Justice International Children Crimes

In both of the congressional hearings on these matters before Rep. Ben Gilman of New York, chairman of the House Committee on International Relations, and Sen. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Criminal Justice Oversight one element appeared evident: Parentally kidnapped children are not a high priority for anyone in the Clinton administration and no long-term plan exists to rectify the problem. Sen. Mike DeWine, an Ohio Republican, put it bluntly to State and Justice officials during the Senate hearing. "I don't think it is a high-enough priority with the State Department and Justice Department. All I hear you say is why you can't do things." That they did.

The Justice Department said it rarely pursues prosecutions under the 1993 International Parental Kidnapping Crime Act, or IPKA, because its prosecutors assume a U.S. indictment will prevent children from being returned. In five years, just 62 indictments and 13 convictions have resulted from the thousands of cases of abductions.  "The law is rarely used," Thurmond told a group of a dozen or so concerned parents at the hearing. "The administration discouraged the Congress from passing this statute, which is evident from the department's reluctance to enforce it," and simply ignores the law. Likewise, the State Department does not appear to treat child thefts as seriously as violations of patent and copyright laws. DeWine says the message is that people better not steal from U.S. corporations but may steal American children and get away with it.

The sons of Lady Catherine I. Meyer, wife of the British ambassador to the United States, were kidnapped to Germany by their biological father, her former husband. Meyer testified recently before the Senate committee, arguing for the State Department to treat these cases as human-rights abuses echoing Hillary Rodham Clinton's remarks this summer after Insight raised the issue (see "Kidnapped Kids Cry Out for Help," May 10). Meyer told the senators that months pass, years pass, without her being permitted to see her children, Alexander and Constantin. "Has anyone proved that I am an unfit mother?" she asked. "No. Has anyone proved that I do not love my children? No. But I am nonetheless denied the rights that even women in prison are allowed."

After an Insight cover story (see "Kids Held Hostage," March 8), Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mary Ryan defended her office's record by asserting that these cases merely are "international parental child-custody disputes," essentially private matters, a term that infuriates victimized parents. (Ironically, in Ryan's Hague Convention Compliance Report to Congress, which identified Honduras, Mauritius, Mexico and Sweden as chief violators, Ryan noted that labeling them mere "custody disputes" is the standard line foreign governments provide to the United States.) Challenged by Gilman in the House hearing, Ryan called for more federal money.

Meyer certainly wasn't happy with Ryan's response nor in agreement that Germany should not be listed in the Hague compliance report. German courts and authorities, she says, consistently have shown bias in favor of the German parent. "As a result," Meyer told the committee, "Rebecca Collins has not seen her children since 1994, James Rinaman since 1996, Kenneth Roche since 1991, Edwin Troxel since 1997, Mark Wayson since 1998, Anne Winslow since 1996, Donald Youmans since 1994, Joseph Cooke's children have been placed in foster care and he has not seen them since 1994 and John Dukheshere and George Uhl do not know the whereabouts of their children.... None of us have received any information on our children's welfare. And to top it all, the German courts often demand child-maintenance payments from the victim parents!"

Frustrated that the State Department even resists performing welfare checks on these children, many parents hoped a General Accounting Office, or GAO, investigation requested by Gilman would expose and document the poor record of the State and Justice departments concerning these matters and force changes. The report is due out in mid January.

But don't expect much. Jess T. Ford, associate director for international relations and trade issues at the GAO, has provided a summary of its findings to Gilman's committee, and parents already are calling it another whitewash of the kind they say they experienced earlier this year. That time it was the report to Attorney General Janet Reno prepared by the Justice Department Subcommittee on International Child Abduction of the Federal Agency Task Force on Missing and Exploited Children and the Policy Group on International Parental Kidnapping. The report suggested the department had the blessing of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, based in Arlington, Va., but in fact the center strongly disagreed with the findings and issued a dissenting opinion, which the task force didn't note.

The center was upset that the task force neglected to include the record of Justice Department failure to pursue criminal prosecutions under IPKA and froze them out of international cases.