L-R Christina Rivera Slater, Sarah Joy Slater and Christopher Joseleno Slater
DEDICATION:
To OUR three children; 1. Christopher Joseleno Slater (born November 1994 in Victoria, B.C., Canada - ), 2. Christina Rivera Slater (born January 1997 in Nanaimo, B.C., Canada - suicide at age 14 on October 11, 2011), both abducted from Nanaimo, British Columbia, Canada to UNKNOWN, UNDISCLOSED location somewhere in Courtenay - Comox, B.C. by their mother, Maria Belen Batoon, Lea and 3. Sarah Joy Slater (born December 1997 in Duncan, B.C., Canada and abducted by mother Helen Venus Smith and stepfather Brent Smith to UNKNOWN, UNDISCLOSED location in Bremerton, WA, U. S. A. These children's mothers and stepfathers CONSPIRED with local authorities to ABDUCT and CONCEAL our children in VIOLATION of Provincial and Supreme Court of British Columbia ORDERS. These children have experienced and suffered from Stockholm Syndrome, Parental Alienation (P. A.) and Hostile - Aggressive Parenting (H. A. P.) from their abductive mothers and stepfathers.
A DEFINITION: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abduction
Abduction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Look up abduction in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
Etymology
From Latin abductiō (“robbing; abduction”), from abdūcō (“take or lead away”), from ab (“away”) + dūcō (“to lead”)[1].- (Received Pronunciation) IPA(key): /əbˈdʌk.ʃn̩/
- (US) IPA(key): /æbˈdʌk.ʃn̩/, /æbˈdək.ʃn̩/, /əbˈdək.ʃn̩/
Noun
abduction (plural abductions)
- Leading away; a carrying away. [Early 17th century.][2]
- (physiology) The act of abducing or abducting; a drawing apart; the movement which separates a limb or other part from the axis, or middle line, of the body. [Mid 17th century.][2]
- (logic) A syllogism or form of argument in which the major premise is evident, but the minor is only probable. [Late 17th century.][2] [quotations ▼]
- The wrongful, and usually forcible, carrying off of a human being. [Mid 18th century.][2]
- the abduction of a child
Of a person or people
- Alien abduction, memories of being taken by apparently nonhuman entities from a different planet
- History of alien abduction claims
- Alien abduction claimants
- Narrative of the abduction phenomenon
- Perspectives on the abduction phenomenon
- Child abduction, the abduction or kidnapping of a young child (or baby) by an older person
- International child abduction
- Raptio, large scale abduction of women, either for marriage or enslavement
- Kidnapping, the taking away of a person against the person's will
- Bride kidnapping, a practice in which a man abducts the woman he wishes to marry
- Express kidnapping, a method of abduction where a small ransom that a company or family can easily pay is requested
- Tiger kidnapping, taking a hostage to force a loved one or associate of the victim to do something.
Child abduction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Child abduction or child theft is the unauthorized removal of a minor (a child under the age of legal adulthood) from the custody of the child's natural parents or legally appointed guardians.Family law Marriage and other
equivalent or similar unions and statusValidity of marriages Dissolution of marriages Other issues Private international law The Family and the Criminal Code
(or Criminal Law)
According to the US National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, in the USA an estimated 800,000 children are reported missing every year, of which 97% are recovered.[1].
The term child abduction conflates two legal and social categories which differ by their perpetrating contexts: abduction by members of the child's family or abduction by strangers:
- Parental child abduction: a family relative's (usually parent's) unauthorized custody of a child without parental agreement and contrary to family law ruling, which largely removes the child from care, access and contact of the other parent and family side. Occurring around parental separation or divorce, such parental or familial child abduction may include parental alienation, a form of child abuse seeking to disconnect a child from targeted parent and denigrated side of family.
- Abduction or kidnapping by strangers (from outside the family, natural or legal guardians) who steal a child for criminal purposes which may include:
- extortion, to elicit a ransom from the guardians for the child's return
- illegal adoption, a stranger steals a child with the intent to rear the child as their own or to sell to a prospective adoptive parent
- human trafficking, a stranger steals a child with the intent to exploit the child themselves or by trade in a list of possible abuses including slavery, forced labor, sexual abuse, or even illegal organ trading
- murder
Contents
Abductions by strangers
The stereotypical version of child abduction by a stranger is the classic form of "kidnapping," exemplified by the Lindbergh kidnapping, in which the child is detained, transported some distance, held for ransom or with intent to keep the child permanently. These instances are rare. However, child abduction cases by a stranger or strangers of a different nature are not so rare and are more common in society than reported.[1]
Child abduction for ransom: United States
The earliest nationally publicised kidnapping of a child by a stranger for the purpose of extracting a ransom payment from the parents was the Pool case of 1819, which took place in Baltimore, Maryland. Margaret Pool, 20-months-old, was kidnapped on May 20 by Nancy Gamble (19-years-old) and secreted with the assistance of Marie Thomas. On May 22, the parents, James and Mary Pool, placed an ad in the Baltimore Patriot newspaper offering a $20 reward for Mary’s return. When the child was recovered on May 23—through the efforts of members of the community who conducted a search—it was revealed that the child had been badly whipped by Gamble and bore bloody wounds. Both Gamble and Thomas were tried for the crime of kidnapping and found guilty. The motive for the crime was demonstrated to be financial. She had kidnapped the child with the intention of waiting for a reward to be offered, then would return the child and collect the money. This is a technique favored by many ransom child kidnappers before the use of written ransom demands became the favored method.[citation needed] Nancy Gamble's crime and subsequent trial were reported in detail in Baltimore Patriot (June 26, 1819). The June 26 article, as well as others on the case that had appeared in the Patriot, were reprinted in newspapers in other states including: Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Vermont, Virginia and Washington D.C.
Children abducted for slavery
Main article: Child slaveryIn 1597, Elizabeth I of England licensed the abduction of children for use as chapel choristers and theatre performers.[2]
There are reports that abduction of children to be used or sold as slaves is common in parts of Africa.
The Lord's Resistance Army, a rebel paramilitary group operating mainly in northern Uganda, is notorious for its abductions of children for use as child soldiers or sex slaves. According to the Sudan Tribune, as of 2005, more than 30,000 children have been kidnapped by the LRA and their leader, Joseph Kony.[3]
By stranger to raise
A very small number of abductions result in most cases from women who kidnap babies (or other young children) to bring up as their own. These women are often unable to have children of their own, or have miscarried, and seek to satisfy their unmet psychological need by abducting a child rather than by adopting. The crime is often premeditated, with the woman often simulating pregnancy to reduce suspicion when a baby suddenly appears in the household.
Historically, a few states have accepted child abduction as a form of punishment for political opponents or for profit. A notable case is Francoist Spain, during which an estimated 300,000 children were abducted from their parents.[4][5]
Some other abductions have been to make children available by child-selling for adoption by other people,[6] without adopting parents necessarily being aware of how children were actually made available for adoption.[7]
Parental child abduction
Main article: Parental child abductionBy far the most common kind of child abduction is parental child abduction (200,000 in 2010 alone)[8] and often occurs when the parents separate or begin divorce proceedings. A parent may remove or retain the child from the other seeking to gain an advantage in expected or pending child-custody proceedings or because that parent fears losing the child in those expected or pending child-custody proceedings; a parent may refuse to return a child at the end of an access visit or may flee with the child to prevent an access visit or fear of domestic violence and abuse.
Parental child abductions may be within the same city, within the state region or within the same country, or may be international. Studies performed for the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention reported that in 1999, 53% percent of family abducted children were gone less than one week, and 21% were gone one month or more.[9]
International child abduction
Main article: International child abductionInternational child abduction occurs when a parent, relative or acquaintance of a child leaves the country with the child or children in violation of a custody decree or visitation order. Another related situation is retention where children are taken on an alleged vacation to a foreign country and are not returned.
While the number of cases which is over 600,000 a year consists of international child abduction is small in comparison to domestic cases, they are often the most difficult to resolve due to the involvement of conflicting international jurisdictions. Two-thirds of international parental abduction cases involve mothers who often allege domestic violence. Even when there is a treaty agreement for the return of a child, the court may be reluctant to return the child if the return could result in the permanent separation of the child from their primary caregiver. This could occur if the abducting parent faced criminal prosecution or deportation by returning to the child's home country.
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is an international human rights treaty and legal mechanism to recover children abducted to another country. The Hague Convention does not provide relief in many cases resulting in some parents hiring private parties to recover their children. Covert recovery was first made public when Don Feeney, a former Delta Commando, responded to a desperate mother's plea to locate and recover her daughter from Jordan in the 1980s. Feeney successfully located and returned the child. A movie and book about Feeney's exploits lead to other desperate parents seeking him out for recovery services.[10]
By 2007, both the United States, European authorities, and NGO's had begun serious interest in the use of mediation as a means by which some international child abduction cases may be resolved. The primary focus was on Hague Cases. Development of mediation in Hague cases, suitable for such an approach, had been tested and reported by REUNITE,[11] a London Based NGO which provides support in international child abduction cases, as successful. Their reported success lead to the first international training for cross-border mediation in 2008, sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.[12] Held at the University of Miami School of Law, Lawyers, Judges, and certified mediators interested in international child abduction cases, attended.
International child abduction is not new. A case of international child abduction has been documented aboard the Titanic. However, the incidence of international child abduction continues to increase due to the ease of international travel, increase in bi-cultural marriages and a high divorce rate. Parental abduction has been defined as child abuse.[13]
Organizations
Organizations have set up websites where users can go to gain knowledge or contribute help to stopping child abduction. Among these are the organizations: Association For The Recovery Of Children or ARC, Enough is Enough and National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which have partnered with the online community, Abducted Angels in the UK, Myspace to help keep the internet a safe place for children. Well known International Child Recovery companies are Zamora & Associates and ABP World Group Ltd.
See also
Photographs of the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear- Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act
- AMBER Alert
- HELPSPAN.org United State's first anti parental child abduction legislation
- Child abduction alert system
- Child custody
- Child laundering
- Child Protective Services
- Child sexual abuse
- Child slavery
- Code Adam
- Commercial sexual exploitation of children
- International child abduction
- Joint custody
- Kidnapping
- National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
- Phantom social workers
- Prostitution of children
- Supervised visitation
- Take Root
- Trafficking of children
- Jacob Wetterling
References
Wikinews has related news: Eight year old Victoria Stafford of Ontario missing since Wednesday - Jump up ^ "NISMART National Non-Family Abduction Report October 2002 (A study commissioned by the US Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention found that there were only approximately 115 stereotypical stranger abductions in 1999)" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-09-09.
- Jump up ^ Coughlan, Sean (17 June 2013). "Elizabethan child actors 'kidnapped and whipped'". BBC News.
- Jump up ^ "Time may be running out for Uganda's LRA warlord - Sudan Tribune: Plural news and views on Sudan". Sudan Tribune. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
- Jump up ^ Adler, Katya (18 October 2011). "Spain's stolen babies and the families who lived a lie". BBC News.
- Jump up ^ Tremlett, Giles (27 January 2011). "Victims of Spanish 'stolen babies network' call for investigation". The Guardian.
- Jump up ^ Child Trafficking: A Cruel Trade, in The Economist, January 26, 2013, as accessed July 14, 2013.
- Jump up ^ Raymond, Barbara Bisantz, The Baby Thief: The Untold Story of Georgia Tann, the Baby Seller Who Corrupted Adoption (New York: Union Square Press, 1st ed. 2007 (ISBN 978-1-4027-5863-8)), p. 245.
- Jump up ^ Maureen, Dabbagh (2012). Parental Kidnapping in America. US: McFarland. p. 1. ISBN 978-0-7864-6533-0.
- Jump up ^ "NISMART National Family Abduction Report, October 2002" (PDF). Retrieved 2012-09-09.
- Jump up ^ › Donya Al-Nahi. "Rescue My Child: The Story of the Ex-Delta Commandos Who Bring Home Children Abducted Overseas: Neil C. Livingstone: Books". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
- Jump up ^ "Reunite International". Reunite.org. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
- Jump up ^ "National Center for Missing and Exploited Children". Missingkids.com. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
- Jump up ^ "Parental Child Abduction is Child Abuse". Prevent-abuse-now.com. 1999-06-09. Retrieved 2012-09-09.
External links
- Associationfortherecoveryofchildren.org
- BBC News Report: West Africa's child slave trade (6 August, 1999)
- The PK Papers: Index of Parental Kidnapping Historical Texts
- The Japan Children's Rights Network (Information Regarding Abductions to Japan)
- The Pool ransom kidnapping, 1819
- The Holt parental kidnapping case, 1760
- The Tuthell parental child abduction, 1810
- Child abduction in Germany, German Federal Office of Statistics 1995 - 2012
- German CPS echo Nazi Germany
- Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.International child abduction
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis article is about International child abduction. For child kidnappings for ransom and other forms of international child exploitation, see Child trafficking.Conflict of laws
and
Private international lawPreliminiaries Definitional elements Connecting factors Substantive legal areas Enforcement
The term international child abduction is generally synonymous with international parental kidnapping, child snatching, and child stealing.[1] However, the more precise legal usage of international child abduction originates in private international law and refers to the illegal removal of children from their home by an acquaintance or family member to a foreign country. In this context, "illegal" is normally taken to mean "in breach of custodial rights" and "home" is defined as the child's habitual residence. As implied by the "breach of custodial rights," the phenomenon of international child abduction generally involves an illegal removal that creates a jurisdictional conflict of laws whereby multiple authorities and jurisdictions could conceivably arrive at seemingly reasonable and conflicting custodial decisions with geographically limited application. Such a result often strongly affects a child's access and connection to half their family and may causes the loss of their former language, culture, name and nationality, it violates numerous children's rights, and can cause severe psychological and emotional trauma to the child and family left behind.[2]Family law Marriage and other
equivalent or similar unions and statusValidity of marriages Dissolution of marriages Other issues Private international law - Private international law
- Divorce
- Marriage
- Hague Convention (adoption)
- International child abduction
The Family and the Criminal Code
(or Criminal Law)
There is a common misconception that because the abductor in these cases is usually not a stranger the children are not in danger.[3] The harmful consequences for children and families have been shown in several studies and child abduction has been characterized as a form of parental alienation and child abuse.[4] Adding international dimensions to the detrimental effects of child abduction significantly increases the detrimental effects on children and families. The modern day ease of international travel and corollary increase in international marriages is leading to a rapid rise in the number of international child abductions.[2]
Contents
Origin of the term
What is today called "parental kidnapping," "international child abduction,", "parental child abduction" and "parental child trafficking" has existed as long as different legal jurisdictions and international borders have—though often under different names. None of these names achieved the modern day broad acceptance of terms like international child abduction. Lacking a common set of terminology or specifically designed laws to address the, at the time, poorly defined problem, researchers on the history of cross-border child abduction must search for terms like "custodial interference," "contempt of child custody orders," "legal kidnapping" or, in cases where children were viewed more as property than as individual subjects of rights, name variations on theft, child-maintenance debt and smuggling, among others.[5]
Lawmakers struggled to typify and discuss international child abduction and discussions at the Hague Conference on Private International Law noted that, what some were referring to with variations on "legal kidnapping," was an oxymoron since that which is legal cannot be kidnapping and that which is kidnapping cannot be legal. The response to these concerns was the coining of the term "international child abduction." The terms first prominent use was in the title of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The term is not, however, used anywhere in the actual text of the convention itself in preference of the more technical terms "wrongful removal" or "wrongful retention" which were better suited for describing the mechanics of the Convention's system.[6] The use of the term is now widespread in international law.[7]
Internationalization of Family Law
In all family law disputes a determination must be made as to which legal systems and laws should be applied to the dispute. This question becomes much more complicated when aspects, or parties, of the case occur in, or hail from, multiple legal jurisdictions.[7]
Today's international family law norms were heavily influenced by the concepts of domicile and nationality. In Europe these ideas were refined during the nineteenth century by Italian politician, Pasquale Mancini, who believed matters of personal status were to be governed by the nationality of the person. During the same period in the US and Latin America the prevailing principle was that jurisdiction over personal matters was determined by domicile which, in the Americas, was acquired immediately upon moving to a foreign jurisdiction even if neither citizenship nor nationality were acquired.[7]
Starting in the late eighteenth century until the early 1920s a number of efforts were made to develop a series of international treaties governing international conflicts of law in Europe. Treaties that favored nationality as the determining jurisdictional factor either never got of the ground, were not widely signed or had substantial practical problems with countries renouncing them after signing. At the same time the inter-American system in Latin America produced the Bustamante Code of 1928 and the Montevideo Conventions of 1939 and 1940. Of particular note in these later Conventions was the introduction of a definition of "domicile" that started with a reference to the "habitual residence" for civil status. Lessons learned in prior efforts to create successful multilateral treaties culminated in a number of successful treaties in the mid-1900s, such as the 1961 Convention on the Protection of Minors, the New York Convention of 1956 on the Recovery Abroad of Maintenance drafted under the auspices of the United Nations, and the Hague Convention of 1961 concerning the powers of authorities and the law applicable in respect of the protection of minors ("1961 Convention.") [7]
The 1961 Convention brought an innovation in terminology by creating a compromise between advocates of "nationality" as the determining factor for jurisdiction and advocates for the modern fact-centric model of "habitual residence." It also included expanded language to encompass both judicial and administrative authorities in response to the Boll case, in which Sweden claimed its public administrative law was exempt from the 1902 Convention on the Guardianship of minors because it only governed domestic private judicial law and not public administrative law. The 1961 Convention also emphasized the concept of the "interests of the child" as a basis for authorities of the child's nationality to overrule the authorities of the child's habitual residence. Of particularly special note, the drafters of the 1961 Convention expressly considered a provision addressing the removal of a child from their habitual residence with an intent to evade rightful jurisdiction—primarily for child custody reasons. This first attempt to codify international child abduction failed due to an inability to agree on a definition or manner of describing the phenomenon, with a number of countries that adhered to the principle of nationality regulating personal child and family law unable to classify their nationals removing children from foreign countries to their home state as fraudulent evasion.[7]
In actual cases of international child abduction, this lack of a specific provision on child abduction in the 1961 treaty resulted in countries regularly interpreting the "habitual residence" concept of the Convention in a manner that allowed parents to take children to a foreign country and immediately acquire "habitual residence." This allowed judicial forum shopping and created perverse incentives for removing children from their homes to foreign jurisdictions in order to game the family law system and obtain a more favorable custodial outcome than could be gained in the jurisdiction of the child's home.[7]
In the 1970s, dissatisfaction with these results led to efforts to create conventions on the foreign recognition and enforcement of judgments to make it harder for courts to favor a parent solely because that parent is a national suing in his or her home state. Canada also proposed that the Hague Conference work on a Convention to address what it termed "legal kidnapping." The Hague received Canada's request enthusiastically and, inspired by a Swiss proposal originally submitted at the Council of Europe in 1976 coined a new term in international family law -- "international child abduction."[7] Although the problem of international child abduction was well understood, finding a way to address the problem in practice was exceedingly difficult, but the Swiss proposal had a solution that was elegant in its simplicity. Why not simply restore the status quo ante? [7]
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction
In 1980 the Hague Conference drafted a convention to address the problem of international child abduction: the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction - commonly referred to as the Abduction Convention. The Swiss idea of restoring the status quo ante after a "wrongful removal" or "wrongful retention" became a mainstay of the Abduction Convention. Under the convention, an application could be made for the return of a child who had been wrongfully removed or retained so long as the applicant possessed rights of custody, and provided that those rights were being "actually exercised" at the time of the abduction. The concept of "actually exercised" in reference to custodial rights itself was an innovation in terminology. Having met these requirements a child was to be returned "forthwith" except in exceptional circumstances.[6]Countries which are party to the Hague Abduction Convention
Inspired by the Hague Evidence Convention and the Hague Service Convention's of 1965 and 1970, the Abduction Convention required the establishment of a single Central Authority in each country that would handle two-way communications with domestic courts, administrative agencies and foreign Central Authorities. Furthermore, each Central Authority was required to take "any and all actions" to secure the goals of the treaty and cooperate with other Central Authority's to do the same. All of these new obligations emphasized the need for international cooperation amongst state parties in achieving the objectives of the Convention.[7]
The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
Flag of UNICEFMain article: Convention on the Rights of the ChildEstablished in 1989 the Convention on the Rights of the Child reflected the growing international consensus that children be viewed as a subject of rights and not merely as an object of rights or of protective action. The UNCRC roused an unprecedented response with 187 countries ratifying it within seven years forming an essential backdrop in international children's law. Article 11 of the Convention explicitly requires State Parties to combat the illicit transfer and retention of children and promote the conclusion of bilateral or multilateral agreements or accession to existing agreements that do so, Article 35 stipulates that "States Parties shall take all appropriate national, bilateral and multilateral measures to prevent the abduction, sale or traffic of children for any purpose or in any form."[7]
The Hague Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Cooperation
Main article: Hague Convention 1996The 1996 Convention on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Co-operation in respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures is the third of the modern Hague Conventions on international family law, following in the footsteps of the Abduction Convention and the Adoption Convention. It is much broader in scope than the first two conventions and covers a wide range of civil measures related to the protection of children including: orders concerning parental responsibility and contact, public measures of protection or care, matters of legal representation and the protection of children's property.
The Convention has uniform rules determining which country's authorities are competent to take the necessary measures of protection. The Convention also determines which country's laws are to be applied and provides for the recognition and enforcement of measures taken in one Contracting State in all the other Contracting States. The co-operation provisions of the Convention provide the basic framework for the exchange of information and the necessary degree of collaboration between administrative authorities in the Contracting States. Reflecting an ever increasing emphasis on the need for international cooperation as an essential element in the success of these measures the Convention has a full chapter on cooperation consisting of eleven articles.[7]
Although initially slow to gain support and plagued with political problems, the number of states acceding to it has begun to grow.
Impact on society, families and children
As the result of the harmful effects on children, parental kidnapping has been characterized as a form of child abuse and an extreme form of parental alienation. Abducted children suffer emotionally and sometimes physically at the hands of their abducting parents. Many are told the other parent is dead or has abandoned them. Uprooted from their entire life, home, family and friends, abducted children are often even given new names by their abductors and instructed to hide their real names or where they used to live. Generally the abductor avoids mentioning the victim parent and waits for time to erase difficult questions, such as "When can we see mom/dad again?". These children become hostages. It is beyond their comprehension that a parent who truly cares and loves them cannot discover their whereabouts. Childhood cannot be recaptured. Abductions rob a child of their sense of history, intimacy, values and morals, self-awareness, opportunity of knowing one's beginnings and the love and contact of extended family—a loss virtually no child possesses the ability to protect themselves against.Cover of a US report on International Child Abduction (2007)
Huntington (1982) lists some of the deleterious effects of abduction on child victims:
1. Depression;
2. Loss of community;
3. Loss of stability, security, and trust;
4. Excessive fearfulness, even of ordinary occurrences;
5. Loneliness;
6. Anger;
7. Helplessness;
8. Disruption in identity formation; and
9. Fear of abandonment.
Many of these effects can be subsumed by the problems relevant to reactive attachment disorder, stress, fear of abandonment, learned helplessness, and guilt.
The extended support systems of abducting and victim parents can also become part of the dispute. Believing primarily one side of the abduction story, family, friends, and professionals in each parents individual country may lose their objectivity. As a result, protective concerns expressed by the abandoned parent may be viewed as undue criticism, interference, and histrionics preventing the victim parent from effectively relieving the trauma imposed on their innocent child by the abduction.[4]
Mediation in child abduction cases
Mediation is a process during which abductors and the left behind family, assisted by mediator(s), attempt to resolve conflicts independent of the judicial system. Mediators create a constructive atmosphere for discussions and ensure fair dealings between parents. The mediators do not make decisions; instead, they confine themselves to assisting the parties in working out for themselves a fair and sensible solution to their problems. More specifically, the mediation can address not only the child’s primary residence, but also the child’s contact with both parents, visitation arrangements, agreements concerning the child’s maintenance, schooling, further education, bi-cultural and bi-lingual upbringing, necessary arrangements for financial support etc.This section does not cite any references or sources. (June 2012)
Mediation can be helpful in international child abduction cases.[8] In the context of mediation families can deal with the question of return and also find solutions to other issues relating to their children.
Legal justifications for abduction
International law has generally recognized that there may be extenuating circumstances where a child abduction may have been necessary or justifiable due to extenuating circumstances. The 1902 Convention on the Guardianship of minors limited such considerations to strictly emergency situations. Starting with the 1924 Declaration on the Rights of the Child and the 1959 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of the Child there was a growing recognition at the international level of the shift in nation's domestic laws away from parental authority and towards an emphasis on protecting the child, even from their own parents.[7] This foreshadowed the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and led to the establishment of exceptional circumstances in Article 13 of the Hague Abduction Convention where the removal of children would not be considered child abduction and allow the child to remain in their new country.[6][9]
Abduction Convention: "Grave risks of harm" and "intolerable situations"
The principal purpose of the Abduction Convention is to cause the prompt return of a child to his or her "habitual residence." In certain exceptional cases under Article 13b, the court's mandatory return obligation is changed to a discretionary obligation, specifically, "the judicial or administrative authority of the requested State is not bound to order the return of the child if the person, institution or other body which opposes its return establishes that there is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation." It is important to note that the duty to return a child is not abrogated by a finding under Art. 13(b) but merely changes from mandatory to discretionary. Since the general intent of the Convention is to cause the return of a child to his or her "habitual residence," unless there are some powerful and compelling reasons otherwise the court is normally and routinely expected to exercise its discretion and return the child to his or her "habitual residence".
In the primary source of interpretation for the Convention, the Explanatory Report, Professor E. Perez-Vera noted the following:
"it would seem necessary to underline the fact that the three types of exception to the rule concerning the return of the child must be applied only so far as they go and no further. This implies above all that they are to be interpreted in a restrictive fashion if the Convention is not to become a dead letter. In fact, the Convention as a whole rests upon the unanimous rejection of this phenomenon of illegal child removals and upon the conviction that the best way to combat them at an international level is to refuse to grant them legal recognition. The practical application of this principle requires that the signatory States be convinced that they belong, despite their differences, to the same legal community within which the authorities of each State acknowledge that the authorities of one of them - those of the child's habitual residence - are in principle best placed to decide upon questions of custody and access. As a result, a systematic invocation of the said exceptions, substituting the forum chosen by the abductor for that of the child's residence, would lead to the collapse of the whole structure of the Convention by depriving it of the spirit of mutual confidence which is its inspiration."
In spite of the spirit and intent of the Convention as conveyed by the Convention itself and further reinforced by the Perez-Vera report, Article 13b is frequently used by abductors as a vehicle to litigate the child's best interests or custody. Although Article 13(b) inquiries are not intended to deal with issues or factual questions appropriate for custody proceedings, many countries use article 13b to request psychological profiles, detailed evaluations of parental fitness, evidence concerning lifestyle and the nature and quality of relationships.[10] These misinterpretations of the Abduction Convention's exceptions have rendered the Convention largely ineffective in accomplishing its objectives. The best interests of a child, which is explicitly never mentioned in the Convention, is an essentially subjective standard that judges often use to facilitate foreign nations' manipulation of the treaty and create a pretext for discretionary decisions. This discretion often takes the form of gender, cultural and national biases. The result is substantive non-compliance with the Abduction Convention.[11]
Domestic violence
Domestic ViolenceSee also: Domestic violenceAt the time the Hague Abduction Convention was drafted domestic violence was never explicitly considered as an affirmative defense for child abduction, although it may be brought as a defense under Article 13, if "there is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.". This reason for not explicitly mentioning domestic violence is attributed to foreseeing that the child's primary caretaker would abduct the child to escape the domestic violence of a non-custodial parent. Part of this lack of foresight is caused by the fact that, at the time of the Conventions drafting, joint custody laws were rare. One parent was usually both the custodial parent and primary caretaker while the other, non-custodial parent, had rights of access. The move towards joint custody laws conferred both the parent who acted as the primary caretaker and their ex-partner with custodial rights and, by extension, a right to request the return of children wrongfully removed from their place of habitual residence. In addition to not accounting for a shift in child custody law towards shared parenting and joint custody, the framers of the Convention also did, according to Weiner little to account for the motivation for abducting a child, generally assuming that all abductions were harmful to children when, in fact, the child's primary caretaker may be acting altruistically by fleeing with a child to protect themselves from a dangerous domestic situation.[12]
See also
- Child-selling
- Extraterritorial jurisdiction
- Hague Convention 1996
- Human rights
- International adoption
- Kidnapping
- National Center for Missing and Exploited Children
- Trafficking of children
- Hague Abduction Convention Compliance Reports
- Not Without My Daughter
- International child abduction in Brazil
- International child abduction in Japan
- International child abduction in Mexico
- International child abduction in the United States
References
- Jump up ^ HON. WILLIAM RIGLER and HOWARD L. WIEDER (2000). "THE EPIDEMIC OF PARENTAL CHILD-SNATCHING: AN OVERVIEW". US Department of State. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
- ^ Jump up to: a b "2010 Compliance Report". Travel.state.gov. Retrieved 2010-05-23.
- Jump up ^ Ernie Allen. ""The kid is with a parent, how bad can it be?" The Crisis of Family Abductions". National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Retrieved 2012-05-11.
- ^ Jump up to: a b Parental Child Abduction is Child Abuse. Nancy Faulkner, Ph.D. Presented to the United Nations Convention on Child Rights in Special Session, June 9, 1999
- Jump up ^ Richard K. Stevens. "The PK Papers". Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c "Hague Abduction Convention text". Hcch.net. Retrieved 2010-04-20.
- ^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l Adair Dyer. "The Internationalization of Family Law". US Davis Law Review. Retrieved 2010-08-08.
- Jump up ^ [1] Reunite research 2012
- Jump up ^ Elisa Perez-Vera. "Explanatory Report". Hcch.net. Retrieved 2010-04-20.
- Jump up ^ William M. Hilton (1997). "The Limitations on Art. 13(b) of The Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction done at the Hague on 25 Oct 1980". Retrieved 2009-06-12.
- Jump up ^ Leto, Marisa (2000-04-01). "Whose best interest? International child abduction under the Hague Convention". Chicago Journal of International Law. Retrieved 2010-09-24.
- Jump up ^ Merle H. Weiner (2000). "International Child Abduction and the Escape from Domestic Violence". Fordham Law Review. Retrieved 2010-08-21.
External links
- Hague Conference on Private International Law
- The Hague Domestic Violence Project
- U.S. State Dept. International Parental Child Abduction
- Child Abduction section of the Hague Conference site
- MiKK e.v. - Germany
- Child Focus - Belgium
- Reunite - UK
- Centrum Internationale Kinderontvoering NL -Netherlands
- Network of International Mediators
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