Experts say Elian video may backfire

WASHINGTON - It comes across like some kind of weird electronic hybrid: a poignant glimpse of childhood captured on home video melded with the unsettling reminder of a POW mouthing the words of his captors.

The grainy image of 6-year-old Elian Gonzalez wagging his finger and telling his father "Papa! I do not want to go to Cuba!" appeared to be a final, desperate attempt by family members struggling to keep the child in Miami.

But it may have backfired, in the view of some child-development experts and callers who flooded talk radio shows as a child's 45-second tirade played time and again yesterday on radio and TV.

In the tape, he sat on a bed, scolding his father in a hollow tone that sounded to some observers more mimicked than harsh.

Armando Gutierrez, a spokesman for the Miami family, said that the tape was shot late Wednesday night after the family returned from their Miami Beach meeting with Reno. He said that one member of the family, whom he did not name, shot the footage.

The circumstances of his case made his words seem even more incredible, child psychology experts noted. How could a traumatized boy who watched his mother drown months ago make a competent decision about his future?

"The notion that a 6-year-old child should somehow be paraded on TV as capable of determining whether he should stay or go is a tremendous distortion and at some level an abuse of the child," said Dr. Flemming Graae, interim director of child psychiatry at New York Presbyterian Hospital in Westchester, N.Y. "His mother is gone. His parents were separated. There is a piece of this child that doesn't want to turn his world upside down again."

Several experts concluded that the boy had been coached. One characterized Elian as "robotic" and the video as "a charade."

Timur Kuran, a professor at the University of Southern California, said no one would suggest that Elian was under the same pressure as a hostage attempting to avoid torture or death.

Indeed, it is quite possible that he believed what he was saying: "I do not want to go to Cuba," was repeated in some version four times in his nine-sentence appeal. At issue, though, is how he came to harbor that belief, said Kuran, who has written a book on people who misrepresent their beliefs to accommodate social pressure, escape punishment or win rewards.

"If for days he was told terrible things would happen to him if he went back to Cuba and life would be so wonderful here, it's not surprising he would respond the way he did," Kuran said. "Someone 18 or 30 can be influenced this way. That he is only 6 makes it that much easier for the process to work."

The U.S. media appear to be a likely target of criticism for broadcasting the tape, which apparently was given for distribution to Univision, the country's largest Spanish-language television network.

It first was shown on ABC's "Good Morning America" yesterday but not before the network was certain of its origins, said ABC spokeswoman Eileen Murphy.