But this wasn’t a custodial dispute gone wrong. He wasn’t a little late dropping the kids off. He took the kids from their primary caregiver and she had no idea if they were dead or alive or in pain or what for fifteen years. Sounds to me like she went through the exact same anguish that any parent whose kid is taken from them went through.
He is a common kidnapper. Even if the kids are happy and safe as clams, living a perfect life with him, the fact that he took the children from their mother, and robbed her the right to know her children, is a serious, serious crime committed against the mother. Any debate about whether the kids are victims or better off is completely irrelevant because the crime committed against the mother alone needs to be punished. See also upthread numerous posts about the how setting an example of NOT punishing this behavior makes it an extremely more attractive option for future parents who want to do this.
Nope, the father assured that when he stole the kids.
Moderately irrelevant. Sentencing is certainly something that would take these into consideration, but that doesn’t really matter during the trial, IMO. He stole the children from their mother. That has consequences. BTW, what is a “common kidnapper”?
These are inevitable consequences of the father’s actions. Not only these children but all other children in custody battles will be affected by the upholding of rule of law.
I distinguish a person who takes his flesh and blood to raise them with love from a person who takes a stranger or a hostage at a bank.
They are not the same thing, and can be distinguished. I believe more harm is done to someone who has their children taken away for 15 years than to someone kept hostage for a day at gunpoint. And I am certainly not making light of being taken hostage. both crimes deserve considerable jail time. You are giving too much weight to motivations, and not considering damage caused.
I see over and over variants on “HE TOOK HER CHILDREN!!!1111111”
Are all of you really just concerned about her?
- He took THEIR children. They are both parents.
- He took THE children. Children are not possessions.
- He took the PEOPLE. Children are not second class humans.
Why does this keep being about damages to the mother? Shouldn’t the first concerns be for the lives of the 2 kids? Yes, kidnapping, even non-custodial parent kidnapping, should be discouraged. But in most crimes, the victims are given some say on if they want to press charges. What are the kids being discounted here?
Before someone comes along and starts yelling “HE TOOK HER CHILDREN AND BRAINWASHED THEM”…
Really? Just what kind of proof do we have?
How about we ID the real victims, the real damage, and work to “First do no harm”.
The real victims are the mother and the children. The mother did everything right. She went to court, presented her case to the Judge, and won a ruling in her favor.
The father did nothing right. He violated a court order, and various criminal statutes. He deprived the mother of 15 years of her children’s lives. He deprived his children of at least 15 years worth of relationship with their mother. They could lop this fucker’s head off on the courthouse steps, and it isn’t going to fix the harm he’s done.
There is no way to spin this where the father is not the bad guy here.
OK, then – He took THEIR mother!!!
Whether or not the children are happy now, whether or not he raised them well – he stole from his children the right to know their mother. This is not inconsequential – the loss of a parent is a very serious loss for a child.
How on earth is denying her access to her children for 15 years doing her no harm? How is she not a victim?
Remember, if he left the kids in her custody, he could have visited them, called them, checked up on them, and, if they were in danger, mistreated or neglected, sued to change the arrangement. She had none of these options. How is that not harming the mother?
We have identified the vicitims:
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The children - who were kept from their mother, who was designated as their legal guardian by the courts. They were taken at an age too young for them to ever create a bond with their mother.
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The mother - who followed all the rules and was victimized by the ex who took her children away from her. She lost out of 15 years of her children’s lives, untold anxiety and worry.
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Society - the rule of law was flaunted and violated. To reward the ex for his illegal actions would put all other children in custody battles at risk.
OK, harm has been done. To not attempt to penalize and rectify that harm would be to cause severe damage.
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Because apparently there can only be one “real victim”, which, if kids are involved, that automatically means them by default
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and if it turns out they are happy and not victims after all, then there are no victims, because (goto 1)
Nevermind. Misunderstood something.
Then, apparently, the mom is even more likely to be doing more than half of the child care.
It’s not really sexist to say that the parent who does most of the work of caring for the children is, all other things being equal, likely to be the most suitable choice as custodial parent.
It is sexist in some ways that mothers are the parents who on average do most of the work of caring for the children, and that mothers are disproportionately likely to be the ones who prioritize parenting responsibilities over career and income opportunities, but that’s not the family courts’ fault.
Then it is still less disruptive to the child’s daily life to be left with the parent who does most of the hands-on parenting. This is not a complicated concept. Is it your contention that level of disruption to the child’s life should not be a factor taken into consideration when deciding what is in said child’s best interests?
But children are “his”, “hers”, or “theirs”. They do belong to the parents. they are not available for the taking for whoever can provide a better home, richer, more stable, or less disruptive… You can’t sue to take the cute baby from the couple down the street because you have more money and have a nicer house and can hire a nanny and give them a pony and dance lessons… Unless the parents are demonstrably abusive, children belong with/to their parents.
Unfortunately, in a divorce, usually one side wins more of the children’s presence than the other. This is a strong motivation to work things out, but obviously not strong enough.
We seems to have morphed from “take the interest of the children into account” to “the children’s interest trumps all”. It does not. The problem is that often neither parent will consider what’s best for the children if it gives something to the other spouse. Often, parents would rather chop the child in half than let the other parent have any part of the child’s attention. In this case, someone needs to speak for the child.
My father won custody of us in the early 1960’s. My co-worker got custody of his 2 children even in the 1980’s. In both cases, it took a seriously expensive lawyer. (in my co-worker’s case, I suspect it was because the inlaws perjured themselves accusing him of abuse but could not get the story straight - screw with the system and the judge will screw you over.) In another case, a co-worker lost her 3 kids for exactly the same reason - took them during the hearings, disappeared, and refused to bring the kids back. Once she did under threat of contempt, she lost custody.
So… the courts are not exclusively anti-male; it just seems that way to parents who often are more intereste in revenge than the good of the child. And more often than not, they are anti-male biased. A good lawyer is worth whatever they charge…
Brainwashing? I was never too dense to pick up on the implication that any contact with my mother was disloyalty to my father and a rejection of all the love and care he had shown over the years. Plus in my step-mother’s worse moments of rage, suggesting I would be tossed out of the house if I thought about it or I could be sent to a home for mentally disturbed children. (My step-mother was actually the more insecure and jealous one)
We don’t know what the father told the kids, but the girl had no inclination to talk to the mother. This strongly suggests they had been somehow motivated not to. The mother tried just contact at first, then had to take more drastic measures.
You don’t know what Appeal to Authority is. It is not a fallacy to cite an actual, relevant authority, like the family court, whose job it is to decide what is best for the children.
In 1991 or '92 I was on AOL and Compuserve. By '95 people were piling onto AOL in droves. Once you’re on the net, you can’t not run across ads for background checks and finding missing people. The kids were living under their own names. C’mon, $25 to one of these online search places and the kids would have been found.
Mom probably ran out of booze and drug money and decided to try and find some family to hit up.
As someone who works with kids of the same ages as those in question here, I’m a bit disturbed by some of the reactions of people here. These kids are 16 and 17 now. They are, at most, 729 days from being considered adults. The 17 year old is less than 364 days from being considered an adult.
It seems odd that people think the best solution is to uproot a junior and a senior in high school and ship them literally across the country because a 15 year old court decision says that they should have been there the whole time. Regardless of the law in this case (which probably says that this is what should happen), I can’t see these kids coming to terms with being torn away from their entire social life within one or two years. Sure, the mother probably has the legal right to regain custody of them. But should these kids really be forced to move across the country to live with her? Would emancipation be an option at this point?
No one is saying that they should be forced to move. What is being discussed is whether or not the father should be prosecuted for his crime, and whether or not the mother was wrong for reporting the crime to the police.
As far as what happens after that–maybe the kids should be allowed to live with grandparents, or friends. Perhaps mom ought to move down to them. Who knows? But the idea that the mother should have just ignored the situation and walked away from her kids or that the law should give the father a pass seems poorly thought out.
Exactly, Manda Jo.
First, the kidnapping parent needs to go to jail.
Second, after the kidnapper is in jail, the kids need to be cared for. Since their father is not available, since he’s in prison for kidnapping, one obvious candidate is their mother. However, at 16 and 17, children are allowed a great deal of input into their care. If the kids are dead set against living with their mother, they can ask for emancipation.
There are several ways the kids needs can be met, and the best interests of the kids might not be to send them to their mother. But it sure isn’t to leave them with their father, because he’s going to prison.