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Hundreds of kids stolen from Australia |
Bring My Baby Home.
MELBOURNE mum Meagan Storey has lived every parent's worst nightmare.
The terror began when her only child, Matthew, was stolen from her.
Her estranged fiancé, Matthew's father, took the toddler to war torn Belfast last year and refused to bring him back.
What should have been a three week holiday became a torturous six month battle to bring her baby home.
The 24-year-old nurse was forced to sell her house in the fight with
Irish authorities for the return of her son. They were finally reunited
this year.
"My one concern when i left Melbourne to go and get him was that he
wouldn't remember me. He was only 15 months old when he left, and five
months is a long time for a little baby," Ms Storey said.
"I was just a mess when i got there. But when he saw me, Matthew put
his arms out to me and said 'mummy'. I just grabbed him and started
bawling."
Official figures show international kidnappings of Australian children have tripled in the past decade.
Authorities have blamed a surge in racially mixed marriages and
Internet love affairs by cheating husbands and wives for the explosion
in abductions.
The Attorney General's office is investigating 137 cases of abduction
from the last financial year alone, compared to only 17 in 1989-90.
Up to four children are involved in each case. They range in age from only a few weeks to 12 years old.
Dozens more cases, particularly to Muslim countries, go unreported each year because parents fear there is nothing they can do.
Some have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting to get their children back, selling their homes to pay legal fees.
Other Australian parents have given up on the legal system, instead resorting to hiring mercenaries to find their kids.
One doting dad paid a private detective $60,000 to snatch his
five-year-old daughter back after she was kidnapped and taken to
Singapore by his ex-wife.
And a young mother paid a team of British commandos almost $160,000 to
rescue her daughters, aged two and four, from Pakistan last year.
Records show most children are taken to New Zealand, Lebanon, the United Kingdom or the United States after being snatched.
But Australian children are also being held illegally in Bosnia,
Portugal, Egypt, Hungary, Sri Lanka, Romania, Greece, Iran, Turkey,
Chile, France, Argentina, Austria, Dubai, Samoa, Germany, Israel, Hong
Kong, Croatia, Italy and a dozen other countries.
A Herald Sun investigation has also revealed:
VICTORIA: has the third highest rate on international child abductions
in Australia, topped only by New South Wales and Queensland.
LESS than one-third of snatched children are ever likely to see
Australia again. FALSE passports are being used to smuggle children out
of the country under the unsuspecting noses of customs officials.
DESPERATE parents who resort to hiring bounty-hunters to kidnap their
children back when foreign courts fail them have become targets for
conmen posing as rescue agents.
MANY countries are flouting international laws and refusing to send Australian children home.
Geoff Day, of national support group Hug-Ur-Kids, said that many
parent's have lost their life's savings to crooked rescue agents.
"There are a lot of shysters out there who only want your money. They're not interested in finding your kids," Mr Day said.
He said trying to get a child back by legal means was just as crippling
financially. It cost Mr Day and his wife Jane $200,000 to get her
children back from Malaysia.
Justin, 5, and Alison 3 flew home to Australia only weeks ago after a
16-month battle to get them back from Mrs Day's first husband.
Jenny Degeling, principle legal officer with the federal Attorney
General's department's family law section, said parents were easy
targets.
"You can imagine that parents who are desperate to have their children back will pay whatever they can," Ms Degeling said.
"For some people, tracing the child becomes an obsession. It becomes their whole purpose for living."
She said the rise in abductions was "a concern" and blamed inter-racial marriages for the surge.
Globalisation and the Internet were also to blame, she said.
"A lot of people are taking children after getting caught up in an
Internet relationship and running overseas to meet their lover."
Family Court judge, Justice Joseph Kay, said the impact on children could be "devastating".
"It's an extremely traumatic experience for children, especially if they have to go on the run," he said.
He said abducting parents were rarely prosecuted, even though it was a criminal offence to remove children from Australia.
SOURCE: Heraldsun Newspaper Victoria
Monday November 19, 2001
By Nikki Protyniak
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