All Talk, No Action on Stolen Children

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 18, 2001 | by Timothy W. Maier

Although Congress has called on foreign nations to abide by the Hague Convention on parental child abductions, the U.S. government is not really offering parents much help.

Secretary of State Colin Powell talks tough when it comes to asking for the return of thousands of America's forgotten kids who have been abducted by estranged spouses to foreign countries. He recently testified before the House International Relations Committee that he would give "personal attention" to this issue being raised by Lady Catherine Meyer, the wife of Sir Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador to the United States. She has not been allowed to see her children, Alexander, 15, and Constantin, 13, for a total of more than 24 hours since they were abducted to Germany in 1994 by her former husband.

Powell since has promised to reach out to political leaders to intervene on behalf of American children being held abroad in contravention of American court orders. But then so did former secretary of state Madeleine Albright under pressure from Insight at the end of her tenure. Little happened, and parents fear Powell may be on the same road.

Parents don't want to admit it in public, but privately they tell Insight that when a child is kidnapped by an estranged spouse to a foreign country the odds are that he or she never will be returned home. Since 1995, for example, only 37 percent of such kidnapped American children have been returned from Germany. More than 100 children are trapped there now, reports Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, in a letter to Powell urging him to make international parental abduction a priority issue.

DeWine recently sponsored a resolution that passed both the House and Senate, calling on Germany, Austria and Sweden to honor Hague Convention obligations. The 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is an agreement signed by about 60 countries, including the United States, that seized children should be returned to their country of habitual residence where a court can decide custody.

"Unfortunately, it has become clear that all countries that have signed the Convention do not take their obligations seriously," DeWine told Powell in a letter obtained by Insight. "I look forward to working with you and the Bush administration in making the return of all internationally abducted children a top foreign-policy priority."

It remains to be seen whether that will happen. Especially if the United States does no more than rely on the Hague Convention, which is "rarely a remedy in foreign courts and too often an instrument of terrible injustice in American courts," says Thomas Johnson, whose 13-year-old daughter, Amanda, was abducted in Sweden by her Swedish-born mother nearly six years ago.

Johnson, a lead attorney for the Bureau of Population Refugees and Migration at the State Department is no friend of the Consular Affairs Bureau, three floors above his own office at State. It is Consular Affairs that oversees the international abduction cases. Johnson points out that his daughter should have been returned under the Hague Convention, but instead the authorities dragged their feet for two years until the Swedish courts ruled Amanda had become a habitual resident of Sweden, a key component of the Hague Convention. Johnson not only lost his daughter, he was made to pay child support to the kidnapper.

Parents view the Hague treaty as a diplomatic black hole, routinely violated. Tom Sylvester of Cincinnati, for instance, won court decisions in both the United States and Austria ordering his ex-wife to return his 6-year-old daughter, Carina. The runaway wife simply refused. Rep. Steve Chabot, R-Ohio, has met with Powell about the Sylvester case, and Powell promised to work to resolve the issue. That was four months ago and nothing has been accomplished. Sylvester hasn't been allowed to see his daughter since her abduction in 1995.

Some parents such as Persian Gulf War veteran Joe Howard, a soldier whose 11-year-old daughter, Priscilla, was abducted to Germany six years ago, chose not to file a Hague complaint. Howard notes that Lady Meyer has spent $200,000 and used all her diplomatic connections without getting her boys back from Germany. "I'm a poor soldier," he says with deep sadness. "I don't even have an address or phone number for my child. I just can't afford to file a Hague petition."

In those countries that don't recognize the Hague treaty, including most of the Middle East, return of the seized American children seems all but hopeless. There are occasional exceptions, of course, such as that of courageous Dria Davis, who successfully engineered her own successful escape from Saudi Arabia when she was 13 years old after abuse by her father and relatives. Telephone conversations with her mother detailing that abuse had been taped secretly and the tapes delivered to Congress, President Bill Clinton and then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, who simply ignored the child's tears. This left Dria no choice but to attempt a death-defying escape (see "A Great Escape," Feb. 14, 2000).