Rise in parental kidnap cases

Thursday, 02 July 2009 12:18
http://www.euroweeklynews.com/2009070259740/news/national/rise-in-parental-kidnap-cases.html
Rise in parental kidnap cases
By Annie Maples

The number of children illegally taken out of Spain by a parent after a marriage or partnership breakdown is steadily increasing and Ministry of Justice statistics for 2006 – the latest available – show that 178 children were, in effect, kidnapped by a parent. One of these was Sara, whose mother Leticia Moracho fought for three years before her daughter, now aged 11, could return from Basra where she was taken by her Iraqi father, Leticia’s former husband, on the pretext of a holiday in 2006.

There has been a spectacular rise in cases like Sara’s which, according to a report by Barcelona’s College of Lawyers, are prompted by the increase in marriages between Spanish nationals and foreign immigrants. The survey’s authors found that South America received the majority of petitions to return children seized by parents unwilling for custody cases to be held in Spain, despite International Court of The Hague stipulations that such hearings should be conducted in the child’s country of origin.

But what happens when the country receiving one of these requests refuses to co-operate or to accept a custody ruling by a Spanish court?

This is the situation of a 44-year-old Valencian lawyer, Maria Jose Carrascosa, who married US citizen Peter Innes in 1999. The marriage broke up in 2004, and, in 2005, she and her daughter Victoria, aged seven, returned to Spain after a New Jersey court gave Innes custody.

A Valencia court, in line with the International Court, later ruled in favour of Maria but the New Jersey court not only refused to comply with the Spanish ruling but imprisoned Maria Jose in 2006 after she voluntarily returned to the US. She had intended to demonstrate that Spain had granted her full custody of the child but was accused instead of contempt of court and kidnap after failing to hand Victoria over to an American court.

Campaigners for Maria Jose Carrascosa’s release accused the judge in charge of the case of capricious behaviour, claiming that because he did not recognise the International Court’s authority and disagreed with the Valencia decision, he chose to ignore it.

Recent attempts to reach an out-of-court settlement between Maria Jose and her ex-husband having failed, a date has now been set for Maria Jose’s trial, which is set to begin on October 20.Leticia Moracho’s battle for the return of her daughter was fought in war-torn Basra, requiring three years and the intervention of Spain’s Foreign Ministry and the Spanish ambassador in Iraq.

Matters only came to a head last March after Sara’s family managed to prove to an Iraqi judge that her father had forged documents in order to keep her in Basra. To their horror, Sara’s family found that she had been living surrounded by rats, refuse and dead bodies: “More than a triumph, this is a miracle after three years of hell,” said a spokesman.

By the time she returned to Spain, Sara had virtually forgotten how to speak Spanish and wore the traditional Iraqi head-covering, but her mother said at the time: “I won’t tell her to take it off. I don’t want to wound her psychologically.”Legal experts are concerned that lawyers, courts and police are still unused to ‘kidnap by parent’ and need specialist training to deal with such cases.

Neither are concerns all one-way, as the authorities are aware that they are often ill-equipped to respond to requests to locate children brought by a parent to Spain, hampered by the absence of a national database co-ordinating details of all children enrolled in Spanish schools.

Comments (1)
There Is Much Ignorance In Child Abduction
Written by Abducted Minors, July 02, 2009

Since 1996, my organisation has dealt with locating, internationally, some of the many thousands of children abducted by a parent, each year.
An "abduction" takes place if a minor child (under aged 16) is "removed or retained from their place of habitual residence, without benefit of a court Order (allowing the removal or retention) or without the consent of a person (or body) who has rights of access".
For your Reporter to say that "parents are unwilling for custody cases to be heard in Spain" and that "despite International Court of The Hague stipulations that such hearings should be conducted in the child’s country of origin" is incorrect.
The whole point of The Hague Convention On The Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is that children who are abducted from one signatory country to another, should be expediently returned to their place of habitual residence, so that a competent Judge in that country may decide about the child's custody.
Where it all goes wrong, is that a parent given custody, care and control (residence) in one country, then believes they have to do nothing more to remove or retain that child elsewhere. So once they have left - particularly in a place like America, where child kidnap is a criminal offence - the 'isolated' parent merely returns to a court; gets a 'sole custody' Order; files a Hague Petition to have the child returned and then 'abductor's' like Maria Jose Carrascosa, find themselves arrested, in jail and facing criminal kidnap charges.
The consequences of her arrest, for both her and the child's future relationship are horrific; whether she subsequently faces jail or extradition from the country.
The Hague is great at returning children between non-Muslim countries; but again, does little or nothing for the many hundreds of children abducted from Spain/Europe each year to Algeria, Morocco; Syria; Egypt; Saudi; Iraq, etc.,
Where it fails too, is that investigations to locate abducted children are not taken too seriously and the 'flaw' is in cases being made for abducted children becoming 'settled' in a new country; if not located quickly after being taken. In many countries too their is no funding for investigations to take place and the costs are borne by isolated/searching parent's rather than the authorities charged to find them.
The Hague Convention and International Child Custody laws need to be rethought.

How very sad for all these children who are torn between 2 people who are acting like children instead of thinking of the children!

I remember years ago one of my mam's neighbours was married to a lybian. Really nice fella who did everything for his wife and children. The whole family were due to go to lybia to meet his family. Everything was organized and the day they were due to fly out Yvonne was checking that she had the usual passports etc. Her passport was missing. She searched the whole house and couldn't find it. As they were together for about 8 years at this stage Yvonne said she would go and get a new passport and follow them out the next day. They had 3 of the most beautiful children. Yvonne got a phonecall that evening to tell her the kids were staying in lybia with him and if she followed him over or tried to get them back through any other way he would have her killed. The eldest of her children at the time was 11. She would be about 24 or 25 now and Yvonne has never seen her kids since. She tried everything she could to get them back but because they were still married and he is their father there was nothing anyone would do to help her.

I know he did let them ring her on birthdays etc but that was as far as the communication went. I've not seen Yvonne in about 3 years and I often wonder if her kids ever came home to see her. Although I was only a kid at the time myself I always remember seeing her crying and begging for someone to bring her babies back to her.

I think this is one of the main reasons I try to keep missing people in the public eye. I was too young to help Yvonne but her kids always stick in my mind.