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Dedicated to Bringing Our Children Home
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Written by Administrator
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 20:09 |
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Dec 5, 2009 21:41 | Updated Dec 6, 2009 0:01
By RON FRIEDMAN An Israeli mother charged with kidnapping her two young children from their non-Jewish, Swedish father has denounced the Israeli court system.  While Sarit Kassin told The Jerusalem Post last week that she believes Israel is eager to deport her children in order to appease the Europeans, the children's father, who requested his name not be published, claims the mother set up an elaborate trap to get rid of him and keep the children for herself.
Both the family court and the district court have ordered the mother to return the children to Sweden, where the father now lives, as required by the 1980 Hague Convention on International Child Abduction. She is now appealing to the Supreme Court, hoping that it will overturn the decision.
"For some reason the state has a clear agenda of deporting the children as swiftly as possible. They want to sacrifice them in order to mend their relationship with Sweden," said Ezra Kassin, the children's uncle.
"The same thing that happened in the Holocaust is happening today in Israel of 2009. Two Israeli courts ruled that the Jewish children should be removed from their Jewish mother and be kicked out of the country, left to meet their fate," he said.
What differentiates this kidnapping case from many others is the circumstances under which the alleged kidnapping took place. As opposed to most other cases, where a parent secretly removes the child from his or her country of residence, in this case the family moved from Sweden to Israel together and the abduction allegedly took place when the mother refused to return to Sweden with the two children, ages five and seven.
The Hague Convention, to which Israel is a signatory, stipulates that children must be returned to the country of origin if they were unlawfully removed from it and that a custody trial must take place in the country of permanent residence. The dispute in this case is whether the family moved to Israel in order to immigrate, as the mother claims, or for a prolonged vacation, as the father argues.
The mother's version, as presented in court by attorneys Shmuel Moran and Judith Meisels, states that after living in Sweden for many years, the family decided to immigrate to Israel, in August 2008, to gain a fresh start in a place with better weather and to be closer to the mother's family.
Meanwhile, the father, represented by Varda Efrat, claims the move was only temporary, for the duration of his seven-month parental leave and that they planned to return to Sweden immediately afterwards.
At the end of his leave the father returned to their home in Gothenburg. Several weeks later, when the rest of the family failed to return, he filed charges against the mother for kidnapping.
The overall picture that arises from the court documents is of a family, which in the past has known ups and downs, torn between two opposing versions of the truth.
The father's version paints the mother as manipulative and deceptive. He claims the mother had planned all along for the move to Israel to be a means of removing him from her life and gaining sole custody of the children.
"The knowledge that the mother was not intending to return to Sweden caught my client completely by surprise," said Efrat. "He had agreed for the children to remain in Israel an extra few weeks so that the son could complete first grade, but was completely unprepared for the announcement that the mother was planning on staying for good."
In the trials, the prosecution presented evidence that the family had every intention of returning to Sweden after the parental leave. The prosecution showed that the children were registered for school in Sweden the following year, that the family's landlord was told that they would be returning and that their apartment was left fully furnished, that the father had made no attempts to learn Hebrew or find a job in Israel, and that the mother had retained ownership of her car in Sweden and told her place of work that she was taking a year's leave of absence.
The prosecution argued that the mother had tricked the father into agreeing to live in Israel for the duration of his parental leave and that she had made plans behind his back to immigrate with her children to Israel, pointing to correspondence between the mother and an Israeli legal expert in the area of child law and the fact that she had filled out returning resident forms claiming she was single as proof that it was premeditated.
"She acted as if the father didn't even exist, as if the children were a result of a sperm donor," said Efrat.
The defense presented a completely different picture - of the father as a vindictive bully and the mother as a victim of his whims. The mother argued that all the arrangements in place in Sweden were only a precaution in case things didn't work out in Israel, claiming she wanted to leave behind a "safety net."
The defense also brought witnesses, from both Sweden and Israel, including the mother's family members, who testified that the family had planned a permanent move to Israel.
"We knew we were coming to stay. We came to Israel under the auspices of the Israel@60 events," said the mother.
On November 5, Family Court Judge Varda Ben-Sachar ruled in favor of the father. The judge said she was unconvinced that the father had known about the mother's intentions to remain in Israel after the leave and ruled that the mother had unlawfully removed the children from their regular place of residence.
After an attempted appeal, the district court backed the lower court's ruling and gave the mother two weeks to return the children to Sweden and ordered her to pay the father NIS 20,000 for legal expenses.
The mother's family is outraged, not only by the ruling, which they are appealing to the Supreme Court, but by the way the mother was treated in court and the way the state handled the case.
"We are rapidly losing our faith in the legal system," said Ezra Kassin. "It was not my sister who kidnapped her children; if the court rules against her, it will be the courts that have kidnapped these children from their mother. (Continued from page 1 of 2 )
"Incredibly, the father's legal proceedings are being paid for by the Israeli government, which has hired an Israeli lawyer to represent him," he said. "In contrast, the legal bills my family has incurred in our attempt to keep these children here with their mother are nearing 300,000 shekels, money we do not have. "Even more shocking has been the speed with which the authorities have taken action and the position of the Israeli courts."
He said that the mother, upon notice that the charge had been filed, was given only four days in which to hire a lawyer and present a defense before appearing in court. He also said that the court had done everything in its power to expedite the trial, including scheduling the hearings during the High Holidays recess.
"Even criminal extradition cases take longer. What's the great urgency? Who died?" said the children's grandmother, Aliza Kassin, expressing anger at the prosecution lawyer, who, she claims ,committed character assassination against her daughter.
"They took a good woman, a women who takes care of children and does good deeds and turned her into an abhorrent criminal," she said.
While the mother's side of the family is convinced that the courts are only interested in deporting the children, the mother said she is unable to even ponder the thought of returning to Sweden. She said she is too traumatized by the ordeal to ever go back.
When asked what she would do if the Supreme Court rejected her appeal, she could only shake her head.
"What they did to me here is like Solomon's trial. Sending me back to Sweden is like sending an abuse victim back to her attacker."
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Written by Administrator
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 19:18 |
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By Charlie Reed, Stars and Stripes Pacific edition, Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Read the senator's letter to the president YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — A group of U.S. senators has urged President Barack Obama to address parental child abduction with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama during his first trip to Japan, scheduled for later this week.
“This is a deeply important issue,” states the Nov. 5 letter the 22 lawmakers signed. “Many parents have not seen or heard from their children in years. We cannot sit back and wait while these children grow up without one parent.”
Japan is the only major industrialized nation that has not signed an international treaty on child abduction, despite continued international pressure. The 1981 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, to which 81 countries are signatories, safeguards custody rights for parents and prevents them from fleeing with their children to or within those countries.
There are a growing number of international child custody disputes in Japan, where family courts typically award custody to mothers and do not enforce visitation rights with criminal penalties.
The courts also do not recognize foreign custody orders, which some Japanese women estranged from non-Japanese spouses defy to bring their children back to their home country.
Beyond convincing Japan to sign the Hague convention, the senators also want the United States and Japan to develop a process to resolve the current open cases involving more than 100 Japanese-American children living in Japan and kept away from their American parents.
It’s a critical point, according to the letter, because the treaty is not retroactive and could not be used as a tool to resolve the existing cases in Japan.
The new administration in Tokyo “is a unique opportunity for the United States to reinvigorate its dialogue with Japan on the issue of international parental child abduction,” the letter states.
There is also a bill making its way through Congress that would pose economic sanctions against countries that do not cooperate in resolving international child abduction cases.
The bipartisan push from the Senate further ratchets up the pressure for the new Japanese government to act.
The United States and seven other countries publicly urged Tokyo in October to sign the Hague treaty and resolve the current cases.
The eight-nation push came the same week Tennessee resident Christopher Savoie was released from a Japanese jail after attempting to take back his children, who were allegedly abducted by his ex-wife from their U.S. home and taken to Japan.
He has since returned to Tennessee and is prohibited from contacting his children or ex-wife in Japan as part of the conditions of his release, he said Monday in a phone interview.
He said he hopes Obama can make headway on resolving the abduction issue and that the senators’ letter proves it’s a matter of “great importance to the American people.”
“It’s not just this little dark secret anymore,” Savoie said. Original Article:
http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=66000
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Written by carlos
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Saturday, 18 April 2009 20:19 |
BRUNSWICK - FBI agents believe a fugitive Brunswick woman who failed to return her two young children to their father after a visit has taken them to into hiding in Mexico.
Maria De La Luz Lara, 34, faces federal charges of international parental kidnapping and unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Glynn County police also have charged Lara with felony interference with child custody, court documents showed.
Also known as Rosaura Rosed, she fled the country after abducting her 11-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Garcia, and 10-year-old son, Abel Garcia Jr., FBI Special Agent Tony Alig told the Georgia Times-Union newspaper.
A federal grand jury indicted Lara on April 9 on the kidnapping charge. U.S. Magistrate James Graham previously issued a federal arrest warrant charging her with unlawful flight. Glynn police filed the state charge against Lara in June after she and the children disappeared, court records showed.
From the Saturday, April 18, 2009 online edition of The Augusta Chronicle Original Article: http://chronicle.augusta.com/stories/latest/lat_518383.shtml
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Written by carlos
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Sunday, 24 January 2010 19:08 |
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From "The Japan Times Online" Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009
By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer
U.S. President Barack Obama has been sent a letter signed by 22 senators urging him to address the issue of international parental child abductions during his summit in Tokyo this week with Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.
"This is a deeply important issue, as Japan currently does not recognize international parental child abduction as a crime," the senators, including former presidential candidate John Kerry, said in the letter dated Thursday. "We urge you to ensure that the United States continues to raise this issue at the highest possible levels in the context of our close bilateral relationship with Japan."
Foreign fathers who divorce Japanese wives typically cannot see their children because Japanese law allows only one divorced parent to have custody and Japanese courts usually rule in favor of Japanese mothers, even if they forcefully take their children away from their former husbands.
Such cases have violated overseas custody rulings in the event the ex-spouse took their children without permission to Japan from their country of residence — the U.S. in the case of the senators' grievance.
Also, divorced fathers are rarely granted visitation rights, or at best get rare visitations because of cultural notions over stability in the family environment, some lawyers said. Japanese law equally deprives Japanese men of custody of their children.
"There are currently 79 known cases involving over 100 American children who have been abducted by a parent to Japan," the letter says. "According to the U.S. Department of State, no cases have been successfully resolved with Japan over the last few decades through the Japanese judicial system or through diplomatic or political efforts."
The senators urged Japan to sign the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, whose aim is to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any signatory countries. But they also said the U.S. must work with Japan to establish a bilateral mechanism to assist with because the Hague Convention does not apply to abductions before a country becomes a signatory. Original Article: http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20091110a4.html
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Last Updated on Sunday, 24 January 2010 19:09 |
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Written by carlos
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Thursday, 12 March 2009 14:15 |
Selma Milovanovic
March 12, 2009
A NSW mother has won a High Court appeal overturning an earlier decision that her four Israeli-born children should be returned to their father in Israel.
The court overturned a lower court decision made after Israel applied for the children - who are Australian citizens - to be returned under the Convention on International Child Abduction, which recognises that the appropriate forum for resolving parental disputes is the child's "country of habitual residence".
Justices William Gummow, Kenneth Hayne, Dyson Heydon and Susan Kiefel ruled yesterday that the children were not habitually resident in Israel.
In September 2005, the woman, an Australian citizen, and her husband separated in Israel. The children continued to live with the mother.
In May 2006, the mother and children travelled to Australia. The couple had agreed the woman, known only as LK, would set up a home for herself and the children in Australia, unless her husband decided to reunite with them, in which case they would return to Israel.
But in July 2006, LK's husband filed for divorce and requested that the children be returned to Israel.
A Family Court judge issued orders to return the children to Israel, and the full court of the Family Court affirmed that decision, ruling the parental dispute should be settled according to Israeli law.
Upholding LK's appeal yesterday, the High Court said the full court "should have held that the children were not habitually resident in Israel when the father asked the mother to return them to Israel".
"Whether they were habitually resident in Australia when the father asked for their return need not be decided. What is decisive is that the children left Israel with both parents agreed that unless there were a reconciliation they would stay in Australia, and their mother … set about effecting that shared intention."
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