Grave Concerns for Missing Australian Boy

Ahhhh digger digger digger.....  When you muyst resort to insulting a person's intelligence you have indeed sunk as low as one can possibly go.

Considering that there is a major war on women with one in three women being effected by violence against them at least once in their lifetime, Darcey was handed over to the father despite their concerns that they had raised over a two year period and he threw her off the bridge.  The Family Court is extremely negligent and has the murder suicide history to show for it. There has been numerous reports from researchers about the grave concerns that are being ignored by the Family court.  The iss has revealed that one of the highest reasons for running with the child is family violence.  I have my information correct and know the facts of the matter.  I am aware that the hague convention was originally for fathers abductions due to the high death rate and now its mothers - but the children are not harmed.  Holly Ann Collins was one of the first american assylum seekers because of the large amount of evidence that was provided on the abuse of her and the children.  They treated her as an abductor just like Melinda.  

Anonymums.

I restate that I am not gender-biased in any way.

I have used whatever forums I can to get information out about Andrew. Some of these I've posted information on and others have had information posted on them by others. I'm not sure what FR stands for. If you let me know I'll be able to tell you if I've posted anything there.

As you well know, I've posted information on several womens/mothers forums in the belief that people who are truly concerned about the well-being of children are not biased towards one gender or the other. Sadly, this hasn't always been the case and a very strong bias has been displayed towards me on some of these sites despite all the evidence.

This afternoon, I spent about one hour on the phone talking to a very distraught mother. She'd contacted me through a third-party because she had very real concerns that her former husband was about to abduct their child out of the country.

After making some phone calls on her behalf I was able to put her in contact with someone who is now arranging for an Airport Alert to be put in place as quickly as possible to prevent her daughter being abducted.

This hardly sounds like the actions of someone who is gender-biased. I'm very pleased that I have been able to prevent another child from being abducted out of this this country and then being systematically abused by its own father.

I am also very pleased that you are watching me closely. I have nothing to hide and I never have had anything to hide. This is why I have done whatever I can to have Melinda's allegations put before the court and thoroughly investigated. I am still offering to have her allegations investigated again.

Regards.

I recently posted some information/comments on several websites that I thought were established to protect children from abuse. These websites seemed to have a strong bias against men but I thought their over-riding concern would be for the safety and well-being of children irrespective of the gender of either parent. It looks like I was wrong.

It's interesting that I no longer have access to at least one of those sites. So much for protecting children. Perhaps that's the reason why the discussion is now continuing on this site.

I had the original information posted on this website and then I added a comment. A couple of months later (and shortly after I posted my comments on the other websites) posts began appearing on this site from people such as yourself. I could be mistaken but it looks like you're following me. In fact, a couple of the people who are now posting on this site have stated they are watching me closely. This is good because you will learn a lot more about me and this will eventually cause you to question your current position, which is indefensible.

As I've said many times before, a qualified child and family psychiatrist with 25 years experience who was appointed by the Family Court of Australia stated in his report that Melinda had an "underlying mental state......etc". I did not make this statement, he did.

Because of Melinda's extreme response to this report (abducting Andrew), two other offers were made by me and the Australian Government to engage another independent psychiatrist to review the findings of the first psychiatrist and to conduct another investigation. This offer was communicated publicly and to her family. Both offers stated she could choose the psychiatrist. Nothing has ever been heard from Melinda about this offer so she must be extremely reluctant to do this. One has to wonder why.

This offer still stands.

Nothing inappropriate happened behind closed doors or anywhere else. This has been borne out through several independent investigations. Melinda's accusations have been found to be false (I prefer to say mistaken but either way they are wrong) but it seems that some people just won't accept the facts. Again, one has to wonder why.

Ken.

I don't see why you are so determined to define this as some kind of gender issue.

I would never have taken Andrew from his home without seeking Melinda's consent, and I never did. Until December 2007, she never took him from our home without seeking my consent either.

I am certain Melinda would also have wanted to know  where I was with Andrew if I'd simply walked out of the family home with him with no explanation at all; then disappeared; then refused to tell her anything about Andrew's welfare whenever there was any contact between us, and then did not disclose any details about my allegations towards her until she received my affidavit on the morning of the first (and only) court attendance.

The judge agreed. This is why he ordered that contact between me and Andrew be reinstated.

This is why he also issued a Location Order.

Regards.

In reply to Digger, Jazzyzazzy, Anonymum, Cold North Wind, Artemis and Rand, the simple facts of this case are that the mother, Melinda, decided out of the blue one day, only 4 months before she abducted Andrew, that her husband, Ken was molesting their three-year-old child. The child could not support or deny these allegations. Her view had no basis in fact. Various professional assessments and reports on her allegations of abuse were prepared for the Family Court of Australia. These reports exonerated Ken Thompson and indicated that Melinda's suspicions were baseless, caused by an underlying psychiatric condition. The complete support that the Family Court has given Ken, arrest warrants, publication orders, and other custody orders, demonstrate that rational, objective people have viewed Melinda's allegations as baseless.

During the four months leading up to her unilateral action, I have been made aware by two different members of Melinda's family that she actually used a book I wrote, on the abduction to France of my own 18-month-old grandson, to RESEARCH countries that would less likely to be bound by the Hague Convention to return Andrew to Australia, his habitual place of residence and his home and father, who has kept his bedroom exactly as it was when his mother forcibly removed him from their home. Bear in mind, SHE does not have to return, only the child.

My book on child abduction was written to share the devastating experiences of others and thereby help and support people who find themselves in the dreadful and heartrending situation that Ken Thompson now occupies, as did my son in 1999. I never envisaged it being used as a tool for abducting parents to help them evade their responsibilities, which are to equally parent children with both partners.

Andrew is Ken's only child. A son he loves and adores. Before Melinda made the accusations she did, he loved and adored her too. The people making self-righteous comments about mothers having the right to flee have obviously never had a child of their own torn from their hearts and homes. It is well documented that many mothers use 'abuse' as a last resort in the battle against fathers, because a lie is hard to prove—or disprove. This in no way ignores the mothers who are genuinely abused and who need or  compassion and help.

Whilst I have sympathy for Melinda in her desperation and flight (I'm certain she believes what she has said, which is further evidence of her mental fragility), I support the rights of young Andrew Thompson to know and grow up in the country of his birth. It's a great country and a wonderful heritage, as my grandson discovered on his first permitted visit back to Australia, last year when he was 11 years old. How much he had missed out on! In France he has an unsettled life, from pillar to post between his mother and my son, who gave up his life in Australia to live in a country he loathes so he can see his son once a fortnight and share the school holidays. If the 'abuse' his wife claimed as her reason for running was real, why does she sanction these custody arrangements and even ask my son sometime to keep the child longer, so she can go on holidays. But it's now too late to change things.

To Melinda, if you read this website, come home. Don't make your son's life one of deceit, hiding, uncertainty and longing for home. Things can be worked out. For those who are interested, read on. 

The Land of Tears

It’s a secret place, the Land of Tears.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

Who can imagine the shock of returning home from an unremarkable day at work to discover your partner has left you and taken your child—the impact of suddenly facing the possibility you will never see your family again?

On 11 March 1999 it happened to my son Andrew. His French-born wife had abducted his son. Andrew had become a ‘left-behind’ parent, and our family had changed forever. The happy home of yesterday became the wreckage of a family.

As international boundaries fall away, especially in Europe, and travel and tourism increase, so does the incidence of marriage across cultures and national borders. But, just as same-neighbourhood marriages are not necessarily made in heaven, neither are cross-cultural unions. In fact, the normal stresses of marriage can be accentuated when one partner is living far from home, in a strange country with a foreign language, unfamiliar customs and little family support. When children arrive, the stresses can become intolerable.

Sometimes parents take the law into their own hands. Without consulting the other parent, they decide to take their children back to their home countries. Or they go home for a negotiated holiday and refuse to come back. But their home is not their children’s home.

With improvements in transportation, abducting parents can be outside Australian airspace in a matter of minutes. According to the Attorney General’s Department, this happens in this country about 120 times a year, or a bit more often than twice a week—to average, ordinary people.

These abductions plunge the left-behind parent into an abyss of shock, despair and bewilderment. The emotional trauma is sharpened by the prospect of having to contend with an unfamiliar political and legal system, usually with no knowledge of the law or international niceties. Just identifying sources of help can be difficult. Emotional, financial and personal resources are often stretched to the limit. Community attitudes about international parental child abduction (IPCA) vary. Many people don’t recognise an ‘abduction’ if the child is with a parent.

During the first shocking days or weeks, left-behind parents discover that they must do all of the running, as possession is nine-tenths of the law. They also struggle with the realisation that (as often happens) the abducting parent could be telling their children (and others) all sorts of untruths about why they left. They imagine the abductor saying the left-behind parent is dead, or didn’t want to come along, that he or she doesn’t love the children any more—in other words, that the left-behind parent has abandoned the rest of the family. Pain and fear sometimes push left-behind parents to desperate measures in the hope of being reunited with their children before the untruths become an accepted reality.

Each day, left-behind parents face the awful prospect of never seeing their children again. The chances of recovery are not guaranteed, and they diminish as time passes. Some parents find it difficult to explain that in one way they’d rather their children were dead; at least then they could grieve properly instead of being trapped in a spiral of uncertainty and vain hope. But I can identify with that. I don’t find it shocking at all. If your grandchild dies, everyone rallies around. If his mother abducts him overseas, you feel almost embarrassed to talk about it. It can’t be permanent, you think, so you just keep it to yourself and cry in private.

*

For nearly thirty years there has been an international agreement to deal with the problem of kidnapping by parents. In 1980 the European Court at The Hague in the Netherlands released the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction for signature by participating countries, which are known as ‘Contracting States’. (The text of the convention and a full list of Contracting States can be found on the Federal Attorney General’s website: www.law.gov.au/childabduction). Australia became a signatory in 1987. The convention is brilliantly simple in its expression, but can be brutally complicated to implement.

The principal objectives of the convention are ‘to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed to or retained in any Contracting State; and to ensure that rights of custody and of access under the law of one Contracting State are effectively respected in the other Contracting States’. In other words, if the parent’s former home is a Hague Contracting State, theoretically, the abducting parent can no longer hope for favours in their ‘home’ country, but will be returned to face the music in the country they have taken the children from. Theoretically.

The convention is easily understood by almost anyone, if read in an objective manner. It would be hard to imagine that anyone with any legal training could possibly get it wrong. But get it wrong they do, and often.

In Europe, and often in the USA, applications can sometimes be heard in small courts nearest where the abducting parent is living, just like minor traffic offences in Australia. Many magistrates and judges have little knowledge of their country’s obligations under the convention, and confuse location issues with custody, maintenance and access.

The other complicating factor is removal to non-Hague signatory countries. No country operating under Sharia law is a Convention signatory. Realistically, government agencies can offer little assistance to parents of these children. The left-behind parent needs a lawyer in the abducting parent’s country and must go over and slug out the whole issue on the abducting parent’s home ground. The International Family Law Section of the Attorney General’s Department has prepared a Guide to Parents and Practitioners, which understates the problem nicely in one sentence: ‘This can be more complicated, time consuming and expensive than the process under the Hague Convention’.

Most left-behind parents who try the foreign courts in non-convention countries are thwarted at every turn. They often become obsessed by the process. They spend their days in empty houses surrounded by piles of legal documents, and spend their money on travelling back and forth overseas for court hearings, at which they are usually whacked around the ears. The Australian Central Authority does offer advice and some financial assistance (subject to means-testing), but not much hope.

Many parents lose faith. They can’t wait through the drawn-out legal processes, or their children have been taken to non-signatory countries. Some resort to a desperate solution—re-abduction. This involves hiring a private ‘intervention team’; lots of danger and lots of money cost (fifty to one hundred thousand dollars is not uncommon); a possible jail term if they are caught—and still no guarantee of success.

*

Family law experts have called IPCA ‘the scourge of our jurisdiction’. Melbourne lawyer Sally Nicholes (www.nicholeslaw.com.au) has represented many parents who have been affected by IPCA. She has also acted for the government in their duties and responsibilities in applying the Hague Convention.

 Sally says that the abducting parent who does this ‘usually sees their kids as an extension of themselves.’ They don’t recognise or acknowledge their children’s rights to have a relationship with both parents. Sally regularly experiences the pain and loss suffered by the left-behind parent and has first-hand knowledge of the damage that is done to children. She cautions that the right balance must be achieved between legal and social considerations. She considers that more training of lawyers to understand the spirit of the convention is necessary.

Psychologists and psychiatrists who are appointed by the Family Court to assess the damage done to abducted children seem to agree that most parents who abduct are likely to experience a sense of loss because the Court usually requires that their ‘ownership’ of their children must be shared. They also feel a profound sense of unfairness. They may wish to inflict the same sense of loss on their former partner, whom they hold to blame for the predicament. There is a lot of unresolved anger, accompanied by deep sadness and depression. Left unresolved, this combination can become volatile. Some parents who don’t have the option of abducting to another country kill their children instead, to inflict the ultimate pain on the other parent.

Many separated parents may fantasise about inflicting pain on their former partners, but abducting parents are less inhibited and see no wrong in abducting their children. There is often extensive covert planning to ensure the abduction succeeds, including research into non-Convention countries, from which return is less likely to be imposed.

A leader in this field is Sydney-based child psychiatrist, Dr Brent Waters. He told me when I interviewed him for a book I wrote after my own family loss, ‘The abducting parent can tell the children all sorts of lies about the left-behind parent and the children begin to believe them. Even the parents telling the lies can begin to believe their own stories. Some of them will have their kids thinking the other parent is the devil incarnate.

‘In situations where people feel compelled to abduct children overseas, the antecedents are almost always a total lack of trust between the parents. The children have already been exposed to these things. By the time of the abduction the relationship is almost as poor as it can get, and the kids are likely to be already disadvantaged.

‘In some circumstances the children can do well, because their state of uncertainty is replaced by a state of certainty, but even under the best of circumstances they have to go into a situation where they don’t have another parent. In the worst of circumstances they can be forced to go into hiding, take new names and create a whole false life, which can severely affect their future sense of what’s real and what’s not.’

Many of the abducting parents to whom I have spoken have told me they abducted their children because ‘it was in their best interests’. This is plainly not the case. Children and left-behind parents are likely to develop post-traumatic stress, which creates serious life consequences. Other children who have been hidden or who’ve undergone identity changes become secretive or confused, or worse, become distrustful or compulsive liars. The very person they should be able to trust above all others, their parent, lies to them to achieve their own ends.

And what of these children who are taken in contempt of laws, international boundaries and parental and children’s rights? Are they victims of pain, passion or a thirst for revenge? Are they damaged irreparably by their parents’ tug-of-love across national borders? Are their feelings even considered in the bickering that goes on over their heads? Parents invariably claim they are acting ‘in the best interests of the child’. But if the children were consulted (and sometimes they are), would they agree? How do they cope with one, or even two kidnappings—or a kidnapping followed by a ‘forced’ return by the courts to their country of origin?

Child abduction is a wicked situation. Kidnapping a child away from everything he’s known and loved is like ripping someone’s heart out. There are no winners in this tug of love, there is only heartbreak.

Robin Bowles is a Melbourne writer. Her book about her grandson’s abduction, Taken in Contempt, is published by The Five Mile Press.