Injunction Fails To Stop Boy

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32395, 7 September 1970, Page 13

Injunction Fails To Stop Boy

f N.Z.P.A. -Reuter—Copyright) WEST BERLIN, September 6. A part-Aboriginal Australian boy who has spent most of his life in East Germany left West Berlin last night for Australia in spite of a court injunction to stop him leaving West Berlin.

The injunction was ob-i tained by Mrs Rita Heisler, a 53-year-old British woman who! had looked after the child! just after his birth and for the last two years in East Germany.

iwas clearly against Aborigines |and not just a simple matter lof mother’s rights.

Mrs Heisler said that the boy, eight-year-old Barry McKenzie. had been handed over to another woman by his mother when she was unable to take care of him. Six! years ago he disappeared. The woman had gone to East Germany, where she later met Mrs Heisler and passed the boy to her. Mrs Heisler, an active campaigner for the rights of Australia’s Aborigines, said that she would like to keep the child.

The injunction, against the Australian military mission in West Berlin and the West Berlin police president, came through just too late to prevent the boy leaving. The police confirmed receipt of it, but the mission said that no injunction had been served on it.

By the time the Court order was granted by the West Berlin Administrative Court. Barry McKenzie was already in Frankfurt. Once there, he was outside the jurisdiction of the West Berlin authorities.

Mrs Heisler, on hearing the news, said that “it shows an almost indecent haste to beat the decisions of a proper court”

She added that she would ask the assistance of civil liberties organisations in Britain, as in her view the case