Its going to be pretty hard to say if it did or didn’t fail since they ran before the hearings had been completed. Not only do we not have enough information to know whether this woman should have gotten custody, we don’t even know if custody would have been granted permanently. All we know is that the last hearing gave her a trial custody period. She didn’t get the opportunity to complete the trial.
And looking back eighteen years, its going to be pretty hard to say what the outcome of that trial period would have been.
Here’s a question. If the reason the grandparents took Richard was because they were worried about his mother’s ability to take care of a child, why were they still in hiding? Richard turned 18 in 2007 - at that point custody was no longer an issue. They could have contacted Richard’s mother and told her that her son was still alive and doing well. But they were apparently okay with her living the rest of her life not knowing if her son was alive or dead.
To me, that seems to be evidence that there was a measure of vindictiveness in what the grandparents were doing - they were punishing their daughter-in-law as much as they were protecting their grandson. That or they were aware that what they had done was wrong and they didn’t want to face the consequences for it.
From the latest reports I’ve read, the mother and stepfather had lived in a car at one point for a period of three days. But in 1994, when they were seeking to regain custody of Richard, they were living in a regular house.
I wonder what would have happened if the mother had had a gun at the time. Surely she would have been justified in shooting the grandparents as they attempted to flee with her child.
Another example of a violent crime that could have been prevented by a well-armed citizen.
It depends on whether you believe (a) the sheriff involved in the abduction case at the tme; or (b) the woman’s lawyer today.
I’m inclined to think (b) makes more sense than (a), as it is difficult to imagine a court awarding a trial custody to someone living in a car, but it is by no means clear yet that we know the real facts.
I’ve reread the articles and this thread. It does seem like the local police didn’t look that hard for these grandparents. The previous sheriff is quoted saying they were nice people and he understood their actions.
The 2nd article I posted mentioned the boy only recently had his name legally changed. I think it was 2007? Probably when he turned 18. I’m curious what name he used on his school records. Maybe he decided at 18 to make his alias legal with the name change?
Finally, we figured out that he’s been working and using his original SSN all along. Yet it didn’t trigger any police investigation until very recently, when stepdad had a new cop check it.
It doesn’t sound like the grandparents were clever at all. Just very lucky that the local cops were sympathetic and didn’t try that hard.
I was wrong in my previous post. It was the mother and father, Richard Landers Sr, who lived in a car for three days not the mother and stepfather, Richard Harter.
Okay, I was the kid in a similar scenario where my grandparents decided my mom was failing at her job, so they took matters and the law into their own hands, took us out of the home and dropped us off at my dad’s house. While I can’t say in retrospect that was a bad decision or that I was worse off, it did cause some trauma for me and my sister. The whole nightmare was handled poorly. I can forgive all that because my grandparents were right, despite some unskillful handling of the situation. We were, in fact, better off not with my mom… for a short time until she got her shit together. What I cannot forgive is how we were isolated and not allowed contact with mom for a couple of years. Then it was supervised visiting, and after a while, it was okay for mom to hang out with us again. I moved in with her when I turned 18 because I got a better FAFSA deal in college with her.
So I’m sure I don’t know all the facts about this case. So far, I am reacting very negatively to the idea that the grandparents had to move away, change their names and never allow any contact with mom whatsoever. What, they couldn’t let the kid write, Skype, email once in a while? The mom must have been worried sick for years. The now-adult probably has some trust issues now (based on my own experience) and it’s not fair to him that he probably thought his mom completely abandoned him and wanted nothing to do with him for most of his life. That is clearly not true. So I forgive these grandparents for doing what they thought was right for the kid, but I cannot forgive for completely cutting off all contact between him and his mother. That was just flat-out cruel to both of them. That said, I don’t think they should necessarily be locked up and the key swallowed, either. I think the adult child will now have a few things to say about all this and may be lucky enough to say them out loud to those most needing to hear it. I hope so for his sake, anyway. I (sort of, a little bit) know how he must feel sometimes.
In this case, apparently the (now adult) kid knew his real name all along and he’s now an adult - and made no effort to contact his biological mother. Indeed, even after he was “found” he’s apparently not interested.
From the article:
Of course one could say that this position was the result of his grandparents’ brainwashing, Stockholm-syndrome style. OTOH, it could also be the result of the fact that his grandparents raised him from birth and so he considers them, essentially, his “real” parents (which would account for the ‘grandparents’ in the above quote).
But at least subjectively, for what it’s worth, the adult kid is siding with them. Assuming of course the article can be trusted.
Well, of course he considers his grandparents his real parents. They did raise him. He’s known nothing but them, and, to the extent that he has any ‘view’ of his biological parents, it’s the one they gave him. It would be incomprehensible for him to have any position now but support for them.
None of that really has any bearing on the question of whether it was right for the grandparents to abduct him in the first place.
I know it is not within the law as it now states, but when I am Empress of the World the grandparents would be jailed and the key buried. The grandparents never called the mom to say her child was OK – even when he reached his majority and custody was no longer an issue.
It sounds like the police were complacent, or at least looked the other way, in the kidnapping. The sheriff thinks the grandparents are nice people and he understands why they did what they did. It sounds to me that the police viewed a woman who was not as smart as the grandparents, who had lived in a car for three days, and had lived in a group home, then when her child was stolen – when she was trying to get custody – they sided with the grandparents in kidnapping the child. It was a new police officer who ran the SSN when the stepdad spoke with him at church. If this is really the case, and I know nothing except what I read in two articles, I hope the mom looks into holding the police responsible. It will never get back the lost years with her child, but if it totally ruins the retirement of people who thought they knew better because she was a little slow (and I know I am projecting my own bias here) I am all for it.