A young German girl taken into Clark County protective custody after suffering near-fatal abuse is becoming a point of international contention.
On Friday, German Vice Consul Thomas Scherer joined attorneys representing the 3-year-old's mother and father in Clark County Family Court. Child welfare services in Germany have assumed guardianship of the girl and are now seeking her repatriation.
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"What would the U.S. government say if this were a U.S. child being held abroad?" asked Scherer, of the German Consulate in Los Angeles.
The child was taken to Las Vegas in May by her mother, Semaneh Rezaei, who came to visit boyfriend Arash Hashemi. By August, Child Protective Services had opened two investigations involving the girl, who had sustained an escalating series of injuries that culminated in a head trauma that nearly killed her.
The District Attorney's office intends to seek a grand jury indictment against Hashemi, who has had charges of felony child abuse lodged against him and then withdrawn in this case. Rezaei was deported before she could face criminal charges.
On Friday in Family Court, Rezaei's attorney, Joseph Sciscento, pleaded no contest on his client's behalf to counts of improper supervision, failure to seek medical attention for the child and failure to protect her daughter from harm.
With that concluded, Sciscento pressed Hearing Master Frank Sullivan to return the girl to Germany. Her father is there, along with siblings and extended family, Sciscento said, before asking that police return the girl's passport.
"To drag this out longer is going to cause irreparable harm to the child," Sciscento said.
Sciscento also stressed that there is now an order from the German courts seeking the girl's return. Failure to act now may be interpreted as an act of abduction, said Sciscento, who has discussed the matter with German authorities.
But Steve Hiltz, a lawyer with the Children's Attorney Project, which represents the girl, argued to keep her in the United States. She is still receiving counseling and recovering from her injuries, he said.
Hiltz presented a statement from the girl's physician indicating that she requires additional surgery to repair a shoulder and an elbow.
Most important, Hiltz said, the child has -- for the first time since being victimized in ways that left her with a broken arm, a fractured skull and bruises and bite marks -- finally obtained a measure of security and trust with her foster parents.
"The main thing, to me, is that she's already suffered so much," Hiltz said. "She almost died. Now, she speaks English, she clings to her foster mother, she laughs with them. She's acting like a normal little girl."
The father, who didn't know that Rezaei was taking his daughter out of Germany, is also seeking the child's return. Murat Celebi, a Turkish citizen who is a permanent resident of Germany, hired Las Vegas attorney Don Randles to represent him.
"The father has rights to his daughter," Randles told Sullivan, pointing out that Celebi has never been charged with anything related to the abuse involving his daughter.
"He wants to talk to his daughter," Randles said. "He didn't consent to her coming here. I believe at this point in time that the child should be permitted to return to her country."
Hiltz said the girl doesn't even recognize photos of her father and can't identify him in a video of them together.
