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When a parent steals a child away: child abductions across international borders are increasing, leaving many bereft parents scrambling for help from legal and diplomatic authorities. Follow these steps to help clients locate missing children and bring them home.

Article Excerpt
In 1993, Juliana Simon, a U.S. citizen from North Carolina, married Esteban Coronada, a Mexican citizen living and working in the United States. (1) Over the next few years, they had four children--Estanzia, Juan, Isabelle, and Anna--all born in North Carolina.

In January 200l, Esteban moved to Mexico to assume a temporary position as assistant vice president of Central American operations for his employer, Cignus PetroChemical Co., on a two-year contract. Five months later, Juliana and the children left North Carolina to join him. They occasionally returned to North Carolina, each parent having signed permission forms to travel independently with the children.

Toward the end of 2002, Esteban became secretive and verbally abusive. On the advice of a lawyer in Mexico, Juliana hired a private investigator, who produced evidence that Esteban was using drugs and frequenting prostitutes. The marriage ended, and Juliana left Mexico with the children in December 2002.

Shortly after Juliana returned to North Carolina, Esteban came to the United States without her knowledge. On February 10, 2003, he picked up the two youngest children--Isabelle and Anna--from day care and fled with them to Mexico. Unable to locate Esteban or the children, Juliana began a desperate search for them in Mexico and initiated a Hague Convention application for her daughters' return to North Carolina.

Juliana's case is not unusual. The U.S. Department of State reports that, since the late 1970s, at least 16,000 children were either abducted from the United States or prevented from returning to this country by one of their parents. (2)

The Internet and e-mail have helped eliminate many barriers to international communication. As a result, the number of international marriages is on the rise. The surge has been paired with an increase in international child abductions when those marriages end. (3)

A stunned parent can face significant obstacles to locating and recovering a child. He or she often lacks sufficient funds to pay for assistance in investigating the abduction or tracing the child's location, and the parent may encounter difficulties with foreign laws and officials--including judges who are inexperienced in handling international abduction cases or law enforcement agencies that fail to respond adequately. (4) This parent will look to his or her lawyer for legal advice on how to locate the child and secure the child's return.

The Hague Convention

The United States and other countries implemented the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction in 1980 "to protect children internationally from the harmful effects of their wrongful removal or retention and to establish procedures to ensure their prompt return to the state of their habitual residence, as well as to secure protection for rights of access." (5) Congress adopted procedures in 1988 to implement the Hague Convention by enacting the International Child Abduction Remedies Act (ICARA). (6)

The Convention's signatory countries have agreed that a child who has been wrong-fully removed to, or retained in, another country...

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