The Child Snatchers

By Jasmin Newman

Child abduction has impacted everyone from royalty to a-list movie stars. It is estimated that every year at least 500 children will be abducted from Australia, overseas. Many more will be abducted within our shores, making Australia one of the highest ranking parent-child abduction hotspots in the world.

The Child Snatchers takes an investigative look at some of Australia’s more notorious cases. Sally Faulkner, who found herself in a Beirut prison for trying to bring her children back to Australia; The four Vincenti sisters, brought to Australia and returned to Italy under traumatic circumstances; Dorothy Lee Barnett, wanted for abduction by the FBI for 20 years, finally found on the Sunshine Coast. Each of these stories are deeply personal, highly complex and frighteningly true. Were they a desperate act of protection; or a despicable act of revenge?

The Child Snatchers explores the too-often bitter nature of separation and divorce, and our heavy reliance on the overburdened Australian Family Law system. It brings you the heartfelt, true accounts of left-behind parents and the children they longed for. Some are heart-warming, successful recoveries; others may never see their children again. All will leave you questioning everything you thought you knew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legend Press
• Release date: Feb 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781789558647

Book preview

solutions.

1

Introduction

On the 28th December 2015, New Jersey was delivering a typically bleak winter. For Adam Roberts, life was darker than the cold sleeting weather prevailing that day. Adam was in that pit of darkness that suicidal people fall into. The trouble was, he was climbing the wrong ladder out. Adam had a plan. He had his affairs in order, purchased the equipment he needed. He had made sure his plan was fail-safe because he needed this to succeed. His one final act on this earth could not be another failure.

I'm ready to call it quits. I have a plan. I have a time. I am working on the final details. Then I am out. I'm 47 years old. I’ve had a good try, but now I am too tired. Too hurt. Too alone. I just need to overcome the instinctual need for survival and fear of dying.

This is what he wrote to me.

I had only ever spoken to Adam once before and I knew very little about him. He’d asked me for some relationship advice when we first spoke as he was struggling with a toxic relationship. It was his first real relationship in over a decade. Later, I would learn that decade was the ten years since his four-year-old son, Josh, had been abducted from the USA to Europe.

Adam’s plan was very clear, and I was very concerned talking to him.

I’m done, he said. My son has been missing for 3,993 days and there is little hope that I will ever see him again.

At the time I had no formal training in suicide prevention and although I’d spoken to many suicidal men, this somehow felt more dire. His plan was solid and he was committed to it. The date to execute his plan was New Year’s Eve, just a few days away.

I’m tired of being alone. I’m tired of the anxiety, the depression, alienation, the crushing feeling in my chest, the weeks of sleeplessness. I’m exhausted.

Over those days I held a torch for Adam in his darkest hours. I got to know him. He had lived in Australia for eight years and I was fascinated with his professional sporting life. In those heady days, Adam travelled the world with Australian and world sporting royalty.

We spoke about Josh who was just four years old when he was abducted by his mother on 21st January, 2005. At the time, the young family had been living in San Diego. Adam was managing his own successful business. Not many people get to ‘live the dream’ and make a living out of helping people to learn a craft they are passionate about. Despite this, Adam had previously struggled with some complex mental health problems from his childhood. He was earning enough to afford appropriate health care, which is not an easy feat in the United States.

One morning, he woke up to the realisation his partner had fled with his only son.

Josh’s abduction made it all resurface, and worsen, he said of his mental health struggles.

During our days of online chats and as I got to know Adam’s amazing life story, I suggested he write his memoirs and gave him some coaching around making that happen.

Start with an outline of chapters, I encouraged him. I knew he wouldn’t; however, the exercise was designed to help him reflect positively, even briefly.

At times Adam became frustrated with my attempts to keep him alive. Challenging suicidal ideation is a difficult but lovingly-led process. It was not enough to just show Adam compassion, he had a very detailed plan and so I felt it necessary to challenge many things he said. On one occasion he said to me,

I was going to say, you’re making this hard. But I reckon that’s your point.

This made me unapologetically relieved because I knew exactly what to do next. Upping the love to match the tough love was easy.

Saving lives through situational distress such as this is like riding a seesaw with a giant on the other end. You’re constantly trying to find the right amount of weight for the ballast and balance. A little more love, a little less challenge. A lot more challenge, a little less love. When you strike that sweet spot, you reach a point where fear and pain are minimised, allowing people to consider life more positively. Adam, like so many left-behind parents, had a giant loving heart that was currently haemorrhaging.

When the 31st December came round I was still deeply concerned. I kept the conversation light and focused on the future. We spoke about writing his memoirs and what that would look like. We spoke about gratitude for things today and things in the future.

As the New Year dawned in Australia, I sent Adam a photo of the sunrise over the ocean in southern New South Wales. It was an area he had once visited himself. He knew the waters well. It was still New Year’s Eve in New Jersey but I needed him to know the sun was going to come up and there were brighter days ahead. We spoke throughout his night on his New Year’s Eve, until he eventually fell asleep.

He made it.

In February 2016 Adam messaged me that he’d found Josh via Facebook – in Denmark. He sent me an updated photo and commented that the now almost twelve-year-old looked healthy. He had made contact with the boy’s mother, but she’d refused to reply.

From that day forward I would follow Adam’s social media posts to keep an eye on him. I saw how genuinely loved and respected he was but most of all it gave me immense satisfaction to see him out living his life. A life a few months earlier he almost gave up on.

It wasn’t to be the end of his struggles though. Darkness visited him again twice during 2017. Then again in 2018. As we rode that seesaw one more time, I would always ask him to hold on for Josh, but his reply was always,

Josh doesn’t know I exist.

Adam had told me once that he was the poster boy for suicide. He certainly hit all the markers. Struggles with complex childhood trauma, a failed relationship, financial struggles and the abduction of his son.

After six years of conversations with alienated and left-behind parents, it’s evident that suicide, and thoughts of it, are a multifaceted problem. There is never one single thing, but rather many things that lead to such despair and the sense of hopelessness. While the presence of children by no means saves everyone, for left-behind parents whose children have been unfairly removed from their lives, maybe this could be that one element that saves them from tipping over the edge.

The heartfelt stories in this book are stories of personal struggle and survival. They are accounts of outright heroic success and yet among them are those still holding onto nothing but a glimmer of hope.

To this day, Adam remains alienated from his son. I continue to fight for Josh and every child to be reunited with their left-behind parents who never stop loving them.

2

Parental-Child Abduction

The term ‘abduction’ renders a vision of a child-snatching or kidnapping. It creates an image of a terrified child being snatched by strangers, whisked away in a van. Public opinion sways toward the belief that because of the parent-child relationship, a parent cannot abduct a child. Legally, this is not the case. Nor is it the experience of abducted children. As one abducted child, now an adult, commented on the subject, Just because you’re with a parent, doesn't mean you are ok.

It is perhaps more technically accurate to state that the majority of abducting parents are absconding with a child or children under relatively calm circumstances. The parent usually says they are going on a holiday or an exciting adventure. Typically, there is no obvious distress to the child at that moment. Irrespective of the motive, or self-righteous belief, a parent taking a child against the wishes of the other parent is considered in the judiciary as an abducting parent. In some parts of the world, such as the United States, it is referred to as parental-child kidnapping.

The abducting parent does not feel they are causing emotional harm to the children. In some cases, they may feel they are protecting them. Whether that is justified or not is a matter of much debate in individual cases. In almost all cases, they believe they are acting in the best interests of the children. For some parents, however, abducting the children is purely an act of spite and vengeance against the left-behind parent.

For the left-behind parent, there is a brutal reality. Frightened and desperate, these parents have the sudden, shocking realisation that their children have been ripped from their lives. They are left feeling a sense of loss, grieving for a child who is still alive. Recovering their children is an exhausting, costly and sometimes impossible process. And so begins the legal and financial nightmare of dealing with parental-child abduction.

It is a criminal offence if a child is abducted from Australia when there are family court orders in place, and such orders can assist in expediting assistance from the authorities for recovery. However, it is minimal protection, and there are severe limitations, almost always resulting in years of legal process. For the prevention of abduction, the child can be placed on a watch list by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) if they have not yet left Australia. However, for many left-behind parents, they do not know what has happened until after the children have left the country. In some cases, they did not even know their relationship was over.

When a parent abducts a child within Australia and there are no court orders in place, the police advise the left-behind parents to approach the court. But it is not a police matter, they are told. This then creates a lengthy and costly protracted legal dispute for parents who are most often unable to afford legal expenses and are not adequately prepared to represent themselves in court. If the abducting parent cannot be located, left-behind parents will turn to people we can classify as abduction recovery agents, to help locate the children.

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

This convention facilitates a right of assistance for parents whose children have been abducted to countries where the Hague Convention applies.

While ninety-eight countries have signed the treaty, the Hague Convention does not apply in most Middle Eastern countries and most Asian countries, and in fact there are 195 countries in the world today. Should a child be removed to a non-Hague signatory country, the left-behind parent is left without government assistance or legal recourse in the country the child is taken to. Some countries, such as Japan and Mexico, have signed the convention and have yet to order a child repatriated. Note that the convention was formally introduced in 1980!

When it’s applied as intended, the Hague Convention considers the child removed from the country of their birth or where they spend the majority of their time as a citizen to be their home country. When returned under the treaty, the consideration is that parenting matters are to be resolved there. Like all matters in family law, the system is not without complications and, unfortunately, considerable failings.

In 2016 the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) reported that 31% of all marriages in Australia occurred between people from different countries of origin. This means that our propensity toward international child custody disputes is rising. Australia recorded 127 new applications under the Hague Convention in 2018. However, this in no way represents the gravity of the situation for Australian families. Critical countries of abduction from Australia include many outside the Hague list and these are not counted by the ABS.

The Australian Attorney General’s department estimates 3-5 children are abducted from Australia every week. Many left-behind parents give up or never apply through official channels. Others recover their child by non-official means, often with the assistance of ‘child recovery agents’. Child recovery agents estimate this figure to higher, citing the incidents of parents who have a child abducted and do not pursue recovery past initial enquiries.

For those applying under the Hague Convention, many left-behind parents have not yet entered the family court. Their first legal requirement is to apply to the court for an urgent hearing to be awarded parental responsibility for their children. For parents, this is a daunting time when they are already under considerable duress. For many, the affordability of professional legal help is out of reach.

A further complication occurs when the parent who has abducted the children applies for custody in the country they have fled to. This can result in the parents having custodial orders in two countries.

Despite its failings, the presumption of equal shared parenting in the Australian family law system means it’s considered to be a global leader in western countries. Australia considers shared parenting as being in children’s’ best interests. While this may be our moral standpoint, in other countries, where religion is considered of higher importance than terrestrial law alone, they often have a different view.

Left-behind parents are grieving, confused, overwhelmed, and under financial duress. They are ill-prepared for complex international law matters they are now faced with. It is not surprising then that the lure of a ‘recovery agent’ becomes attractive.

Child recovery agents provide a multitude of services. Perhaps none more important than being the person who says I can help you when it seems no-one else can. They have some knowledge of the law in the abducted country and are generally skilled in intelligence and surveillance work to assist with locating the child. Once they are satisfied about the legal and moral circumstances of the abduction, they can begin work on coordinating a recovery. However, international child recovery is an unregulated and unlicensed field of work. Thus, it is open to abuse by ‘Rambo’ style operators who give false promises or take on recoveries they are ill-equipped to carry out successfully.

International abductions from Australia occur to a wide range of countries. While neither is an absolute, abducting fathers tend toward Middle Eastern countries, along with Cyprus, Greece and Turkey. For abducting mothers, on the other hand, the tendency is toward