New child abduction bill in Oregon House

By Sean Aaron Cruz

March 5, 2013

Portland, Oregon—

State Representative Alissa Keny-Guyer (D, Portland, House District 46) has introduced legislation calling for an Oregon State Police study of the issue of children abducted both from and to Oregon.

HB 2014 is the first legislation on the issue since the passage of Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) in 2005.

Representative Keny-Guyer’s bill addresses the issue of parental, family and church-sponsored abductions in several important ways, and I want to underscore the fact that when your child disappears, every barrier and everything that delays or prevents the recovery of your child matters, every minute of every day matters, and it will matter for the rest of your and your children’s lives.

(1) HB 2014 calls on the Oregon State Police to report on “the chain of events that take place when a child is reported to law enforcement officials as missing by the parent, grandparent or legal custodian of the child.”

Under existing laws and practices, law enforcement and court officials ignore reports of missing/abducted children from grandparents and non-custodial parents.

Yet, all too often, children are abducted by family members in situations where the parents are still married or were never married, and thus there is no custody order.

And there are often cases where it is a grandparent who is actually raising the child(ren), but has no standing in court.

HB 2014 brings the whole of the child(ren)’s family into view, and asks the question, “What chain of events takes place….”

(2) HB 2014 calls on the Oregon State Police to report on “the chain of events that take place when a child is reported to law enforcement officials as having been brought to Oregon in violation of a lawful custody order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction in another state.”

There has been no prior study on this issue, what happens when a child is abducted from somewhere else and brought to Oregon.

(3) HB 2014 calls on the Oregon State Police to report on “any progress that has been made in conducting investigations” of children abducted to or from Oregon since the issuance of the final report of the 2004 Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions.”

The 2004 Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions built on prior work by the earlier Task Force on Family Law, which sought to reduce the incidence of divorce in Oregon.

Among the findings of the Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions was the shocking realization that no state agency knew the number of non-stranger child abduction cases occurring in Oregon, because no one tracks them. The Oregon State Police made promises to the legislature in 2005 that they would do so in the future.

The 2004 Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions laid the groundwork for Senate Bill 1041 “Aaron’s Law” in 2005. With the passage of SB 1041, Oregon became the first state in the nation where abducting a child (violating the Custodial Interference I statute) creates a civil cause of action.

Aaron’s Law provides parents of abducted children with new tools to deter and resolve cases where parents or family members or members of a church congregation engaging in a shunning have abducted a child in the state of Oregon.

Here is the full text of HB 2014:

77th OREGON LEGISLATIVE ASSEMBLY--2013 Regular Session

House Bill 2014

Sponsored by Representative KENY-GUYER; Representatives BARTON, GARRETT, KRIEGER

SUMMARY

Requires  Department  of  State  Police  to  conduct  study  on issues related to abduction of children. Directs  department  to  report  results  of  study  to  interim 

committees  of  Legislative  Assembly  related to  crime  on  or  before 

November  1,  2014. Sunsets January 2, 2015.

Declares  emergency,  effective  on  passage.

A BILL FOR AN ACT

Relating  to  the  abduction  of  children;  and  declaring  an  emergency.

Be It Enacted by the People of the State of Oregon:

SECTION 1. (1) The Department of State Police shall conduct a study of:

(a) The chain of events that take place when a child is reported to law enforcement officials as missing by the parent, grandparent or legal custodian of the child;

(b) The chain of events that take place when a child is reported to law enforcement officials as having been brought to Oregon in violation of a lawful custody order issued by a court of competent jurisdiction in another state;

(c) Investigation procedures related to violations of ORS 163.245 and 163.257; and

(d) Any progress that has been made in conducting investigations described in paragraphs (a) to (c) of this subsection since the issuance of the final report of the 2004 Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions.

(2) The department shall report the results of the study to the interim committees of the Legislative Assembly related to crime on or before November 1, 2014.

SECTION 2. Section 1 of this 2013 Act is repealed on January 2, 2015.

SECTION 3. This 2013 Act being necessary for the immediate preservation of the public peace, health and safety, an emergency is declared to exist, and this 2013 Act takes effect on its passage.

__________

Link to Representative Keny-Guyer’s web page:

http://www.leg.state.or.us/keny-guyer/

__________

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signed Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) with my son’s picture on his desk in 2005

Mother of missing child Kyron Horman claims Constitutional rights

Desiree Young, whose 7 year-old-son Kyron Horman was kidnapped more than two years ago, filed motions in Multnomah County Circuit Court today, arguing that the civil case should be heard, and that further delay would violate her constitutional rights.

Governor Ted Kulongoski signed Aaron's Law in 2005

Terri Horman, stepmother of Kyron Horman and the defendant in the civil case, has filed a motion to abate the civil proceedings for at least two years, asserting that her constitutional rights under the Fifth Amendment are threatened.

And thus, the opening salvos in the Kyron Horman civil suit will address issues of rights guaranteed by the US and Oregon constitutions.

This civil suit is the first filed under Oregon’s landmark 2005 child abduction statute, Senate Bill 1041, known as “Aaron’s Law”, which provides child abduction victims with new tools when the criminal and family law systems are unable to move forward, and yet there is a missing child.

Under Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first and (so far) only state in the nation where abducting a child (violating Oregon’s Custodial Interference in the First Degree statue) creates a civil cause of action.

Thus, everything that happens going forward in the Kyron Horman case will be first in the nation.

Local Portland news channels are beginning to devote more resources to understanding the issues that will be at trial, and there will be many.

KGW-8, for example, consulted with Tung Yin, a legal scholar at Lewis and Clark Law School in this story filed by Nigel Duara of the Associated Press:

http://www.kgw.com/news/Kyron-Hormans-mother-fights-lawsuit-delay-164788256.html

The story includes a link to the legal arguments filed today.

Aaron’s Law was written with Constitutional rights in mind, including the right to parent your child without criminal interference from third parties, and the child’s right NOT to be abducted by ANYONE, including family, friends, neighbors, hangers-on, mopey in-laws, ex-family, church groups, and other criminal associates.

The nation’s criminal and family law systems treat the issue of time, the value of time in a child’s life and in the child’s relationships to parents and family, as if time has no importance.

Both systems also provide few tools or options for victims, who are usually put in the position of helpless spectators to processes that are failing to produce a missing child.

Aaron’s Law provides new tools to resolve and deter child abduction cases.

Aaron Cruz died in Payson, Utah from long term medical neglect, abandonment and heartbreak in the course of his Mormon abduction and the shunning imposed on his father by officials in the Mormon Church.

Aaron’s Law also recognizes that many child abductions involve multiple perpetrators, and is triggered by the Oregon Custodial Interference I statute that reaches to any person who takes, entices or keeps a child wrongfully, who provides planning, logistical or financial support to the abduction.

Aaron’s Law followed on the work of the Senate President's 2004 Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions, and was informed by Sean Aaron Cruz’s personal experiences as the father of four children who disappeared from Oregon in a Mormon abduction that began in 1996.

Breakthrough! Landmark Oregon child abduction suit filed under Aaron's Law!

by Sean Cruz


Portland, Oregon--Desiree Young, the mother of Kyron Horman, filed a civil suit against her son's stepmother under Senate Bill 1041 (2005), Oregon's landmark child abduction statute, known as "Aaron's Law" after my son Aaron Cruz, who died as a consequence of his abduction by members of the Mormon church enforcing a shunning.


http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/06/desiree_young_seeks_10_million.html


Aaron's Law provides new tools for kidnapping victims to resolve and deter abductions, and to hold kidnappers accountable, particularly when law enforcement and the courts are unwilling or unable to act.


The US Department of Justice reports that more than 200,000 US children suffer the trauma of kidnapping by a parent, family member or religious organization every year, with growing numbers of children taken to foreign countries.


The filing of the Horman suit, regardless of the length of time it takes or its outcome is likely to serve a greater good in deterring others from committing similar crimes.


Under Aaron's Law, persons who provide assistance to an abduction, whether logistical, planning or financial, are liable for damages, including punitive damages for their participation in the crime.


The Hormon case and the Marenco case both illustrate how difficult non-stranger child abduction cases are to resolve, and in all cases the experience of abduction and loss is so traumatic to the child that focus needs to be on deterrence.


Consider these facts:


In the past five years, the only child to be recognized as missing by the Oregon State Police Missing Children Clearinghouse is Kyron Hormon.


The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children currently identifies 17 Oregon missing children, none of whom are listed on the Oregon State Police Missing Children site. Are those children missing or not? Ask the parents who are looking for them.


An international child abduction case that originated in Oregon was resolved just last week with the assistance of more than a dozen police agencies, with the Oregon State Police conspicuously absent from the credits. The Marenco child was listed by the National Center, but not by the Oregon State Police over the year and a half that the child was known to be abducted.


What does an abducted child have to do to get some OSP attention?


More on this later.

In 2005, Governor Ted Kulongoski signed Senate Bill 1041 with my son Aaron's picture on his desk

Rivers flooding, highways closing, a Mormon kidnapping underway

By Sean Cruz


Portland, Oregon—

Rivers are flooding, highways closing.... These are the same weather conditions as when the Mormons took my four kids out of their schools and vanished, during the Great Storm of 1996.

They shuttled my kids among themselves from place to place in Oregon, Washington and finally to theocratic Utah, all in violation of the joint custody order that had protected my children for five years, keeping their lives orderly and secure.

You would never do this to children you actually loved.

Today’s Oregonian headline reads:

Oregon winter storm: Mother and child die; 17 rivers at or near flood stage; more rain on the way

http://www.oregonlive.com/weather/index.ssf/2012/01/oregon_winter_storm_mother_and.html

Takes me all the way back to the Great Storm of 1996, and a lonely, desperate search for four missing children, children I love with all of my heart….

Law enforcement, the courts and the media take little interest in missing children when family members are involved.

The U.S. Department of Justice tallies more than 200,000 cases of parental and family abductions taking place across the country each year, every year, year after year….


I’ll have more to say about this later, just talkin’ about the weather….

The first places the Mormons hid my children in Utah were organized by Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, in the mountains east of Ogden.

Years later, kidnapping bastard Kory Wright moved his family back to the Portland Metro Area, working for a Mormon-owned company, Columbia Ultimate, where he's on its management team:

https://www.columbiaultimate.com/about-us/management-team.aspx


More about this later, and later still....

Fourteen years after four children vanish from Oregon--someone notices!

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

Fourteen years after my four children vanished from Oregon, and five years after the death of my son, Aaron Cruz, and the passage of Oregon’s landmark anti-kidnapping Senate Bill 1041, Aaron’s Law, named in his honor, the abduction of 7-year-old Kyron Horman has stirred up some media interest in the issue of children abducted by family members and persons known to the victims.

Radio host Diane Dennis made the Aarons Law media breakthrough on the topic when she interviewed me yesterday, July 31, 2010 on her Family Focus 101 program on KUIK 1360 AM. The link to the interview is below.

Diane, you are the first to take an interest! Thank you!

Later on the same day, one of the Portland TV stations broke the news (!) that, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, more than 2,000 US children are reported missing every day! That may be news to a lot of people, but not to those of us who have suffered the disappearance of a child, or to the child victims themselves, who grow in number every day.

The National Center and the US Department of Justice has put the figure of children abducted by their own parents, family members or persons known to the victims at more than 200,000 a year, every year, for more than a decade now.

Either way, it adds up to a lot of traumatized and seriously abused children, like my own, whose kidnapping was first reported after they vanished without a trace on February 12, 1996.

The fact is that, in sheer numbers, the most dangerous kidnappers are a child’s own parents, and this is news only if you haven’t been paying attention to the issue.

Parental and family abductions can be divided into two categories: those involving a single perpetrator, and those that involve two or more perpetrators, acting together to carry out a criminal act and any subsequent criminal acts.

Aarons Law makes Oregon the only state in the nation where abducting a child creates a civil cause of action. This means, in layman’s terms, that only in Oregon can you hold a person financially accountable for abducting your child.

Practically speaking, if the whereabouts of your child and the child’s kidnapper(s) is unknown, there’s little that you can do but pray that local law enforcement doesn’t give up (they usually don’t even get started).

If you become aware, however, that the kidnapper(s) had help, had associates, had others providing logistical, financial or planning support, and you can identify them and locate them, then Aaron’s Law is your answer.

The criminal custodial interference and kidnapping statutes require evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” and unanimous agreement by a jury for a conviction. That is far too often a bar too high for the prosecution to get over, and thus many investigations end right there, even though the children remain kidnapped.

Aaron’s Law, however, creates a civil cause of action, and a judgement can be reached in court with a lower standard, by showing “by a preponderance of the evidence” that a person did in fact participate in the criminal taking, enticing and keeping of a child from the child’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid order for joint custody.

I know that if Aaron’s Law had been on the books in 1995, the people who planned and executed the abduction of my children, who committed those crimes and the crimes that followed, would have never gotten involved in the first place.

They would have known that I would never give up on my children, and that I would have sued them for everything they could ever hope to own, for the damage and trauma they inflicted on my children, on my family and on me.

That fact would have kept my children safe in their homes, among their family and friends, growing up and living normal lives, instead of lives lived in concealment in a succession of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah, lives that led to the death of my son Aaron.

Here are some easy examples:

After my children disappeared, mail addressed to them at their mother’s last address was not forwarded to Utah, where they were being concealed. The kidnappers had thought about how forwarded mail might lead to discovery, and my children’s mail was actually being forwarded to an address in Hillsboro, Oregon, to a person named Evelyn Taylor, Mormon Relief Society President at the time of the abduction.

I later learned that it is not illegal to receive mail intended for abducted children, but Evelyn Taylor was filthy beyond her eyebrows in enticing my children out of their homes and on the road to Utah. She would have faced a lawsuit filed under Aaron’s Law had the statute been on the books, and a lot of subsequent embarrassment, probably loss of standing in her church. That eventuality would have had a strong deterrent effect.

I learned that my children’s first stop on their circuitous, hidden journey to Utah was at the home of Tony and Connie Micheletti near Salem, my former wife’s impotent brother and sister-in-law. It was here, on February 12, 1996, that my children first learned that they were being moved to Utah.

Tony and Connie Micheletti would have been looking at a lawsuit under Aaron’s Law, had the right to file a civil suit for the abduction of a child been on the books back then, and with that the leverage to force information as to the whereabouts of my children out of them. I would have seized their rancid, reeking, cat-filth-infused house and burned it to the ground.

The next example of how Aaron’s Law would have deterred the abduction of my children is that of Kory and Chris Wright, Mormon zealots and friends of my ex-wife’s and the principal planners of the kidnapping. The Wrights live in Vancouver now, but at the time of the abduction they lived in a remote area in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah.

The first place that my children were concealed in Utah was at the home of Chris and Kory Wright. These stupid, self-absorbed individuals actually wrote out sworn statements describing how they welcomed my children into their home and local Mormon church congregation, where they held leadership positions.

It is a felony to take, entice or keep a child from the child’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order. Utah and Washington statutes add the word “conceal” to the statute.

Nothing could have been simpler than to assemble “a preponderance of evidence” to show that each of these people were involved in a criminal enterprise.

For that matter, had law enforcement taken an interest in the case, it would not have been difficult to show that each of these persons were guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

You can hear what I had to say in the interview, here:

http://hillsboro.kuik.com/production/famsecrets/Family_Focus_0731.mp3

Aaron’s Law exists to act as a deterrent to non-stranger child abductions. It is not likely to be effective against stranger abductions, which take place about 100 times a year in the US.

More than 200,000 children are victims of non-stranger abductions every year, however, and Aaron’s Law can be an effective deterrent to many of those.

I hope to see the principles of Aaron’s Law applied nationwide, and that we might see that 200,000 number knocked down to zero.

Thanks again to Diane Dennis.

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 8: To murder the soul

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

Former Portland police detective C.W. Jensen recently gave his opinion regarding the presumptive motive for the abduction of Kyron Horman:

“If you are really, really angry at someone, you can kill them, or you can kill their soul by taking their child away, and that’s what I’m afraid happened here.”

Every year, more than 200,000 US children are abducted by family members or persons known to the victims. The crime is horrific, but only a tiny percentage receive any attention by the media, the public or law enforcement.

In all of these cases, the abductors intend to murder the soul of the victim parent by causing their child to disappear, and are willing to murder the soul of the child victim as collateral damage.

High-conflict custody battles are common; parents use their children as weapons in far too many cases, but the abduction of a child is indeed tantamount to murder.

When my four children disappeared on February 12, 1996, 14 years ago, kidnapped by my former wife and a group of Mormon officials in three states, no one was interested. Four children vanished. Zero interest. Ho hum.

My former wife wanted to murder my soul, and was willing to put our children through hell to do so; the Mormons that Kory and Chris Wright organized to carry out the abduction wanted to re-engineer my children’s personalities, at a cost to my family that was irrelevant to them, and through a process that led to the death of my son Aaron Cruz.

Those Mormons included Evelyn Taylor and Mormon Bishop David Holliday in Washington County, Mormon Bishop Donald Taylor in Clark County and Utah resident Steve Nielson, who would become my former wife’s fourth husband, who I would later learn slapped my children around throughout their marriage.

Retired Portland police commander Cliff Madison, interviewed today about the Kyron Horman case, made a comment that resonated with my experience, referring to the revelation that Terri Horman, Kyron’s stepmom, might be involved in the 7-year-old’s disappearance:

“They’ve just been hit with a big right hook, because all of a sudden the possibility of someone within the family being involved. It is a shock, because we all refuse to believe that until it is thrown in our faces.”

It is that refusal to believe, on the part of law enforcement, the media and the public, on the part of the courts, that refusal to believe that a family member would kidnap a beautiful child, that stands in the way of recovery and of achieving justice in many, many cases.

That refusal to believe that a family member would do such a thing causes the wheels to turn slowly, if at all.

In most cases, the family is entirely on its own. No cops, no detectives, no media, no public outcry…ho hum….

In the months and years that followed the disappearance of my children, I nearly died from shock, from grief, from bereavement, from depression and from suicide, when I had run out of hope and was overwhelmed by the pain.

My mother died four years after the abduction began, without seeing or hearing from her grandchildren again. That fact alone speaks to the character of the people involved in the abduction.

Remember that kidnappings are continuing crimes, crimes with a beginning but no end….

The abduction of Kyron Horman has thrown the fact in our faces, that a person in a trust relationship with a child, a family member, could inflict harm on this scale, and law enforcement, the public and even the media are getting involved.

There was a time when they could have expended just a little bit of energy and saved my family, could have saved Aaron’s life….

Now there is Aaron’s Law on the Oregon books, soon to be modeled in other states, and with it a drive to end parental and family abductions in this country.

I hope that they find some time to take an interest in that, too.

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 7: Complicated Grief and a Continuing Crime

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

I began the Parental Abduction Wisdom series in 2009, but the subject was so painful that I had to step back after posting the sixth installment, “The Little Girl in the Blue Dress”, nearly a year ago.

Kidnappings are continuing crimes, however, and the damage to the Cruz family continues to mount with the passage of every minute of every day.

The present case involving the disappearance of 7-year-old Kyron Horman illustrates the concept of a continuing crime very clearly: the public generally understands that this child is just as kidnapped today as he was when he disappeared several weeks ago. The crime continues….

My experience, as the victim of a parental, family and Mormon kidnapping, has been entirely different. Few have understood the continuing nature of the crime, many have wondered at why I haven’t let the crime (and my children) go, and some have expressed frustration that I haven’t “moved on.”

I want to note here that each of my critics can pick up the phone and speak with their living children any time that they want to…and that none have experienced the disappearance of their child….

Before I saw the Oregonian article linked below, I had never heard of "complicated grief syndrome", but I realize that it attaches to cases of child abduction, like mine, which began with the abduction of my four children in a Mormon kidnapping.

Unlike deaths, time and aging bring no closure to kidnapping victims. There is no "coming to peace with it." Only the mending of the relationships can bring closure.

Kidnappings are "continuing crimes", meaning that the crime has a beginning but no end, not before the victims are reunited and the kidnappers see justice served.

I want Mormon kidnappers Kory and Chris Wright in particular to take notice of that last statement. The crime has no end. Justice…will…be…served!

So long as people believe that they will get away with abducting a child, they will do so. In the case of Mormon zealots like the Wrights, they will relish pulling off a child abduction, if the purpose is to absorb the child into their belief system.

More on this later.

I am reviving the Parental Abduction Wisdom series with this post. There is no end in sight.


Here is an excerpt from the Oregonian article on Complicated Grief Syndrome:

“We are built to love, biologically programmed to attach. To lose that relationship, as everyone does, is to meet sorrow.

“Early in grief, humans yearn for the one who died, until we recognize that search is futile. Psychiatrist M. Katherine Shear says this transformation occurs in the brain circuitry and we eventually come to peace. ‘Death is a part of life and we have the mechanisms to come to terms with it,’ says the Columbia University professor.

“But in the 1990s, Shear and other researchers realized that about 15 percent of the bereaved suffer ‘complicated grief,’ stuck in a loop of despair. Their longing for the loved one overcomes all other desires. They either avoid any mention of the dead or become totally preoccupied. They daydream about being together and have suicidal thoughts. Brain imaging shows their reactions differ from people who progress through the grieving process. Researchers want complicated-grief disorder and its treatment included in the 2012 American Psychiatric Association diagnostic manual.

“No one tracks how losing a young, healthy child in war can push parents and other survivors to suicide. Yet, complicated grief almost exclusively occurs after the loss of a person's closest, most rewarding relationships. Losing a beloved child is one of the most obvious risks, and losing an only child, greater still.

"’Debra wanted to be with Michael,’ George says, ‘Wherever he was.’"

The complete article is titled: " Measures of Sacrifice: Answering the call to military binds a patriotic Oregon family", here:


http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2010/07/measures_of_sacrifice_answerin.html

Father's Day 2010, child abduction and Aaron's Law

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

I last had a reason to celebrate Father’s Day 14 years ago, other than honoring my own father and grandfather, not since my four children disappeared into concealment in Mormon Utah in February, 1996.

Abducted children are never permitted to celebrate any memory honoring a left-behind parent, much less a holiday, and the day becomes radioactive for all its victims. No cards, letters, gifts or phone calls will get through in either direction.

Abducted children suffer the devastating loss of a parent, but are never permitted to mourn. My children were compelled to celebrate Father’s Day with a succession of three stepdads in three states, no trace memories of me or my family allowed.

The abducting parent, family members and other criminal associates involved in an abduction will work hard to destroy every emotional connection the child(ren) have to the left-behind parent, and with it any possibility of a normal childhood, of a normal life.

A kidnapping is a continuing crime, with lifelong consequences, and for many victims, like my son Aaron, life-ending consequences.

I have learned that I have a grandchild, name unknown, being raised in concealment in a Mormon enclave.

My son Aaron would have made someone a fine father, with his big heart and irrepressible good humor, had he been given the chance to live a normal life, to become a father himself.

I am working my way out of a five-year period of mourning the death of my son, and have begun preliminary work on the introduction of Aaron’s Law into the California State Assembly, gathering allies, planning, looking at legislative concepts that would increase the effectiveness of the law.

I have connected with the Polly Klaas Foundation and spoken with Marc Klaas,
Polly’s father and Founder of the KlaasKids Foundation. Both organizations are national leaders on the issue of child abduction. See for yourself here, and become aware of the issues at stake:


http://www.klaaskids.org/

http://www.pollyklaas.org/

May 25 is National Missing Children Awareness Day

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice help shed light on the problem.

Missing children

•An estimated 797,500 children were reported missing each year.

•More than than 2,000 children are reported missing every day, but thankfully the vast majority of them are recovered quickly.

Non-family abductions

•An estimated 58,200 children were taken in one year by someone outside the family
•An estimated 115 children experienced a stereotypical kidnapping, the rarest type of abduction potentially posing great risk of serious harm.

Family abductions

•An estimated 203,900 children were victims of family abduction, where the child was taken by a noncustodial parent.

•24 percent of these abductions lasted one week to less than one month.

Ancestors, Penance, California and Aaron's Law

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

I arrived in Fairfield California on Monday planning first to visit my parents’ and grandparents’ gravesites and then look up some old friends, but my itinerary changed as soon as I arrived at the cemetery and saw the condition of the graves.

A pile of green glass shards, the remains of a broken vase left by one of her friends, lay beside my grandmother’s tombstone, needed immediate attention, and as I reached down to collect the pieces one of them bit me hard on the end of the finger, cut me so deeply it was still bleeding the next day.

“Ow!” I said. “Lo siento mucho, grandma. I am sorry.” Thus began a daylong conversation with my ancestors.

“Where have you been, mijo? What took you so long?” she said, silently but directly, pointedly.

“I am sorry, grandma. I love you.”

I know she was glad I had come, had returned home.

The Cruz family plots are located on a hillside in the old section of the cemetery, where the dense, irregular clusters of upright monuments and above ground tombs make upkeep difficult and more time consuming for the maintenance crews. There’s an Old California feel to the place, many of the names Spanish first and last, and there are many old shade trees scattered throughout and houses in the surrounding neighborhoods with red terra cotta tile roofs.

Blood on my clothes, on the side of the car, gushing out of my finger, sopping up the blood with paper towels, I cleared the graves where my grandparents lay side by side, where my parents lay side by side, where my beloved uncle Victor lay, he of the movie star good looks, idolized by all of us children, whose tire caught a patch of gravel in the valley one summer night in 1960, spun him out of control to an early death at the age of 26.

I had returned to Fairfield only twice in the last ten years.

Ten years ago we laid my mom to rest here beside my dad, who had preceded her by twenty-five years.

I came here for a funeral visit five years ago also, the day after we buried my son Aaron in El Dorado Hills, north of Sacramento. At the time of his death, I had refused to argue with my former wife over where Aaron would be buried, and she had chosen a place convenient for her and stepdad number three, who had never known my son, a story for another day.

This is an ancestor story, an elders story, a generations story, a story of gratitude, of paying respect, not the story of a young man lying alone on a hillside among strangers, a son as abducted in death as he was kidnapped in life.

I will get to that story in a few days.

The headstones all faced east into the warm morning sun. The ground was baked hard, the crab grass tough and difficult to dig out. I worked with the one tool that I happened to have with me, a folding shovel with a 12-inch handle.

I was aware that I could call any one of several friends and borrow landscaping tools, and a maintenance truck festooned with real shovels and other equipment was parked no more than fifty feet away, but I elected to work with what I had brought with me.

My ill-preparation was part of my conversation with my folks, particularly with my Dad.

“If you had thought this through, son, there wouldn’t be a problem with the tools.”

“Yes. You’re right, Dad. Next time, I will come prepared.”

The ground was so hard that the shovel was mostly useless as a digging tool. I adjusted the handle to use it as a hoe to chop at the edges, and I thought about that, too.

A hoe with the short handle. El cortito. The short one. Short hoes similar to this one had ruined the backs of countless millions of mostly-Mexican farmworkers before Cesar Chavez organized the effort that resulted in its ban, and I was reminded of how hard that labor was, down on my hands and knees as the sun rose on my back.

A couple of hours into the work, the hard ground separated the blade from the handle and I finished edging the sites chopping with the blade only, held between my two hands.

Tools hung in racks on the maintenance truck nearby, and friends were only a phone call away, but there was a certain amount of penance to be paid this day, and devices that would ease the work or shorten the time would interfere with the process and intrude on my silent conversations.

I broke for lunch, drove to meet old, old family friend Chuck Johnson for cheeseburgers and reminiscence. I had brought with me a Christmas card that his parents had sent to mine decades ago, with it a photograph of the Johnson family on it, and I had wanted to return it to them, this too in the spirit of paying respect to our elders.

I returned to the cemetery with bags of topsoil and live flowers to plant in the ground.

I had brought glass vases from Portland and fresh flowers cut from my friend Michael Iverson’s Sacramento yard for the graves, and I had brought a rock from the Columbia River, a chunk of basalt with my son’s name and yellow flowers painted on it to place with my parents, the grandson whose name now references Oregon’s Aaron’s Law, the only law in the nation whereby persons who abduct children can be held accountable for the damage they cause in the lives of innocents.

I’ll have more to say about that, too. With this trip to Sacramento, I began the work to see Aaron’s Law take effect in California. I brought several Columbia River rocks with Aaron Cruz’s name painted on them, and I place the rocks where I plant the seed of the Law.

As I molded the new soil with my hands, planted and watered the new flowers, completed my conversations with the folks, with grandma and grandpa and Uncle Victor, I was aware that this day marked a new beginning for me.

I will be back. Soon. Often. There is a foundation to build on here.

Family. Generations. Ancestors. Past…and the future.

My parent's headstone reads: "Sunshine, fresh flowers, green grass. Together at last."

That California sun spoke to me. I drove on those California roads and highways with the windows rolled down, just like in the old days, just like home.

Not Guilty!

by Sean Cruz

A Vancouver jury returned a verdict of Not Guilty yesterday on charges of assault and harassment stemming from my confrontation with my children’s kidnapper in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel last October (Happy Valentine’s Day!).

The outcome became a dicey proposition during pre-trial motions, when the prosecution successfully moved to prohibit any discussion or mention of my children’s kidnapping or Kory Wright’s participation in the abduction during trial.

The prosecution’s motions also disallowed any references to Aaron’s Law, or to the contents of the envelope (which contained a copy of Aaron’s Law), or of my motives for the encounter other than the embarrassment factor, or of what exactly was said during the event. Consequently, the jury only heard that there were “some papers” or “an envelope” involved, and never heard what was actually said or exchanged between my children’s abductor and myself.

Also during pretrial, the prosecution moved successfully to bar my blog writings or any mention thereof while the jury was present.

I’m telling you, it was really difficult to answer some of the questions posed when I was on the witness stand without crossing into forbidden territory. At several points, I was concerned that it might appear that I was avoiding answering some questions, when I was trying to figure out how to answer truthfully with the handicap that answering the question fully was not going to be allowed. I’m sure that worked to my disadvantage.

The jury never learned that my children had been abducted, which was the whole point of the encounter in the first place, to force Kory Wright into a courtroom where he would have to testify under oath to events that he had previously lied about.

The outcome I was looking for all along was a perjury charge against Kory Wright.

Ironically, the prosecution relied on statements I had written on Blogolitical Sean as their basis for pressing charges without ever telling the jury where the statements came from, since the blog writings were disallowed at their own insistence.

The language I had used to describe the incident was intentionally insulting and inflammatory, but was largely rhetorical. It was never intended to be a literal account of the confrontation.

I had written that I had both slapped my children’s abductor with the envelope containing Aaron’s Law and had thrown it at him, bouncing it off his face, but had actually done neither, although I had flipped it in his direction.

This was bait.

I was aware at the time that security cameras in the Hilton would capture the incident and thus I could describe the sequence of events with great latitude.

When Kory Wright filed his complaint against me using the identical language from my blog, “slapped” and “bounced”, I was extremely pleased. The language I had used rhetorically was being taken as a literal description, even an admission of guilt, which could easily be disproved.

After posting my description of the confrontation, I had felt compelled to call or email a number of friends to clarify that the slap was rhetorical, not actual, but otherwise let the writing stand unaltered as a continuing insult, just as an abduction is a continuing crime.

My next focus was to get the earliest possible trial date, to get Kory Wright into a courtroom as soon as the law would allow, and as I navigated through the process of hearings and conferences, representing myself, I never stated to anyone in the court system or to law enforcement that the language was rhetorical. I let it stand. I wanted to be taken seriously.

I was focused on my day in court like a laser beam, and very frustrated at the length of time it took to get there.

An unexpected complication arose when just before trial I finally saw the Hilton security video, taken from two perspectives in the lobby, neither ideal, and taken as a series of stills rather than as a running documentation of the confrontation.

The entire encounter, from start to finish lasted only 42 seconds, long enough to get through my brief talking points, serve Kory Wright with a copy of Aaron’s Law, and leave for my intended interview with a reporter from the Vancouver Columbian.

The stills, however, showed me with the envelope in my hand and then cut to where it was lying at Kory Wright’s feet.

I did not anticipate this at all. The stills showed an obvious heated exchange of words, me pointing my finger at my children’s abductor, but did not clarify whether contact occurred.

This caused me great concern at trial, as the prosecution sought to convict me with my own words, “slapped” and “bounced”, which I had stated to just about everyone, including a Vancouver police officer, who testified to that effect.

The fact is that I had indeed used those words to describe the incident… which was backfiring on me in an unexpected way…somewhere in here there is a lesson for me….

Kory Wright testified that I had reached out with the envelope in my hand and slapped him in the face with it. A bitch-slap encounter.

His witness testified that I had thrown the envelope and that he thought it had struck my children’s abductor somewhere in the chest. He was largely confused.

You really can’t have it both ways, although the prosecutor tried to prove that I had done both.

The bottom line is that the prosecution had to prove that an assault took place and that there was intent on my part to assault my children’s kidnapper. Same for the harassment charge.

My attorney, Mr. Blake Doré of Vancouver Defenders did a remarkable job. It gave me great comfort to watch him work. This man has a bright future.

The judge was tough but fair, and had an immensely likeable personality (ideal characteristics for the bench); nonetheless, I promised the Honorable Verne Schreiber afterwards that he wouldn’t see me before him again!

As for the prosecution, your narrow focus did nothing to advance the cause of justice. Every witness swears “to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth”, but you did your best to see that the truth did not get into the record or before the jury, and in that lies your only success. Choke on it.

POINT OF CLARIFICATION: The foregoing statement regarding choking is
meant rhetorically, not literally.

There’s a difference.

Lastly, the one point of satisfaction for me, apart from the acquittal, was to cause my children’s abductor to at last suffer a consequence for his criminal acts, even if it is only some embarrassment and time taken off from work to appear in court.

If he doesn’t like what I have to say, then he’s free to sue me.

I’m waiting for you, motherfucker.

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth…that’s my defense.

Count on it.

Cruz kidnapper confrontation earns commendation from judge!

See you next year, judge rules!
By Sean Cruz


It took 14 years to get Kory Wright, the organizer of my children’s kidnapping, into a courtroom, and that drama played out today.

The courtroom opportunity took place as a result of my confrontation with this criminal in the lobby of the Vancouver Hilton Hotel, where I slapped him with a copy of Aaron’s Law, Oregon’s anti-kidnapping statute…

…bounced it right off of his face…, telling him: “Oregon’s Aaron’s Law was written for people like you, motherfucker. You are served!”

Kory Wright was asking for a permanent Order For Protection From Unlawful Civil Harassment, which would restrain me from entering or being within 250 feet of his home or of Columbia Ultimate, his place of employment.

The judge heard me out…you lose track of time in there…she listened to me explain the Order for Joint Custody that had protected my children for four years…

She listened to me describe how Kory Wright, motivated by his rabid Mormon zealotry, had violated that order and criminal statutes in three states, but there had been no investigation and the statute of limitations had run on those crimes….

The judge saw documentation detailing Kory Wright’s criminal conduct…there was no question about whether he violated the law or not, that was easy to show….

The judge heard me describe my history of work on the issue of parental and family abductions:

My testimony on Kory Wright’s criminal conduct before the Oregon Senate Judiciary Committee and the Joint Ways and Means Public Safety Committee in 2003….

My testimony on Kory Wright’s criminal conduct before the Senate President’s Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions in 2004….

My assignment, as Senator Avel Gordly’s Chief of Staff, to lead her workgroup on Senate Bill 1041 in the 2005 legislative session….

My 2005 testimony on Kory Wright’s criminal conduct before the Oregon Senate Judiciary Committee, the Senate Rules Committee and the House State and Federal Affairs Committee….

The 2005 passage of Senate Bill 1041 on a unanimous House vote…the bill became known as Aaron’s Law after the death of my son….

I showed the judge a photograph of my family—my children and I—taken before the abduction, and a photograph of Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signing the bill into law with Aaron’s picture on his desk….

The judge asked me questions…What does Aaron’s Law do?...I described the law…explained that it provides an alternative to traditional criminal and family law procedures….

I described how both the criminal and family law systems had failed in response to the abduction of my children, and how common the problem is….

The judge asked me if there were any other legal avenues available regarding my quest for justice against Kory Wright (and the other criminals)….

I explained that custodial interference statutes have a 3-year statute of limitations, even if the children remain kidnapped, and that fact plus the inaction of law enforcement had allowed Kory Wright and the other criminals to escape justice.

I said that I had hoped that she would find Kory Wright’s conduct offensive and that she might order him jailed today on a perjury charge….

We discussed the fact that my “service” of Aaron’s Law on Kory Wright was an intentionally symbolic act, and not a legal process. I had not gone to the Hilton in order to get into a scuffle but to serve a document…there was a larger public purpose at stake.

I described my ongoing efforts to raise public awareness of the crime of abduction by persons known to the child or to members of the child’s family….

We talked about the Hilton confrontation. If he hadn’t smiled, I wouldn’t have thrown the envelope at him, I explained. He smiled, I threw it at his face….

After some deliberation, the judge handed down her order:

“Mr. Cruz, I see that you are an intelligent man, and I commend you for your work on these issues….”

She then ordered the Protective Order into effect until October 27, 2010.

Kory Wright protested…he was asking for a permanent order….

“You will have to file again next year”, the judge said.

Next case.

Looks like I will be seeing my children’s kidnapper again, this time next year….

See you again, motherfucker…!

I wonder how soon/often he is planning to set foot in Oregon…home of Aaron’s Law…?

Sean Cruz's confrontation with his childrens' kidnapper moves to Clark County courtroom!

Portland, Oregon--

At long last,14 years after Kory Wright organized the disappearance of my four children, I will face him in a court of law, in the same building where my Order for Joint Custody had originated.

Korwin Jay Wright didn’t like being served with a copy of Aaron’s Law, Oregon Senate Bill 1041 (2005), and has filed for an Order for Protection, stating under penalty of perjury that “…I feel Mr. Cruz represents an immediate threat to me, my family and others.”

The kidnapper alleges that unlawful harassment has occurred.

The document states: “Unlawful harassment means a knowing and willful course of conduct directed at a specific person which seriously alarms, annoys, or harasses, or is detrimental to such person and which serves no legitimate or lawful purpose.”

I’m glad that the subject of “a knowing and willful course of conduct” will be part of the discussion, because it describes Kory Wright’s years-long actions in violating the Order for Joint Custody that once protected my children and kept their lives orderly and secure.

I’m also open to discussion regarding whether the incident “serves no legitimate or lawful purpose.”

FYI, neither Kory Wright nor any member of his family is related in any way to my family or to my former wife’s family. His involvement in the kidnapping of my children was motivated by his own extremist religious views and enabled by his position in the Mormon church, which he used, violating a trust relationship, to further the kidnapping over a years-long period of time.

It is a felony under Oregon statute to “take, entice or keep” a child in violation of a valid joint custody order, which is exactly what Kory Wright did. There was never a police investigation, and he was never charged with the crime.

Technically, the immediate crimes he committed were Custodial Interference I and II, both serious felonies with penalties of up to five years in prison.

An investigation would have shown that Kory Wright became involved in planning the disappearance of my children and their concealment in Utah several months before the actual kidnapping took place.

If we were talking about a stolen load of lumber or a pallet of printers or a car theft operation, there would have been charges of conspiracy and other related crimes added to the docket, both state and federal, and all of the defendants in court….

But the System handles child abduction cases where a family member is involved differently from the way stranger kidnappings are handled, ignoring the roles non-family members play in carrying out the crimes, focusing on just the parents, which often obscures the real picture and allows criminal conduct to go unaddressed.

More than 200,000 US children suffer an abduction where a parent or family member is involved every year, year after year…the System fails to make a dent in the numbers.

Child abductions by any party are so heinous, so damaging to the children and so costly to the victims’ families that the best solution is to deter these kidnappings from happening in the first place.

Aaron’s Law offers new tools to deter and resolve child abduction by any parties.

Aaron’s Law is landmark legislation, unique in the nation, and I hope to see it enacted by every state in the USA.

The fact is that, without Kory Wright, my children would have never been abducted….

…which is why I stated, when I served him with SB 1041, that Aaron’s Law was written for him and for people like him….

Aaron’s Law creates a civil cause of action that can only be triggered by the commission of a serious criminal act, the violation (in Oregon) of Custodial Interference I and II.

If Aaron’s Law had been on the books in 1995, Kory Wright would have faced an immediate lawsuit and would have been liable for the damage he caused my family to suffer, including “Special and general damages, including damages for emotional distress; and punitive damages.”

His Mormon zealotry would have never been sufficient to motivate him to get involved in violating the Order for Joint Custody of a family he barely knew, not if it was going to cost him money.

More on this later….


The hearing will take place in Clark County District Court, 1200 Franklin Street, Vancouver Washington on October 16, 2009 at 9:00 a.m.

The public is invited.


================


I’ve written extensively about the kidnapping and Aaron’s Law in earlier posts on www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com and www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com

Link to Senate Bill 1041, Aaron’s Law:

http://www.leg.state.or.us/05reg/measpdf/sb1000.dir/sb1041.en.pdf

Sean Cruz confronts man who kidnapped his children

Portland, Oregon—

Fourteen years ago, Kory Wright organized the kidnapping of my four children, and today I walked into the lobby of the Vancouver Hilton Hotel and slapped him in the face with a copy of Senate Bill 1041, Aaron’s Law.

I became aware that he would be present at the Columbia Ultimate conference today, October 6, and I drove there with dual intentions: to confront this person who had done such grievous harm to my family; and to raise awareness of the issue of child abduction by persons known to the child or the child’s family.

He looked at me quizzically as I approached him, and I asked him if he remembered who I was…he was unsure….

“My name is Sean Cruz. You kidnapped my children, motherfucker.”

He remembered who I was then, smirked a little, thinking back to how good it felt to cause my children to disappear from their Oregon homes into the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, near where Kory Wright was living.

“Oregon’s Aaron’s Law was written for people like you, motherfucker,” I said, and bounced the envelope right off of his face. “You are served!” That ended the smirking.

The entire confrontation lasted less than 30 seconds. I was careful to keep to my talking points:

1. I am Sean Cruz
2. You kidnapped my children (motherfucker)!
3. You ruined six lives: mine, my mother's (who died four years later without seeing or hearing from her grandchildren again), and my four children (Natalia, Aaron, Tyler and Allie)
4. Aaron's Law was written for you, and people like you (motherfucker)!

Those were my words to Kory Wright, Mormon zealot.

To be specific, when my children disappeared on February 12, 1996, my former wife drove them directly to the home of Chris and Kory Wright, who were living east of Ogden, Utah at the time. It was at the Wright home that my children were first concealed.

I then walked out of the hotel and drove to the Vancouver Columbian where I spoke at length with a reporter, about child abduction in general and the kidnapping of my children in particular.

My essential point was that Aaron’s Law is designed to deter non-stranger abductions, but it cannot possibly serve as a deterrent if no one knows it exists, and the Oregon State Bar hasn’t produced a single lawyer who is conversant with either the law or the issue.

It is a felony to “take, entice or keep” a child in violation of a valid joint custody order, which is exactly what Kory and Chris Wright did, Mormon zealots that they are. There was never a police investigation, and they were never charged with the crime.

I’ve written extensively about the kidnapping and Aaron’s Law in earlier posts.

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 6: The little girl in the blue dress

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

How long does a father's love last? MSNBC’s Dateline asked the question….

When Richard Pulsifer arrived to see his children, 6-year-old Richard, Jr. and 3-year-old Michelle, on a summer day in 1969, he found that the house where his former wife and her new boyfriend had been living was empty.

He went to the authorities, to law enforcement but was rebuffed at every turn. No one was willing to take his children’s disappearance seriously.

The police wouldn’t take a missing persons report, because the children were presumed to be with their mother, who had full custody. She had the right to do whatever she wanted to do with the children.

A recent story on MSNBC’s Dateline tells this tragic story of a parental kidnapping, of a father’s broken heart, of a little girl who fell through the cracks in the worst possible way….

“(MSNBC): Even though Donna had full custody of the kids, Dick had never imagined that his ex-wife and her boyfriend could just take the kids and vanish without his permission. He immediately complained to local authorities.

“Dick Pulsifer: ‘I went to the social services. Told them-- I said, "They can't do that. It's illegal." And they said, "Well, yes, she can. She's got full custody; she can do what she wants."

“(MSNBC): He was helpless -- and heart sick. Where were they? It would be months, and he'd receive another blow -- news that his wife and son were accounted for, but his daughter, Michelle, was not. Somehow, Michelle was gone.”

Michelle had vanished from the face of the earth.

All that was left was a handful of photographs, memories, and a father’s love.

He began a search for his little girl that would take years, decades, lifetimes….

“(MSNBC) John Larson: ’What is life like when you have to wonder and look at every little girl you see?’

Dick Pulsifer: ‘You're always seeing that child somewhere, walking through a crowd. Wow, that could have been her, you know.’

(MSNBC) John Larson: ‘And this isn't like once a year.’

Dick Pulsifer: ‘No, it's all the time.’”

Nearly forty years after Michelle vanished, the police finally took the case of the missing little girl seriously enough to open an investigation.

See the story of Michelle Pulsifer, here:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23592454/


=========

Coming next:

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 7: Comments on “The little girl in the blue dress”

=========

Sean Cruz writes

Parental Abduction Law at http://www.parentalabductionlaw.blogspot.com

Oregon’s Aaron’s Law: Stop Parental Abductions at http://www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com

Blogolitical Sean at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com


Resources:

Take Root link: Survivors of parental and family abductions speak out

http://www.takeroot.org/flash.php

Link to Find the Children: Become aware; Save a child’s life

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2008/news/find.the.children/index.html

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 5: Oregon's anti-kidnapping law

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—Each year, according to the U.S. Department of Justice, more than 200,000 American children experience the trauma of abduction by a parent, a family member or other persons known to the victim.

Some children are abducted back and forth repeatedly, others disappear forever.

Existing state and federal laws have proven to be inadequate to deal with the problem, as the staggering numbers attest.

In all cases, the harm to the child victim is so severe that the best strategy is to prevent the abduction from taking place in the first place.

Aaron’s Law, Senate Bill 1041, passed by the Oregon legislature in 2005, is designed to provide relief to the victims of parental and family abductions and to deter parents from kidnapping their own children in the first place through financial and other sanctions.

Aaron’s Law is unique in the nation, bypassing the criminal and traditional family court approaches by creating a civil cause of action for the crime of custodial interference, which applies if the child is removed from the state of Oregon.

Aaron’s Law is named in memory of Aaron Cruz, who was abducted from Oregon along with his brother and two sisters in 1996 by his mother, other family members and several of their church associates, all members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon). Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot who is completely unrelated to any member of the Cruz family, led this group, which included David Holliday and Evelyn Taylor, Mormon officials in the Hillsboro area.

Aaron later died, essentially from long-term medical neglect, heartbreak and abandonment, alone in an empty house in Payson, Utah, where his mother had
taken him, concealed him and then left him behind.

Aaron’s Law operates as a deterrent to parental and family abductions by providing financial sanctions against all participants in the crime, those who “take, entice or keep” a child from the child’s lawful custodial parent or in violation of a joint custody order.

Aaron’s Law also operates as a deterrent by authorizing the Court to appoint legal and mental health professionals assigned to protect the child.

Aaron’s Law contains a provision authorizing the Court to require the parties to attend counseling sessions to understand the harm they are inflicting on their own children.

Aaron’s Law authorizes the court to assess the costs of the professional services to the perpetrators, an additional financial deterrent.

Aaron’s Law may apply to any Oregon child abduction occurring after the date the Governor signed the bill into law.

While this law applies only to children taken from the state of Oregon, it can serve as a model for other states.

Link to Aaron’s Law:

http://www.leg.state.or.us/05reg/measpdf/sb1000.dir/sb1041.en.pdf

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Coming next: Parental abduction wisdom, pt 6:

=========

Sean Cruz writes

Parental Abduction Law at http://www.parentalabductionlaw.blogspot.com

Oregon’s Aaron’s Law: Stop Parental Abductions at http://www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com

Blogolitical Sean at http://www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 4: Parental kidnappings up 70%

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

“’Right then, I knew my life was over….’”

“American Janet Greer lost her 3-year-old daughter, Dowsha, 12 years ago when her boyfriend took the child from Hawaii to Egypt. She had pleaded with a judge for sole custody when the unmarried couple split fearing her ex might flee. The judge refused. Her worst fear was realized when Dowsha never returned from a weekend visit with her father.

"’Right then I knew my life was over,’ recalled Greer. ‘Right then I knew he had her.’

“Greer fought for years to see her daughter, even winning a ruling in the Egyptian courts. The ruling was never enforced.” (Source: ABC News)

The U.S. State Department reports that parental abductions involving American children are rising. There were more than 1,000 new cases of American children taken by a parent to another country in 2008 — a 70 percent increase in the past two years.

There is probably a corresponding increase in the number of domestic U.S. parental abductions, but that data is difficult to find.

The U.S. Department of Justice has calculated the total number of parental abductions across the U.S. at more than 200,000 cases each year.

This figure is probably an undercount, as many parental abduction cases that are reported to local law enforcement by victims go no further than that.

In Oregon, for example, the State Police operates its Missing Children’s Clearinghouse, but the OSP rarely receives reports regarding abducted children from local police agencies and its clearinghouse site is both hard to find and updated infrequently.

http://www.oregon.gov/OSP/MCC/child_index.shtml

The unstable U.S. economy is one factor behind the increase in international parental abductions. It has led to layoffs of foreign-born workers, which might prompt a parent to return to his or her home country and take a child with them.

Other reasons include the increase in binational marriages and the combination of international travel and divorce.

“’The international tug-of-wars get even more difficult to resolve when nations
disagree on which parent should keep a child. It's not just a U.S. trend, it's a worldwide trend,’ said Julie Furuta-Toy, director of the Office of Children's Issues at the U.S. Department of State.

"’In the long term, it is the children who suffer,’ she said.”

Parental abductions are cases of extreme cruelty, where one parent’s desire to harm the other parent falls one step short of actual homicide, leading the parent to commit a criminal act despite the obvious severe harm to the child.

“Rick Paris was taken from Argentina at age 6 in the 1950s and brought to the states for polio treatment by his American mother. She told him his father and grandfather were killed in a car accident. Mother and son moved several times and she often changed their names.

“At 16, Paris learned his father was still alive. He called his father who arranged a reunion in Argentina. The two stayed close until Paris' father died two years ago. Paris believes the psychological toll on the children in abduction cases is huge, regardless of what may appear to be happy reunions.

"’Parental kidnappings are definitely one of those gifts that keeps on giving,’ said Paris. ‘It deeply and fundamentally affects your ability to trust, your ability to create meaningful relationships. It sure does stay with you forever.’

In a case that recently made some stir in the media, David Goldman has been fighting to get his son back ever since his former wife took the child to Brazil and never returned. She later died, and the boy has been living with his stepfather in Brazil.

“U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, has been advocating for Goldman. He recently introduced a bill that would remove Brazil from a duty-free trade program until Goldman's son is returned to him in the U.S.

“Since beginning his advocacy, Smith said he has heard from people across the country entangled in international child custody disputes. Goldman's fight has inspired others and brought needed attention to the issue, he said.

"’By his heroic efforts to get his son back, he's not only brought hope and renewed activity for other families, he's lifted the veil off this egregious problem for the United States Congress,’ Smith said.

"’This is a serious issue globally that Congress, the White House and the State Department has to do much more than we've done to date.’"

One of the greatest barriers to reducing the incidence of parental abductions is the complacency of the general public and of elected leaders at all levels of government.

Most can’t be bothered….


Sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=7832816

http://abcnews.go.com/WN/WorldNews/story?id=7833689&page=1

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Coming next: Parental abduction wisdom, pt 5:
=========

Sean Cruz writes

Parental Abduction Law at www.parentalabductionlaw.blogspot.com

Oregon’s Aaron’s Law: Stop Parental Abductions at www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com

Blogolitical Sean at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 3: The most dangerous kidnappers are parents

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--Parents who murder their own children shock us to the core, and cases of children abducted by strangers frighten us, move us to watch our children ever more closely. Children abducted by strangers are almost always murdered.

Both types of cases generate headlines, the shock and fright so central to who we are as human beings, the crimes so heinous, so alien to our souls, that they cut through all of the distractions, push even the news of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to the inner pages or behind the weathercast.

Recently, in the Portland Metro area alone, a mother threw her two small children off the Sellwood Bridge, drowning her son, a father in Hillsboro murdered his two children with a handgun, then turned it on himself, and a couple chose to watch their child suffer and die rather than seek the medical attention that would have saved her life.

These are parents—criminal parents—but they are by far not the only ones who use their position and power as parents to commit crimes against their own children.

Children are far more likely to be kidnapped by one of their parents than by a stranger, but those cases rarely generate interest from either the media or law enforcement.

Among the approximately 200,000 reports of child abductions that take place across the US each year, only about 100 are by strangers, by persons unknown to (you) or (your) child. The rest are by parents and other family members, and they all damage the child(ren).

We are all busy people, and if the media and the police don’t recognize a problem, don’t see a crisis situation unfolding in a particular case of a missing child, then no one else will, either.

“Experts say there is a perception among the public and law enforcement that children kidnapped by their parents are not endangered. After all, figures from the Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile and Delinquency Prevention show that only 4 percent of children abducted by their parents are physically harmed.”

See ABC News: The most dangerous kidnappers: parents

http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=91365&page=1

Some parents commit murder; some kill their children through criminal neglect; far too many others take their (your) child and disappear.

Children are most at risk of a parental or family abduction within the first five years following a divorce or separation.

My four children disappeared from Oregon 14 years ago in a kidnapping noted in The Oregonian’s August 1996 editorial “Say Yes for Kids”, published seven months after my kids were abducted. It was the only media attention the case ever generated, and it prompted no response from the police or from anyone else.

My son Aaron died later, essentially from long-term medical neglect, heartbreak and abandonment, alone in an empty house in Payson, Utah, where his mother had taken him and then left him behind.

The Oregon legislature passed Senate Bill 1041 (Aaron’s Law) in 2005, shortly after I buried my son, his arms covered with the scars of self-inflicted knife wounds, cuts he made in the months following the abduction, when he was largely under the control of Kory Wright, a Mormon zealot carrying out an old-fashioned Mormon shunning, which was the primary motive for the kidnapping.

Aaron’s Law is a landmark bill, first-in-the-nation legislation, providing both victims and Oregon courts more tools to resolve and prevent child abduction, recognizing the emotional and psychological harm that child victims suffer when kidnapped by persons they love and trust.

One of Aaron’s Law’s most important clauses authorizes the court to order counseling sessions directed at educating the parents to the harm that their conduct is inflicting on their own children.

Most parents understand the difference between what is harmful and what is not and can be fairly objective about it, but every now and then something like the Sellwood case or the Worthington case or the Hillsboro case surfaces and we are reminded that this fundamental essence of our humanity cannot be completely taken for granted.

It is far more common for a parent to kidnap a child than to commit murder, but both actions have permanent consequences.

If your ex kidnaps your child, you can expect to be utterly on your own. No one will help you look for or recover your child.

Time will pass, you will hear (or it will be unsaid) “Geez, that was years ago. You ought to move on….”

Eventually, people will forget you ever had a child.

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Coming next: Child abduction wisdom, pt 4: Parental kidnappings increasing, up 70%

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Sean Cruz writes Blogolitical Sean at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com, and Oregon’s Aaron’s Law: Stop Parental Abductions at www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com

Aaron and I, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

We were so proud of each other....

As time went by, his mother changed her personality 180 degrees, became a TBM (True Believer Mormon)....

This was the cause of great tension in our household, as I wasn't buying it....

After we moved from California to the Portland area in 1988, not long after this photograph was taken, she started representing to her new Mormon friends (she wouldn't befriend anyone else) that she had been a TBM her entire life....

Telling that story of lifelong devotion to Mormonism became an obsession with her, and the obvious contradiction that I represented was a major cause of our divorce.

She sold that story to her current husband, husband number five, who apparently went for that TBM bullshit hook, line and sinker. The happy couple, Ben and Gina Foulk, their marriage founded on a bed of lies, live near Sacramento, California.

Gina and I negotiated a divorce in 1991. The Court ordered joint custody, joint decisionmaking and joint responsibility for our children's education and medical needs.

The order specified the days and times that our children would reside with each parent, and I saw my kids an average of 180 days a year for the next five years, with daily phone contact. I wasn't going to be an every-other-weekend kind of dad.

Sometime in 1995, however, Gina and her Mormon friends and family began to scheme to kidnap our children and conceal them in Utah, to permanently sever all contact with me and with my family, and to isolate my kids and immerse them in an environment of Mormon absolutism.

It’s easy to find TBM allies in Utah, theocratic Utah, when you have a good TBM story to sell.

After the kidnapping, Aaron never smiled like this again. His heart was too full of pain, too full of tears. Betrayal will do that to you.

Children abducted by parents, by people they love, lose their ability to trust.

More on this later.

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 2: The police won't help you

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--There are strict laws on the books regarding child abduction, Oregon statutes that might serve as a deterrent to child-snatching were it not for their lax enforcement.

The non-enforcement of these laws has several causes, but the most important among them, and the most disastrous to a family severed by a kidnapping, lies in the attitudes of policing agencies, the legal profession and the courts towards the issue of parental and family abduction itself.

These attitudes shape what is possible in the real world, when your child vanishes with a family member or with the connivance of a family member.

Local law enforcement generally will not take your claim that your child was kidnapped seriously, and despite the fact that the 14th Amendment guarantees equal protection under the law, fathers are far less likely than mothers to see a priority status attached to a police report. They are going to assume that you, the father, did something wrong….

This fact alone shapes the attitudes of others (if the police aren’t concerned, why should I be?) and cuts your options down severely.

When your child disappears, the first thing you do is call 911, which brings a response of some sort from local law enforcement.

There is no statewide policy regarding how these cases are handled. It is all up to local law enforcement and the district attorney.

If you call the Oregon State Police or the FBI, they will refer you back to local law enforcement. Makes no difference if the child has been taken out of state. They will want to see a report from local law enforcement (which isn’t likely to be issued).

Under Oregon statute, in order to trigger the custodial interference laws that govern non-stranger kidnapping, one must demonstrate that the person intends to take the child “permanently, or for a protracted period of time.”

It may be clear to you that this is an actual kidnapping, clear to you that your ex will never willingly allow you to see your child again, but try telling that to the police.

They are going to want to wait, to see if either “permanently” or “protracted” takes place, even though there is no general agreement, no legal definition, on what these terms mean in terms of time, in terms of your life or your child’s life, which is slipping away….

Both terms can mean “forever.”

Parental and family abductions are the only crimes on the books with a built-in, open-ended waiting period.
If your ex stole your car, the police would be right on it, and they would haul in everyone who conspired to steal your car, and anyone who acted after the fact in a criminal capacity (more on this in a later post), and those people would be going to jail.

Despite the fact that my four children had been taken out of their schools and away from their home with me, in clear violation of a joint custody order, I was never interviewed by a detective.

In order to trigger an Amber Alert, you have to convince local law enforcement that a crime has taken place, and you need a physical description of the vehicle.

Shortly before she kidnapped my children, my former wife bought some kind of mini van, painted white. That’s all I knew, not enough information for an Amber Alert, and local law enforcement wasn’t going to look for my kids anyway.

At the time of the kidnapping, the Pacific Northwest was in the grip of a major storm, and many roads leading out of the Portland area were closed due to flooding, avalanches and downed power lines. I-84 eastbound and I-5 northbound were both cut by floods.

It seemed impossible that she could have driven anywhere, and it was unthinkable that she would have taken the kids out on the road in these hazardous conditions—but that’s exactly what she did.

Weeks passed by before I learned that my children’s abduction had been carefully planned and carried out by a group of Mormon church leaders living in three states, and I learned later still that they would stop at nothing to ensure that the abduction was permanent, and that their own roles in the crime would remain hidden (more on this in later posts).

If they had stolen any of my personal property, then the police would have gotten involved and my family would still be whole, my son alive today.

But all these criminals did was cause my four children to disappear and hide them in another state, and that leads to the issue of attitudes, for the laws are already on the books.


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Coming next: Child abduction wisdom, pt 3:

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Sean Cruz writes Blogolitical Sean at www.blogoliticalsean.blogspot.com, and Aaron’s Law at www.aaronslaw.blogspot.com