Child Abduction
Hidden Girls’ Great-Grandmother Ready For Jail
The great-grandmother of four sisters at the centre of a bitter international custody dispute says she would rather end up in jail than reveal their whereabouts.
A Brisbane judge on Wednesday ordered the girls’ grandmother, great-grandmother and aunt to attend court on Friday to answer questions under oath about where the girls are hiding.
The girls disappeared earlier this week to avoid being returned to Italy to live with their father.
Their great-grandmother, who is hiding them, says no-one knows where she and the children are and she would not front court on Friday.
“If the judge throws me in jail, I’ll live with it,” she told the Seven Network.
“I have no respect whatsoever for the justice system.
Abusive Father or Parental Alienation?
Editor: Please treat the below article with a grain of salt. In my opinion this is a clear case of parental alienation, vilifying the father in the children’s eyes just so the mother can secure full custody. I find it extraordinary that the Family Court and the Department of Communities and Child Safety would force children into the custody of a genuinely abusive father. It would have been great for the Courier Mail to have exercised balanced reporting rather than falling for the same old tired stigma of the bad father wanted contact with his children just so he can abuse them. This is another example of the entrenched anti-father bias in the mainstream media in this country. This story below is so unbalanced and in my opinion, deceitful, that it would leave the likes of Caroline Overington and Adele Horin utterly green with envy.
FOUR Sunshine Coast sisters in hiding with their 70-year-old great-grandmother to avoid flying to Italy with an abusive and mentally unstable father have written emotional letters begging their dad to leave them alone.
But the father, his lawyers, the Family Court, and the state Department of Communities and Child Safety show no signs of backing down and are using police to hunt the girls.
FREE legal assistance for parents of abducted children
FREE legal assistance will be available to parents who are dealing with the abduction of a child from Australia.
The federal government has reached an agreement for new funding with the International Social Services (ISS) to provide the new service.
ISS already provides counselling and mediation services which are funded by the Attorney-General’s Department.
Federal Attorney-General Nicola Roxon said the service is designed to provide practical support to parents in distressing circumstances.
“We want to make it as straightforward as possible for parents to get the assistance they need when dealing with the abduction of their children from Australia,” Ms Roxon said in a statement.
Three-year journey ends after abducted boy and his mother caught and sent home
A BRITISH mother abducted her six-year-old son and spent three years country-hopping through Asia before settling in Melbourne, where she was finally taken to court and ordered to return home.
According to a Family Court judgment published this month, the mother and father of the boy were in the midst of a custody dispute when the mother said she was taking their son on a two-week trip to the Philippines to visit his sick grandmother. They never returned.
A court order seeking information about the trip went unanswered and, several months later, an English judge found that the child – referred to in court documents as ”B” – had been unlawfully removed.
Mum pleads guilty in boy-behind-wall case
A US woman who authorities say hid her young son, often in a crawl space, for nearly two years as part of a custody dispute has been ordered to spend two years on probation without more jail time.
Shannon Wilfong, 32, pleaded guilty yesterday to five misdemeanours, including obstructing a police officer.
Wilfong was sentenced to $US1500 ($1470) in fines and 30 days in jail – a judge credited her with time served – on that count and fines of $US100 on each of four counts of unlawful interference with child visitation.
Wilfong’s mother, Diane Dobbs, also pleaded guilty to obstruction and escaped additional jail time when the judge credited her with the 12 days she’d already been behind bars. Dobbs, 53, was fined $US1000.
A prosecutor said the case-closing plea deals came with the blessing of the boy’s father, Michael Chekevdia, Wilfong’s one-time boyfriend.
Federal Police in fight over stolen kids
CHILDREN are being stopped at airports daily as police swoop on parents suspected, sometimes wrongly, of trying to abduct their kids overseas.
Figures supplied by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) to a Senate inquiry into international child abduction show the names of 12,000 children have been placed on a “watch” list by the courts.
The watch register operates at international sea ports and airports with the presentation of a child’s passport activating an alert to the AFP.
Child Abductions a Nightmare for left-behind Parents
TWO fathers who experienced the “nightmare” of having their sons taken from Australia by former partners have urged the federal government to make the act a crime.
Lauchlan Leishman and Ken Thompson fronted a Senate committee in Canberra today, arguing that the system surrounding international child abductions needs a desperate overhaul.
Mr Leishman, whose son was taken out of the country in 2008 and has not been returned, labelled it a “long, painful and exhaustive process” that had come at great financial cost.
Child Abduction Penalties to be determined by Gender: Labor says
In a further sign that the Julia Gillard led Labor government is fermenting a co-ordinated ideological attack on all matters related to fatherhood in Australia, the federal Attorney General, Robert McClelland, today supported softer measures against parents who abduct children illegally out of Australia, despite the serious nature of such crimes, and the damage that such acts invariably have on the children concerned, because “the majority of abductors are mothers.”
Shadowing this inquiry into penalties against International Child Abductions, the Labor/Greens controlled Senate is soon expected to pass what is widely considered to be the strongest ever anti-father family law amendments in this country’s history, and as a result dismantling Australia’s Shared Parenting laws, but going further by creating an effective presumption of guilt (of child abuse) against all separated fathers.
The Gillard government is now taking its entrenched gender ideologies a step further, by arguing that since the vast majority of international child abductions are perpetrated by females, that their gender should be the driving force behind softer penalties. Many critics have labelled this argument a perversion of the principles of the best interests if the child, and quite out of step with the majority of other western nations.
Parental child abduction should not be treated as a general criminal offence despite the demands of a “vocal lobby” for tough new sanctions when children are kidnapped by parents who then flee overseas, says Community Services, the NSW government agency responsible.
While some groups have demanded jail and fines, the department says imposing new criminal sanctions could force abducting parents “to take more extreme actions to remain undetected”, hindering the return of children.
In a submission to a Senate inquiry into child abductions to and from Australia, community services says it is now mostly mothers who abduct the children — a dramatic turnaround from 30 years ago when the Hague Convention for bringing children home was signed and the abductors were fathers.
“Incarcerating the person who has primary care of a child will never be in that child’s best interest and has the potential to destroy the future relationship between the child and the parent who requested their return,” the submission says. “Parental child abduction is a matter for the family law system and should not attract criminal sanctions.”
The agency has also warned that Australia needs to make a bigger commitment to prevent children from being wrongly taken out of the country, including by requiring adults travelling to and from Australia to provide evidence of a court order or consent to allow them to leave the country with their child. “Alerts should be placed in strategic points around the airport,” the submission says.
Compounding the problem, some countries from which Australia accepts migrants — including China, Vietnam, The Philippines and Lebanon — have not signed the Hague Convention.
While Lebanon and Egypt have both signed bi-lateral agreements with Australia, the best these offer are “tools of dialogue” but no legal remedies.
Groups such as the Family Law Reform Commission have called for Australia to impose tougher sanctions against international child abduction.
Under the Family Law Act, international parental child abduction carries a maximum three-year jail sentence.
But these offences apply where residence, contact or specific issues orders in relation to a child are in force or are pending before the family courts.
Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland recently referred Australia’s international child abduction laws to the Family Law Council to see if they were adequate.
That review found one gap in the law. If a child is taken overseas by one parent with the consent of the other parent but fails to return despite a court order, there is no penalty. “That is certainly an issue that we are looking at,” Mr McClelland said.
But he agreed with community services that a general criminal offence for international child abduction was likely to be counter-productive.
“The advice of the Family Law Council also raised the point that introducing a specific crime in the Criminal Code in respect to child abduction could actually make securing returns more difficult,” he said.
“In other words, driving the party who has taken the child or abducted the child further underground and making conciliation and resolution of the matters more difficult.”
Mr McClelland said the Hague Convention — to which Australia is a signatory — provides the best available mechanism to lawfully seek the return of wrongfully removed or retained children.
Father sick of waiting for ‘child abduction’ action
Transcript
ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: Unlike the US and the UK, Australia has no criminal law against parental child abduction. Instead, Australia relies on international co-operation to try to get children back.
But that hasn’t helped Lauchlan Leishman. Almost three years ago, his son was removed from Australia by his former wife without his consent. Lauchlan Leishman hasn’t seen his son since. He says it’s proof the system is broken.
A Senate inquiry is currently considering whether more can be done to return abducted children. It’s due to report back to the Government at the end of October, but Lauchlan Leishman says he’s tired of waiting.
Michael Atkin reports.
MICHAEL ATKIN, REPORTER: Lauchlan Leishman fell hard for Gina Fargnoli, a beautiful classical pianist. After a whirlwind romance, they married in June 2003.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN, FATHER: We both liked travelling, talking and reading books and we thought we could have a good, solid relationship based on an intellectual thing, I suppose.
MICHAEL ATKIN: Gina became pregnant. They named their baby boy Cameron. But while they were celebrating the birth, according to Lauchlan, cracks began to appear in his relationship and his two other children became an issue.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: She started saying things to me like, ‘You can’t see your other two children. Forget all your friends that you’ve made up to point in your life. It’s now just you, Cameron and I’.
MICHAEL ATKIN: In 2006 they divorced. Young Cameron lived with his mother and Lauchlan visited regularly. Then Gina moved from Noosa to Sydney. But despite the distance, Lauchlan Leishman continued to visit Cameron once a month.
But that all changed in September 2008 when he called to plan a weekend outing.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: The phone was disconnected. The mobile wasn’t answering. So I rang the agent that she was letting from and he said, yeah, she broke the lease last week and she’s gone.
MICHAEL ATKIN: Gina had mentioned plans to take their son to Italy and Lauchlan had raised concerns. But he never thought Gina would take Cameron overseas and vanish without a trace.
It violated a Family Court order requiring one month’s written notice of any intention to travel with Cameron and a copy of a return plane ticket.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: There was never any domestic violence. There has been nothing that she’s – could put up to say that she took him out of Australia because I’m an evil person or something wrong with me.
MICHAEL ATKIN: The Family Court has now granted him full custody. His estranged wife and son are on an international airport watch list and an Interpol yellow notice for missing children has been issued.
He’s also engaged the help of the Australian Federal Police and the Attorney-General’s Department.
In 2009, a private detective tracked Gina to her birthplace, Zimbabwe. But just when investigators were getting close, a major roadblock loomed.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: When I first met Gina, she was working for the then opposition leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, who is the current prime minister of Zimbabwe. When the private detective was trying to track Gina down in Zimbabwe, Mugabe’s heavies – that’s the only word to use – came round to their office and said, ‘Why are you harassing this woman?’
MICHAEL ATKIN: Lauchlan Leishman believes Gina Fargnoli is being protected by powerful interests in Zimbabwe. She has multiple passports and has been able to travel extensively. Now Lauchlan Leishman wants the Australian Government to do more.
At International Missing Children’s Day last year, he confronted the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: His words to me in front of my friend and the Minister for Home Affairs, Brendan O’Connor, was, ‘I will get your file out and get back to you’. I never heard from him again.
MICHAEL ATKIN: Robert McClelland says he asked his department to look into Lauchlan Leishman’s case.
ROBERT MCLELLAND, ATTORNEY-GENERAL: I’m satisfied that my department is taking all effective action that they possibly can.
MICHAEL ATKIN: This included contacting Zimbabwean authorities and offering to ignore alleged breaches of the Family Law Act by Gina Fargnoli if she immediately returned Cameron to Australia.
The Attorney-General said this was one of the few options available to the Government.
ROBERT MCLELLAND: We don’t have any international law enforcement authority. We cannot send a team of AFP officers into another country to remove a child or another person. We just simply cannot do that.
MICHAEL ATKIN: Lauchlan Leishman’s case is not a one-off. Last year, 125 children were wrongly removed from Australia. 74 have been returned.
Michael Nicholls is an expert in international child abduction law. He says The Hague Convention is effective in most cases.
MICHAEL NICHOLLS, CHILD ABDUCTION LEGAL EXPERT: The 1980 Hague Abduction Convention is widely regarded as being one of the successful international instruments for preventing and deterring international child abduction.
MICHAEL ATKIN: Both Australia and Zimbabwe are signatories, but Zimbabwe struggles to enforce it.
MICHAEL NICHOLLS: There are 85 contracting states to this convention and almost inevitably they vary in their ability to apply it.
MICHAEL ATKIN: International child abduction is not currently a criminal offence in Australia, but is in the US and UK.
MICHAEL NICHOLLS: The advantage of criminalising the abduction is that you can engage international assistance through Interpol and you can seek the recovery of the child through the mechanism of extradition.
MICHAEL ATKIN: At the Attorney-General’s request, the Family Law Council recently considered whether international child abduction should be made a criminal offence. However, while it did recommend some changes to the law, it advised against criminalisation.
ROBERT MCLELLAND: We need to be careful in sending a message which, yes, potentially has some power as a disincentive, that we don’t actually make it more difficult to have children returned, and in particular to cause a situation which is likely to drive the parent who has removed the child further underground.
MICHAEL ATKIN: But Lauchlan Leishman says the law should change.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: It might make people think twice about actually doing the act if it’s illegal. At the moment, it’s not even a slap on the wrist.
MICHAEL ATKIN: At his Cairns house, Lauchlan Leishman waits. It’s almost three years since he last saw Cameron.
LAUCHLAN LEISHMAN: That heart-wrenching: it’s impossible to describe. It’s – you know, what could I say to Cameron if I can see him? You know, I mean, just that I love him.
ALI MOORE: Michael Atkin reporting. And Lateline contacted Gina Fargnoli by phone, email and social media to request an interview. Ms Fargnoli has not taken up the offer.
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 13/06/2011
Reporter: Michael Atkin
http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2011/s3242880.htm
Mother arrested for savagely bashing her 16 month old child
A MOTHER was arrested yesterday after allegedly savagely bashing her 16-month-old son.
The child’s frantic father telephoned police to report the sustained assault.
Police said the 23-year-old woman disappeared with the injured boy for more than a day.
The child was in care last night after being treated in hospital.
The mother beat up the infant at her home in Van Senden Ave, Alice Springs, on Monday evening.
The 31-year-old father called police just after 5.30pm to say the attack was under way.
He told police the mother had hit the boy over the head several times with a full can of soft drink before pulling him out of his pram by his shoulder.
She then allegedly picked up the toddler by one of his legs and slammed him onto the ground three times.
The woman then again held him upside down by the leg and slammed him into a metal fence before holding his head under her arm and punching him in the head.
The woman had fled with the boy by the time officers arrived at the home.
Police searched intensively for the mother and son throughout Alice Springs on Tuesday and eventually found them back at the Van Senden Ave property just after 4am yesterday.
The mother was arrested and the child taken to Alice Springs Hospital.
The woman was expected to be charged late last night.
http://www.ntnews.com.au/article/2011/06/16/240881_ntnews.html
