Father Died Last Friday : Boy in Custody Fight Vanishes With Mother

Brian Batey, the boy at the center of an extraordinary custody fight between his fundamentalist mother and his homosexual father, left his late father’s Palm Springs home with his mother Wednesday evening to go out “for a hamburger” and has not returned.

Batey, 16, whose mother successfully fought child-stealing charges after disappearing with the boy for more than a year in 1982, left the house shoeless and in shorts, telling his father’s longtime companion, Craig Corbett, that he would be back in about one hour.

Corbett said Thursday that he believes the boy was abducted. But a Palm Springs police officer, who accompanied Betty Lou Batey to the house Brian shared with his father and Corbett, reported that “no crime . . . occurred.”

“It would seem to me that the kid’s with his mom,” added police spokesman Fred Donnell. “Certainly this guy Corbett, though he may have known the kid for a long time, has no legal standing” in the matter.

Brian father, Frank, won custody of the boy in 1982 after Mrs. Batey refused to respect his visitation rights. Ten days later, Mrs. Batey, now of San Diego, picked up the boy for a weekend visit and disappeared with him.

Nationwide FBI Search

After a nationwide FBI search, they surfaced in 1984. Brian went to live with his father, and his mother was charged with child-stealing. In May, a judge in San Diego threw out the charges. Last Friday, Frank Batey died in surgery while suffering from AIDS.

According to Corbett, Mrs. Batey and her father appeared at the house shortly before 9 p.m. Wednesday. At their request, they were accompanied by a Palm Springs police officer “to keep the peace,” Donnell said.

Corbett and the police officer said the boy went outside to speak with his mother, then went inside and put on a shirt. Corbett said Brian told him he was going out for a hamburger, would be back in an hour and that “he would handle it.”

Late Thursday afternoon, neither Corbett nor the police had heard from Brian.

Corbett said he believes that Brian was abducted because, if he had not been, “he would have called,” Corbett said. However, Corbett said he had not made a complaint to law enforcement authorities, adding, “Everyone knows he’s missing.”

Mrs. Batey could not be reached Thursday. The telephone at her San Diego home rang unanswered. Frank Mango, a lawyer who has represented her in the past and whom she had consulted this week, said he had not heard from her and did not know where she was.

Hopes for Resolution

“I hope that if this is true, that in fact what comes out of it is that the whole thing is resolved between mother and son,” Mango said. “If (they) have taken a day or two to take a ride and discuss it, I look at it as a conversation between mother and son, finally.”

“I can’t see an abduction,” Mango added. “That doesn’t sit right with me. He’s 16 years old. How do you restrain a 16-year-old?”

Brian’s custody remains unclear in light of his father’s death. Although lawyers have said that judges tend to transfer custody in such cases to the surviving parent, they also note that a judge would take into account the wishes of a child as old as Brian.

United Press International quoted the boy last week as saying that he hoped to remain with Corbett. Corbett said he met with an attorney Thursday morning to consider the possibility of going to court to get custody of Brian.

“From what he’s told me, he’d like to remain here,” Corbett said. “He’s made that well-known to the media and to all the people who have been around here. . . . But she’s very good at changing his mind.”

“Apparently she considers me somebody unfit,” Corbett added. “Even though this has been his home for 12 years. She’s protecting him, she says. From what, I don’t know.”

The Bateys were married in 1969 when both were members of the United Pentecostal Church in San Diego. Brian was born in 1971 and the couple were divorced in 1975. The ensuing custody case first attracted national attention when Mrs. Batey fled with her son seven years later.