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This transcript was found on CNN’s website http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0911/17/joy.01.html

BEHAR: Alexis Hutchinson is a cook in the United States Army. She`s also the single mother of a 10-month-old. She`s been ordered to Afghanistan but she can`t find anyone to take care of her son so she`s not going and now she`s in a lot of trouble.

Here now to discuss this story is Alexis Hutchinson`s attorney, Rai Sue Sussmann. Rai Sue, thanks for joining me. Is your client an AWOL soldier or desperate single mom with nowhere to turn?

RAI SUE SUSSMAN, ALEXIS HUTCHINSON`S ATTORNEY: Well she was AWOL for less than 24 hours and then she voluntarily returned to the Military with her baby. At that point the Military although they had other options decided that they would arrest her and put her in jail and took her child from her and placed him in Child Protective Services even though she had voluntarily returned to the Army.

BEHAR: Where is the baby now?

SUSSMAN: The baby — when the baby`s grandmother, Specialist Hutchinson`s mother found out that Kamani was going to foster care in Georgia, she got on a plane and went and got him out of foster care in Georgia, and she took him back to Oakland. However, she maintains that she can`t take care of him in the long-term.

BEHAR: Why not? She has other people to take care of?

SUSSMANN: She`s got other people to take care of. She herself has a young daughter who has special needs and medical issues. She also is one of the primary caregivers for her ailing and aging mother. And she just found out that her sister`s medical problems are about to get a lot worse so her sister had asked for extra care for herself and her family

BEHAR: And Hutchinson, where is she now?

SUSSMAN: She`s currently under heavy restriction on her base at Hunter Army Air Field in Georgia.

BEHAR: They`re just holding her?

SUSSMANN: They`re just holding her there, and she`s under 24-hour watch from what I can understand.

BEHAR: OK, the Army released a statement saying “The chain of command has a legal obligation to the citizens of the United States to investigate and deal fairly with Specialist Hutchinson`s alleged misconduct. Anything less would be irresponsible to our citizens and the thousands and thousands of soldiers who have deployed overseas despite difficult personal situations.”

Is that being fair to your client? I mean, they do have a lot of other people who would like to have special treatment, and they can`t give it to everybody. So what do you say to that?

SUSSMANN: I think that the way they treated her was not fair. The Army when presented with her child care emergency had other options for how they dealt with her. They did not have to arrest her and they did not have to remove her child from her. The Army in fact, has regulations — at this point the Army has 85,000 single parents, and so they do have regulations for how to deal fairly when single parents in the Army have child care emergencies or child care failures.

BEHAR: Well, my information is that more than 30,000 single mothers have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

SUSSMAN: I have that — I have heard that number, too, and I also have a number that since 9/11 115,000 single parents of both sexes have been sent in the war on terror, have been deployed.

BEHAR: Thank you very much, Rai Sue.

What do you think about this?