Mother found her snatched children with help of Scots girl's blog

Published on Tuesday 11 March 2008 20:54

A FRENCH woman's worldwide search for her snatched children ended when she chanced upon her daughter's photograph on the internet blog of a Scottish schoolgirl.

The mother had not heard from her children for two-and-a-half years, since their father abducted them and went on the run to Asia.

She had no idea where they were until she came across the blog of a teenager from Dundee. The girl had included photographs of schoolfriends, and one was the woman's 14-year-old daughter.

Now the mother has won an order from a Scottish judge to have the girl, and her brother, 11, and sister, nine, returned to France.

The father, who is trying to avoid a jail term in France by fighting extradition, had argued that the family was settled in Dundee and the two older children asked Lord Turnbull to allow them to remain in Scotland.

But the judge said he was satisfied that the children's stated wishes had been influenced by their father, who had sought to turn them against their mother.

The Court of Session in Edinburgh heard that the couple, who cannot be named for legal reasons, married in 1989 and lived in England. They left for South America – where the man intended to set up a religious community in Paraguay – but made it only to Mexico. After some time in California, they returned to England in 1998 and moved to Spain, where they separated in 2001. The wife then returned to her homeland.

A bitter divorce was fought in the French courts, and the couple's eldest son stayed with his father, while their three other children lived with the mother. In July 2005, the father fled France with all four youngsters. He flew to Switzerland, and on to Bangkok, where their trail went cold. For six months, they travelled around south-east Asia and eventually moved to Dundee.

Lord Turnbull said: "Throughout the time her children were missing, (the mother] had taken active steps to locate their whereabouts.

"On 17 November, 2007, she came across a blog posted by a teenage girl attending secondary school in Dundee.

"On looking through this, (the woman] came across a picture of her daughter. She took immediate steps to involve the French authorities."

The woman petitioned the Court of Session for the return of the younger children. The oldest is now 17 and outwith the scope of the 1985 Child Abduction and Custody Act. The Hague Convention, on which the act is based, does not oblige a country to order the return of a child if the child has become settled. The father in this case used that argument against the removal of his children to France.

In the father's absence, he was convicted in France of abducting the children and sentenced to 30 months' imprisonment.

Lord Turnbull said it was quite remarkable that neither of the primary school-age children had mentioned their mother to any teacher, which served to demonstrate how far from normality they were living.

RISE IN 'TUG OF LOVE' CASES

A GROWING number of children are victims of "tug of love" cases where they are abducted by a parent in the wake of family breakdown.

Since 1995, the number of children "kidnapped" by a parent from Britain and taken to another country has risen by 93 per cent.

During 2006, the charity, Reunite, recorded a total of 270 new abduction cases, involving 414 children.

As international travel becomes cheaper and easier, and as employees move around the world with multinational firms, the number of international marriages – and divorces – grows.

The influx of Polish workers to Britain has also fuelled the number of abduction cases in this country. When one partner wants to return home to Poland and takes the children, the matter often ends up before the courts.