WESCHESTER GUARDIAN: Court Orders Judge To Reunite Jing Kelly And Son Kidnapping Arranged By DA Jeanine Pirro.

Jing Kelly, the Chinese-American mother who fled to China with her six-month-old son Tristram, more than five years ago, will finally be re-united with that child, now six, under a Mandamus issued August 3rd by the Appellate Division, First Department, of New York State Supreme Court. The Mandamus, a rare judicial action, essentially commands New York County Family Court Judge Sara P. Schechter to immediately comply with an order previously issued by the same court on November 17th of last year calling for the immediate commencement of visitation between mother and child.

Jing, who was married to Craig Kelly, a disgraced former assistant district attorney in New York County, was the victim of severe domestic violence at his hands. Testimony at her criminal trial in Westchester County Court, three years ago, revealed in sworn testimony that he had been physically abusive, demanding genital and oral sex from Jing, at gunpoint, the night after she came home from the hospital with their newborn son. It was further revealed that Craig had a serious alcohol addiction, and was frequenting prostitutes.

Craig’s reckless conduct produced a serious vaginal infection that threatened Jing’s health for months, at a time when she needed most to nurture and care for their infant son. However, her fears for her own safety were not nearly as compelling as her concerns for Tristram, who she quickly discovered could not be safely left, even for brief periods, in his father’s care. One incident, brought out at trial, detailed her horror, upon returning from a brief trip to the store, to find Craig passed out from intoxication, and their son, less than two months old, laying unattended, and smelling from beer.

The relationship quickly deteriorated with numerous incidents of physical and psychological injury to Jing, resulting in frequent police visits which were most often distorted and turned around by Craig’s badge and overreaching influence. After several such incidents, over a period of many weeks, Jing and Craig, who had been seen in Family Court, were separated, with Craig moving out of the apartment. However, despite that arrangement, an overzealous, inexperienced ACS worker ripped Tristram from his mother’s arms in the presence of his maternal grandmother despite their tearful pleas.

Family Court Judge Sara P. Schechter then arranged for temporary custody of the infant by Craig’s sister, Tristram’s paternal aunt, Larchmont Attorney Gail Hiler. Under the court order each parent was entitled to supervised visitation, neither permitted to reside with him. However, Gail Hiler and Craig soon violated those terms when Craig moved into Hiler’s home, thus living full-time with the child.

Jing continued to abide by the terms of the court order, traveling to Larchmont from Manhattan by train. As weeks rolled by, according to court testimony, Jing would find her infant son constantly sick, and with progressively more physical injury. Additionally, Gail Hiler repeatedly complained to her that caring for Tristram was working a serious hardship on her marriage and her relationship with her husband Jim, also a lawyer.

Finally, no longer able to tolerate her son’s deteriorating condition, and fearful of his exposure to alcohol and tobacco from constant contact with his father, Jing used the occasion of her last visit to abscond with her son to China.

Enter Jeanine Pirro. Mrs. Pirro, then District Attorney of Westchester County, under a questionable theory of jurisdiction, given the fact that the only criminal act occurred in Queens County, when Jing boarded a plane at John F. Kennedy Airport, proceeded to arrange for the insertion of Jing Kelly into New York State’s Twelve Most Wanted, amongst murderers, rapists, and thieves. The woman who would have us believe that she is a “victim’s advocate,” then circulated the poster on the Internet and in neighborhoods in Manhattan where Jing and her elderly parents were known to frequent,

Jing and Tristram remained in China for eighteen months, during which time Craig Kelly passed away from a gastrointestinal illness. Mrs. Pirro then proceeded to make contact, through the Mamaroneck Police Department, the United States Embassy in China, and Chinese authorities, promising Jing that she would not be arrested if she returned to New York with her son.

Jing who had only fled to China because of her fears for Tristram’s wellbeing, involving his father, realizing that the harm she feared might come to her son was no longer possible, and accepting Mrs. Pirro’s promise at face value, now boarded a plane, with Tristram, bound for New York, by way of Vancouver Canada. However, Mrs. Pirro, who claims to be a victim’s advocate, was busy arranging with authorities everywhere, including Vancouver, to have Jing arrested on sight, detained, and separated from her two-year-old son. That was more than 4 years ago, and Jing and Tristram have been allowed absolutely no contact since, despite the fact that it has never been alleged that Jing had done anything harmful to him.

On the day following her arrest, and forced separation from her son, Jing Kelly’s baby, under arrangements made by DA Jeanine Pirro with Canadian authorities, was taken, literally kidnapped, by Gail Hiler, a person with no legal authority, no parole custody certificate, nothing other than a vindictive desire to keep a Chinese-American woman, who her brother had married, apart from her infant son.

Mrs. Pirro, to insure that Jing would remain out of the picture, knowingly over-charged her with Felony Custodial Interference, and demanded that she be held without bail, on the trumped-up claim that she was a “flight risk.” Mrs. Pirro knew perfectly well that with Tristram held in custody, Jing was not going anywhere. After 14 months in the Westchester County Jail, Jing was tried by a jury of her peers before Judge Barbara Zambelli, and found guilty only of Misdemeanor Custodial Interference.

Immediately released by Zambelli, having served many more months than she could possibly have been sentenced to for a mere misdemeanor, Jing Kelly has been struggling for nearly three years to regain contact with, and ultimately, custody of, her now six-year-old son. The most recent action by the Appellate Division, several days ago, would appear, finally, to signal a major reversal of the injustice and conspiracy that have maliciously kept Jing and Tristram Kelly apart. Hopefully this development will bring to an end the grief and outrageous mistreatment of a loving mother and child by the malicious prosecutorial misconduct and civil rights violations worked against them by DA Jeanine Pirro.