Child-Stealing Case : Mother Gives Girls to Father Until Hearing

Two young sisters whose abduction from their Valencia home prompted a seven-year search by their mother are being returned temporarily to their father, who was acquitted in December of a felony child-stealing charge.

Faith Canutt, who became active in a nationwide movement to find missing children after her ex-husband, Ronald Whitelaw, disappeared with their daughters in April, 1978, will allow the children to live with Whitelaw until June 27, the father said Tuesday.

A Santa Barbara Superior Court judge is scheduled to issue a custody ruling that day.

Whitelaw said the girls, Kristin, 14, and Alisa, 11, will return Saturday to the small Oregon town of Lebanon, where they lived under assumed names with Whitelaw and his wife, Sandy, until Whitelaw was arrested in August. Since his arrest, the girls have been living with Canutt in Orlando, Fla.

The custody hearing was scheduled for March 14 but was postponed because of the agreement, Whitelaw said.

‘Happily Shocked’

“We’re very happily shocked,” Whitelaw said Tuesday in an interview from his Oregon home. “It came out of the blue, a big surprise--a wanted surprise, a very happy surprise. We are all elated. The girls are very, very, very excited to be coming home, too.”

Whitelaw said he could not discuss Canutt’s reason for the decision, which he said had been reached a little more than a week ago after talks between Canutt, Whitelaw and their attorneys.

“She has expressed to us that she feels she is doing this for the benefit of the children,” Whitelaw said.

Canutt and her attorney, Stephen A. Kolodny of Westwood, declined to comment Tuesday.

Whitelaw said Canutt will be able to call the children, and the girls will visit their mother in Orlando during their spring school vacation.

Under terms of an order issued in December by Santa Barbara Superior Court Judge William L. Gordon, Whitelaw’s contact with the girls has been limited to letters, 15-minute telephone calls three times a week and a 12-hour visit on New Year’s Day in Orlando in the presence of a chaperon.

‘Nice Little Reunion’

Whitelaw said he, his wife and the girls spent the day visiting an amusement park, going out to lunch and dinner and celebrating a late Christmas.

“We had a nice little reunion. They were very happy to see us and we were very happy to see them,” Whitelaw said.

“There’s not a day that goes by when we don’t talk about the girls or miss them,” Whitelaw said. “It’s been pure hell.”

Whitelaw, who was acquitted by a San Fernando Superior Court jury Dec. 2, has said he abducted the girls and hid them from Canutt because she mistreated them and had threatened to kill him and the children.

Canutt has denied Whitelaw’s allegations, pointing out that Whitelaw willingly signed over custody of the children to her.

Whitelaw is appealing a $1.5-million judgment awarded to Canutt in 1984 by a Los Angeles Superior Court judge in what experts said was the nation’s first civil damage case involving parental child stealing. The $1 million in general damages and $500,000 in punitive damages were to be paid by Whitelaw, his wife and his mother, Edith Louise Whitelaw.

A motion to set aside the verdict was heard Feb. 12 by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Jerry Fields, who has not issued a decision.

Whitelaw said the girls will start school on Monday in Lebanon.

He said friends in Oregon “want to throw a big party for them, have a big celebration right away, but I quietly want to bring them home.”