Parents
accuse Foreign Office of failing to rescue stolen children
By
Tosin Sulaiman
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,175-1158069,00.html
Times
- 26th June 2004
A
child abduction unit is set up as 400 British children are illegally
taken abroad by a parent
NEARLY 400 children a year are being kidnapped by a parent and taken
to countries which flout international child custody laws.
The
number of British children abducted has increased by 93 per cent since
1995, with the number of mothers who break the law on the rise. The
Foreign Office has set up a child abduction unit to deal with the problem
but campaign groups have accused the Government of failing to take a
proactive approach to cases.
As
a result, parents fighting for the return of their children are dependent
on the host country obeying the rules on child abduction laid out by
the Hague Convention. In all, 74 countries, including the United Kingdom,
have signed the convention, which provides a procedure to secure the
prompt return of children to the country in which they normally live.
But campaigners say that adherence to the convention is patchy.
The
Department for Constitutional Affairs, which administers the Hague Convention
in Britain, admits that 10 of the 74 countries are not fulfilling their
obligations. It has no records of children taken to these countries.
A charity
called reunite International Child Abduction Centre has revealed that
in 2003 it dealt with 255 new cases involving 373 children being taken
from or brought into Britain. This represents a 93 per cent increase
since 1995. The charity also recorded a significantly higher number
of mothers, rather than fathers, taking their children abroad.
Denise
Carter, the centre’s director, said: “Women are becoming
more independent. We tend not to stay in a marriage, as maybe our parents
would have done.”
Parents
& Abducted Children Together, a charity run by Lady Catherine Meyer,
the wife of Sir Christopher Meyer, the former British Ambassador to
the United States, said that the Government was not doing enough for
parents.
Lady
Meyer’s two sons, Alexander and Constantin, were abducted by her
former husband, Hans-Peter Volkmann, in 1994. He defied a court order
by keeping them in Germany when they went there on holiday without their
mother.
She
has seen her children for only 24 hours since then, as German courts
have repeatedly denied her access, although she has received backing
from courts in Britain and France and support from politicians in Europe
and the US.
She
wrote a book about her experience, entitled They Are My Children, Too:
A Mother’s Struggle For Her Sons.
Lady
Meyer said the problem was much more widespread than the Government
realised. Often parents were too afraid to report abductions to the
authorities and the true figure could be as high as 4,000 incidents
a year. “The Government does not collect exact figures, so we
don’t know the true scale of the problem,” Lady Meyer said.
“Our Government and our courts should be much tougher and protect
British citizens much better. We should expose these injustices. The
Foreign and Commonwealth Office should put pressure on governments abroad.
We should follow the example of the French and the Americans, who seem
to be more active in defending their victim parents.”
Children
are often kidnapped after a holiday abroad or taken during contact visits.
“Sadly, even the Hague Convention does not work as well as it
should,” Lady Meyer said.
“In
the UK, we seem to be playing by the rules and our judges have one of
the highest rates of returning children who have been abducted and brought
to the UK from abroad. But other countries do not necessarily abide
by the rules as we do.”
The
situation is even more difficult for parents who are trying to get their
children back from countries that have not signed the Hague Convention,
and the Department for Constitutional Affairs has no statistics for
these countries. Many parents spend years and thousands of pounds in
legal costs trying in vain to get their children back.
Although
a Foreign Office representative can attend a court hearing with the
parent and help in finding translators and local lawyers, they are not
trained to give legal advice.
Lady
Meyer criticised this hands-off approach, in which abduction is treated
as a private legal matter. “Parental abduction is a matter of
human rights and international law, which demands the direct involvement
of governments,” she said. “There needs to be more work
on prevention, and direct discussions with governments in countries
that are not sending our children back.
“The
British Government needs to take this problem more seriously, or parents
who don’t like a custody decision will realise they can just take
their child to another country and more and more families will have
to suffer this heartbreak.”
According
to the Foreign Office, parents have to rely on the legal systems in
the countries in question. “We cannot interfere in the judicial
process of another country,” an official said.
