Kantaras: Wife wanted to take kids away

 

By Matt Bean
Court TV

A transsexual at the center of a Florida custody battle testified Wednesday that despite his wife's attempts to sabotage his relationship with his two children, he simply wasn't going to let them slip away.

"Why fight it? Why not let Linda take the children and just walk away?" lawyer Collin Vauss asked his client, Michael Kantaras.

"Because those are my children. I made a committment to Matthew and Irina both the day that they that were born to provide love and caring and financial stability and emotional stability, to teach them how to be a good person," said Kantaras.

"I love my children. I would never ever want my children to feel that I did not love them or that I would ever abandon them," he added, shaking his head. "I couldn't live with that."

A deliberate campaign of alienation by his former wife, Linda Kantaras, did indeed push the children away, Michael Kantaras and his lawyers charge. In a case that could set precedents in Florida, Linda and Michael are battling over the custody of their children. Linda Kantaras is alleging that her ex-husband has no right to the children because he was born a woman, and thus, could not have been legally married to her in Florida, where same-sex marriages are illegal.

"[She wanted] to take my children completely out of my life," Kantaras said.

Kantaras, 42, singled out a number of ways his wife had interfered, including disclosing his transsexual status to the children without his knowledge, refusing to his allow court-ordered visitation, and even threatening to suspend visitation altogether and move the children to Michigan.

As a result, the children gradually rejected him, Kantaras testified.

The lowest point, he testified, came when both children reported in 1999 that not only did they not want to live with him, they no longer even wanted to visit with him in their scheduled sessions.

After a year of intensive therapy sessions, testified the transsexual, who had his breasts, ovaries, and uterus removed between 1985 and 1987 to become a man, the relationship was gradually repaired.

"They understand I do have a heart, and that's all you need to love somebody," said Kantaras. "You don't need an arm, you don't need a leg, you don't need a penis to love somebody."

Michael Kantaras, (left), an unidentified assistant of attorney Claudia Wheeler, and Linda Kantaras

Earlier, Michael Kantaras cited watching his children's births as the two most important moments during his life. Though he is not the biological father, Kantaras was present at his son Matthew's birth and adopted him shortly after marrying Linda Kantaras, 33, in 1988.

His daughter Irina, now 10, was conceived using his own brother's sperm, and on the stand, Kantaras recalled the birth with paternal pride, describing how he clutched a video camera in one hand and his daughter in the other.

"She was gorgeous, your honor," Kantaras said, his voice suffused with pride. "And one of the things that would never leave me was... as Irina was being checked [after being born] she was angry and crying... but as soon as I said the word 'kuklitsa' [greek for 'baby doll'] she stopped crying."

Since the couple separated in 1998, with Michael Kantaras leaving his wife for one of her best friends, Sherry Noodwang, relations between the two centered on the exchange of their children for Michael Kantaras' scheduled visitations.

During those interludes, Kantaras testified, Linda Kantaras was often angry and uncooperative, and lashed out at him and his new partner, Noodwang.

He also expressed concern at what he described as a religious bent his wife had taken in the past year. "She has expressed numerous times that I am not right, I do not walk with God. That I am a lesbian, and that I that I have no right to have the surgery that I did."

Another such outburst took place in front of the children, Kantaras testified.

With the children watching, he explained, "She told me that [Matthew's] attitude was a punishment to her for having sex outside of marriage. She then told me that I was lucky that the insemination was successful the first time for Irina or she would never have attempted the insemination again."

Attorney Vauss asked the witness what reaction Kantaras then saw on his children's faces.

"Pain," Kantaras said.

Kantaras has stressed during his testimony that his male bond with his son Matthew is as strong as that between any other father and son. He helped the 12-year-old join football and karate, often took him fishing, and offered the boy his truck when he reaches driving age.

Linda Kantaras

He also explained that he understood his son's difficulties in school and at home. "Matthew is being labeled as a child that has problems," Kantaras said. "Matthew does have problems. But you don't just put a label on him and put him on a shelf and not deal with him."

Much of the trial has centered on Kantaras' gender disorder, something he and his lawyers have claimed has skirted the real issue—what's best for the children.

"There has been an intense focus on you during the trial. Did you want the trial to be this way?" asked Vauss.

"Absolutely not," Kantaras said.

He told the court that, if explained carefully to the children, his transsexual status would not have proved such a problem.

"I would have explained my gender disorder [to my kids] in a way to let them understand that I may have been born in one body, but that my mind and my heart and my soul is a male," Kantaras said. "I love them whether I was physically able to make Linda pregnant. The fact that I was there the day that they were born... that I could love them no less because I didn't have a penis. That my love for them will never change."

Michael Kantaras' attorney, Vauss, also worked to portray Linda Kantaras' recent assertion that her marriage, and Michael Kantaras' custody claims, are void because he does not have a penis.

A 1998 Florida law that came in the wake of a landmark Vermont ruling allowing same-sex marriages banned the unions statewide.

Vauss asked Kantaras whether both he and his wife had, in action, always acted as husband and wife.

"Mr. Kantaras, have you always considered yourself married to Linda Kantaras?"

"Yes," Kantaras replied.

"As you sit here today do you consider Linda Kantaras your wife?"

"Yes."

"Have you and Linda always held yourself out as husband and wife?"

"Yes."

Vauss then led Kantaras through a number of occasions in which he and his wife stipulated legally that they were husband and wife—from their marriage certificate to the adoption certificate for Matthew Kantaras to the mortgage on their home.

Circuit Court Judge Gerard O'Brien, too, seemed interested in documentation—particularly those declaring Michael Kantaras as a male, including his driver's license and passport. O'Brien will have to rule whether Kantaras is legally a male in order to decide the custody claims.

 

 

Transsexual says he was good father

 

By Matt Bean
Court TV

A transsexual embroiled in a bitter custody battle took the stand Tuesday, describing his bond with his two children and charging his former wife with trying to turn them against him.

"I did everything with my children. Everything that I could," testified Michael Kantaras. Describing the years before he separated from his wife, Linda Kantaras, he continued, "There was an elderly woman that lived across the street that used to watch and comment how any time I pulled up in the driveway both children would run out to meet me."

After the 1998 divorce, however, his relationship with his children soured abruptly, particularly with his 12-year-old son. "It became increasingly strained," Kantaras testified. "There was tension. There was doubt, I think, on Matthew's part."

"Was this because you were not making a big effort to come around and see Matthew?" asked Kantaras' lawyer, Collin Vauss.

"No," Kantaras replied. "I never wanted my children to feel abandoned by me."

Asked by Vauss why his relationship with Matthew became strained during January 1999, Kantaras replied, "Because of the inconsistency of visitation. Because of the disallowance of phone contact. Because of the disparaging things that he was hearing at home."

According to Michael Kantaras and his lawyers, Linda Kantaras shouldn't gain custody of the children — Matthew Kantaras, whom Linda Kantaras brought to the marriage, and Irina Kantaras, whom the couple conceived using sperm from Michael Kantaras' brother — because she is more concerned with winning the custody battle than with the children's well-being.

But Linda Kantaras claims that Michael Kantaras isn't legally a man, even though he had his breasts, ovaries and uterus removed, and takes hormones that have deepened his voice and allowed him to grow facial hair. She says that their 1989 marriage, and her former husband's claim to their two children, are therefore void under a 1998 Florida law banning same-sex marriages.

In more than two hours on the stand, Michael Kantaras provided a number of examples of how his former wife tried to alienate his children from him.

Three months after the July 1998 divorce, Kantaras testified, his wife called to say that she was going to pull the kids out of school. "She was going to leave and [said] that I would never see my children again," Kantaras said.

In response, Kantaras called their school, where the principal confirmed that the children were not there. "I became quite frantic," Kantaras testified. "I got really upset and started to cry."

Kantaras later learned that his wife had transferred the children to a different school without notifying him, one of her many efforts to reduce contact, he testified.

Michael Kantaras and his attorneys have pinned some of Linda Kantaras' animosity on the fact that Kantaras left her for one of her best friends, Sherry Noodwang, who also testified Tuesday.

Noodwang testified that she became fast friends with Linda Kantaras, working on the PTA with the substitute teacher, joining WeightWatchers in January 1998, and attending bible study together.

"I liked her pretty much immediately," said the witness, adding that between Christmas 1997 and July 1998, "I considered her one of my best friends."

Noodwang, a strawberry blonde, answered attorney Karen Doering's questions in a cheerful, calm voice.

Noodwang's credibility on the stand could prove important to Michael Kantaras and his lawyers not only because she is a character witness, but because if Kantaras gains residential custody of his children, they might also live with Noodwang and her three children.

Doering worked to establish Noodwang as a sympathetic person, who was motivated by a failed marriage to seek solace in a sympathetic friend.

Noodwang testified that she had been having difficulties with her husband, police detective Ron Noodwang, and that in July 1998 she filed for divorce after 15 years of marriage.

Sherry Noodwang

"I tried everything, everything," Noodwang said emotionally. "I went to counseling, I read books ... My husband did not like anything about me ever and never failed to remind me daily of every way that I had failed him..."

When Noodwang gave Michael Kantaras a ride to his parents' house, Noodwang testified, "He said he was starting to have feelings for me and that he thought I might have feelings for him."

Noodwang, who admitted to having feelings then for Kantaras, pushed all thoughts of a romance from her mind, she testified.

Linda Kantaras eventually found out about their mutual feelings, and confronted Noodwang, who promised she would choose choose her friendship with Linda Kantaras over a romance with Michael Kantaras.

But in another discussion between the two women, Noodwang told Linda Kantaras, "I'm not going to lie to you. I cannot promise you that if one day in the future you and Michael are not together that I will not be with him."

Two of Michael Kantaras' employees at the Sam's Club bakery where he is a manager also testified.

Jayne Blanton said she had overheard an accusatory speakerphone conversation between Kantaras and his wife at work. "She said, 'I know you're having F-ing relationships there with the females in the bakery department,'" Blanton testified.

Another employee told the court that Kantaras never flirted with the women at work, and described him as a gentlemen.

Michael Kantaras' testimony will continue Wednesday at 9:30 a.m. The trial is being broadcast live on Court TV.

http://www.courttv.com/trials/kantaras/013002_ctv.html