What Can We Do To Prevent Parental Child Abduction ?

Source: The Polly Klaas Foundation

When the kidnapper is a family member

For Parents… How to Protect Yourself and Your Child

• Are you in the middle of a custody battle?
• Do you argue with your child’s other parent about visitation?
• Do you worry about your child when he or she is with the other parent?

If you answered YES to any of these, you and your child may be at risk of family abduction.

Family abduction happens when a family member, usually a parent, kidnaps and conceals a child for any length of time. It is a serious crime that happens to over 203,000 families a year. Life on the run for a child abducted by a family member offers many dangers: over half of family abductors have a history of violence, substance abuse, or a criminal record. In addition, children are often deprived of schooling and medical care, and learn to distrust the very authorities who could help them. The potential for harm is so great that many states prosecute family abduction as a felony.

Why do parents kidnap their own children?

According to family abduction experts, parents cite the following reasons for kidnapping their own children:

• To force a reconciliation or continued interaction with the left-behind parent;
• To spite or punish the other parent;
• From fear of losing custody or visitation rights;
• In rare cases, to protect the child from a parent who is perceived to molest, abuse, or neglect the child.

Are you at risk for family abduction?

A direct threat of abduction should always be taken seriously, but often the warning signs are more subtle. Here are the most common signs that your child may be in danger of being kidnapped by a parent or family member:

• Your relationship with the other parent of your child is volatile and you argue often over visitation;
• A parent has a history of threatening abduction or has actually abducted the child in the past;
• A parent suspects or believes abuse has occurred and his/her friends and family support these concerns;
• A parent is paranoid delusional or severely sociopathic;
• A parent is a citizen of another country and is ending a mixed-culture marriage;
• A parent feels alienated from the legal system and has family/social support in another community;
• A parent has no strong ties to the child’s home state;
• A parent has no job, is able to work anywhere or is not financially tied to the area;
• A parent is engaged in planning activities such as quitting a job, selling a home, terminating a lease, closing a bank account or applying for passports, birth certificates or school and medical records.

If any of these warning signs are present in your family, we recommends following the steps described below.

Keeping your child safe — Tips to prevent family abduction

Most parents who fall victim to family abduction are not aware that something like this can happen to them. While most people think strangers are to blame in child kidnappings, national statistics reveal that abductions by family are much more common than by strangers.

Michael Smith, whose children were abducted by his ex-wife in December 1997, says, “While it is devastating to know that the risk of family abduction is much higher than stranger abductions, parents can take comfort in knowing that there are preventive measures they can take to reduce the risk of family abduction, precisely because they know who the potential abductor is.”

We recommend taking the following cautionary steps:

1. Respect the other parent’s custody and visitation rights. Anger, frustration and desperation are leading causes of family abduction.
2. Attempt to maintain a friendly relationship with your ex-spouse and his/her family. This may be difficult, but it can save you from experiencing the far greater trauma of family abduction. The family will be less willing to aid in an abduction if they have a relationship with you. If an abduction does occur, you will need the support of the kidnapper’s family to bring your child home safely.
3. Consider counseling. As little as 10 hours of intervention can effectively reduce the likelihood of family abduction. Information on obtaining counseling or mediation services is available atwww.divorceinfo.com. Child Find of America (1-800-426-5678) offers a mediation hotline. Your local family court can also help you with referrals to counseling or mediation services.
4. Begin the custody process immediately and get temporary custody of your child. You cannot prove your custody rights without a custody order.
5. Include abduction and interference prevention measures in the custody order. The most common are:
   • Having both parents post bonds. If the child is abducted, the money helps the left-behind parent with costs of recovery. It also serves as a deterrent. Companies that provide such services include Accredited and Roche Surety. For more information on posting bonds, contact the Professional Bail Agents of the United States at www.pbus.com or 1-800-833-PBUS.
   • Providing detailed police procedures in case of abduction or custodial interference, and authorization for law enforcement to recover the child.
   • Imposing visitation restrictions, such as supervised visits. The Supervised Visitation Network can provide more information about supervised visitations.
   • Requiring that the parents passports be left at the county clerk’s office during visitations.
6. Keep a certified copy of the custody order with you at home. Check with your family court that it is the most recent order.
7. Record and document abduction threats. Report them to the family courts or your lawyer immediately.
8. Ask the police or prosecutor to intervene. If a parent threatens to abduct a child, it can help to ask the local police or prosecutor to contact the parent and warn him/her of the criminal consequences.
9. Notify schools, healthcare providers, day care centers and babysitters of custody orders. Certified copies of custody orders should be on file with the school office and given to teachers, day care providers, babysitters, dentists and pediatricians with instructions not to release your child to anyone else without your permission. You should ask to be contacted immediately if the non-custodial parent attempts to pick up your child without explicit authorization.
10. Keep lists of identifying information about the other parent and your child, including Social Security numbers, current photographs, license plate numbers and bank and credit card account numbers.
11. Keep a complete written description of your child, including hair and eye color, height, weight, date of birth, and identifying physical features. Take color photographs of your child every six months. A head and shoulder portrait is best. Consider getting your child fingerprinted. Contact your local police department to find out how this can be done in your area. You, not the police, should retain the prints. Or use the Child ID kit available from the Polly Klaas Foundation to fingerprint and document identification information about your child.
12. File or register a certified copy of the custody order in the non-custodial parent’s state. This notifies the courts that a valid order has been made and must be enforced without modification. Contact your local family court for advice on how to do this.
13. Obtain a passport for your child and notify the passport office that your child is not to leave the country without your written permission. Learn how to restrict your child’s passport through the U.S. Department of State at www.travel.state.gov.

To keep your children safe, it is ALSO important that you:

• Keep the lines of communication open between you and your children.
• Teach your children their full name(s) and your full name. Older children should be able to easily recite their full address, city, state and country, as well as telephone number with area code.
• Practice using both a private phone and pay phone, with clear explanation of when to call home, and how to place long distance calls. You should also help them understand how and when to dial 9-1-1 and 0 for Operator, and that these calls are free, even from a pay phone.

AND MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL is something you can easily do every day:

• Be sure that your child knows that you love him/her and if anything should ever separate you that you will do everything you can to be together again. For your child’s well-being, this should be conveyed without mentioning, or accusing, the other parent of being a potential threat.

The Polly Klaas Foundation has compassionate and professional case workers who can help you prevent family abduction and recover a child who has been abducted by a family member. If you have any reason to believe you and your child are in danger of family abduction, contact us immediately at 1-800-587-4357.

We strongly encourage you to share this information.

You can download this fact sheet and other educational materials at www.PollyKlaas.org, or request materials and Child ID kits for families by calling the Polly Klaas Foundation at 1-800-587-4357.

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One key to ABP World Group`s successful recovery and re-unification of your loved one is to use all necessary means available

Contact us here: Mail

Join the Facebook Group: International Parental Child Abduction

NOTE: We are always available 24/7

U.S Phone Number: (646) 502-7443

UK Phone Number: 020 3239 0013 -

Or you can call our 24h Emergency phone number: +47 45504271

Child abduction issue should be key concern in Japan-U.S. relations

Source: Japan Today

TOKYO —

The issue of international child abductions in Japan should be a key concern in bilateral relations between Japan and the United States.

For years, the international community has been pressuring Japan to abide by international human rights standards in preventing cross-border parental kidnapping.

Japan has been censured for not being a signatory to the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, which protects children from wrongful removal or retention from their habitual place of residence.

Though former Prime Minister Naota Kan announced on May 20 last year that Japan intends to sign The Hague Convention, Japan is the only G8 member that has yet to become a signatory. LBPs (Left Behind Parents) are cautious to find the signing as reason to cheer because changes are also needed in Japan’s family courts for them to be reunited with their children. The continued condoning of both domestic and international child abduction cases can be traced to Japan’s family court.

Japan’s family court often awards sole custody to the parent with whom the child is residing. If the other parent wishes to see their child, permission by the parent to whom custodial rights were awarded becomes necessary.

This means that the parent who takes away the child from the other parent first will be in a superior bargaining position, since the family court overwhelmingly recognizes the status quo of whom the child is residing with.

Many LBPs have criticized the Japanese judicial system for condoning abduction by granting sole custody rights to the parent who snatches the child away first. In situations where cross-border kidnappings take place, the foreign parent is effectively powerless, as the Japanese family court will rule in favor of the parent with whom the child is residing. This has led some bereaved foreign LBPs to refer to Japan as a “black hole for child abduction.”

First, the Japanese government’s stance to become a signatory of The Hague Convention is an indication of changes in favor of adopting international human rights standards.

The move comes at a time when the numbers of international marriages and divorces are increasing in Japan. According to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, approximately 19,000 international marriages ended in divorce last year in Japan, comprising 7.5% of the total number of divorces in Japan. In 2010, the ratio to divorces to all marriages in Japan was approximately 36%. Children of divorce are at significant risk of losing access to one parent in the current family law system.

Things are finally starting to change at both the international and domestic levels. There are two model cases, one in Wisconsin and one in Matsudo, Chiba.

Japan has stuck to awarding sole custody to one parent following a divorce since the Meiji era. Though some have mentioned this as evidence of sole custody being a part of Japan’s culture, in reality, this system has also created a legal system that condones child abductions.

In addition, on Dec 23, 2011, a girl was returned to her father in Wisconsin after being abducted by her Japanese mother nearly 4 years earlier, the first return of an abducted child from Japan by means of the courts.

She was reunited with her father when her mother, who had been arrested in April 2011 in Hawaii on child abduction charges, agreed to a plea bargain to be released from jail in exchange for returning their daughter to the United States.

The case, which received wide coverage in international and Japanese media, marked the first time for Japanese media such as NHK and Asahi to use the term “tsuresari” (abduction) rather than “tsurekaeru” (to bring home).

Of course, a plea bargain is still not the equivalent of a change in stance in Japan’s family court, but changes are also gradually being implemented in the domestic sphere as well.

Many people following the child abduction issue are closely monitoring the development of a high-profile domestic abduction case in Matsudo, Chiba Prefecture, to see if a judicial precedent making child abductions an unlawful act will be made.

On April 26, 2011, former Justice Minister Satsuki Eda mentioned three criteria that need to be considered in determining the custody of children after divorce, as stated in article 766, in his remarks to the Committee on Judicial Affairs.

The three criteria are: the abduction of children should be eligible for consideration as child abuse; the issuance of custody rights should favor parents who are willing to allow the other parent visitation of their children (also known as the “friendly parent rule”); and parents who commit unlawful abductions of their child should be at a disadvantage in the issuance of custody rights.

At the domestic level, article 766 of Japan’s civil code, which stipulates legal guidelines for the custody of children after divorce, was revised on June 3, 2011, to include a provision which states that visitation and economic support must be deliberated between the two spouses before divorce papers are submitted.

As stated in the “friendly parent rule,” one of the three criteria underlined by Eda, not allowing visitation, ought to work unfavorably toward obtaining custody rights. In cases where the child has already been abducted, the LBP may offer the abducting parent visitation in fighting to recover their child in court.

In effect, the revision of article 766 is significant, as the abduction of a child by a parent will be in breach of the new provision. This measure, if properly enforced by Japan’s family court, will help prevent the abduction of children by a parent.

However, when asked to recognize the remarks made by Eda, Tatsushige Wakabayashi, the judge presiding over the case, reportedly remarked, “What the justice minister says at the Diet is irrelevant.”

In response, various LBP groups have called for Wakabayashi to step down. Wakabayashi has yet to make a final verdict, leaving both domestic LBP groups and the international community tense anticipating his decision.

Follow our updates on Twitter and Facebook

One key to ABP World Group`s successful recovery and re-unification of your loved one is to use all necessary means available

Contact us here: Mail

Join the Facebook Group: International Parental Child Abduction

NOTE: We are always available 24/7

U.S Phone Number: (646) 502-7443

UK Phone Number: 020 3239 0013 -

Or you can call our 24h Emergency phone number: +47 45504271

Abducted children not priority, fathers say – Canadian police and courts called ineffective

Source: CBC News

Two Canadian fathers whose children were allegedly abducted by their mothers and taken to European countries say authorities have done little to try to enforce court orders and bring them back.

Calum Hughes breaks down when he talks about how he misses his little girl, who he has not seen since 2009. (CBC)

“I’m holding my hands up going, ‘Can somebody please do something about this?’” said Calum Hughes, whose five-year-old daughter Livia was allegedly abducted by her mother from B.C. and taken to Italy in 2009.

“Somebody is not doing their job behind a desk,” said Gary Mezo, from Thunder Bay, Ont. His two-year-old son Gary Jr. has been in Hungary for a year. Court records confirm his mother took him there without his father’s permission.

“I believe Canada has to put its foot down — finally — and do whatever is written in law what has been ordered in court.”

There is a two-year-old Canada-wide warrant for the arrest of Hughes’s ex-wife, Sibylla Verdi, for child abduction. He hasn’t seen Livia for 2½ years.

“It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I think of before I go to sleep at night,” said Hughes, of Kelowna, B.C.

Fathers have legal custody

Hughes is a hospital administrator and Mezo a successful businessman. Both were granted sole custody of their children by Canadian courts, but they said those orders have proven meaningless.

“A Canadian Supreme Court full custody ruling has no teeth,” said Hughes. “There’s not a lot of consequence that I see for a parent to just pick up and leave.”

Mezo alleges his ex was planning to abduct his son for more than a year.

“Before my child left, I told the police several times, please do something,” he said.

He has an affidavit and emails from a boyfriend of his child’s mother, showing she planned to leave and then claim abuse.

“He felt so bad that he couldn’t live with himself. He said that he had to do something about it. He wants me to have my child back,” said Mezo.

The Missing Children Society of Canada said while it has seen a steady increase in calls about international parental abductions, there is effectively nothing in place that could have prevented the abductions.

Child’s rights ‘at risk’

“The child’s rights are at risk here,” said private investigator Ted Davis. “A woman or man who wants to take their child [outside Canada or the U.S.] can simply jump on a plane and leave.”

Davis said his office is working on 60 cases of international abductions from Canada, dating back six years.

The latest RCMP figures show there were 237 reports of parental abduction in Canada in 2009 and 41 per cent of the children were under the age of five.

More than half the cases were resolved or withdrawn within a day. RCMP spokesperson Julie Gagnon said she didn’t know how many of the remaining children were taken to other countries.

She said when there is a warrant, as in the Hughes case, the RCMP can ask Interpol to put a “red notice” in the system, so the alleged abductor could be arrested at any border crossing.

She said, depending on the country and the case, extradition can also be initiated.

Dads desperate

However, Hughes said he heard nothing from the RCMP after a charge was laid against his ex-wife two years ago.

“They have done nothing,” said Hughes. “What message are we sending to everybody out there? If you don’t get a court order that you like, take your kid and leave the country? You will suffer no consequence? Is the Canadian justice system OK with that?”

RCMP spokesperson Dan Moskaluk insisted the investigation is still active.

“Resources involved in advancing this case since 2009 has involved RCMP investigators from the Kelowna detachment to assistance from our international policing branch liaison officer in Italy,” Moskaluk said.

CBC News sent messages to Sibylla Verdi, but received no response.

Mezo said he tried to get Thunder Bay police to pursue abduction charges in his case, but the investigating officer told him she couldn’t get approval. He believes that is partly because his wife falsely alleged he was abusive.

“It boils down to one thing — no reasonable grounds to get a charge approved,” said Thunder Bay police spokesperson Chris Adams. “These cases are very problematic. We don’t have the authority to enforce custody in another country.”

“It’s a very expensive proposition to initiate extradition on an abduction charge,” said Davis. “It’s not a priority [to police]. They don’t like getting involved in family cases when it’s not a life-threatening situation.”

Davis said under the current system, where parents can make applications for the child’s return under the Hague Convention, it takes two to three years and several thousand dollars to get children back, and it can only be done with signatory countries.

System slow, expensive

“If there’s no one stirring the pot, then no one is working the case,” he said. “The system is effective, but slow and very, very expensive.”

Both fathers made Hague applications. Italy refused to send Livia home, though, because the court believed his Italian ex-wife’s assertion that Hughes was an unfit father, allegations that were rejected by a Canadian court.

“That’s all needless details and garbage,” said Hughes. “I’ve spent over a hundred thousand dollars and how many hours in court. I’ve ended up with nothing in terms of a relationship with my daughter. “

Mezo’s application is stalled in the Hungarian court system, which has sympathized with the Hungarian-born mother of his son.

“The Hungarian court said that ‘well there is no warrant out for her. She didn’t do anything wrong in Canada. So therefore we take it all with a grain of salt whatever the judge ordered in Canada,’” said Mezo.

His son’s mother, Boglarka Balog, sent an email to CBC News, again claiming abuse.

“The [Hungarian] court will value the behaviour of Gary that was violent so much in Hungary too, not only in Canada,” she wrote.

“Countries protect their own,” said Davis. “The stumbling block in Hague cases is when the court [overseas] is convinced there’s risk to the child [if returned].”

Call for exit controls

Hughes and Mezo said Canada should put some type of exit control in place, to try to stop parents from leaving with children they don’t have custody of.

“I was devastated when I learned [Livia and her mother] were gone because I knew what that meant,” said Hughes. “If they had been stopped, this would have all been prevented.”

“It’s happening everywhere [in the world]. But nobody is doing anything about it. Somebody has to step up and put their foot down and say enough is enough,” said Mezo.

Airlines and governments advise travellers to have a consent letter from the other parent if they want to fly with a child alone, but that system is voluntary.

“It’s smoke and mirrors — and those letters can be forged,” said Davis, who agreed exit controls are needed. “We have a file cabinet full of international cases.”

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) confirmed airlines can do nothing to stop a parent from leaving with a child, even when they don’t have a letter.

“Since there’s no governmental requirement, the airlines have no legal mandate to be checking these,” said spokesperson Perry Flint, who added airlines could open themselves up to lawsuits if they refuse to let a paying passenger board.

A U.S. government agency recently proposed establishing a “no fly” list – for parents who the courts have ruled are likely to abduct their children.

CBC News asked several federal departments if something like that is being considered for Canada. Transport Canada said it is not, Foreign Affairs did not reply and Public Safety said that would not be its department.

Both fathers said their children have been let down by a system that is ineffective and hasn’t made children’s rights a priority.

“I’ve tried everything by the book,” said Hughes. “This [going public] is my last hope to ever see Livia.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined in my dreams that my country would let me down or let my son down,” said Mezo. “It’s hard to go to work and pay taxes … when this country is not backing you up.”

Read: International Parental Child Abduction: The Hague convention – Proved Useless 

Read: When the Hague Convention won`t help

And: The Hague Convention is not enough to recover your child

Follow our updates on Twitter and Facebook

One key to ABP World Group`s successful recovery and re-unification of your loved one is to use all necessary means available

Contact us here: Mail

Join the Facebook Group: International Parental Child Abduction

NOTE: We are always available 24/7

U.S Phone Number: (646) 502-7443

UK Phone Number: 020 3239 0013 -

Or you can call our 24h Emergency phone number: +47 45504271