Grandmother Does Not Want Rescued Girl Returned to Mother

June 26, 2009 by Suzanne Conlon

Four-year-old Haylee Donathan is now in the custody of her grandmother, Mary Watson, who says that she will not give the girl back to her mother.  “There’s no way I would do that,” she said on “Nancy Grace” Wednesday.  “If [she] is not allowed to see her, she is not allowed to see her.  That’s the way it is going to be.”

The girl went missing from her hometown in Ohio three weeks ago and was found with her mother and a convicted sex offender at a Christian retreat center in Valley Center near San Diego, CA.  Mary Watson still has not seen her granddaughter since she was found, because the girl was kept in California for examination.

“I want to tell her how I love her and we all love her and want her to come home soon,” she said.

Candace Watson, Haylee’s mother, allegedly helped Robbi Potter escape from a halfway house.  A registered sex offender, he was convicted of two counts of sexual battery of girls ages 7 and 9 and was on probation at the time of the escape.  He had been ordered by a court to stay in the halfway house and to have no contact with children.

After she was arrested, Candace Watson told authorities that she “was in love with [Potter] and knew she would help him any way she could,” according to Pete Elliot, the U.S. marshal for the northern district of Ohio.

It took 27 days to bring the couple to custody and take the child into protective care.  The child was believed to be with her mother, and so she could not officially be considered abducted until June 19, when a court granted Haylee’s grandmother emergency custody.  Custody was granted to the grandmother on the basis of a convenience store surveillance video, which indicated that Haylee was in the presence of sex offender Potter.

Once Mary Watson had been granted custody, it was possible for law enforcement to send out a Missing Child Alert.  Someone who had seen Watson, Potter, and Haylee at the California retreat center where they were hiding out saw photos of the trio in the media following the alert, and the police were notified of their location.  They were taken into custody without a struggle.