Japan remains a nightmare when it comes to parental child abductions

December 29, 2013

Source: Vancouver Sun

There are few more heart-wrenching stories than those of parental child abductions. Forget the emotional dynamics that drive ex-wives and ex-husbands to use their children as weapons in an ongoing war. The greatest damage inflicted is on little kids, which is why for the past 35 years all but Japan among the developed countries in the world and dozens of others have signed on to the Hague Convention of Child Abduction.

The convention requires signatory countries to honour the court orders of other member states. The goal is to protect children’s right to have access to both of their parents.  And while the Hague Convention’s application isn’t always perfect, it’s the best we’ve got so far. Of course, it would be better if more countries signed on and then lived up to both the convention’s letter and spirit.

I’ve written a number of stories, most recently an update on five-year-old Max Kawabata-Morness, who was abducted July 26 by his mother Chie Kawabata. In the column, which follows below, I mentioned that as far as I knew Canada has never put pressure on Japan to either ratify or enforce the Hague Convention.

It turns out I was wrong. Strangely, the correction didn’t come from Prime Minister Stephen Harper or anyone in the Canadian government. The mistake was pointed out by  — Capt. Paul Toland, executive assistant to the deputy surgeon general of the U.S. Navy. Toland’s daughter, Erika, was less than a year old when she was abducted by her Japanese mother in August 2003. His last contact with her was in July 2004.

(Toland’s story is one of five in a documentary of parental child abductions called From the Shadows.)

Toland provided me a link to a 2006 Kyodo News International report on Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s first meeting with Japan’s then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi. Here’s part of what that report says: “Harper, who took office in February, was meeting Koizumi for the first time, took the Japanese delegation by surprise when he brought up the issue of parental child abductions and called on Japan to accede to the Hague Convention.”

Toland also gave me a link to a Japanese government press release from the June 17, 2013 meeting between Harper and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that referenced Harper’s 2006 comments about the Hague Convention and updated him on Japan’s intention to become a signatory.

Of  course, as I noted in my Nov. 1 column, Japan’s enabling legislation appears to have a massive loophole that would allow Japanese judges to reject any foreign court orders regarding children that run contrary to Japanese “custom.”

Here’s the column.

Kris Morness and his son, Max Kawabata-Morness, in Vancouver a few weeks before the five-year-old was abducted by his Japanese-American and taken to Japan.

Kris Morness spent thousands of dollars in legal fees trying to ensure that his worst fear wouldn’t come true. It was a waste of the Vancouver father’s time, money and effort.

On July 26, his ex-wife Chie Kawabata abducted their fiveyear-old son, Max. A Washington court had previously denied Kawabata’s request to move with Max to Japan, ordering her to remain in Kirkland, Wash., and comply with the court-approved parental order, which included Max having regular visits with Morness in Vancouver and frequent Skype calls.

After Max missed a scheduled Skype call, Morness contacted Kirkland police, who determined that Kawabata had flown on a one-way ticket and had arranged to ship “500 pounds of household goods and personal effects” to Tokyo.

On Sept. 15, King County Superior Court issued a warrant for Kawabata’s arrest on the charge of custodial interference in the first degree, with bail set at $100,000. The prosecutor’s report noted that “the State has serious concerns about the well-being and whereabouts of the five-year-old child as well as the defendant’s unwillingness to follow court orders.”

But Morness’s court orders and even the arrest warrant aren’t worth the paper they’re written on as long as Kawabata stays in Japan.

The arrest warrant is only valid in the United States and there’s no way that a Japanese

court will honour the court orders. Simply put, from a stolen child’s point of view or that of a left-behind parent, Japan is one of the worst places in the world.

There’s no firm estimate of how many Canadian children have been abducted to Japan and not returned, but I know of at least six including Max.

And while Canadian politicians don’t appear to have ever raised this abuse of both human rights and children’s rights with their Japanese counterparts, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama spoke of the more than 120 abducted American kids often enough that Japan’s parliament agreed this Spring that it would ratify the Hague Convention on child abduction. Japan has yet to implement the legislation. And even if it had, while it may meet the Hague Convention requirements, it doesn’t appear to reflect its spirit.

The convention has been in place for nearly 35 years and requires that signatory countries respect and implement each other’s Family Court orders. The goal is to protect children from the trauma of abduction and ensure that children don’t end up stateless without any legal rights.

Before any foreign order would be enforced, a Japanese judge would have to agree to allow it. And that’s no easy thing.

According to information provided to me by the Japanese Embassy in Ottawa, the foreign court where the judgment was made would have to have international trial jurisdiction over the case “based on Japanese standards.”

Additionally, the legislation would only require a Japanese court to enforce a foreign judgment if it and the legal procedures of the foreign court are “not against the manners and customs or public order in Japan.”

So, what is Japanese custom? A year ago, a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation asked Japanese legislator Masao Ido about parental abductions.

“While Westerners call it abduction, it’s common among the Japanese that a mother and child return to the mother’s parents after a divorce,” said Ido, a member of the judicial affairs committee. “If anything, (the Japanese) think it is not a bad thing. It’s really a custom.”

Ido snatched her own three children after her marriage ended. “Like other parents, I left a note so the other parent knew where the children were and understood that they were in a safe place.”

Morness holds out hope that Kawabata may change her mind and bring Max back. That would seem to be the best outcome for everyone.

But that rarely seems to happen. Like Morness, Richmond teacher Murray Wood spent thousands of dollars trying to get his son and daughter back. His son, who is now an adult, returned to Canada earlier this year after spending nine years in Japan. His daughter remains in Japan.

(Wood’s story is one of five documented in a film called From The Shadows, which is being screened Sunday at 2 p.m. at the Roundhouse at 1181 Seymour Street in Vancouver.) Morness worries every day about Max. But since September and around the time of the arrest warrant being issued, Kawabata agreed to resume Max’s Skype calls with his father.

Morness says the calls seem to be made at Starbucks and the connection isn’t great. The calls are often brief, ending abruptly when he asks questions like whether Max wants to come home.

Morness also isn’t certain whether his son is in school.

Even though Max has only been gone for three months, Morness has noticed that his little boy’s English is more heavily accented than before and the phrasing is a bit off. That’s another huge concern, he says, because English is the only language Morness speaks.

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Mother facing kidnap charge loses US extradition fight

Source: BBC News

A mother accused of international parental kidnapping has lost her fight against extradition to America.

The High Court ruled Eileen Clark, who moved to Britain with her three children in 1998, should be returned to the US.

The kidnapping allegations, made more than 12 years ago, were brought against Mrs Clark by her ex-husband John Clark.

The US citizen was arrested at her home in Oxfordshire in July 2010, following a US government request for her return.

Lawyers for Mrs Clark, 54, said her worsening psychiatric problems and fear of flying would make extradition “oppressive”.

‘Hardship not oppressive’

They also criticised US authorities for not seeking her return earlier, as she had been living “openly” in the UK since December 1998 and had put down “deep roots”.

But Lord Justice Stanley Burnton and Mr Justice Underhill, sitting in London, dismissed her appeal.

Mr Justice Underhill said: “We accept there will be hardship for the appellant if she is returned to the US to stand trial, but we do not believe that hardship can properly be characterised as oppressive.”

Mrs Clark had left her husband in February 1995, taking their children with her.

Jury indictment

In June 1995, state prosecutors had charged her with “custodial interference” after she travelled from the family’s New Mexico home to stay with a friend in California.

Both parents retained legal custody of the children after divorcing in 1997.

A US grand jury eventually indicted her with the kidnapping charge after Mrs Clark moved to Britain with the children, who are also US citizens.

In March last year, Westminster Magistrates’ Court ruled that extradition could go ahead.

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Parents who abduct children should face longer in prison, says top judge

Source: The Telegraph

Parents who abduct their own children could face life sentences because of the “unspeakable cruelty” they cause, the country’s most senior judge said yesterday.

Lord Judge said has called for tougher penalties for parents who abduct their own children. Photo: PA

Lord Judge, the Lord Chief Justice, dismissed a legal precedent that parents in such cases should not be charged with kidnap.

That could mean them facing life imprisonment instead of the current seven year maximum for child abduction.

Lord Judge said the maximum term for child abduction should also be increased because it currently does not meet “true justice”, especially for the other “loving parent” whose children are snatched away.

The call for a review came as he dismissed sentence appeals by two fathers who abducted their children and took them abroad “for very many years”.

He said cases where fathers abducted children and took them abroad “have become increasingly troublesome”.

In one case, the children were away from their mother for so long that they now refuse to have contact with her.

Lord Judge said: “The abduction of children from a loving parent is an offence of unspeakable cruelty to the loving parent and to the child or children, whatever they may later think of the parent from whom they have been estranged as a result of the abduction.”

Ruling on a separate case in 1991, the Court of Appeal concluded that in cases where a parent abducts their child prosecutors should “avoid altogether charging anyone with child kidnapping”.

But sitting in the same court yesterday, Lord Judge said: “Our view is clear.

“Simply because the child has been abducted by a parent, given current conditions, it no longer necessarily follows that for policy reasons a charge of kidnapping must always be deemed inappropriate”.

He said the previous ruling “has no continuing authority” and asked the Law Commission, the Government’s legal advisers, to address the issue as part of its ongoing review of kidnap laws.

It paves the way for such parents being charged with kidnap and facing a possible life sentence.

Lord Judge also called for those convicted of child abduction to face longer terms by raising the maximum term available for such offences beyond the current seven years.

He said there were currently child abduction cases which “merit a sentence greater than the maximum current sentence of seven years imprisonment after a trial”.

The “wide discrepancy” between sentences for kidnap and abduction offences under “seems illogical”, he said

Sitting with Lord Justice McFarlane and Mr Justice Royce, Lord Judge said: “There are some cases of child abduction where, given the maximum available sentence, with or without the appropriate discount for a guilty plea, the available sentencing options do not meet the true justice of the case, properly reflective of the culpability of the offender, and the harm caused by the offence.”

Such crimes result in “depriving the other parent of the joy of his or her children and depriving the children from contact with a loving parent with whom they no longer wish to communicate,” he said.

The court dismissed an appeal by Talib Hussein Kayani, 49, who pleaded guilty at Luton Crown Court to two offences of abducting a child and was sentenced in June to five years imprisonment.

The two sons, who were taken to Pakistan until 2009, have not seen their mother since 2000 and still refuse to have contact with her.

Madhat Solliman, 58, who pleaded guilty at Harrow Crown Court to three counts of abducting a child and was sentenced to three years jail in April, also lost his sentence appeal.

He abducted his three children in 2002 and took them to Egypt before returning in 2009.

Lord Judge stressed that abduction was an offence of “great seriousness” and in both cases the mothers had “suffered extreme emotional hardship”.

He said: “The periods of abduction were prolonged, many years in duration, and the relationship with the mothers was irremediably damaged.

“In the case of the mothers, the hardship will be life long.”

Lord Judge also called for tougher penalties for those who breach court order designed to prevent forced marriages, describing the current sentence of two years as “utterly inadequate”.

The Home Office is currently consulting on whether to make forcing someone in to a marriage as a criminal offence in itself. Lord Judge added that forcing someone to marry against their will also effectively results in them being raped.

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Mediation No Help in Child Abduction Case

Source: Fathersandfamilies.org

November 9th, 2011 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

I’ve said many times that mediation in custody matters is no better than the underlying law and practice of the court.  After all, mediators have little power over litigants.  Mediators just try to get the parties to make a deal rather than have a judge decide the matter for them.

There are a lot of reasons why mediated settlements can be a good thing.  For one thing, the parties tend to be more satisfied with them than they are with the winner-take-all judgment the court issues.  That’s in part because they feel like they have input in the mediation that they don’t have in court.  They can also make agreements on matters that the court is powerless to rule on.  So, on balance, mediation has a lot to offer.

But what parties agree to is necessarily a product of what they think their chances are in court.  So if one party thinks a judge or jury will award him a large monetary verdict in a civil case, he’s not going to be very motivated to settle for less.

And so it is in custody matters.  A husband and wife can mediate till the cows come home, but if the wife knows to a certainty that the judge will give her the kids and him every-other-weekend visitation, why would she settle for less?  Oh, she might do so out of the goodness of her heart, and sometimes that happens.  But a system that depends on the good will of one of the parties to a notoriously acrimonious dispute – i.e. divorce and custody – is bound to fail more often than it succeeds.

So the concept of mediation as the cure-all for what ails custody cases is misplaced.  If laws and judge’s biases don’t change, there’s little mediation can do to help.

This case is a perfect example (Seattle Times, 11/7/11).

Solomon Metalwala, originally from Pakistan and Julia Biryukova, originally from Ukraine, were married in the United States in 2003.  They have two children, Maile, 4 and Sky, 2.  The couple had debt problems, but more than anything they suffered from Biryukova’s mental illness.  Between March of 2010 and the present, she’s been committed three times to mental institutions and diagnosed with a severe form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, that one psychologist said did not rise to the level of psychosis.

During the bitter divorce, Biryukova leveled child abuse allegations at Metalwala, investigations which were ruled to be unfounded.

So, on the one hand there’s the mentally impaired mother with a history of making false allegations of child abuse against the husband, who on the other hand, seems to be a perfectly capable, loving father.  In a sensible family justice system, he’d get custody and Biryukova would get visitation, probably supervised by social workers.

But our family justice system isn’t sensible; it’s Mom-centric, and, as I said above, no amount of mediation will change that.  So when the two went to mediation, what they agreed to looks like pretty much what they and their lawyers figured they’d get from the judge if he/she was required to rule.  Biryukova got primary custody and Metalwala got visitation.

But even that turned out to be too much for Biryukova.

[Attorney Leslie Clay] Terry said the mandatory mediation in which the couple participated last week was intended to bring a close to the bitter divorce. Both parties had compromised, he said, and an agreement that granted custody to Biryukova but allowed visitation with Metalwala was signed by both.

“On Friday, she called and said she’d felt pressured and wanted to void it,” Terry said.

Two days later, 2-year-old Sky disappeared while in Biryukova’s care.  Here’s what she told police happened:  she and the two children were driving in her car when she ran out of gas.  She and Maile walked a mile to the gas station, got gas, called a friend to come pick them up and, when they returned to her car, Sky was gone.

Police said there was no sign of forced entry into the car nor was there a gas can or any indication of car trouble. Police said the car started right up.

The police and the FBI are now searching for Sky.  He’s not with either parent, but the chances Biryukova is telling the truth are slim-to-none.  Someone has the child and that someone is conspiring to hide the boy from his father.  Such, at any rate, is my take on the situation.

No arrests have been made at this time,” [police officer Carla Iafrate] said. “All possibilities of what may have happened to the child are being investigated.”

She said there are still “many unanswered questions.”

You bet there are.  But however they’re answered, we all hope that little Sky is unharmed.  My money says he’s in the care of Biryukova’s co-conspirator.

With any luck, Biryukova will come clean about what she’s done with the little boy.  My guess is that will happen soon.  If so, it’ll be interesting to see what the family court judge does with the new information.  After all, if my take on the case is correct, we can now add an attempt to deprive Metalwala of his son forever to Biryukova’s previous maternal shortcomings.  Into the bargain, she’s needlessly involved the police and the FBI in her charade.

Will that be enough to convince the judge that Biryukova’s not fit to be a parent?  The fact that the local child welfare agency has taken Maile into care suggests caseworkers there think she’s not.  But of course they’ve also refused to give the girl to her father for reasons no one has yet explained.

So, despite everything, Solomon Metalwala is still being treated like a second-class citizen when it comes to his children.  Do we really expect a court to behave differently?

Maybe they should let a mediator decide.

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Parental Abduction – How bad can it be?

Leading experts believe that due to the rapid growth in multi-national marriages and relationships, the number of children born from parents of different countries will continue to expand.

Similar to all relationships, a significant portion of these marriages or partnerships will end in divorce. All too often, one of the separating parents of the child of the relationship will seek to abduct the child to a country other than where the child has lived. This is called ‘International Parental Child Abduction’, and though there are various civil remedies available to targeted parents who have had their child abducted, the challenges they face are grave, and include first and foremost, locating where the child is located.

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Parental dilemma: Whether to spy on their Kids – parenthood and paranoia often walk hand in hand.

Source: David Crary

– In the 21st century, parenthood and paranoia often walk hand in hand.

For some, the blessed event is followed by high-tech surveillance – a monitoring system tracks the baby’s breathing rhythms and relays infrared images from the nursery. The next investment might be a nanny cam, to keep watch on the child’s hired caregivers. Toddlers and grade schoolers can be equipped with GPS devices enabling a parent to know their location should something go awry.

To cope with the uncertainties of the teen years, some parents acquire spyware to monitor their children’s online and cell phone activity. Others resort to home drug-testing kits.

Added together, there’s a diverse, multi-billion-dollar industry seeking to capitalize on parents’ worst fears about their children – fears aggravated by occasional high-profile abductions and the dangers lurking in cyberspace. One mistake can put a child at risk or go viral online, quickly ruining a reputation.

“There’s a new set of challenges for parents, and all sorts of new tools that can help them do their job,” said David Walsh, a child psychologist in Minneapolis. “On the other hand, we have very powerful industries that create these products and want to sell as many as possible, so they try to convince parents they need them.”

Some parents need little convincing.

In New York City, a policeman-turned-politician recorded a video earlier this year offering tips to parents on how to search their children’s bedrooms and possessions for drugs and weapons. In the video, State Sen. Eric Adams – who has a teenage son – insists that children have no constitutional right to privacy at home and shows how contraband could be hidden in backpacks, jewelry boxes, even under a doll’s dress.

“You have a duty and obligation to protect the members of your household,” he says.

Another parent who preaches proactive vigilance is Mary Kozakiewicz of Pittsburgh, whose daughter, Alicia, was abducted as a 13-year-old in 2002 by a man she met online. He chained, beat and raped her before she was rescued four days later.

In recent years, mother and daughter have both campaigned to raise awareness of Internet-related dangers.

Mary Kozakiewicz urges parents to monitor children’s computer and cell phone use, and says those who balk out of respect for privacy are being naive.

“It’s not about privacy – it’s about keeping them safe,” she said,

On a different part of the spectrum are parents such as Lenore Skenazy, a mother of two teens in New York City who wrote a book called “Free Range Kids: How To Raise Safe, Self-Reliant Children (Without Going Nuts with Worry).”

Skenazy, who let one of her sons ride the New York subway alone when he was 9, contends that many marketers exploit parents’ ingrained worries about their children’s safety.

“The idea is that the only good parent is a parent who’s somehow watching over their child 24/7,” she said. “You feel nothing should take precedence over monitoring your child’s well-being every second of the day … from time they’re born to when they go off to college.”

Joe Kelly of St. Paul, Minn., helped his wife raise twin girls (they’re now adults) and founded a national advocacy group called Dads and Daughters. Like Skenazy, he bemoans commercial exploitation of parental anxiety.

“Markets play on this fear that something horrific is going to happen to your child, when the odds of that are minuscule,” he said. “It might happen, but to have their whole childhood predicated on this remote possibility is, in the aggregate, even more damaging.”

Psychologists who work with troubled adolescents and teens say parents often ask if they should be doing more surveillance.

“Ideally, parents establish good open communication and trust with their children, and they don’t need to do all these things,” said Neil Bernstein, a psychologist in Washington, D.C. “But if the child is doing something to create suspicion, you can’t expect parents to turn their back and not monitor.”

Bernstein, author of “How to Keep Your Teenager Out of Trouble and What to do if You Can’t,” says the best approach is a balanced one – neither overly zealous and paranoid nor uninvolved and neglectful.

A look at some of the monitoring tactics and products available to parents:

___

Baby monitors:

These devices – some limited to audio monitoring, others also with video capability – have developed a reputation as a mixed blessing. They can provide parents with peace of mind, freeing them to be elsewhere in the house while the baby naps, but sometimes they accentuate anxiety.

“Some parents are reassured by hearing and seeing every whimper and movement. Others find such close surveillance to be nerve-racking,” says Consumer Reports, which has tested many of the monitors.

Skenazy likened night-vision baby monitors to the surveillance cameras used by convenience stores and prisons.

“It’s treating your child’s bedroom as if it’s the streets of Kandahar,” the battle-scarred Afghan city, she said.

The monitors operate within a selected radio frequency band to send sound from a baby’s room to a receiver in another room, a technology which can be vulnerable to interference from other electronic devices. Prices of models tested by Consumer Reports ranged from $30 for audio monitors to more than $200 for some with video.

“Overall, baby monitors can be as temperamental as a 2-year-old,” says Consumer Reports. “Interference is probably the biggest complaint, but parents also report such problems as low visibility, a shorter-than-expected reception range, and short battery life.”

Models at the high end of the price scale include the Dropcam Echo audio-video system, for $279. Its manufacturer says the system automatically detects motion and sound, and sends alerts to a parent’s smart phone or iPad.

Experts say baby monitors can provide a useful early warning if something is amiss, but caution that they should never substitute for adult supervision.

Parents are warned not to rely on monitors to prevent Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, and they should be sure that the monitors’ electrical cords are kept away from cribs. Earlier this year, about 1.7 million Summer Infant video monitors were recalled after being linked to the strangulation deaths of two infants.

___

Tracking devices:

Of the roughly 800,000 children reported missing in the U.S. each year, the vast majority are runaways or were abducted by a parent. But there are enough kidnappings by strangers – including a few each year that make national news – to fuel a large, evolving market for products catering to apprehensive parents.

The devices range from clip-on alarms to GPS locators that can be put in a backpack or stuffed in a doll, but they have limited range and can raise safety concerns of their own.

Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, says the devices can be helpful in some circumstances but worries about overreliance on them.

“Some of them encourage parents, perhaps unwittingly, to forget their basic responsibilities,” he said. “There are parents who think they can depend on the technology, not on themselves.”

He recounted the case of one little girl who activated her wristband alarm when she was abducted. The abductor cut off the device, left it behind and later killed the girl.

Allen said the child might have been better off yelling for help, rather than focusing on the alarm.

“Some of the new technology is extraordinary,” Allen said. “But these shouldn’t be used as substitutes for good old-fashioned parenting.”

Generally, the gadgets are in two parts – a main device carried by the parent and a small alarm attached to the child. If a child vanishes, the parent can activate the alarm.

Other gadgets use GPS technology, relying on satellite signals, that allows parents using a Web browser to track the location of an enabled device such as a cell phone.

One company, BrickHouse Security, offers a GPS child locater for $200 that functions as a digital watch and can be locked into the child’s wrist. If forcibly removed, an alert is sent to the parent’s cell phone and email.

Some anxious parents wonder if a satellite-enabled tracking device could be implanted in their child – a technology now expanding in Mexico among people rattled by a kidnapping epidemic there. But Allen says such implantation, for children, could have grim consequences – a child who ran away from home or a noncustodial parent who abducted a child might make a grisly attempt to extract the device.

___

Spyware:

For many parents, one of the toughest decisions is whether to spy on a child’s computer and cell phone activity. It’s common for some children to send more than 100 text messages a day, and a recent Associated Press-MTV poll found that about one-quarter of teens had shared sexually explicit photos, videos and chat by cell phone or online.

Walsh, the Minneapolis psychologist, says the best initial step for parents concerned about online risks is a heart-to-heart talk with the child, with monitoring used as a contingency measure only if there’s clear justification.

“If it does make sense to use some spyware, I would never do that in secret way,” said Walsh, whose own three children are now adults. “Tell your children you’ll check on them from time to time. Just that knowledge can be effective.”

Mary Kozakiewicz disagrees, saying deployment of spyware must be kept secret.

“You can’t let them know it’s there, or they’ll do it at a friend’s house,” she said.

Indeed, one of the challenges for some parents is a technology gap – their children may have more savvy about cyberspace and an ability to thwart various spyware tactics.

“Parents are trying to play catch up – and it’s a highly fragmented, confusing sector,” said Keith Jarrett of the AmberWatch Foundation, a nonprofit based in Seal Beach, Calif., dedicated to protecting children against abduction and “the dangers of the digital world.”

AmberWatch promotes various safety devices and technologies, including SafeText – a system enabling parents, for $5 a month, to monitor their children’s text-messaging. The system sends alerts when it detects potentially dangerous or inappropriate text messages, so the parents don’t have to review vast numbers of messages themselves.

Another enterprise, Software4Parents, reviews and sells a range of spyware products. Its Web site features a comment by Mary Kozakiewicz after her abducted daughter was rescued.

“No matter how you feel about your child or how trusting you are that what’s going on is innocent, check it, check it and double check it – or don’t have (the Internet) at all,” Kozakiewicz warns.

Among the site’s featured products are Spector PRO and eBlaster, for sale at $99, and touted as ways way to monitor online chats, instant messages and emails.

“Receive complete transcripts of the web sites they visit, keystrokes they type and more – all delivered right to your email inbox,” the site says.

Several spyware brands, including Mobile Spy and MobiStealth, now offer systems that work with Android, Google’s operating system for mobile phones, ranging in price from $100 to $150 per year.

The software “gives you complete control over your child’s cell phone,” says MobiStealth.

Dr. Henry Gault, who practices child and adolescent psychiatry in Deerfield, Ill., says parents who spy on their children “are walking down a slippery slope” and may end up causing worse problems than the ones that prompted the surveillance.

“That should be the course of last resort,” he said. “Essentially you’re throwing in the towel and saying there’s no trust anymore.”

He suggested it’s normal for children try to keep some secrets from their family.

“Parents shouldn’t feel guilty not knowing 100 percent of what’s going on,” he said. “It’s our job as parents to reduce risk, but you can never reduce the risk to zero.”

___

Home drug tests:

Compared to tracking and spyware gadgets, home drug testing kits are relatively low-tech and inexpensive. But they raise tricky issues for parents, who may be torn between alienating their child on the one hand and living with unresolved doubts about possible drug abuse on the other.

David Walsh directed an adolescent treatment program earlier in his career and says the at-home tests can be appropriate when parents have solid reason for suspicion.

“When a son or daughter is getting seriously into drugs, one dynamic of that is denial,” he said. “The stakes are so high. Parents can say, ‘We need to make sure you’re not doing serious damage to yourself. We might occasionally test you.'”

In Colorado Springs, Colo., single mother Amanda Beihl was among the first to carve out a business from Internet sales of test kits, starting in 1999.

Beihl created homedrugtestingkit.com, selling kits to test for illicit drugs and alcohol use. Individual kits testing for a single drug cost as little as $3; a 10-substance kit sells for $19.95.

It’s an ever-evolving field, Beihl says, as teens experiment with new hallucinogens or abuse a range of prescription drugs.

“A lot of parents say they’re afraid of ruining their relationship with their kid – they don’t want to be seen as the bad guy,” Beihl said. “I tell them, if you’re already worried about it, the relationship is probably not that great.”

Kim Hildreth, 52, of Dallas, tested both her daughters during their teens. They’re now in their 20s, and provide occasional assistance as she runs a company, drugtestyourteen.com, that sells testing kits online.

Hildreth has been in the business since 2003 and says she has many repeat customers – parents who used the tests on an older child and now worry about a younger sibling.

In Hildreth’s case, she opted for testing after concluding that her oldest daughter’s best friend was using methamphetamine.

“None of us wants to believe our kids are capable of that,” Hildreth said. “Denial is a much more comfortable place.”

She also later tested her younger daughter, to the point where resentment surfaced, but said both daughters are now staunch proponents of testing.

“We all think we know our kids, but they can change on a dime, and bad things can happen before you even figure it out,” Hildreth said. “They’re good at deceiving parents when they want to – that’s kind of their job.”

Published by: ABP World Group International Child Recovery Services

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Child Abduction Prevention

CHILD ABDUCTION PREVENTION The following information is from The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention In light of the high profile abductions of several children, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) encourages families not to panic. Instead, parents need to empower themselves with information that can help protect their children. CHILD ABDUCTION: STATISTICS Parental abductions and runaway cases make up the majority of missing children in the United States. In 2002 there were about 797,500 children reported missing, or nearly 2,185 per day. The vast majority of these cases were recovered quickly; however, the parent or guardian was concerned enough to contact law enforcement and they placed the child into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center – a computerized national database of criminal justice information. It is available to Federal, state and local law enforcement and other criminal justice agencies. Each year there are about 3,000 to 5,000 non-family abductions reported to police, most of which are short term sexually-motivated cases. About 200 to 300 of these cases, or 6 percent, make up the most serious cases where the child was murdered, ransomed or taken with the intent to keep. The NCMEC analyzed more than 4200 attempted abductions from February 2005 to March 2010 and found that 38% of attempted abductions occur while a child is walking alone to or from school, riding the school bus or riding a bicycle; 37 % of attempted abductions occur between the hours of 2:00pm through 7:00pm on a weekday; 43% of attempted abductions involve children between the ages of 10 and 14; 72% of attempted abduction victims are female; 68 % of attempted abductions involve the suspect driving a vehicle. Research shows that of the 58,000 non-family abductions each year 63% involved a friend, long-term acquaintaince, neighbor, caretaker, baby sitter or person of authority; only 37% involved a stranger. SAFETY TIPS FOR PARENTS: Be sure to go over the rules with your children about whose homes they can visit when you’re not there and discuss the boundaries of where they can and can’t go in the neighborhood. Always listen to your children and keep the lines of communication open. Teach your children to get out of dangerous or uncomfortable situations right away, and practice role-playing and basic safety skills with them. Teach your children in whose car they may ride. Children should be cautioned never to approach any vehicle, occupied or not, unless accompanied by a parent or trusted adult. Make sure children know their names, address, telephone numbers and how to use the telephone. Choose babysitters with care. Obtain references from family, friends and neighbors. SAFETY TIPS FOR CHILDREN: Always check first with your parents or the person in charge before you go anywhere or do anything. Always take a friend when you play or go somewhere. Don’t be tricked by adults who offer you special treats or gifts or ask you for help. Don’t be afraid to say no and get away from any situation that makes you feel uncomfortable or confused. Trust your feelings. Don’t get into a car or go near a car with someone in it unless you are with your parents or a trusted adult. Never take a ride from someone without checking first with your parents. Never go into a public restroom by yourself. Never go alone to the mall, movies, video arcades or parks. Stay safe when you’re home alone by keeping the door locked. Do not open the door for or talk to anyone who stops by unless the person is a trusted family friend or relative. INTERNATIONAL PARENTAL ABDUCTION In situations where parents have not resolved the issue of child custody, and one of the parents has ties to another country, there is the risk that that parent might take the child with them to a foreign country. Parents who are in this situation can find useful information about international parental abduction in “A Family Resource Guide on International Parental Kidnapping” published by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention. For more information please visit www.missingkids.com or call NCMEC’s toll-free hotline at 1-800-843-5678. Published by: ABP World Group International Child Recovery Services Follow our updates on Twitter and Facebook

500 children a year abducted from UK

New data reveals a stark rise in child kidnapping by estranged parents

By Helen Pidd,guardian.co.uk, Sunday 9 August 2009

Almost 500 children were abducted from the UK and taken abroad illegally last year, according to figures released to the Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

There were 336 cases of child abduction reported to authorities in the UK in 2008, an increase of 20% on 2005 figures. These cases involved an estimated 470 children last year. More children were taken illegally to Pakistan than any other country (30 cases in 2008), followed by the USA (23), Ireland (22) and Spain (21). Other abduction hotspots included Australia, France and Egypt.

Abductions usually occur when marriages break down between couples of different nationalities, and the parent who is not awarded custody kidnaps their children. Now is peak abduction season, as children are taken abroad during the school summer holidays and not returned.

Usually, the cases aren’t publicised as they are dealt with in the family courts where reporting restrictions apply to any cases involving the welfare of minors. But they are becoming increasingly common – when the Guardian spent a day in a family court in London recently, eight out of 14 cases heard involved child abduction.

The government has little power to intervene in around 40% of all abduction cases, as they involve children being taken to countries not signed up to the Hague convention, an international treaty which obliges nations to promptly return children wrongfully retained in their jurisdiction. Experts say it is often almost impossible for mothers to get back children taken by their fathers to Islamic countries with sharia law, such as Saudi Arabia, which prioritise male parental rights.

But recently Gordon Brown and the new health secretary, Andy Burnham, have personally intervened in the case of Nadia Fawzi, then a four-year-old British girl taken from Wigan to Libya by her Libyan father.

A month ago, Burnham, the girl’s MP, flew to Tripoli for meetings with the Libyan justice ministry and police force about the case, and Gordon Brown asked the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi, to help return the girl to the UK when the two met for the first time at the G8 summit in Italy.

Nadia was picked up from her home in Wigan by her father, who said they were going to a party. But instead, he drove to Manchester airport, where he was captured on CCTV buying plane tickets to Libya. Nadia hasn’t been home since.

Her British mother, Sarah Taylor, saw her daughter on a few occasions in the months after her abduction, but has had no contact with her since Christmas 2007.

Taylor has spent the last two years doing everything in her power to be reunited with her now six-year-old daughter. Libya is a notoriously difficult country to negotiate with on such matters – it has not signed up to the Hague convention, and so the UK government is limited in the support it can offer.

In November 2007, Taylor took a drastic step. She sold her house, gave up her job and moved to Libya to fight through the local courts for the custody she had already been awarded in the UK courts after her marriage to Nadia’s father broke down.

After a long and difficult battle in the labyrinthine sharia legal system, Taylor won full custody of Nadia in 2008. But her ex-husband refused to comply with the court order, and despite quiet but firm interventions from the Foreign Office and assorted other agencies in the UK and Tripoli, he still has the little girl in his care. Or at least Taylor believes he does – no one is entirely sure where in the Libyan capital father and daughter are currently living.

Burnham told the Guardian he is hopeful that mother and daughter will soon be reunited.

He said: “This awful injustice and crime has now been raised at the highest level and we now expect swift action. This is a story about a young girl taken illegally off the streets of my constituency and I will go to any lengths to right that wrong.”

In 2008, 134 out of the 336 cases of child abduction involved children taken to non-Hague countries, including Bangladesh, Russia, Iraq and Nigeria. These cases are dealt with by the Foreign Office, while Hague cases go through the Ministry of Justice in England and Wales, and the Scottish and Northern Irish court services.

Scotland dealt with nine cases last year involving 12 children. In Northern Ireland last year there were 12 reported instances, involving 20 children taken to the Republic of Ireland, the USA, Israel, Germany, Finland, Poland and France.

The increase in cases is an “inevitable consequence of greater migration”, according to Andy Elvin, chief executive of the charity International Social Services, which helps parents secure the return of their children. “Child abduction is a growing trend as we have an increasing number of families where at least one parent is originally from overseas,” he said.

Denise Carter, director of Reunite, a UK charity specialising in international parental child abduction, said: “The increase in international travel and more and more people travelling on short-term contracts and changing their habitual residence also has an effect.”

Figures from Reunite show that since 1995, the number of children abducted from Britain and taken to another country has risen by 93%.

The government’s figures clearly show the effect of EU enlargement. For example, until Latvia joined the EU in 2004, there had been no reported cases of children being abducted there from the UK in the previous four years. But in 2005, three cases were reported, and there has been at least one new instance every year since.

Similarly, while there were no reported abductions to Poland in 2003, the year before the country’s EU entry, there were 10 in 2006 and 2008. “We expect to see more and more cases from countries like Poland as the years go on and more couples marry, have children and get divorced,” said Elvin.

A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “When there is no international mechanism in place, usually the left-behind parent’s only option [other than trying to come to an agreement with the other parent] is to file a case in the courts of the country where their child has been taken. However, pursuing such a case will often be expensive and there is no guarantee the courts will decide that the child should be returned to the UK.”

Summer is peak abduction season as children are taken abroad during school holidays and not returned.

Published by: ABP World Group International Child Recovery Service

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