The court case the Tribune brought to unseal Jack Ryan’s custody papers for his 9 year old son has been sent to a court referee to figure out what items should remain sealed to protect the child and what documents refer to simple disputes between Ryan and his ex-wife Jeri Ryan.
The telling part is the lameness of the arguments put forward by Ryan’s lawyer:
Ryan’s lawyer, Larry Ginsberg, said the situation has changed since Schnider’s original ruling.
“The detriment to the child is even more evident now,” he said. “The respondent is now the nominee for Senate for the Republican Party.”
Ryan won the Republican nomination in the March 16 Illinois primary. Some of his GOP opponents raised the issue of the sealed papers in the primary.
He said that the level of interest in the case has escalated and “it is now in the absolute worst interest of the child because it will be spun and reported.”
The judge commented at one point: “That’s the price of living in a free society that has open records, and Mr. Ryan is going to have to deal with that.”
I say lame because the interest of the child is only if there is information that damages the child. So information pertaining to the child’s whereabouts or his personal life separate from his parents is reasonable to exclude from the public only because it affects a party not included in the case, but the child trying to be protected. The rest is fair game and should be available because the courts should be an open institution. Protecting parents from embarrassment is not an acceptable reason to close files (or shouldn’t be).
In this case, the judge seems to be making very prudent decisions.
It is important to note that Jeri Ryan is now in favor of keeping the files closed. I’ve been somewhat reluctant to bring up some of this before, but I think it is important to note that the family did face a very serious and dangerous stalker some years ago. Jack Ryan’s fear of people misusing personal information isn’t without grounds. For some background on this there are some usenet discussions that detail the problems. As a warning they are not pretty and demonstrate a man who is clearly dangerous and in desperate need of treatment. Access his statements about Ryan here and for some of the Usenet commentary try here.
Not only did he do this on Usenet, he apparently sent many sexually explicit e-mails to Jeri Ryan and threatened her boyfriend Brannon Braga. So the concerns aren’t baseless, but instead of weeding out the material that is a concern from the rest, Ryan has created an issue that isn’t dying.
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