The orphan, the heiress and a love gone wrong

The once happy family in September 2003.

Tom Leonard

March 30, 2008

THE flamboyant and privileged lifestyle of one of America's richest heiresses has been laid bare in a custody battle over a Cambodian orphan.
Elizabeth "Libet" Johnson, 57, an heir to the $US170 billion ($184 billion) Johnson & Johnson pharmaceuticals empire, has been portrayed by a former boyfriend as ruthless, deceitful and predatory, using her enormous wealth to get her way.
Lionel Bissoon, a Trinidad-born celebrity weight-loss doctor, has been fighting Ms Johnson for nearly three years over a five-year-old Cambodian boy whom both claim to have legally adopted. The case has drawn accusations of "legal kidnapping" and extortion.
Last week, in Manhattan's state appeals court, Ms Johnson appealed against a judge's decision to revoke a previous judgement in her favour.
Ms Johnson, whose grandfather, Robert Wood Johnson, built his company into a pharmaceutical giant, has remained silent outside court, unlike the 47-year-old Dr Bissoon.
He pointed out that she had five husbands before she was 40 and claimed she had been romantically linked with many men, including singer Michael Bolton.
Dr Bissoon, who wrote The Cellulite Cure, became romantically involved with Ms Johnson in 2003. At the time, she was one of his patients. He says she began inviting him to her apartment in the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
Valued at one point at $US62 million, the property was so big that she once considered installing a basketball court and pool. Dr Bissoon admitted that life with her had its attractions, including jetting in her private plane between various homes, one of them a farm in upstate New York.
Within months they were talking about adoption and, later that year, Ms Johnson found an orphan called Rath Chan in Cambodia, where she was involved in setting up an orphanage.
Temporarily getting around a US ban on adopting Cambodians, they brought the boy to New York on a medical visa in August 2003. He was given the new name of William, a $US100,000 trust fund and two nannies, and installed at the Johnson apartment. But by the following summer, the Bissoon-Johnson relationship was virtually over.
Ms Johnson, who has four adult children, told Dr Bissoon that she intended to adopt the child on her own.
He initially agreed but changed his mind after the heiress banned him from seeing William after a row at her apartment.
Two years ago, a judge named Ms Johnson as the child's mother but revoked the order last year, citing the heiress' "substantial, material misrepresentations".
The judge was unimpressed to learn belatedly that Ms Johnson had failed to disclose that she had originally tried to adopt the boy with Dr Bissoon, and that he had actually adopted William in Cambodia in 2004. The socialite had also not disclosed that she had recently been treated for a drinking problem.
The four-judge panel has reserved its judgement.
DAILY TELEGRAPH