Complicity in Child Abduction

An estimated 15,000 U.S. children remain abroad after being abducted by a parent. But the State Department is pursuing action in less than 30 Hague Convention cases.

Former Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Jesse Helms, R-N.C., has met his match. For that matter, so have Sen. Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, and Reps. Benjamin Gilman, R-N.Y., and Nick Lampson, D-Texas. All have been outspoken critics of how the State Department has handled international parental abductions. Suddenly they are silent. No press conferences. No hearings. Nothing.

Yet none has received a straight answer to their shared question: How many parentally abducted children have been returned from abroad under the Hague Convention, an international treaty signed by 54 countries that promises the return of children kidnapped by noncustodial parents?

Helms and Gilman expected that a series of congressional hearings and General Accounting Office (GAO) probes would get the State Department to provide direct answers. But, today, Gilman is no closer to the answer and Helms is no longer bothering to ask questions.

Certainly the answer to what has happened to America's forgotten children is nowhere to be found in the 2001 Compliance With the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, a State Department report required by law. The State Department claims there are only 29 unresolved Hague cases. But with an estimated 15,000 American kids missing abroad, the claim that there are less than 30 unresolved cases makes no sense.

"We lose kids by default," says Dave Thelen, founder of the Atlanta-based Committee for Missing Children Inc. Thelen calls the 2001 Hague report "useless," noting the failure of the State Department to identify either the number or details of allegedly resolved cases as mandated by Congress. Parents charge that most of the cases should be listed as unresolved.

Angered by cases classified as resolved when the children still are being held abroad in the hands of their kidnappers, parents gathered outside the White House in June to protest the State Department's failure to bring their children home. For example, State claims that cases such as that of Tom Sylvester's daughter, Carina, who was abducted by his ex-wife to Austria in 1995, are resolved. The State Department refuses to pressure Austria to abide by the Hague Convention rules even though Sylvester won his Hague case. Why is Carina's case regarded as resolved, he asks, when State only is supposed to call a case resolved if access has been ordered and enforced or the child has been returned?

But State claims wiggle room which Congress in fact eliminated when passing the 1999 State Department Authorization Act. Disregarding the clear intent of the law, critics say, State considers cases resolved as soon as foreign governments close them or when legal maneuvers abroad are exhausted -- regardless of whether court orders have been enforced.

The State Department then maintains there is nothing more it can do. But parents say State can do more by putting economic pressure on offending countries or listing them as abusers in State's annual human-rights report. Not only has the State Department refused to do either, but it also resists filing federal warrants against estranged spouses who abduct their children to foreign countries.

Parents of the forgotten children charge that Congress has tolerated these violations of the law for three years without holding the State Department accountable for failure to give the required details in its compliance report. But this year, no public outcry has been heard from Congress as in past years, when Lampson and Gilman called the reports "inaccurate" and "disappointing."

Lampson did quietly send a letter to the State Department questioning its upgrading of Germany, a major abuser. DeWine wrote to the president and says he is considering a working group to study the issue.

Part of the tiptoeing is due to the change of guard. Helms handed leadership on the issue to Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., who now chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Gilman passed his chairmanship of the House International Relations Committee to Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill. While the new staffs played catch-up on this tragic issue, the State Department moved quickly and quietly to publish the obfuscatory report on its Website. And, so far, the 2001 Authorization Act on the Senate side does not include the reporting requirement. The House bill does at least direct State to provide the numbers for two more years.

Perhaps more disturbing is the State Department's response to a questionnaire delivered to the Hague Conference in the Netherlands that has yet to be made public. State blocked American parents from attending the conference, which is held every four years, claiming it didn't want to focus on specific cases, according to State Department letters obtained by Insight. But parents think this has more to do with Foggy Bottom being unwilling to get down to cases that would embarrass habitual offenders -- even though Congress in a joint resolution last year condemned Germany, Sweden and Austria for failure to enforce Hague orders.