International abductions and government inaction

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 21, 1999 | by Jeffrey A. Crafts

As the father of Amanda, an internationally kidnapped child held captive in Guatemala since Dec. 9, 1998, I have been encouraged by Timothy W. Maier's recent articles on the subject ["Kids Held Hostage," March 8, "Kidnapped Kids Cry Out for Help," May 10, and "State Abandons Kidnapped Kids," June 14]. At a recent conference in Washington, left-behind parents of internationally abducted children met to discuss our common frustrations in our attempts to get help from various agencies of government: the State Department, the Justice Department (especially the Children's Affairs Division) and the U.S. embassies in the countries where our children have been taken.

The U.S. government is the most powerful entity in the world. It possesses a formidable array of means of exercising leverage in dealing with foreign countries that harbor abductors and thereby sustain the kidnappings of American children. The fact that the government does not do so, but rather treats victim parents as nuisances, should be a national scandal. We parents are working toward greater publicity of this disgrace in the hope of building public pressure on our government to change its policy and make the repatriation of our children and the restoration of their criminally violated constitutional rights its highest priority.

Jeffrey A. Crafts
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