Court Fight Waged Over Brain-Damaged Mom's Triplets

(CNN) -- Abbie Dorn always wanted children, and in June 2006 she got her wish -- triplets. But during a difficult birth she suffered severe brain damage that took away her chance to raise them.

Now, her parents and former husband are locked in a legal battle over whether Dorn is capable of interacting with her children, and whether they should visit her.

On Tuesday, a judge in Los Angeles County Superior Court ruled that Abbie Dorn's parents have the right to fight for visitation rights on her behalf.

The ruling clears the way for a trial, scheduled for May 13. No matter who prevails, the case is likely to lead to years of appeals that could result in a legal landmark affecting the rights of mentally incapacitated parents.

Dorn, 34, last had contact with triplets Esti, Reuvi and Yossi in October 2007, when they were toddlers. They will turn 4 on June 20.

Paul and Susan Cohen, a physician and former nurse, are conservators of Abbie Dorn's estate and care for their daughter full-time at their home in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A $7.8 million medical malpractice settlement funds her treatment.

Her former husband, Daniel Dorn, is raising the triplets in Los Angeles, California.

Susan Cohen says her daughter has made considerable progress after intensive rehabilitation and now communicates by blinking her eyes.

"One slow blink means 'yes.' No response means 'no,'" said Cohen.

Daniel Dorn maintains that his former wife remains in a vegetative state. She is more than physically disabled, he contends in court papers, she is "neurologically incapacitated" and legally incompetent to make decisions involving her children.

Abbie and Dan Dorn, both devout Orthodox Jews, were in their early 20s when they met in Atlanta, Georgia, and embarked on a whirlwind romance. They married in August 2002 after dating for six months. Dan Dorn took a job with his father in Los Angeles, and his wife moved to Southern California with him.

Three years later, in the fall of 2005, Abbie became pregnant.

"They were very much in love," recalled her mother. But what happened to Abbie when her triplets were born would tear the young family apart.

According to her parents and their lawyers, during the delivery Abbie began bleeding severely and went into cardiac arrest, which deprived her brain of oxygen. Medical personnel were not able to resuscitate her for nearly 20 minutes, according to the Cohens and their lawyers.

After Abbie Dorn was revived, her condition initially seemed to improve. Her organs were functioning. Her blood was clotting. But over the next three days, she took a turn for the worse

With his wife's parents overseeing her medical care, Dan Dorn found himself a young father raising triplets. He believed Abbie's prospects of recovery were faint. One year to the day after the triplets were born, Dan notified the Cohens that he was ready to move on.

"I still love Abbie very much, but I am trying to move on and have been and will continue to parent our children, who are happy and are thriving," Dan Dorn told CNN in an e-mail.

At Dan's request, the Cohens initiated divorce proceedings on Abbie's behalf. The divorce was finalized in the fall of 2008.

Dorn and the Cohens continue to disagree over whether or not Abbie is making progress in her treatment. They also cannot agree on whether she has the ability to interact with her children.

Dan Dorn maintains in his legal papers that it is not in his children's best interest to see their mother now.

"The neurosurgeons told me in 2007 that she would not recover. I have asked for an updated neurological report," he told CNN by e-mail.

The judge granted that request at Tuesday's hearing.

CNN has obtained the 2007 medical report in which neurologist Richard Helvie described Abbie Dorn's condition as "permanent." Observing a list of mental functions, Helvie noted that she was "so impaired as to be incapable of being assessed" for most of the evaluation.

Abbie Dorn's parents and therapists tell a different story about her recovery.

"Abbie has made dramatic progress since 2008," said her mental health counselor, Dr. Robert McCarthy.

McCarthy is part of a $33,000-a-month rehabilitation program designed by Susan Cohen. He is treating Abbie using a method called neurofeedback, which trains the brain to function more efficiently.

"With the introduction of neurofeedback, she has become increasingly alert, can voluntarily bounce her legs up and down, has regained movement in her arms, and can even verbally respond 'yes' or 'no,'" McCarthy said.

Court battles like the one between Dorn and the Cohens are rare but not without precedent.

In 1979, the California Supreme Court ruled in favor of a quadriplegic father, William T. Carney, stating that physically disabled parents cannot be deprived of their children because of their disability.

But there are key differences between these cases: Carney's case dealt with custody of a physically disabled parent, while the Dorns' involves visitation by a mentally incapacitated parent.

Dan Dorn contends in court documents that the legal drama is more about what the Cohens want rather than what Abbie might have wanted for her children.

"Abbie and I were happily married and very much in love. She would want the best for me and our children," he told CNN in an e-mail.

Paul Cohen visits the triplets every three months. The Cohens have asked Dorn to send videos of the children and allow the family to see each other via webcam but so far, they say, that hasn't happened.

"There's no reason for the triplets not to have a relationship with their mother, whatever that relationship may be," said Lisa Helfend Meyer, the Cohens' attorney.

Dorn's attorney, Vicki J. Greene, responded that he "wants to be the one to parent the children and tell them at an appropriate age the proper details of their life. From our perspective, he gets to make the decisions. He's the father."

Dorn, who is seeking child support from Abbie's estate, stated in court documents that he has not told the children what happened to their mother because they are too young to understand. He says he will consider taking the children to see Abbie when they are older -- if he receives medical evidence that she will be able to communicate with them.

The Cohens argue that if the children are properly prepared for the situation, the experience will not be detrimental. They have requested that the children see a psychologist to help prepare them.

For now, the Cohens will continue to hold on to hope for their daughter.

"I can't let her lose her children," Susan Cohen said.

'Unabomber' Fights Plans to Auction His Possessions

SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- Convicted "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, who terrorized the country with a series of mail bombs over nearly two decades, is fighting to stop a public auction of his diaries and other personal possessions.

But Kaczynski's five-year legal battle will come to an end soon unless he can convince the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case.

"I regard him as the essence of evil. He's evil and amoral. He has no compassion," said Dr. Charles Epstein, who was seriously injured in 1993 when a bomb went off in a piece of mail he opened at his home. The blast destroyed both of Epstein's eardrums, and he lost parts of three of his fingers.

Epstein, 75, is a world-renowned geneticist and retired professor at the University of California at San Francisco. He is one of four victims who are owed $15 million in court-ordered restitution from Kaczynski, and he told CNN the auction was important to victims.

"Who would think that we would still be sitting, this many years later, still having dealings ... with the man who tried to kill us?" Epstein said.

Kaczynski was arrested in 1996, pleaded guilty in 1998 and is currently serving a life term in the federal "Supermax" prison in Florence, Colorado. CNN was given exclusive access to videotape the items that will be up for auction, which were seized from the Montana cabin in which Kaczynski lived for years and held in evidence by the FBI in San Francisco and Washington.

The property includes tools, typewriters, knives and a hatchet; Kaczynski's degrees from Harvard and the University of Michigan; and the glasses and hooded jacket made famous by an artist's rendering of the suspect. But experts say the most valuable items probably will be the 40,000 pages of Kaczynski's diaries and other writings.

"Personally, I don't think he has any rights to anything," Epstein said. "I think he abrogated all of his rights by his behavior."

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the victims earlier this year, and now Kaczynski has until June 15 to file a notice of appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court. Steve Hirsch, a California attorney who represents the four victims, said he doubts the Supreme Court would consider an appeal, and thinks the auction could happen later this year. A private company will handle the auction, but no company has yet been selected.

"The victims were placed in this terrible position of either accepting this idea of an auction with all of its problems or letting Kaczynski have all of his things back, which would have been another wound for them," Hirsch told CNN.

In handwritten legal documents, in which Kaczynski refers to himself as "K," he claims, "The District Court's orders violate K's First Amendment rights."

"The case involves the question of whether the government, consistent with the First Amendment, can confiscate an individual's personal papers and sell them at public auction to enforce payment of a debt," Kaczynski wrote in one of his numerous legal arguments.

Lawrence Brown, acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of California, said his office has no choice but to support the auction.

"This is a directive from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals," he said. "We were put in a situation where it was sort of an either-or. Either we returned all of the property back to Kaczynski, or we sought to maximize its value by holding an auction to put it back towards the $15 million that's owed in restitution."

Kaczynski, now 67, killed three people and wounded 23 others in a string of attacks from 1978 to 1995. The remainder of the victims have declined to seek restitution.

Federal agents gave the case the code name "Unabom" because universities and airlines were the early targets. Kaczynski quit a tenure-track position at the University of California-Berkeley in 1969 to build a 13-by-13 foot shack near Lincoln, Montana, where he lived without running water or electricity until his 1996 arrest.

Agents closed in after his brother noted similarities between his old letters and journals and the bomber's 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto. The New York Times and the Washington Post agreed to publish the document under a promise that the bombings would stop.

"If some funds are raised by this auction, to help out some of the victims, well, then that does help promote some level of justice," Brown said. "But you just cannot right the tremendous wrong that Kaczynski committed."