Mom Busts Dad For 15 Year Old Custodial "Kidnap" -- Now What?

Great Debates
101

It doesn’t take a lot of brainwashing to convince a teenage girl that she doesn’t necessarily want a deep relationship with someone who, factualy, is a middle-aged stranger to her.

Find me the part of my post where I say he shouldn’t pay – my ideal scenario had him in jail for two years or so – just not till the kids are out of the nest.

Have we had a thread on how annoying it is to offer detailed opinions on a thread that someone is admittedly systemically ignorant about? 'Cause if not, I’ll start one.

Finally . . . Google this guy’s name and take a look at the mugshot. I’m obviously speculating here, but the guy looks a lot more like a journeyman roofer, and not necessarily a very successful one, than the master psychological manipulator some here have been positing him as.

102

If this is the best you’ve got, this isn’t even worth arguing about anymore.

103

It’s obviously not the “best I’ve got” or I’d have introduced it somewhere before the third page of the thread. Argumentation, people. Though maybe some of you do argue that way.

It’s an incidental response to unsubstantiated speculation by your ilk about “brainwashing.”

104

Delaying calling the cops suggests that she was concerned with the kids’ best interests: rather than call the cops and disrupt their lives, she tried to build an independent relationship with them without making any waves. It was only after that was blocked that she called the cops.

Are you seriously advocating that this woman, who lost her kids completely for 15 years, who spent 15 years missing and wondering and dying a little inside every day, should have simply walked away from them after she found them to be apparently happy and healthy? That she should have simply disappeared from their lives? I really think a parent could no more do that than they could hold their own heads underwater until they drowned.

105

Systematically? :dubious:

There is quite a difference between posting blindly to a lengthy thread without reading it, and carefully reading the first 50 posts, forming an opinion, and posting it, only after reading, but admittedly speed reading, the remaining 50 posts and offering a disclaimer as such. Confidently declaring this to be systematically ignorant based on limited information seems to be an example of just the behavior you are claiming of others.

And again, more important than whatever scenario may be more likely in this story, is:

Not punishing the father in a case like this sets a dangerous precedent to all future parents thinking of illegally fleeing with their children. Yup, maybe it sucks for the kids, but that’s the risk the father took, that things may suck for them in the future because of his actions.

Because

106

Basing the decision for this case on what makes the kids happy is insane. I know tons of good parents whose children spout hateful crap at them and tons of horrible parents whose children love them unconditionally. Leaving the kids with the father sends the message that breaking the law is acceptable. Leaving the kids with the father sends the message that kidnapping is cool as long as you think you would be a better parent.

If he really, really wanted his children the correct response would have been to go back to court and do what he could to convince a judge of his case. I know that would have been hard and expensive but it would have been a much better choice than kidnapping. Unless the mother was getting plastered and wailing on the kids with a golf club or teaching them to play russian roulette or something there is no defense for his behavior and he should now have to pay for the choice he made.

107

Hmmm… when I was about 5 my dad took us halfway around the world during a custody dispute with our mother. Those were the good old days… Eventually he won custody, after a nasty 2-year fight. We spent one summer with our mother, not a bad experience. then we never saw her for 40 years, until she was in her 80’s. Going thorugh her things after the funeral, I found letters that we had declined to spend the next summer with her. I don’t remember that. (To be fair… There were also letters we wrote thanking her for our bicycles, and I don’t remember the detail that she paid for them…)

Did it bother me at the time? Was it traumatic? No… I don’t know that I understood what was going on, I didn’t realize it was not normal. Looking back, while our step-mother made sure we did it, it was silly to scribble out our address on birthday cards etc. and put “return to sender” when the address was correct anyway, so what difference did it make to obliterate it? With the thought that if I ever tried to talk to my mother, my father and step-mother would find out and never talk to me again?

I know in Canada recently there have been several instances where the custodial parent has lost custody because of “parental alienation”. I think brainwashing against the other parent is probably a horrible thing for any parent to do and deserves the strictest remedy.

I’m reminded of Eminem’s songs, where he rails against his “pussy, faggoty father” who walked out when he was 1 or 2… Only to find out in the news after he became famous that it was his mother who took off, and his father could not find them. Dad was doing fine and has a nice new well-adjusted family elsewhere. Eminem’s hatred is strictly built from his mother’s brainwashing lies…

So for this OP… A seemingly happy family? How do we know? What normal child refuses to have anything to do with their other parent? She’s 17 and it’s been 15 years, so the only information she has is presumably what she’s heard from daddy. Adopted kids in happy homes often spend years looking for their “real” parents - yet this girl was not interested. Why?

Did daddy say that he would give her the boot if she talked to mother? Or just suggest it was a betrayal? Or say what horrible things he mother would do if she found them?

The fact that she refused any serious contact with her mother suggests something interesting was going on. There are lots of kids who have perfectly fine relationships with both parents and their new spouses, so it’s not some instinct to protect existing relationships, unless she’s really maladjusted.

So is this in the child’s best interest? Yes. If their “comfort zone” or “happy home” is badly out of whack with reality, it is no service to the child to let them wallow in a comfortable but seriously warped view of life.

Plus, since when is “interest of the child” paramount? If it was, parents would be under court order to stay together and stop fighting. The court is under obligation to take into consideration the best interest of the child - as in:

-when for example two parents demand exclusive custody and the right to lock the other parent out of the child’s life, the answer is no.
-when parents demand custody simply to spite the other, the court must understand what’s happening and avoid a bad decision; children must not be weapons.

But the “happiness” of the child does NOT trump all other considerations.

108

If this were the common practice, there would be no consequence or deterrent to prevent future custody kidnappings. The most stealthy parent and his/her ability to abscond with the kids would likely get custody everytime.

109

Remember, folks, they will be dealing with two different legal process in two different legal proceedings: the family law matter, and the criminal law matter. There will be different priorites in each. It will not be wrapped up into one court proceeding, so there will be no requirement that a balance be found between the family law issues and the criminal law issues.

110

Poor kids. They are being sacrificed on the alter of “precedence”.
“We have to take them away and imprison dad. We wouldn’t want to set the wrong precedence.”

Unfortunately, the best outcome for the kids would have been for Mom to contact Dad, outside the legal system, and work out a way to be reintroduced into the kids lives. But that would involve Mom not wanting to exact punishment, being willing to settle for a smaller role in the kids lives, and no one talking to the authorities. That just wasn’t going to happen.

111

Yes. It is a trendy issue at the moment, with quite a few decisions having been reported in the last couple of years, and a great many (most?) pleadings in the low court that I have come across recently claiming it. It’s rough when a homemaking mom badmouths the income earning dad, but the court still awards the kids to the mom simply because the dad is not set up for raising the kids on his own. Now that dads tend to be more involved in parenting than they were a few decades ago, they are having more success at getting the kids when the moms badmouth them.

(It works both ways – a couple of years ago I dumped a client when I came upon rock solid evidence that he was poisoning the mind of his kids against the mother, and I have seen fathers loose custody fights and have access reduced due to their badmouthing the mothers.)

112

He.
Kidnapped.
Her.
Children!

113

That could be said for most fathers who are in prison for just about anything. “Don’t put a person convicted for [fill in the blank for the crime] because it will harm that person’s children.”

114

He took them and hid them from her for more than a decade. What makes you think that he has any interest in reintroducing Mom into their lives?

115

No, you wouldn’t.
You are greatly underestimating the implications of setting precedents.

116

Any psychologist would tell you it’s in the best interest of the children for them to know the sweet embrace of their mothers love. They had that right taken from them, by a grown man aware of, and apparently prepared to risk, the cost for having kidnapped them, mainly that he could be spirited away to prison at any moment during their young lives. Leaving them traumatized, confused, feeling abandoned and in the care of people unfamiliar to them. He took that risk with they young psyches, after removing them from their own mothers love.

She did the right thing, it IS in the children’s best interest, it’s the law. And if there is trauma to the children as a result, that is on him. Hope he enjoys prison.

117

No, but honestly, what do you think this guy told the kids about their mother? The best case scenario is that he told them that she was dead. (In which case it wouldn’t be surprising that the daughter was completely confounded about having a relationship with someone who’d been a ghost all of her life.) The most likely case scenario is that he told them that she left and didn’t want them. And there’s no chance that whatever lie he told them (and any explanation he had for their lack of a mother would have been a lie) it was only told once, because kids don’t ever ask the big questions – like “where is my mommy?” – only once.

Is it brainwashing in the classic sense, like putting someone in a small room and playing a tape on a loop? No. Is it brainwashing to tell the same (or, as is most likely, ever embellished) lie over and over to someone for fifteen years? I certainly think it qualifies.

And note, he didn’t just lie to these kids about their mother, he lied to them about themselves. What they know about themselves is built on the tissue of fabrication created by their father. 16 and 17 year olds are just figuring out their identity for themselves, based in large part on their upbringing. To learn that the foundations that they’re building upon are false would be devastating and could easily explain the 17 year old wanting to retreat to the safety of the familiar falsehood rather than continuing out onto the dangerous path of the confronting the truth by remaining in contact with her newly discovered, apparently-not-dead-nor-an-abandoner mother.

In other words, he gets another two years to commit his crime, which was ongoing until his ass was thrown in jail, because an additional two years of driving a wedge between these kids and their mother – as if they wouldn’t be utterly torn between kidnapper dad and out of the blue mom and devastated by having to weigh their loyalty to dad against the truth of his crimes – is great for the kids. That’ll certainly keep that cute little nuclear family intact and happy!

And no way could this guy, who figured out how to hide for 15 years, work out a way to disappear and avoid going to jail two years from now, if given that chance.

Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, clearly. :rolleyes:

You’re very clearly speculating. Psychological manipulators look just like everyone else. They don’t have a uniform and they don’t wear nametags that say “Hi, My Name Is Bob and I’m A Sociopath!” on them. Think about it for a second and your line of reasoning falls apart like a underbaked bundt cake.

Precedents are the foundation of our legal system. Stare decisis matters. So you bet your butt we don’t want to set the wrong precedent, like rewarding someone for being exceptionally successful in committing their crime. Funny how that works.

Dad working outside the legal system when he committed at least two if not more felonies was what started all of this. He doesn’t get the privilege of being insulated from the legal ramifications of his bad acts so that bystanders don’t get the heebies out of a “good guy” going to jail for hijacking the lives of his own children.

Why, exactly, should it? Because you think that it’s better for the kids that the person who committed this offense against them should not be punished? Because on one day, one of the kids said that she didn’t want to talk to mom on Facebook any more? That’s your basis for thinking he should just get away with it?

118

If a stranger took two young children from their parents, and by the time the kids were 16 and 17 they were very happy living with that stranger, thinking of that stranger as their parent, and did not want to leave that stranger upon it being discovered that they had been kidnapped, who would think that the stranger should not be prosecuted and that the kids should remain with him? If so, then why would it be any different if the stranger were a bio parent rather than a stranger? The kidnapping would be the same. The harm done to the kids would be the same. The harm done to the mom would be the same. The need to discourage would-be kidnappers would be the same.

119

It’s an aside and there’s not enough facts here to figure it out, but I’m wondering why it took Mom so long to discover the kids’ whereabouts. It doesn’t help/hurt his culpability, but it took her till last year to find the kids, apparently under their real name, on Facebook, and there’s no discussion of his having taken any particularly sophisticated subtrefuges to hide? I’m not on Facebook but one or two of my friends have managed to quasi stalk/shadow their exes through the webs to the extent that I get detailed status updates on their ex BFs from five years ago who have moved to another continent. Mom sounds (1) not necessarily too sharp; or (2) just recently coming off fifteen years in which she wasn’t necessarily trying too hard for whatever reason to know where the kids were.

120

Maybe the kids weren’t on Facebook until last year, or maybe mom didn’t know it existed. Plenty of people of an age to have 17 year old kids don’t have computers and know next to nothing about the internet. Dopers and our friends aren’t a representative sample, you know.