Taken In Contempt
When parents abduct their own children
Third Edition
Robin Bowles
Copyright Robin Bowles 2011
Published by Robin Bowles at Smashwords
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or be transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
ISBN 978-0-9871738-6-7
Unless otherwise stated, photographs in this book are from the author’s collection or from private collections and used with permission.
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On the second anniversary of the incident, Robin Bowles, crime investigator and writer, attempts to duplicate the events of that night. It appears that Joanne Lees may not have told the full story. This is the definitive book on the disappearance of Peter Falconio, including 60 hours of interviews Robin did with Murdoch in prison.
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However, since this book went to press, several of the protagonists have been completely exonerated and others are still using all avenues open to them to achieve justice for themselves. Many no longer have teams of people on the outside working on their behalf. In most countries, once the appeal process is completed, there are no further options of due process.
In the UK, it is estimated that approximately 5% of prisoners are serving terms for crimes they did not commit. Similar figures apply to the USA, which translates to about 10,000 people, including some on Death Row.
In Australia about 1000 people are unjustly jailed. Not all that many, unless you are one of them.
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Preface to the third Edition
This book was first published in 2001. It was written from my heart, the story of my own son’s pain of experiencing the abduction of his only son. The main part of the book has been reprinted as it was written, in order to present the contemporaneous picture of how things were then. Many of the stories threaded through the book have not changed since. Fortunately for us, ours has.
This book, like most of my books, captures circumstances and events that were prevailing at the time of writing. I feel about my books that they are like children, as perfect as you can get them at the time of their release into the world, but not able to be subsequently tinkered with. The book (and the child) exists as a complete entity and in my view, can’t be added to and subtracted from. But because my books are about real life, circumstances DO change, so I have addressed these in a Postscript you will find at the end of the following stories.
Life is rarely ‘fair’, the law is almost never just, people grow and attitudes change, often for the better. That will become apparent when you read the Postscript. But in the meantime, this book is a true reflection of the pain and loss felt by my son, myself and the others who have shared their stories. It should be remembered that in most cases, only one side of the story could be told, although I did manage to include three abducting parents and five abducted children. The left-behind parent is full of grief and anger and that can be reflected in their story. International parental abduction marks a family for life. The abducted child, or children, is never the same. But there is room for hope and love, if only links can be restored.
Robin Bowles
Melbourne
November 2011.
This book is dedicated to my grandson,
who is growing up in
France,
and to his father,
who has joined him in exile.
Contents
2 William’s Story—The Red Tape
7 ‘The Scourge of our Jurisdiction’
9 The Million-dollar Baby—The Philippines
12 Anna’s Story—The United States
15 Kelly and Astaire—The Yemen
Appendix I The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of Child Abduction
Appendix II Hague Contracting States as at December 2000
Appendix III Contacts and Sources
Appendix IV The Friedrich Finding—A Hague Convention Model
Acknowledgements
I have drawn on the knowledge and generosity of so many people during the research and writing of this book that I’m terrified I’m going to forget to thank someone. If I do, please forgive me. I’ve also drawn extensively on a number of publications for some powerful messages and factual information. Those sources and resources are acknowledged separately.
Sincere thanks to all the parents who told me their stories. They appear throughout the book with their names changed, as are their children’s, with a few mutually agreed exceptions. But they are all real people, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration. They have survived a terrible event in their lives. Those parents who have shared their painful memories with me have all read and agreed to what I have written on their behalf in the hope they might save others from suffering similar experiences.
The staff at the Central Authority in Canberra—Jennifer Degeling, Julianna Greenane and Nan Levett (a special thank-you)—have all co-operated to the full extent of their ability to provide as much factual information as possible for this book. They too wish to prevent others from going through the heart-rending experiences they deal with at work every day. Their co-operation is in no way to be seen as an endorsement of this book by the Attorney General’s Department. The views in this book, unless otherwise credited, are mine.
In addition, to comply with Section 121 of the Family Law Act, all names and locations of parents and children have been changed and no parents’ descriptions or professions have been provided.
Further thanks go to Keith Schafferius and Logan Clarke—two brave men who, with their ‘special intervention’ teams, risk their lives helping parents for whom the Hague Convention cannot or does not work. Both these investigators and Logan’s wife and co-investigator, Doña Clarke, have shared many hours with me ensuring I’ve faithfully reported their dangerous exploits.
Thanks especially to my first-born, eldest and much-loved son, not really called Alex, who agreed to let me tell some of our own story; and my husband Clive, who helped me through the worst of the pain with his strength, support and encouragement. He never wavers.
To all those people I have met on the phone or the internet, whose faces are only familiar through photos and whose lives are known to me through their published articles and their e-mails, thanks for the help you’ve given and the generous sharing of your experiences—Lady Catherine Meyer, Robert Marquette, Adair Dyer, Bengt Nestrup, Professor Geoffrey Greif, Dr Brent Waters and others.
There are more to thank, such as Vanessa Mathews from Wisewoulds Family Lawyers, who practises law as it should be practised, with care and great compassion; Sheik Issa and other members of the Melbourne Islamic community; journalist Di Webster from Who Weekly magazine; Betty Mahmoody; people from the Australian Family Law Council; Jacqueline Pascarl-Gillespie, Chief Justice Nicholson; Mr Justice Kay, staff at the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children—so many have contributed.
Thanks also to my publishers, who have enough faith in me to keep publishing my books about important social justice issues. They allow me to express my feelings and thoughts (and those of others) and share them with a wide audience. And to Jenny Lee, my editor, whose skill enables me to shape my feelings and thoughts into a proper book.
And finally I thank my readers, who keep writing encouraging letters, saying, ‘I’ve finished that book, when’s the next one coming out?’ I’m trying to keep up! Thank you, every one.
Introduction
During my research for this book, I have been inspired by a number of ordinary people describing extraordinary events. These people, who were strangers to me, have volunteered to tell of their most personal feelings, to alert, to educate, to entreat, to share the agony of losing their children through abduction by a partner they trusted. Some of their stories have happy endings, but not many. Many spoke to me through tears and bitten lips. Sometimes they have been angry instead—or as well. All are different, but it seemed everyone had a common goal in agreeing to speak to me. All of them said, ‘I want to contribute to your book. I want to warn parents this can happen to you.’
As international boundaries fall away, especially in Europe, and travel and tourism increase, so does the incidence of marriage across cultures and national borders. But, just as same-neighbourhood marriages are not necessarily made in heaven, neither are cross-cultural unions. In fact, the normal stresses of marriage can be accentuated when one partner is living far from home, in a strange country with a foreign language, unfamiliar customs and little family support. When children arrive, the stresses can become intolerable.
Sometimes parents take the law into their own hands. Without consulting the other parent, they decide to take their children back to their home countries. Or they go home for a negotiated holiday and refuse to come back. But their home is not their children’s home.
With improvements in transportation, abducting parents can be outside Australian airspace in a matter of minutes. According to the Attorney General’s Department, this happens in this country about twice a week. In Great Britain abductions occur about four times a week (a 58 per cent increase between 1996 and 1999) and in the United States hundreds of times a week—to plain, ordinary people. Who can imagine the shock of returning home from an unremarkable day at work to discover your partner has left you and taken your child—the impact of suddenly facing the possibility you will never see your family again?
On 11 March 1999 it happened to my son Alex.
I wasn’t shocked when he first phoned me, as I knew his wife had gone. That morning, while Alex was at work, I had willingly driven Catherine and their eighteen-month-old son to the airport, knowing that Catherine’s father was dying and believing my son had agreed that she should go to her father’s bedside. But once he read me the note she’d left, I realised this was a different situation altogether. My pain and grief were compounded by my guilt at having participated. Trust is so easily abused. Suddenly we had become statistics. My son had become a ‘left-behind’ parent, and our family had changed for ever.
These abductions plunge the left-behind parent into an abyss of shock, despair and bewilderment. The emotional trauma is sharpened by the prospect of having to contend with an unfamiliar political and legal system, usually with no knowledge of the law or international niceties. Just identifying sources of help can be difficult. Emotional, financial and personal resources are often stretched to the limit.
During the first shocking days or weeks, left-behind parents discover that they must do all of the running, as possession is nine-tenths of the law. They also struggle with the realisation that (as often happens) the abducting parent could be telling their children all sorts of untruths about why they left. They imagine the abductor saying the left-behind parent is dead, or didn’t want to come along, that he or she doesn’t love the children any more—in other words, that the left-behind parent has abandoned the rest of the family. Pain and fear sometimes push left-behind parents to desperate measures in the hope of being reunited with their children before the untruths become an accepted reality.
Each day, left-behind parents face the awful prospect of never seeing their children again. The chances of recovery are slim, and they diminish as time passes. Some parents have found it difficult to explain to me that in one way they’d rather their children were dead; at least then they could grieve properly instead of being trapped in a spiral of uncertainty and vain hope. But I can identify with that. I don’t find it shocking at all. If your grandchild dies, everyone rallies around. If his mother abducts him overseas, you feel almost embarrassed to talk about it. It can’t be permanent, you think, so you just keep it to yourself and cry in private.
*
For more than twenty years there has been an international agreement to deal with the problem of kidnapping by parents. In 1980 the European Court at The Hague in the Netherlands released the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction for signature by participating countries, which are known as ‘Contracting States’. (The text of the convention and a full list of Contracting States are in Appendixes I and II.) The convention is brilliantly simple in its expression, but can be brutally complicated to implement.
The principal objectives of the convention are ‘to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any Contracting State; and to ensure that rights of custody and of access under the law of one Contracting State are effectively respected in the other Contracting States’. In other words, if children now end up in a Hague Contracting State, theoretically, the abducting parent can no longer hope for favours in their ‘home’ country, but will be returned to face the music in the country they have taken the children from. Theoretically.
The convention is easily understood by almost anyone, if read in an objective manner. It would be hard to imagine that anyone with any legal training could possibly get it wrong. But get it wrong they do, and often.
Ironically, France, which was one of the first three signatories to the Hague Convention (the others were Canada and Portugal), has been a poor complier for a long time. In Europe, and often in the USA, applications are usually heard in small courts nearest where the abducting parent is living, just like minor traffic offences in Australia. Many magistrates and judges have little knowledge of their country’s obligations under the convention, and confuse location issues with custody, maintenance and access.
The other complicating factor is removal to non-Hague signatory countries. Realistically, government agencies can offer little assistance to parents of these children. The left-behind parent needs a lawyer in the abducting parent’s country and must go over and slug out the whole issue on the abducting parent’s home ground. The International Family Law Section of the Attorney General’s Department has prepared a Guide to Parents and Practitioners, which understates the problem nicely in one sentence: ‘This can be more complicated, time consuming and expensive than the process under the Hague Convention’.
Most left-behind parents who try the foreign courts in non-convention countries are thwarted at every turn. They often become obsessed by the process. They spend their days in empty houses surrounded by piles of legal documents, and spend their money on travelling back and forth overseas for court hearings, at which they are usually whacked around the ears. The Australian Central Authority does offer advice and some financial assistance (subject to means-testing), but not much hope.
Many parents lose faith. They can’t wait through the drawn-out legal processes, or their children have been taken to non-signatory countries. Some resort to a desperate solution—re-abduction. This involves hiring a private ‘intervention team’; lots of danger and lots of money; a possible jail term if they are caught—and still no guarantee of success.
And what of these children who are taken in contempt of laws, international boundaries and parental and children’s rights? Are they victims of pain, passion or a thirst for revenge? Are they damaged irreparably by their parents’ tug-of-love across national borders? Are their feelings even considered in the bickering that goes on over their heads? Parents invariably claim they are acting ‘in the best interests of the child’. But if the children were consulted (and sometimes they are), would they agree? How do they cope with one, or even two kidnappings—or a kidnapping followed by a ‘forced’ return by the courts to their country of origin?
I hope the stories of the people who have taken part in this book will help in some small way to raise awareness about this injustice being perpetrated on children all over the world. These are not children from Third World countries. They are the children of our neighbours, our friends—even our families. The stories I’ve heard represent immeasurable heartbreak. Some are full of danger and adventure, but they are also a record of courage and inner strength, and of the crazy, life-threatening risks people take in the name of love. Left-behind parents, abducting parents and some of the children themselves have contributed their stories; so have the bureaucrats who have to implement the tough decisions, but who sometimes cry when they get off the phone; and the retrievers—men who risk their lives for someone else’s children. All these people have shared their stories to add to my son’s story, which started me off on this path.
Robin Bowles
Melbourne
Prologue
Two small children, a girl and a boy, made their way carefully through the grey of a Polish autumn morning. Against a fresh dusting of snow, their figures formed a stark silhouette, joined at the hands in an effort to remain balanced as one. The girl leant down towards the smaller boy, reciting something in an alien language, her words melting away in the flurries of sooty snowflakes that eddied around their little upholstered bodies.
In a doorway opposite, a former KGB agent watched silently, as he had watched on many days before. The light in the shop behind him blew his shadow out in an elongated caricature across the snow-powdered footpath. Overhead, the wires were strung with icicles. As the children made their way towards the local school, Yuri Nekepelov followed, invisible behind lace-frosted parked cars. He moved like a shadow, seeming interested only in where he might place his feet to prevent a sudden fall. But it was far too cold in Bytom for most people to be on the streets. Nobody noticed him, and the children never looked back. They were heading for the morning session of school, which started at 8 a.m. They looked eagerly ahead, with no inkling of what the coming days might bring.
Yuri had left the KGB and was now employed in the more lucrative business of private investigating, earning most of his income from tracking stolen cars all over Europe. (Trading parts from stolen cars was one of the biggest industries in the former Eastern Bloc.) This surveillance job was different, though—a favour to a Polish friend, a former police officer. Yuri’s friend knew a man of Polish descent on the other side of the world. This man was looking for two North Queensland children who’d been removed from Australia illegally by their Polish-born father. The money was good—American dollars in cash—and once Yuri had found the children and guided the Australians to them, his involvement would be over. It was too good a chance to pass up.
He’d been told the children were probably living in Bytom, where the father’s family lived—a dingy, soot-covered mining town in south-west Poland where the birds rarely sing. Its coal-mining industry has helped to make Bytom one of the most polluted towns in Europe.
Yuri was certain these were the right children. He’d made discreet inquiries at the school, and they were the right ages: the boy was five, the girl seven. They had only been in the town a fairly short time, and they did not appear to have a mother, only a grandmother and great-grandmother. The address he’d been given, an elderly brick block of flats with a dark green front door, seemed to fit. He decided to try to check out his suspicions with the children themselves.
The next morning he caught up with them on their walk to school, using some excuse to start a conversation in Polish. The children were guarded, especially the girl. In accented and slightly stilted Polish, they told him they lived with their grandmother, about fifteen minutes walk from their school. Their little faces, framed by balaclavas, still showed traces of a sun that didn’t shine this far north of the Equator.
That night he advised his client in Australia that the two ‘units’ were confirmed. Then he began preparing for the next stage of his brief.
*
The children’s mother, Marina, was a young Australian woman of Polish extraction. Some months before, she had contacted private investigator Keith Schafferius in Brisbane and told him that her estranged husband, Tomas, had kidnapped their children and taken them to Poland. The Family Court had been about to grant her final custody of her two children the day after her husband spirited the children out of Australia. Knowing that this was likely, Tomas had illegally obtained travel documents for the children by forging his wife’s signature. He then took the children far from the jurisdiction of the Australian courts before she realised they were gone.
It was now nearly a year since the kidnap. Having sold her house and exhausted all legal and political avenues to try to have her children returned from Poland, which was not then a signatory to the Hague Convention, Marina turned to Keith Schafferius, a successful ‘retriever’ of children—for a fee.
Schafferius told her that if they kidnapped the children back they would be breaking the law in Poland. They could go to jail. The Australian embassy might not be prepared to assist them. The Polish justice system was different and potentially very unforgiving. Marina was undeterred. Schafferius tried to arrange passports from ‘Mr Smith’, a contact in Foreign Affairs in Canberra, with no success. Although the children’s passports had been obtained by deception, the documents themselves were still authentic and could not be reissued. Mr Smith suggested that they take along passport photos of the children and the Family Court custody orders. Then, if they were successful, they could try to get special travel documents from the embassy in the country they fled to. This in itself presented a problem, as Marina’s only photos were more than twelve months old.
*
As soon as the go-ahead came from Yuri Nekepelov, Marina, Schafferius and a Polish interpreter/driver flew to Warsaw, entering Poland on entry visas stamped into their Australian passports. For Schafferius, the entry was bitter-sweet. The Queensland-born son of an itinerant farmer of German-Polish extraction, he had often dreamed of going to the old country to absorb some of the culture his grandparents had told him about. But he’d had different plans for his first visit.
They stayed in Old Warsaw, in a small apartment in a modest private hotel run by a wizened old lady who made fresh cakes every day and almost force-fed them to her guests. Eating was the last thing on Marina’s mind. After more than a year, she wondered if her children would recognise her. Would they be frightened when she suddenly appeared? Were they well? Was she doing the right thing? To this last question she had to reassure herself—yes, of course.
Yuri met them in Warsaw and hired a Volvo for them to travel around the city. They went to the Australian embassy, but the staff couldn’t help until the children were back in the mother’s custody. They seemed supportive, though, so Schafferius was hopeful of their co-operation on the return journey. If they succeeded. Along with the car, they had to hire a local driver to stay with the car at all times.
‘It’s not a matter of it might be stolen,’ Yuri told them through their interpreter, ‘it’s when.’
Everything had to be paid for in US dollars, including the spare number plates Schafferius obtained for the escape vehicle—a Ford Transit van. They had originally planned to cross into Czechoslovakia, but Schafferius was unimpressed by the Czechs—‘they’re not friendly people’—so they decided to try to go out legally, the same way they came in. This would entail a two-and-a-half-hour dash to Warsaw, a visit to the Australian embassy to throw themselves on the mercy of those responsible for issuing passports, and an exit by air to Frankfurt.
When Schafferius was satisfied that all the preparations were complete, the party set out for Bytom in the Transit van. Marina was so nervous she couldn’t speak. She had staked all the money she had in the world on a successful outcome to their mission.
Schafferius briefed her again on the rules of engagement. ‘Listen to what I say. Do what I tell you to do. Stick to the plan. No changes. Don’t do anything stupid.’
What a joke, she thought. This whole expedition is stupid.
There was one other instruction, which she found chilling. ‘We may only have one chance at one child. If that happens, we act then or lose both. No arguments, or we could all end up in jail.’
Please God, she prayed, don’t make me have to choose.
*
At 7.30 a.m. on a late October morning, they waited two streets away from the children’s grandmother’s house on the route Yuri had told them the children always took to school. The sky and the streets were a synchronised grey, partially relieved by haloed street-lamps, painting puddles the colour of an old man’s pee. Marina didn’t notice the cold; she felt feverish with fear and dread.
A little person walked around the corner. Alone. He was absorbed in kicking tracks through the slush, unaware of the drama that was about to engulf him. Marina hesitated. ‘Is that really him? I can’t tell from here.’
‘Get out and go to him,’ Schafferius instructed. ‘Talk to him in Polish. Get him into the van.’
‘But my daughter! Where is she?’ Marina cried.
‘Go! Go now!’ Schafferius is used to being obeyed.
The mother approached the little boy and patted him on the shoulder. ‘Andrew, this is Mum.’
Startled, he looked up and pushed her away. Then he looked hard at Marina, smiled and took her hand as if they had never been separated.
‘Come with me,’ she said joyfully. ‘We’re going to Warsaw to visit uncle.’
‘Mummy!’ he responded with an even bigger grin. They ran to the van.
A quick interrogation of the child revealed that he and his sister Jenny had been separated only days before. Jenny was now living with her great-grandmother near by and attending a different school. She had gone to school alone, by a different route. Had the father become suspicious after Yuri’s little chat with the children?
There was no time for speculation. They all drove to Jenny’s school, and Marina and Andrew ran from classroom to classroom, looking for Jenny through the glass doors. Finally they saw her. Marina’s heart was beating like a drum.
‘I couldn’t believe I was actually doing this,’ Marina said later. ‘I sent Andrew inside ahead of me. I told him, “Tell Jenny Mummy’s here and we’re all going to visit our uncle in Warsaw.”’
She stood waiting, only to be confronted with a hysterical Jennifer and a hesitant teacher. Jennifer was screaming, ‘I don’t want to go to Australia! I don’t want to go with my mother!’ She clutched her teacher tightly, then ran back inside the classroom.
‘I could never have imagined in a million years that Jennifer would turn against me,’ Marina said sadly. ‘I told the teacher I was visiting from Australia to see my children. She said, “Look, I don’t want to know the story. I can’t make Jenny go with you. I should call your husband . . . but I won’t.”
‘Jenny looked at me from the classroom as if I was a murderer. I just stood in the hall, banging my head against the wall. “What have I done? What have I done?” Andrew was so grown up. He took my hand and said, “Mum, let’s go.” I knew I had to leave her there.’
Schafferius’s words on the trip to Bytom were ringing in her ears. ‘Act now, or lose both.’ Sobbing, she grabbed Andrew and ran for the van.
Schafferius was worried. The teacher would probably call the police, and they would contact the father. ‘Marina, what do you want to do? We should go. Andrew wants to go with you. We should get moving.’
‘Oh, Keith, I can’t. I can’t leave Jenny. How can I? I’ll sort it out with Tomas and his mother. I know I can. I’ll talk to them tonight and they’ll understand. Why don’t you go to Warsaw and I’ll come tomorrow with the children?’
Keith was not pleased, but Marina was immovable. She wanted to try to convince her husband that the children should go home to Australia. Slowly, they drove back to the brick building where her mother-in-law lived. Andrew and Marina got out of the van, and so did Yuri. He wanted to take his money and disappear before the whole project fell apart.
‘I’ll wait a couple of days for you in Warsaw, Marina,’ Keith told her. ‘You’ll have to bring the children on the train—if you have any luck.’
Marina taps Andrew on the shoulder and he starts in fright. Photographed by Keith through the car window
Minutes later, they are heading for the car and home
*
‘My mother-in-law was very happy to see me,’ Marina said. ‘She was expecting me, but she didn’t know when, because Tomas had lied to her that I was coming soon, so she thought it was all planned. “You should have let me know,” she said. We started to talk. When she found out why I had really come she was very anxious. She is afraid of Tomas. Then Jenny came home from school, and when she saw me, she started screaming again. She looked at me as if she’d never seen me before.
‘Then Tomas arrived from work. He was furious. “What are you doing here?” I told him I had a lawyer in Warsaw and I was going to fight him in the court. He’s usually pretty bright, but he believed me. Later on, I wondered how my brain thought of such lies so quickly. I am usually a very quiet, reserved person. I think I felt as if I was on a mission and the words came from somewhere.
‘While we spoke, Jenny sat on her father’s lap, hugging him and telling him she loved him. Andrew stayed by me. “Where did you get the money to come here and get lawyers?” he asked me. I told him I’d sold my house in Brisbane. It was mine, and after we married I put it in both names, but the Family Court gave me permission to sell it.
‘He said, “Yeah, yeah. You always waste money. I have to take the children to Grandmother’s now.” We walked to the old house with the green door. When I saw inside, my heart fell. There had been a fire inside some time before, and the walls were black. There was no hot water service and the children were sharing one bed.
‘I started shivering all over and begged Tomas to give me the children. He said, “You can kiss my feet and I’ll kick you, but you are not having them back.” I had brought them some new clothes and toys, so I gave them their gifts and put them to bed. Jenny asked, “Can we still keep the presents, even if we don’t go with you?” My heart was breaking.
‘We went back to his mother’s house and he said he was going out. “You go back to Warsaw—do what you want. You can’t see the children again. You send me a letter with some money in it. They will do what their dad wants them to do.”
‘I tried to phone Keith that night, but the lines were bad between Bytom and Warsaw and I couldn’t get through.
‘That night, my mother-in-law said, “I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” and next day she took me to the train. I sat on the train crying my eyes out. I even thought of jumping off to make an end of me. It was going to be so hard to leave the country, knowing how the children were living. I don’t know how I managed that journey.’
Keith was very pleased to see her when she dragged herself into the little guest-house in Warsaw. But he was cross too.
‘That was stupid, Marina. Really stupid,’ he scolded her. ‘I told you to stick to the plan. What have you told them about me? Anything?’
‘No, no, nothing. I’m so sorry,’ she sobbed. ‘He thinks I have a lawyer . . .’
‘Well get some rest,’ he instructed. She didn’t think she’d sleep, but she did, for a while.
Late that night, Keith came in and woke her up.
‘Look, Andrew wants to go with you. Do you want to go and get Andrew?’
‘I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Well, do you?’
‘Can we?’
‘I think we should,’ he told her.
At dawn the next day, they set out on the same trip. They arrived in Bytom just before 8 a.m. and waited outside the green door, but there was no sign of Andrew.
‘Where’s his school?” Keith asked Marina.
‘I don’t know. Near Jenny’s, I think,’ she answered, getting more anxious every minute.
Their driver had been paid off too. Keith drove along beside children in uniform walking to school, while Marina jumped in and out of the van, asking scared children frantic questions about Andrew. Finally they found the school and she ran inside, asking for the principal’s office.
‘I’m Andrew’s mother. Is my son at school today?’ she asked him.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked her.
‘Not much,’ she lied. ‘Tomas came to Poland with the children for a holiday and I’ve just arrived. Is Andrew here?’
‘No. He’s not. There’s obviously something wrong with your son. He’s been very disturbed and distressed and I don’t know which class to put him in. His English is almost gone and his Polish is bad—he needs counselling. In fact, that’s where he is today—he’s going to the doctor.’
Thinking Andrew would be at his great-grandmother’s house, they headed back to the green door.
‘Keith was so wonderful,’ Marina told me. ‘I don’t know how he found his way around those narrow streets. He’d only been there once and we’d had a driver.’
Outside the house, Marina steeled herself for another encounter with her husband’s relatives. She rang the buzzer.
‘Yes?’ an old lady responded.
‘Is Andrew there?’ Marina quavered.
‘Who is this?’ the old woman asked suspiciously.
‘I did it again,’ Marina told me. ‘I just found a lie in my mouth. I said I was his teacher and we were worried because he was not at school. She told me he was going to the doctor with his grandmother. So we rushed there and on the way Keith gave me some US dollars. He said, “Money talks in Poland.”
‘When we arrived I was running two storeys up the narrow stairs and their huge Alsatian dog barred my way. He’d been there the day before, but I’d had Andrew with me. I was terrified. I called out more lies, “Mum, I’m back. I just couldn’t stay away. I want to leave you some money.”
‘Then Andrew came out onto the top landing, dressed in the clothes I’d left him the night before. My heart went crazy. I whispered, “Andrew, are you coming with me?” He nodded, “Yeah, Mum.” I called out to my mother-in-law, “I’ll need your bankbook to put some money in,” so she went to get it. I said to Andrew, “Run downstairs. There’s a white car down there. Get in and don’t get out. Run!” He ran and I followed. I could hear my mother-in-law calling out that she still couldn’t find her bankbook, but I raced after Andrew, jumped into the car and Keith took off.’
The grandmother came out onto the balcony, calling hysterically after the departing car.
‘Tomas will kill me!’ Marina heard her cry out as they disappeared.
When they arrived in Warsaw, they discovered that the ambassador, who had to approve Andrew’s travel documents, was away overnight. Once again, Marina had to call on her reserves to phone her mother-in-law, apologise and say she’d be back the next day with Andrew; they were just visiting her uncle. If she hadn’t, she is sure Tomas would have followed them.
*
The next day they were given temporary papers for Andrew after a photo session at the embassy. They sped to the airport, where an alert immigration officer questioned them about Andrew’s crisp, new travel documents.
As you would expect from a former ASIO operative, Schafferius is cool. One of his many skills is thinking on his feet. ‘He’s only a little boy. This is his mother. The Australian embassy has provided us with these documents because his passport has been lost.’
Marina was hauled off to have a little chat with Immigration, but not before Schafferius slipped her another bundle of US dollars and warned her to stick to his story. Minutes before the final call for the Frankfurt plane, she returned, poorer but free to leave.
Marina’s tears of joy on her arrival in Australia were mixed with tears of sorrow for the daughter she’d left behind. News of their flight had leaked to the media, and the Sydney news teams were out in force to capture the story of their adventure on film as they changed planes for Brisbane and home. While she tried to contain her exuberant little boy in the Sydney sunshine, Marina’s thoughts were with her daughter in that desolate Polish mining town, so far away.
She told Schafferius in a quiet moment, ‘I don’t suppose I’ll ever see her again.’
*
Keith Schafferius told me his side of this story in his air-conditioned, ultra-modern office in Brisbane, surrounded by owl statuettes, the latest in sleuthing gadgets, a collection of British bobby’s hats and some Sherlock Holmes memorabilia. We were far from illegal border crossings, weeping parents and screaming children, pounding hearts and running feet. He told me other stories from the front line in this international kidnapping game. And who are the winners? Are they the children, or the parents? There is both collusion and obstruction by governments: power and international protocol sometimes take priority over the welfare of a child. Almost every country has laws designed to protect children, but do they? The Hague Convention has been endorsed by over sixty countries. But does xenophobia override human compassion and the law? The stories I have heard from Schafferius and others, along with my own experience, have raised many questions in my mind.
I met Keith Schafferius because of a tragedy that occurred in our own family. He showed me why, when all else seems to fail, people turn to him and others like him to try to retrieve children who have been taken in contempt of family law and international treaties, marriage vows, custody orders and common humanity—the children of relationships gone wrong.
1 The Land of Tears
It’s a secret place, the Land of Tears.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
On Thursday, 11 March 1999, my son arrived home about 1 p.m. from his part-time morning job, intending to get changed, have lunch and go to his full-time job, where he worked from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. He was holding down two jobs so his French wife Catherine could stay at home with their eighteen-month-old son, Byron. It was a hard life for both parents in a way, with Alex working long hours and Catherine alone in the evenings. There were arguments from time to time, and money was often tight. But what marriage doesn’t have problems? Unfortunately, it seems Alex did not realise how serious the problems were.
Catherine and Byron visited us, Byron’s grandparents, regularly for meals; and for swimming lessons, walks in the park to feed the ducks, visits to the playground and ‘walkies with the woo woos’—taking the dogs for a walk. Just the usual family stuff. But such fun! At weekends Alex would join in. He and Catherine both loved their son to distraction, and these happy times helped disguise the weekday difficulties.
Byron was my first grandson. I will never forget the day his father placed him so proudly in my outstretched arms, like a piece of precious porcelain—‘Mum, may I present your grandson.’ I was speechless for once, overcome by emotion.
But on this day, 11 March 1999, Catherine was not at home when Alex arrived. Neither was Byron. There was a note instead of lunch. They were airborne over Australia, heading away from the only home Byron had known. Away from his family and his father. Going back to France—without Alex’s knowledge or permission. His phone call to me was the first of hundreds made during the next days and months.
Frantic phone calls to Airport Immigration revealed the flight details. There were calls to my lawyers, who recommended we speak to Wisewoulds, a firm of family law experts. Alex made a dash into the city.
‘Shall I go with him?’ I asked my husband.
‘No, Rob, he’s a man. It’s his family. Don’t try to take over.’
So I waited, pacing and crying, my thoughts raging around me like random atoms. A special hearing of the Family Court in Melbourne was called for about 4.30 p.m. The judge ran into the court, asking, ‘Where is this poor father?’ Recovery orders were made just in time to force the Singapore Airlines plane to make an unscheduled landing in Perth so that the Federal Police could retrieve Byron.
On the steps of 305 William Street, Melbourne, the tall building that houses the Family Court, a dazed and heart-broken Alex took a call from Perth on his mobile.
‘Did you get the order?’ the Federal Police officer enquired briskly.
‘Yes, I did. What happens now?’ Alex asked.
‘We order the plane to land, board the aircraft and offer the mother the option to leave the plane voluntarily with your son.’
‘What will you do if she won’t?’ Alex asked, knowing how stubborn Catherine could be.
‘We’ll have a female officer with us. She’ll take possession of the child, by force if necessary, and accompany the child back to Melbourne, where he’ll be returned to your interim custody while the matter is resolved.’
‘Oh, Catherine will never let you take Byron from her!’ Alex said darkly.
‘We’ll arrest her if she tries to interfere,’ the officer replied in a matter-of-fact tone. ‘She’ll be in contempt of court. But she hasn’t actually broken the law yet. She’ll probably only be kept in custody for twenty-four hours and then have the option of continuing her trip to France or making her way back to Melbourne at her own expense.’
Alex could visualise the scene already—Catherine’s fear and anger at being thwarted in her attempt to escape, her embarrassment at being confronted in this manner in front of all those strangers and her maternal rage at having Byron taken from her arms. Any faint possibility of reconciliation with Alex would evaporate if he had her subjected to this barbaric Australian treatment of a mother and child. And Byron? Alex could hear his son’s screams in his ears, tearing his heart—‘Mama! Mama!’
Panic wrapped itself around him, and he could scarcely breathe. He stood alone. Peak-hour traffic blurred past him. Tears ran down his face.
‘Let her go,’ he said quietly into the mobile.
‘What was that, mate? You can’t be serious!’ the police officer yelled into his ear. ‘You won’t get another chance—another half-an-hour and they’re outta here.’
‘Let her go,’ Alex repeated with resolve. ‘I’ll go after her and bring them home.’
‘Wish you luck, mate,’ said the policeman, resignation in his voice. He knew better, but it wasn’t his call.
Squaring his shoulders, Alex walked back to his car. Two parking tickets, $200 worth, were tucked under the windscreen wiper. Shit happens, he thought.
He had just made the hardest decision of his life—one he’d regret every day for the rest of his life. But at the time it seemed to be the right thing to do.
*
The happy home of yesterday became the wreckage of a family. In order to save enough money to get to France, Alex moved in with us, selling everything he’d worked so hard to buy, keeping only small treasures that could be easily stored.
Homes had to be found for the pair of family cats, litter brothers, sleek black twins. We couldn’t keep them, as we were planning to move soon ourselves. Alex had always been a sucker for animals; he loved those cats. As I watched him drive off to the Cat Protection Society with two adult cats that had never been separated, my heart ached for him. We both knew the odds were slim for one or both of them to find a home. Together, even slimmer.
He arrived home red-eyed but full of determined cheer. ‘The lady said they look very healthy. “In good condition,” she said. You never know, Mum.’
No, Alex, you never know. And we never rang to find out.
He had to keep working to keep the savings piling up, so I did much of the initial sorting and packing up of the unit. Byron’s shoes, now too small, his little books we’d read together, his bath toys, the change table Alex had made with such high hopes only eighteen months before, painted pale blue and apricot to match his cot, his chest of drawers and his bookcase. The bookcase, with a full set of Peter Rabbit stories, Winnie the Pooh, the Teletubbies. How Byron and I loved dancing together to the Teletubbies! We had the books, the T-shirts, the dolls, the videos—the full commercial suck-in for grandmothers. I knew all their names, but Tinkie Winkie was my favourite—maybe because of that mysterious handbag. No good to Byron where he’d gone. He’d be reading in French from now on.
Then came the Garage Sale. Balloons at the gate, gaily heralding a shopping opportunity. How can I describe the pain of watching my son’s home gradually disappearing down the driveway under people’s arms, in bags, on trolleys? His treasures and appliances sold for a song. But we weren’t singing.
The worst was when a lady arrived whose daughter was coming back to Australia from Austria with her fifteen-month-old son. The woman was about my age and had not yet met her grandson. She was so excited, prattling on about how cute he looked in his photos, how they would stay with her when they arrived, how lucky she was that we had everything she needed. We nodded and smiled. High-chair, cot, change table, car-seat and so on and so on—a bulk price if she took the lot.
‘Why not take the bed linen too?’ I suggested. I folded up the quilts I’d made, the sheets and pillowslips I’d trimmed with a strip of bunnies or bears to match the quilts, and tossed them all into her boot.
‘And what about all these clothes and nappies?’ I added, a bit hysterically. ‘His mother kept everything spotless—you might as well take these too.’
‘How much?’ she asked.
‘Don’t bother. Just take them,’ I pleaded.
Alex and I could hardly make it back to his front door. We were both trying to be strong for each other, but the departure of all that stuff and the dreams it represented was just too much.
‘Bugger this, Alex,’ I said. ‘Let’s take the rest to the auction next week. I can’t do any more today.’
We took down the Garage Sale signs and the bloody balloons, went back to my house and got thoroughly drunk.
*
One of the reasons our despair was so complete was that Catherine had already told Alex by phone that their marriage was over and she wanted a divorce. She intended to go back to university and try to regain her old life in France. Her father was dying and she wanted to be near him. Added to this list was quite a long recitation of Alex’s various and heinous transgressions, which she said gave her reason to refuse to return to Australia with Byron—or consider a reconciliation in France.
Vanessa Mathews, Alex’s lawyer at Wisewoulds, told us about the Hague Convention, which was designed to discourage international parental child abduction and to help people in situations like Alex’s to have their children returned to their homes through the international courts. She suggested he get in touch with the Central Authority, the Attorney General’s Department in Canberra, to enlist their aid to have Byron returned to Australia, his ‘habitual place of residence’, so that Alex and Catherine could resolve the issues in the jurisdiction in which Byron was born and had lived all his life.
Vanessa said that the Family Court would then consider what would be in Byron’s best interests. She warned that Catherine might be successful in obtaining an order permitting her to take Byron back to France. I thought these days that would happen fairly rarely, especially in view of the fact that the ‘habitual place of residence’, as determined by the Hague Convention, is the child’s, not the parent’s.
But I told Alex, in those early days full of drama, ‘This means that you might go through all this pain and expense and get Catherine returned, but because Byron is so little and Catherine has no relatives here, she might still be allowed to go back to France—legally. You need to be very sure of what outcome you want from this action before you take it.’
‘Of course I want them to come back,’ Alex said. ‘I love them both. I can’t believe this is happening to me. What am I going to do here without them?’
*
So we contacted the Central Authority, where Nan Levett was appointed as Alex’s case worker. Through our conversations with Nan, we learnt some new vocabulary and discovered that Alex was not alone in becoming a ‘left-behind parent’. Every year about a hundred parents are bereft in a similar way around Australia, and about the same number of children are brought into Australia by parents abducting from overseas. The Central Authority therefore has a dual role: it finds abducted children in Australia and assists their return to their rightful jurisdictions, and it also helps parents like Alex gain access to the courts of other countries.
The Hague Convention stipulated a number of conditions under which Alex could apply to the Australian Central Authority for assistance in effecting Byron’s return. The child had to be under sixteen; the child must have been taken to another convention country; he or she must have been habitually resident in Australia, and the removal or retention of the child must be a breach of the left-behind parent’s ‘rights of custody’. These all fitted our case.
This list does not mean that the left-behind parent has to have a custodial order for the abducted children. Under Australian family law, most parents automatically have parental responsibility for their children, which also confers ‘rights of custody’. In fact, a custodial order from the Family Court obtained after an abduction is useless in other countries, so it’s a waste of time and money applying for custody after the horse has bolted, as it were. Just the fact that the child or children are yours means you have a responsibility for them. Whether or not you are living with the abducting parent at the time he or she leaves Australia, just being a parent is usually grounds to show you’ve been ‘exercising your custodial rights’, as long as you’ve been seeing them and haven’t been away droving in Queensland. And Alex and Catherine were married and living together; her departure was a complete shock to him.
Unwillingly, Alex had become part of a growing statistical group. Until a few years ago, the abducting parent was usually the father, probably frustrated by Family Court decisions, lack of access or plain masculine ego, who took the children back to his home country and often (not always) left them with female relatives to raise. Increasingly, though, the pendulum has swung the other way. Most abducting parents are now mothers, unhappy with a different life and culture, unable or unwilling to make friends, sometimes caught in an abusive or unhappy relationship with no local family support. I had known for some time that Catherine felt isolated from her culture and her former friends; in fact, I was almost her only friend in Australia, which sometimes placed me in a difficult position—between her and my son.
Vanessa had also explained to us that the Central Authority in each Hague Contracting State in theory acts for the ‘left-behind parent’ in the country to which the ‘abducting parent’ has taken the child or children. It became clear to me that from Day One, an adversarial system clicks into place, with the kids the prize for the winners of the game. In our case, the Prosecutor General in France was allegedly batting for Alex’s team and would be responsible for implementing the intent of the Hague Convention and pleading for Byron to be returned to Australia forthwith.
Out of Alex’s hearing, I said to myself, ‘I’d like to see that!’ Why would the French authorities put themselves out for an Australian father on the other side of the world against a sweet and loving French mother who only wanted to live in France, look after her invalid father like a dutiful daughter and bring up her son like a dutiful mother?
The situation was further complicated by the fact that Alex, Catherine and Byron all had dual nationality, as Alex’s father, my former husband, is French. If it suited the French authorities, they could tell Alex to take it on the chin like a Frenchman and get stuffed, convention or no convention. Nan warned us that this was possible. France was not at the top of the list of ‘compliant countries’, that is, countries that had signed the convention. In fact, France had often done practically nothing to comply with it, or managed to delay until it was too late.
Article 11 of the Hague Convention is intended to ensure that children are returned ‘expeditiously’. It says:
The judicial or administrative authorities of Contracting States shall act expeditiously in proceedings for the return of children.
If the judicial or administrative authority concerned has not reached a decision within six weeks from the date of commencement of the proceedings, the applicant or the Central Authority of the requested State, on its own initiative or if asked by the Central Authority of the requesting State, shall have the right to request a statement of the reasons for the delay.
There are good reasons for moving swiftly. In most cases, local courts take a different view of the obligation to return children to their ‘habitual place of residence’ once they have been in the new country over twelve months, because the children may be considered to be settled there. Little children like Byron might learn to speak in the new country and have no way of communicating if they were returned to their original home. So it was a race against time, as well as everything else. And the courts, if they wished, could move very slowly indeed.