The Rise of Parental Child Abduction

It might seem like something out of a holiday paperback, or your worst nightmare, but children are abducted from all around the world everyday.

With the rise in cross-cultural relationships, and the ease of international travel, many of these abductions are actually perpetrated by one parent.

So what is the other parent to do if their partner disappears to another country with different laws, and takes their child with them? Many start by fighting the legal system, working to get their child back the only way that seems open to them: legally. But when that fails, desperate parents start to look for other means.

That’s where companies like CARI come in.

What Is CARI?

CARI is Child Abduction Recovery International, a business specialising in retrieving children abducted by one of their parents from anywhere in the world. They claim to have been operating under the radar for more than 12 years, and have a 99% success rate of bringing children home. Their founder has 20 years experience working on high profile missing persons cases worldwide. Yes, it sounds fantastical, but CARI is just one of several companies currently providing this service to parents all over the world. A child recovery can cost upwards of $20,000, and CARI claims to conduct extensive background checks to make sure they only act where court orders are in place.

Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it right.

The Harsh Reality Of Child Abductions

When it comes to a parental abduction it’s always going to be a messy business. Custody battles are hard enough when they take place inside one country, but with international laws and differing cultural expectations on each parent, it quickly becomes a complex affair. Although the parent looking to retrieve the child may think they’re acting in their best interest, this may not be the case at all.

Imagine for a moment you’re a young child, living with a familiar person like your father, mother or grandparent. This has been your life for as long as you can remember, with everything that happened before in a blur. Then, imagine strangers come in the middle of the night, or steal you off the street in broad daylight, and whisk you away. They are unfamiliar, and you are scared. They deliver you to a person who might look a little familiar, but who you probably don’t remember. This person tells you that they’ve been wanting to much to get you back, but you aren’t sure you trust them. What about the people who’ve cared for you thus far?

The potential for trauma to the child stemming from these child retrievals is simply too high to them to be widely accepted and undertaken. No company, no matter how in-depth their background checks, can ever really understand the situation. They have a built in client-provider bias to the person that hired them that effectively stops them from being impartial enough to see the big picture. But at the same time, many parents feel as though this is the only avenue open to them, the only way they might be able to see their child again.

Is It Ever The Right Thing To Do?

Of course, it’s hard to understand the real impacts without seeing it from the inside. Take the story of Briton Gordon Carr. He met a woman in Thailand and started a relationship with her. For all intents, they were in love, and she travelled back to the UK to live with Carr. Not long after, they had a son together, little Moregan. Then, his partner’s visa ran out and she returned to her native country of Laos to sort out the paperwork. She took Moregan with her.

Within a few short weeks, it became obvious to Gordon that his partner and his son would not be returning to the UK. He travelled to Laos to see Moregan and try to bring him back but his partner and her family were having no part in it. Then he went back one more time and his partner was gone, leaving Moregan with his maternal grandparents. She had left to the United States, and from what Gordon was told she had met another partner and started a new life there. So, it made sense to Gordon to take Moregan back to the UK. The only problem is his grandparents wouldn’t allow it.

At first he went through the UK legal system, and was issued a custody order by the courts. But in Laos it had no meaning, and the government refused to hand the boy over. Gordon was desperate, with the years of his son’s childhood rapidly disappearing. On his visits to see Moregan he noted his condition appeared to be lacking, with signs of bad dental hygiene and malnutrition. He decided to act.

He hired a company similar to CARI, paid them 10,000 pounds, and had them steal Moregan away in a kidnapping style mission. Gordon claims he has no regrets, and that his son is settling into the UK quite well.

But the chances of Moregan suffering psychologically in the long-term from an experience like that are very high, and in the end we don’t know the full story of what happened to his mother. What if at this moment she’s fighting to get her son home as well? Sadly it seems there just isn’t a right answer for those involved in a parental abduction. Both parents might feel they’re doing the right thing, but at the end of the day it is the child that suffers.

What do you think?