On September 25, after a two-day trial that was televised, Judge Kirk ruled that Gregory had been neglected and abandoned by Ralph and Rachel Kingsley and terminated their parental rights before awarding fulled custody of the boy to the George and Lizabeth Russ.[3] After winning the case, he was presented with a t-shirt that had the name 'Shawn Russ' printed on it as well as the number 9 to show he was the Russ' ninth child.[4]
Gregory's case inspired Kimberley Mays, a seventeen-year-old girl who was switched at birth in 1978 in the hospital she was born in, to take similiar legal measures to divorce herself from her biological parents Ernest and Regina Twigg, who were trying to sue for full custody of her when she wanted to remain with Robert Mays, the man who raised her as his daughter.
The Gregory K case has been portrayed in two made-for-television films: Switching Parents, which starred Joseph Gordon-Levitt as Gregory and A Place to Be Loved where Tom Guiry undertook the role of Gregory.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Answers.com (2007-01-01). Children's Rights. Retrieved on 2007-03-09.
- ^ World Amanac Video (2002-01-01). Landmark Trials of Modern Ethics. Retrieved on 2007-03-09.
- ^ Brainy History (2007-01-01). September 25, 1992 in History. Retrieved on 2007-03-09.
- ^ Time Magazine (1992-05-10). A Child Asserts His Legal Rights. Retrieved on 2007-03-09.
