Testimony for the House Judiciary Committee in support of HB 2014, related to child abduction

March 26, 2013

By Sean Aaron Cruz

Oregon State Capitol, Salem, Oregon—

For the record my name is Sean Aaron Cruz. I am here today to testify in support of House Bill 2014, and am very grateful for State Representative Alissa Keny-Guyer’s leadership on this urgent issue.

Chair Barker, Vice Chairs Garrett and Kreiger, and members of the Committee, it is good to see so many friendly and familiar faces. I owe many of you my lifelong gratitude for your support of Senator Avel Gordly’s Senate Bill 1041 in the 2005 session, which passed on a unanimous House floor vote.

Senate Bill 1041 has since come to be known as Aaron’s Law, in memory of my late, abducted son Aaron Cruz, and I hope that someday its principles will be applied nationwide. If Aaron’s Law had been on the books in 1995, then my family would be whole and my son still alive.

However, it has been seventeen years since my four children disappeared in an abduction organized by members of a church congregation in three states, and it is my opinion that very little has changed either to deter or resolve non-stranger abductions in Oregon.

I first briefed Senator Avel Gordly to the story of my children’s abduction and to the issue in general in 2001, and she promised to work on legislative solutions. In 2002, she offered me the job as her legislative staff, and I began to work on legislation in the 2003 session, when I testified before Senate Judiciary and the Ways and Means Public Safety Subcommittee.

Ever since the 2003 session, I have been contacted by parents whose children have been abducted by the other parent, which is how I became acquainted with Mrs Charisse Laverdiere, who has traveled from Southern California to speak with you today, and their stories all have similar elements, like mine. Mrs. Laverdiere is the most recent of several dozen parents who have contacted me for advice over the years.

We are all parents of children who have been abducted by known perpetrators.

We have gotten no help from the police in large part because the children are with a parent, but there are also several statutory and institutional factors that contribute to the inaction of law enforcement and that continue to stand in the way of the recovery of our children and many others like us.

We parents of abducted children can’t find a lawyer willing to listen to our stories or who might be familiar with the issue of non-stranger child abduction in any real sense of legal expertise. I never met one. Family lawyers will tell you they don’t practice criminal law.  They want to frame it as a custody issue. If the parent can get into court, with or without a lawyer, the judge is no help, and court processes can grind out over years.

And yet there is still a child missing, a child suffering terrible abuse, emotional abuse that amounts to torture. These parents start looking for help on line and that leads them to me, from all over the state since 2003.

The status quo in 1996 when my children were abducted is much the same status quo today.

We are here today, Mrs Charisse Laverdiere and I, to describe to you the chain of events that have taken place in our lives as parents whose children were abducted from Oregon by known perpetrators.

(to Mrs Laverdiere’s testimony)

With Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first state in the nation where abducting a child creates a civil cause of action, providing new tools to deter and resolve non-stranger child abductions. It is now more than seven years after its passage and still no information about the statute appears on the Oregon State Police Missing and Exploited Children Clearinghouse website, and last summer its first known application came in the Kyron Horman case.

I have no idea how a citizen whose child has been abducted or who is in danger of being abducted would learn that the law exists or how it might be applied. It’s buried in the ORS where only a lawyer could find it.

The Kyron Horman abduction is unique in several ways. It is the largest search effort in the history of the state, and is at the same time probably the only non-stranger abducted child that Oregon law enforcement is actually looking for.

During a press conference two years ago, the Sheriff was asked if there were any other missing children besides Kyron out there, and the Sheriff responded “none that meet the criteria.”

What is the criteria, exactly? What chain of events take place when a child is reported missing or abducted? What does it take for a parent of an abducted child to be taken seriously by the Oregon State Police? Who knows?

The 2004 Senate President’s Interim Parental and Family Abduction Task Force found that no state agency—and therefore no one—knew how many Oregon children were abducted in any given period of time, because no one was tracking them. They estimated the number at several thousand, but no one knew for sure. These facts are in the Task Force’s Final Report.

I’d like also to call the Committee’s attention to the news release from the Beaverton Police Department dated May 16, 2012. More than a dozen police agencies and other governmental agencies in the US, New Zealand, Australia and Canada were involved in recovering this child, and yet the Oregon State Police is not one of them, and no information about this child, missing since December 2010, was ever posted on the OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse. What is the criteria?

There are other cases where children who have been parentally abducted from Oregon are identified on the National Clearinghouse for Missing and Exploited Children, but not on the OSP website.

What is the criteria? What is the chain of events that take place in Oregon when a child is reported abducted by a known perpetrator?

We urge your strong support for HB 2014.

Additional comments and recommendations

The 2004 Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions identified several systemic and institutional problems, among them:

(1) That “often” parents “often” take out their anger with each other through their children, and that some “even abduct their own child.” The Task Force found “that this is extremely detrimental to the emotional and mental well being of the children, and at time may even put the life of the child in danger.”

(2) The real injuries a child suffers is not recognized in current statute. “…the injury a child receives, when the child has been abducted by one of the child’s parents, does not necessarily include physical injury. The injury is more in the nature of mental trauma or mental injury. Nonetheless, the injury is real and may be even more long lasting and damaging than physical injury.”

(3) That there was a general lack of awareness among law enforcement, the courts, the bar and social service professionals, which partially explains the low priority all give to non-stranger abduction cases. This lack of awareness factors into the system’s willingness to allow the abducting parent to keep the children indefinitely, and the failure of law enforcement, the bar and court officers to understand that abductions are continuing crimes and respond accordingly.

(4) No person or entity in Oregon knew the number of non-stranger abduction cases originating in Oregon, because no agency was tracking them; there was no system to track them; A parent’s report of the abduction of their child likely went no further than the City or the County taking the police report. This is probably still the case.

Time is everything. But no one is interested. The court processes take no interest in the issue of time, the value of time in the life of a child.

No one understands that a crime is being committed, multiple crimes. The abduction of your child drains every last emotional reserve and financial resource you have.

My four children disappeared from Oregon in a church-sponsored abduction on February 12, 1996, during the Great Storm of that year, organized by Mormon church officials in three states: Oregon, Washington and Utah.

At a time when I-84 through the Gorge and I-5 at Tacoma were closed due to landslides and flooding, when my children’s friends and classmates were safe at home or in school in Washington County, members of this church group, I came to learn later, were holding my kids in a motel on the Oregon coast. They waited for the storm to clear and then took my kids to Utah, where fellow church members concealed my kids in a series of locations east of Ogden, Utah, intending to keep them from me permanently.

The Custodial Interference statute states:

ORS 163.245: “A person commits the crime of custodial interference in the second degree if, knowing or having reason to know that the person has no legal right to do so, the person takes, entices or keeps another person from the other person’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order with intent to hold the other person permanently or for a protracted period.”

And

ORS 163.257: “A person commits the crime of custodial interference in the first degree if the person violates ORS 163.245 and:

      (a) Causes the person taken, enticed or kept from the lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order to be removed from the state; or

      (b) Exposes that person to a substantial risk of illness or physical injury.”

The statutes make no exceptions for the other parent, family members or members of a church congregation.

My son Aaron died in Utah, alone and sick and without the medical attention he had needed for years, and my three surviving children continue to live in church enclaves, completely contained within my former wife’s church. The people who abducted my children got exactly what they wanted. All this despite an order for joint custody that had been in effect for five years at the time of the abduction.

Abductions have beginnings but no real endings. The damage is life long. I don’t think that there is such a thing as a happy ending, all the more reason to take steps to deter people from abducting their own children, which is the whole point to Senate Bill 1041, Aaron’s Law, and why HB 2014 is not only necessary but urgently necessary and important.

Recommendations:

[] Define “protracted” in the Custodial Interference statute. The lack of a definition contributes directly to the inaction of law enforcement. How lengthy a head start should a kidnapper have? What is a reasonable period of time?

[] Add child abduction to the statutory definition of domestic violence.

[] Recognize the abducted child’s mental and emotional injuries in statute and actual practice. Prioritize deterrence and access to medical resources.

[] Recognize abduction as a “continuing crime” in statute and actual practice.

[] Recognize that parental abductions often involve multiple perpetrators. Hold them all accountable, which is normally the case in property or violent crimes.

[] Require local law enforcement to pass all reports of missing or abducted children to the State Police Missing and Exploited Children’s Clearinghouse.

[] Add a synopsis of Senate Bill 1041 Aaron’s Law to the OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse and elsewhere.

[] Recognize nontraditional family relationships in the Custodial Interference statutes.

[] Improve education and awareness throughout the state, beginning at the state bar, law enforcement and the courts.

Attachments: Beaverton PD news release, May 16, 2012

Aaron's Law in statute: ORS 30.868

Are your children and grandchildren protected from parental, family, church-sponsored or other non-stranger abductions? Only if the child(ren) is(are) abducted from Oregon.

Talk to your legislators and Congressional delegation. Here is the model legislation:

30.868 Civil damages for custodial interference; attorney fees. (1) Any of the following persons may bring a civil action to secure damages against any and all persons whose actions are unlawful under ORS 163.257 (1)(a):

http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/030.html

Aaron's Law at work: Taking the 5th 142 times

By Sean Aaron Cruz

October 24, 2012

Portland, Oregon—

The disappearance of 8-year old Kyron Horman more than two years ago triggered the largest search effort in Oregon history. No criminal charges have been filed in the case, and police have released an age-progressed image of what they think Kyron might look like today.

Last seen in the company of his step mom, Terri Horman, the multiple searches turned up no trace of the child. Law enforcement has named no suspects or persons of interest, officially, although those terms most certainly describe Kyron’s step mom and her close friend DeDe Spicher, unofficially.

Both women have stubbornly refused to account for their whereabouts during the crucial two hours on the morning of June 4, 2010, when Kyron vanished from the face of the earth, as did these two women, albeit temporarily in their cases.

Earlier this year, with both the criminal and family law courts at a stand still, unable to move forward, Kyron’s mother Desiree Young filed a civil suit against Terri Horman, alleging that the step mom knows where Kyron is and whether he is dead or alive.

As reported in The Oregonian yesterday, DeDe Spicher invoked the 5^th Amendment 142 times during a recent deposition.

Spicher declined to answer any questions posed by Young's lawyers on Oct. 5 that involved Terri Horman, Kyron's stepmom, or Kyron -- each time asserting her Fifth Amendment constitutional right not to incriminate herself. 

Spicher also declined to answer questions about where she was on June 4, 2010. 

"Are you aware that Kyron Horman has disappeared?" asked Young's lawyer, Elden Rosenthal. 

"I'm asserting my Fifth Amendment right," Spicher replied, according to a transcript filed in Multnomah County Circuit Court. 

Spicher even declined to identify a photo of Terri Horman, or whether she knew Terri Horman's husband, Kaine Horman, Young, or had ever met Kyron. 

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2012/10/terri_hormans_friend_dede_spic.html

This civil suit is authorized by Senate Bill 1041 (2005), known as “Aaron’s Law” for my late son Aaron Cruz, who died earlier that year as a consequence of his abduction from Oregon in 1996.

With the passage of Aaron’s Law, Oregon became the first state in the nation where child abduction creates a civil cause of action, providing family members with new tools when law enforcement and the courts fail to act, and yet there is a child missing.

The civil suit filed by Kyron’s family is the first under Aaron’s Law, and thus first in the nation. “There is no other case like this,” the judge hearing the suit said, and as this process moves forward, there will be many places where precedent will be established and challenged.

Already there is the question of whether a person (Spicher) can take the 5^th in civil court to shield another person (Terri Horman) when neither has been charged with a crime or has been named by law enforcement as a suspect or person of interest.

Aaron’s Law is triggered when a person violates Oregon’s Custodial Interference I statute by knowingly and wilfully “tak(ing), entic(ing) or keep(ing) a (child) from the (child’s) lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order.”

A violation of Custodial Interference I is a Class B felony, good for up to five years in prison, but the statute is rarely enforced.

Historically, there is a high degree of certitude that a parent or family member who abducts their own child will suffer few consequences, and those only after court processes that stretch out for years and drain every economic resource and emotional reservoir available to the family.

Aaron’s Law is designed to change these circumstances.

My own four children disappeared into Utah in an abduction organized by Mormon officials in three states, and despite an order for joint custody that had kept their lives orderly and secure for five years prior to their abduction.

Aaron’s Law is designed to reach anyone, any person or organization, who provides logistical, planning, financial or any other support to the abduction of an Oregon child, through a civil process.

The civil suit empowers Kyron’s mother to depose witnesses, and DeDe Spicher, who is not a family member, unrelated to Kyron Horman in any way, connected only through Terri Horman, is about to become a very public example of the power of Aaron’s Law.

This is how Aaron’s Law will eventually have a deterrent effect.

I hope that the principles of Aaron’s Law will be enacted in every state, protecting every child in the nation. Abducted children are very nearly always taken out of their home state, and international abductions have been trending upwards for years.

If you participate in the abduction of an Oregon child, be prepared to squirm and reach for that Fifth Amendment. Think about whether it is worth it before you act.

Aaron's Law is waiting for you now.

~~~~~

Sean Aaron Cruz, serving as Oregon State Senator Avel Louise Gordly’s chief of staff, led her 2005 workgroup on parental and family abductions, which culminated in the passage of Senate Bill 1041 on a dramatic unanimous vote in the Oregon House of Representatives.

Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski signs SB 1041 “Aaron’s Law”

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.

Understanding Aaron's Law, pt 1: The Trigger

 by Sean Aaron Cruz

July 29, 2012

Portland, Oregon--

The recent civil court motions in Multnomah County in the Kyron Horman kidnapping case are the first filings under Aaron’s Law since the statute was enacted in 2005, when Oregon became the first and only state in the nation to create a civil cause of action for the crime of Custodial Interference in the First Degree.

The number one reason that it has taken so long for a case to be brought forward under Aaron’s Law is because so few people know it exists.  That is about to change, is already changing now.

There are a lot of people close to the Kyron Horman case looking at a completely new application of law right now, intruding at a time when both the criminal and family law systems are failing and time is marching on, and yet a child is still missing, and note the use of the word “intruding.”

Fewer still understand how Aaron’s Law works. The Kyron Horman case is the first of its kind in the nation, and there will be a great many legal precedents set here as the process outlined under Aaron's Law unfolds.

Attention is about to go nationwide. Believe it! There is a presidential election at stake, with a Mormon candidate. This is gonna be good! God does move in mysterious ways, and in this presidential election, He is gonna punish the wicked!

You bet Aaron’s Law is an intrusion!

Aaron’s Law was written for times like these!

Aaron’s Law gives a parent the power to intrude, the power to assert some control into a system that is failing to produce a missing child and that forces a parent to sit on the sidelines and wait, to wait perhaps forever.

Nothing works in a kidnapper’s favor more than delaying proceedings, two years so far in the Kyron Horman case.

This is a good time to explain the law:

Oregon’s landmark anti-kidnapping statute, Senate Bill 1041 “Aaron’s Law”, is triggered when “a person” commits the crime of Custodial Interference in the First Degree.

1. Who: Note that the statute applies to “a person,” making no exceptions.

“A person”…”any person”…”each person”…”every person”…all the same. This reaches to all of those religious zealots and hypocrites out there...a church shunning can very well be a kidnapping.

2. What: DO NOT take, entice, keep (or conceal) a child in violation of these criminal statutes.

“A person commits the crime of custodial interference…if, knowing or having reason to know that the person has no legal right to do so, the person takes, entices or keeps another person from the other person’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order with intent to hold the other person permanently or for a protracted period.”

3. Where: DO NOT remove the child(ren) from the state of Oregon.

4. Why not: DO NOT expose the child(ren) “to a substantial risk of illness or physical injury.”

Abduction by any person—including a parent—is known to be as abusive to the child as any other form of abuse, and is often the gateway to other forms of child abuse.

If Aaron’s Law had been on the books in 1995, then my son would still be alive today, and my family unbroken.

Here are the key elements of Oregon’s Custodial Interference laws:

ORS 163.257 Custodial interference in the first degree.

(1) A person commits the crime of custodial interference in the first degree if the person violates ORS 163.245 (Custodial Interference in the second degree) and:

(a) Causes the person taken, enticed or kept from the lawful custodian or inviolation of a valid joint custody order to be removed from the state; or

(b) Exposes that person to a substantial risk of illness or physical injury.

(3) Custodial interference in the first degree is a Class B felony.

ORS 163.245 Custodial interference in the second degree.

(1) A person commits the crime of custodial interference in the second degree if, knowing or having reason to know that the person has no legal right to do so, the person takes, entices or keeps another person from the other person’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order with intent to hold the other person permanently or for a protracted period.

(3) Custodial interference in the second degree is a Class C felony.

~~~~~

Sean Cruz is the father of four children who disappeared from their Oregon homes into Utah in a Mormon abduction in 1996.

He led the legislative work group on Senate Bill 1041 in 2005, which provides the statutory basis for the civil action filed by Kyron Horman's family.

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

SB 1041 became known as "Aaron's Law" in memory of his late son Aaron Cruz (who died in the course of his abduction) at the same time that it passed the House on a unanimous vote, and Governor Kulongoski signed the bill into law with Aaron's photograph on his desk.

Having fought through four jurisdictions in three states against a phalanx of Mormon lawyers who used every trick in the book to delay proceedings in the case of the Cruz kidnappings, Aaron's Law anticipated where the Kyron Horman case would be today.

They are going to remember you now, son....

For Kyron Horman

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

An age-progressed image is heartbreaking in so many ways

You see so much of your child's life is gone, and for what

You feel your child's pain in ways that most will never know

Along with your own




It is painful to remember the good times

Years ago, you could take a deep breath

But now your chest is too tight all the time

A certain leaden numbness

Encases your heart full of tears

And today feels just like yesterday




An artist’s idea consummately skillful

Took your breath away the first time you saw it

And now you dread the need for another

May your baby boy come home

Marking May 25, National Missing Childrens Day, in Oregon

By Sean Cruz


Portland, Oregon— National Missing Children’s Day is May 25. It is not a holiday, but the one day in the entire year that the families of thousands of missing children hope to have your attention. With very few exceptions, each grief-stricken family is entirely on its own in its search, and with few exceptions, the children were abducted by a parent or family member.

Each year, according to the US Department of Justice, more than 200,000 US children suffer the trauma of abduction by a parent or family member, some repeatedly. It is difficult to track the number of Oregon cases, because no Oregon policing agency keeps a record, not even the Oregon State Police.

An international child abduction case that originated in Oregon made the local news briefly recently and then vanished (just as the child had a year and a half before) a victim of the news cycle, before the Marenco case could illuminate the several public policy issues related to parental, family and church-sponsored kidnappings that are the real story here.

The National Center for Missing and Children currently identifies 17 Oregon children who are not listed as missing on the Oregon State Police Missing Children’s Clearinghouse website. Although more than a dozen international police agencies were involved in recovering the Marenco child, he never appeared on the OSP list.

The recovery of the Marenco child required the cooperation of courts in Washington County and in New Zealand, and “The following agencies/organizations have assisted the Beaverton Police Department with the Marenco case: Interpol, US Department of State, US Customs and Border Protection, US Marshals Service, US Federal Air Marshals Service, US DHS-ICE Homeland Security Investigations , National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, Washington County District Attorney's Office, Washington County Sheriff's Office, Forest Grove Police Department, Government Agencies in New Zealand, Australia and Canada , San Francisco Police Department , San Mateo County Sheriff's Office.”

International abductions are on the rise due to corresponding increases in international marriages and child-producing relationships, and subsequent divorces and breakups. The convenience of international travel also plays a role, as do religious and cultural differences between the couples.

The media is rarely interested in reporting parental and family abductions, largely because law enforcement rarely acts, and there is so much else going on to fill the newscast or the page. After a day or two, a parental abduction story is old news if it was ever news at all. The family is on its own.

In fact, the only child to make the OSP list in the past five years is Kyron Horman. The Horman case also illustrates how difficult and painful child kidnappings are to resolve. The focus needs to be on prevention and deterrence.

The discrepancies in the lists of missing kids indicates that the Oregon State Police is not involved in looking for any of them, and also illustrates how easily a parentally-abducted child can slip through the cracks.

The fact that so many agencies were involved in recovering the child from New Zealand demonstrates how difficult it is to recover a child abducted to a foreign nation, even if both nations speak English and have similar court systems.

These facts, and the finding by the 2004 Oregon Senate President’s Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions that child abduction by any person is child abuse, point to the need to enact policies that discourage people from abducting their own children, or a family member’s children, or through a church-sponsored shunning/abduction, in the first place.

For the purposes of marking National Missing Children’s Day in Oregon, why don’t we take a look at those 17 Oregon kids who are missing enough to be listed on the National Center’s website, but not missing enough to be listed by our own Oregon State Police.

What does a missing kid have to do to get some attention from the Oregon State Police?

Nightmares of an abducted child, Terri Horman and the Casey Anthony trial

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

Some minutes after I woke from the nightmare this morning, I wrote some lines while the memory was still fresh. I’ve had several hundred of these since my four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction more than fifteen years ago, but there was something about this one that felt different, and it took some time for me to put it together….

This, I came to realize, was the first nightmare to trouble my sleep since the conclusion of the Casey Anthony trial, the young mother who couldn’t find the time to report the disappearance of her 3-year-old daughter Kaylee, whose skeletal remains were found months later, her lips and nose duct-taped shut, packed into a plastic bag and dumped by the side of the road.

What was different about this dream was that where my ex-wife Gina Foulk was in it, she had that emotionless Casey Anthony/Terri Horman demeanor, was indifferent to the fact that a small child was missing, although clearly unhappy with the inconvenience resulting, and aggravated at the notion that she might be thought somehow lacking in her role as a mother, an epic of pathological self-absorption….

Nicole Kidman had that look, too, in two of her movie roles: To Die For, and The Others. She was a dead ringer for my ex in those movies, almost like she’d studied scenes from our lives, watched home movies, in preparing for her parts.

Seeing the images of Kaylee Anthony over the course of the search, arrest and trial was always painful for me, and I never lingered on any of them or the horror story itself, but it was always there, has been there since July 2008, when Kaylee’s grandmother contacted the police and the media took an interest….

I saw my baby girl in every one of those pictures of Kaylee Anthony…so many memories triggered…Allie was a week past her eighth birthday on the day the Mormons took her away from the father who loved her, and set her on a path of three Mormon stepdads in three states. Memories of her early childhood were still very fresh.

These are the lines I wrote earlier this morning:

“Nightmares of an abducted child...struck early this morning....


“Sometimes they are focused on a single child, sometimes all four...


“This one was about Allie, missing with her mother for days in the dream, and I was reporting this to the police, over and over...feeling all the shock and horror...over and over...desperate...talking to the police, over and over...then I woke up, exhausted...and the nightmare is real....”

In actual fact, when my four children disappeared from Oregon in February 1996, they were driven more or less directly although by a circuitous route to the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, somewhere in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, who had been in on planning the abduction for months beforehand.

While all of their friends were in school and safe at home, the Mormons were shuttling my children from place to place, knowing that they were violating a joint custody order that had been in place for five years, which is a serious felony, worth five years in prison, but infrequently and very poorly enforced.

The statute of limitations expires on these crimes after three years, even if the child is not recovered. Try to make some sense of that reality….

My children never recovered from the trauma academically or emotionally; and, of course, Aaron is dead, left behind ill and alone in that crappy little Mormon town on the edge of the desert, Payson Utah….

Years later, after many fruitless online searches, one panned out… I located kidnapper Kory Wright right here, where he works at Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver:

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

I counted coup….

But today my thoughts are still buffeted by this most recent nightmare…and that look in these eyes….

http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/contact.nxg

…the look of pathological self-absorption, epic…. You would never know there was a child in distress from these people.

Your child disappeared...then what?

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

Last night, KATU-TV’s Steve Dunn asked viewers the question “What would you do if your child suddenly disappeared?” and in the broadcast described what Kaine Horman, whose 8-year-old son Kyron disappeared nearly a year ago, is doing this weekend.

315 days after his son was abducted, Mr. Horman told reporter Anna Canzano: “Well, there’s only one day to me that has any significance, and that’s June 4, 2010. Every day after that is pretty much as painful as the one before it.”

I know that feeling well…. When asked over the years about how I felt about missing birthdays and other special days, I would respond that those days are just like every other day, only more so….

My life changed forever on February 12, 1996, when my four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction, Mormon zealots and my former wife carrying out a Mormon shunning. This is what can happen when you disagree too openly with Mormon Borg-like intrusion into your family life…the church is very highly organized to sever Mormon family members from contact with non-Mormon members of their own family.

Just ask the grieving parents and grandparents of MormonsHMC (Mormons Have My Child)….

I counted the days, marked out on my calendars, month after month, year after year, 1876 days lived one day at a time, before I finally stopped counting five years and two months after my children were kidnapped….

But enough about me….

Find out what the father of Kyron Horman is doing, and think about what you would do if your child was abducted….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COP0kWJW-kI&feature=player_embedded#at=21

KATU-TV news:

PORTLAND, Ore. - When was the last time you cherished getting your kids ready for school, walking them to the bus stop or tucking them in at night?

Those are the kinds of things - the simple things we sometimes easily take for granted - that Kyron Horman's dad, Kaine Horman, says he misses about his son.

"The days I miss the most are him in one arm and Kiara (his daughter) in the other arm, just sitting on the couch together," Kaine told us.

Kyron disappeared from Portland's Skyline School on June 4, 2010. His stepmother, Terri Horman, has not been named a person of interest or suspect in the case but she has been the focus of the investigation. She is believed to be living in Roseburg with her parents. Kaine still believes she knows something.

While police continue looking into the case and searchers continue heading out to try to find any trace of Kyron, Kaine is keeping his son's name and face out there in the hopes that someday his boy will be found. Kaine was at the Expo Center on Friday and plans to be there throughout the weekend, both at the KidFest and at the Portland Garage Sale.

The last days of Aaron Cruz, pt 3: Aaron's Law: A very personal piece of legislation

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

We were standing near the top of the hill, where my son’s gravesite lay waiting, that sunny day in May, at a place called El Dorado Hills, California.

I had never seen this place before. It was a field of strangers. No friends or family relations were buried here, the cemetery itself no more than 12 years old. There were no connections here, no family traditions, no history here, he was alone here. It was his mother’s choice to bury him here, to park his body here alone. My son was about to be parked here in this place.

I listened dumbfounded as my son’s mother continued her tearless matter-of-fact story, speaking about Aaron, about how he was sick back there in Payson, Utah, seriously ill; about how she had hoped he would agree to move to Hawaii and live with his sister, that maybe living in Hawaii would be good for his health; “But,” she said, “I didn’t think he was going to make it.”

She didn’t think he was going to make it? Did she just say that she didn’t think he would live? Yes! I was stunned and sickened. Again. Only a few days earlier, she had described the last time she had seen Aaron alive, about how he was sick and feverish and how she had left him alone with a sack of groceries and some Heavenly Father stories so she could join her new Mormon husband—the fifth time is the charm they say—who was waiting impatiently across town to get back to his dental practice in—El Dorado Hills!

So they had left Aaron alone, sick and feverish, that part was clear, and we were here in El Dorado Hills because it was convenient, because it was a good place to park, but most of all we were here because Aaron had died from lack of medical care….

My son’s mother plainfaced told the gathering on this grassy knoll that she did not think Aaron would live to board a flight to Hawaii, he was acutely ill, he was desperately ill. She thought he might die before he got out of Payson, Utah, where she had left him behind, and she was telling us all about it.

“I didn’t think he was going to make it”, she said, and what was not said was that she had made no effort at all to get my son medical care, not in Utah where she had left him behind, and not in El Dorado Hills, where she was busy with her new life now, in El Dorado Hills where there was no room for Aaron, not while he was alive, just this patch of hillside….

Aaron had needed hospitalization, urgently, and this was no secret, he had been ill for years, suffering there isolated in that rat hole in the Mormon desert, where they had drained the life out of him rather than let him be happy and free to be with me, to be himself, that’s the real Mormon way….

“I didn’t think he was going to make it”, she said, and then she assured us all that she had seen that Aaron knew all about Heavenly Father before he died, she had done her job you see, shedding no tears, she was devout, and that’s what counts….

Gina had told me that her new white-haired husband number five Ben Foulk had a dental practice but that he was mostly retired, that he had sung with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which must have made him a real catch in Mormon country I suppose, and that his ex-wife was putting a lot of pressure on his wallet, and this was the general impression I had at the time, which turned out to be only a partly true story….

I was angry with her, could not understand why her husband had taken no interest in his new wife’s son, in obvious critical need of medical care, didn’t this man have a medical degree?

She did not want to get her new husband upset over Aaron, she told me, speak-his-own-mind unMormon non-Mormon Aaron. She had told me in the hospital that Ben Foulk wouldn’t have understood Aaron, would have been impatient with his drug history and she did not want to upset the great man, former singer in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir….

This explained why Aaron had received no invitation to travel to El Dorado Hills.

Years later, a couple of years ago, I learned about the string of senior care centers that Ben and Gina Foulk own and operate, offering skilled medical care to those in their tender years….

El Dorado Hills Senior Care Village

Oak Haven Senior Care Village

Oak Creek Senior Care

Oak Grove Senior Care

Oak Hill Senior Care

Oak Ridge Senior Care

"Located in beautiful El Dorado Hills, California"

• 24-Hour Responsive, Compassionate Care
• Fresh Healthy Home Cooked Meals
• Private Rooms with Private Bathrooms
• Enjoyable Social and Recreational Activities
• Music, Arts, Crafts,  and Games
• Assistance with Bathing, & Personal Hygiene
• Medication Management & Assistance
• Manicured Landscaping with Paved Walkways
• Scheduled Transportation to Appointments
• Personal Housekeeping and Laundry Services
• On-Site Salon Services

“Please take time to visit us and see for yourself why El Dorado Hills Senior Care Villageis considered one of the best resident care facilities for the elderly in the El Dorado Hills area,” so the brochure reads….

She had hoped that someone else would take care of Aaron, someone besides herself, had hoped he would just get on that plane to Hawaii and be his sister’s problem. That’s the way she was, our children having spent their entire lives making the world happy for their mother, no relief from that burden once they were taken into concealment in Utah, not then, not since, not now. They are locked into the Mormon world, keeping the world safe for Mom, fighting against evil non-Mormons….

Aaron Cruz suffered a seizure and died in Payson Utah after having run out of his prescription meds, his anti-seizure meds, alone in his mother’s left-behind empty house. He had also probably been unable to get to the methadone clinic a dozen miles away in Orem, adding to his suffering. His mother grabbed all of Aaron’s medical records, where they remain concealed behind a wall of Foulk lawyers.

I was back at my desk in the Oregon Senate Monday morning following the burial, where I led the workgroup on Senator Gordly’s landmark child abduction bill, SB 1041.

Senate Bill 1041 had its first hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 25, National Missing Children’s Day, where I testified on the abduction of my children and the death of my son.

Senate Bill 1041, creating a new path to prevent and resolve child abductions through a civil process outside of both the family law and criminal law systems that routinely fail to protect children from non-stranger abductions, would require ten major rewrites and would benefit from the near-record length of the 2005 legislative session, would need every hour of that time. No other state in the US has a law like this….

On August 1, 2005, the Oregon Senate passed SB 1041 on a 26-3 vote, the same day that I received the Utah Medical Examiner’s report on Aaron’s death, from “undetermined” causes. It was waiting in the mail for me when I got home that night. The report identified my son as “white.” That would need correction.

Passing the Senate was an important step but we were only just arriving at the legislative halfway point, and it had taken months to get here. SB 1041 would yet have to get through the entire House process, and the end of the 2005 session could come at any time. We were entering the session’s final week. There were only a handful of bills still alive in the building, and I held no realistic hope that the bill would see the House floor this biennium.

The following evening, however, as Senator Gordly and I prepared to leave the building, we received a call from staff that the House State and Federal Affairs Committee would hear SB 1041 in just 15 minutes. Another two minutes and we would have missed the call and the hearing. We put our briefcases down and walked across the Capitol building to testify.

Representative Linda Flores, a member of the HSFA Committee, took a particular interest in the bill as the hearing unfolded, disclosing that her grandchild had disappeared into Mexico in a parental abduction and had been missing for a year. Her support was crucial, and the bill was voted out of Committee with a “do pass” recommendation.

After the hearing, we first started referring to SB 1041 as Aaron’s Law. It was a very personal piece of legislation. But the session was coming to an end and time had run out….

The next morning, on August 3, in a stunning surprise, Senator Gordly and I arrived at the Capitol to learn that SB 1041 was scheduled for the House floor. Carried by Representative Flores, the Oregon House passed SB 1041, now called “Aaron’s Law”, named for my son Aaron Cruz, on a dramatic unanimous end-of session vote, 59-0 with one member absent.

I stood in the side aisle and received the congratulations of many of the House members. It was a good day for justice, for children at risk of parental and family abduction, although the legislation did not cover children who had already been kidnapped, like my own.

The legislature adjourned the following day.

To be continued….

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

Sean Cruz led the workgroup on Oregon’s landmark anti-kidnapping statute Senate Bill 1041 “Aaron’s Law”, named for his late son Aaron Cruz.

The provisions of the bill resulted in large part from the multiple failures of both the family law and criminal law systems in the wake of the abduction of his four children.

With Aaron’s Law, Oregon is the only state in the nation where abducting a child creates a civil cause of action.

Under Aaron’s Law, any victim can hold his or her abductor(s) accountable in civil court, including those who provided logistical, financial or planning support to the abduction or who otherwise participated materially in the crime, “enticing, taking or keeping” a child in violation of felony Custodial Interference I.

The civil process requires proof “by a preponderance of the evidence” instead of the much stricter “beyond a reasonable doubt” requirement for conviction in criminal court.

Local law enforcement agencies rarely invest the time and resources required to reach the higher evidentiary standard in parental and family abduction cases, and there the investigations usually end, opening the door for the kidnappings to take place, for the actors to escape justice.

This fact applies in every state in the US, where each year more than 12,000 parental and family abductions lasting longer than six months take place, with lifelong consequences for all of the victims.

The system itself enables the abductions.

Aaron’s Law anticipates that defendants will lawyer up and that their lawyers will use every legal means to protect their clients, to buy time, to keep justice at bay for as long as the system permits, which is indefinitely, as the Kyron Horman kidnapping currently getting some national attention demonstrates fairly conclusively.

I had to fight against a dozen lawyers in three states, mostly representing myself, year after year, losing every time, as the lawyers won delay after delay, buying long stretches of time for my children’s abductors, despite an Order for Joint Custody that had been in effect for five years at the time my children vanished.

Aaron’s Law provides for the appointment of mental health and legal professionals to protect the abducted child and authorizes the judge to assign the costs to the party or parties who are the cause of the problem.

Aaron’s Law takes the additional step of authorizing the judge to order the parties into counseling sessions directed at educating the parties to the harm that their conduct is causing the children, at their own expense.

These provisions are designed to address the real-life consequences of parental and family abductions and to deter the parties from carrying out the kidnapping in the first place.

Had Aaron’s Law been on the books in 1995, the Cruz family abduction would not have taken place and Aaron would be alive today. The Mormon non-family members, the Mormon Bishops and other officials who participated in the abduction would not have risked the consequences of Aaron’s Law.

Chris and Kory Wright, Bishop David Holliday, Bishop Donald Taylor and Relief Society President Evelyn Taylor would have all been subject to Aaron’s Law, all ordered financially liable for the damages, all subjected to the public humiliation of counseling directed at educating them to the harm their Mormon absolutism was causing my children and my family.

Aaron’s Law would have been a significant deterrent.

Once the Cruz kidnapping had begun, however, there was no way for them to end it without consequence, and my children’s conversion to Mormonism became their most important line of defense. I would never see my children again except under circumstances under Mormon control. They would never leave Utah except under Mormon supervision.

Aaron was too independent-minded to buy into their force-fed Mormonism, too much like his father, and they made him pay for that in Utah, where his despair became so complete that he began slicing up his arms with a knife at the age of fifteen.

Sean hopes to see the provisions of Aaron’s Law applied nationwide, that it might help reduce the number of parental and family abductions from its rate of more than 200,000 child victims a year to zero. More than 12,000 of those abductions last longer than six months, with lifelong consequences for all of the victims.

He also believes that Aaron’s Law provides the legal means for victims of child sex trafficking to hold their pimps and other abusers financially accountable for their crimes, having violated the Custodial Interference I statute.

No information about Senate Bill 1041 currently appears on the Oregon State Police Missing Children Clearinghouse website, five years after its passage.

There is much work yet to be done on this issue.

Oregon's Museum of Missing Children and the child sex trade

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

You are probably not aware that the Oregon State Police maintains a Museum of Missing Children.

Created in 1989, it maintains such a low profile that I did not learn it existed until the summer of 2004, eight long years after my four children had disappeared from Oregon, on their way to concealment in a series of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah.

I discovered the OSP Missing Children Clearinghouse website while preparing my testimony for the Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions, which held four meetings that year.

It was a shocking discovery, my first clue to the fact that no Oregon law enforcement agency maintains a list of missing or abducted children, not then and not now (see “Abducted child vs stolen car: A problem of priorities” for further discussion).

One would think that the OSP Missing Children Clearinghouse would have such a list, collected from and shared with local law enforcement agencies throughout the state, but that is far from the case.

The site contains a scant 41 names. Some have been missing for decades. The only name added in the past three years is Kyron Horman, last seen in the company of his stepmom, Terri Horman, in June.

Yet Portland has been making the national news recently for its prominence in the child sex trade trafficking business.

In September, Sharyn Alfonsi reported on ABC World News:

“Though Portland, Oregon is considered one of the most livable cities in the U.S., it also has a reputation as the national hub for child sex trafficking.

“In today's Conversation, ABC's Diane Sawyer and Sharyn Alfonsi talked about Alfonsi's trip to Portland and why middle-class children are getting recruited in a city with the largest legal commercial sex trade (per capita) in the U.S.

“Alfonsi visited the 82nd Avenue strip, also known as "The Track," where there are more than 100 massage parlors and strip clubs. She interviewed child victims their parents and even the pimps.”

These reports are clearly at odds with the OSP list. It is not known what set of circumstances would cause a missing or abducted child’s name to appear on the OSP website, but it would begin with a report from local law enforcement.

Most of the photographs of the 41 missing children on the OSP website appear to be school pictures, and there is a nostalgic sense of looking at old yearbooks, at moments frozen in time, as one gazes at these faces, all but one, Kyron Horman, completely forgotten by all but the once-child’s surviving family members.

There is no cold case squad for missing or abducted children; for most, there isn’t even a warm case squad. If they are still alive, most of these faces belong to adults now, and one can be sure that law enforcement isn’t looking for children-now-adults.

These are photos for a museum, with little effective purpose other than to underscore the fact that abductions are forever, that these are continuing crimes, crimes without end, regardless of the ages of the victims.

To be sure, the OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse suffers from inadequate funding, a condition made permanent by the voters themselves when they amended the Constitution in the 1980’s to shift funding from the State Highway Fund to the General Fund, and then made a habit of continually underfunding the agency, biennium after biennium.

Efforts to recover Oregon’s missing and abducted children and to make a dent in the child sex trade that is currently flourishing here are surely hampered by the failure to prioritize the children, a fault shared by state and local law enforcement agencies and by successive legislatures.

The most recent OSP Annual Performance Progress Report posted on the agency website makes no mention of missing children, nor does its proposed Key Performance Measures for the 2009-2011 biennium.

The OSP and the Department of Justice assured the Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions in 2004 that they would implement a rule requiring that all Oregon local law enforcement agencies report all cases of missing or abducted children to the OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse, because they were not doing so on their own.

They never implemented the rule, making this a good time to remind the Oregon legislature and law enforcement agencies around the state, as they plan for the coming 2011 budgeting bloodbath, of the mission of the Oregon State Police Missing Children’s Clearinghouse:

“The mission of the Missing Children Clearinghouse is to receive and distribute information on missing children to local law enforcement agencies, school districts, state and federal agencies, and the public.  In 1989,the Oregon legislature mandated that OSP establish and maintain a missing children clearinghouse.

“The goal of the Missing Children Clearinghouse is to streamline the system, serving child victims and their families by providing assistance to law enforcement agencies and the public.”

Lest they continue to be forgotten, the names of Oregon’s 41 missing children:

The earliest name on the list is Brian page, missing since 1975

Christi Farni and Edward Nye comprise the Class of 1978

Jerry Johnson has been missing since 1982.

Joan Hall vanished in 1983

William Gunn disappeared in 1984

Jeremy Bright and Duane Fochtman have been missing since 1986

Walter Ackerson, Kacey Perry and Rachanda Pickle, Class of 1990

Thomas Gibson made the list in 1991

Ashlyn Wilson vanished in 1995

Annalycia Cruz was an infant weighing 14 pounds when she disappeared in 1996

Aryssa Torabi and Derrick Engebretson, Class of 1998

Five children disappeared in 2001: Shausha Henson, Yuliana Escudero, Kami Vollendroff, Eugene Hyatt and Shaina Kirkpatrick

Carlos Cortez-Leon vanished in 2002

Five more children disappeared in 2004: Karla Coronado, Miriam Cruz-Torres, Schnee Bedford, and siblings Takoda and Tiana Weed

Narcisa Bernadino has been missing since 2005

Five children made the list in 2006: Samuel Boehlke, Nieves Izquierdo-Olea, Esmerelda Salazar-Penaloza, Luis Adrian-Olea, and Yeni Fuentes-Garcia

Seven children vanished in 2007: Jesus Marina-Mendoza, Keely Gigoux, Maria Hidalgo, sisters Savanah and Sierra Ontiveros, Jamie Wiedeman and Jacob Thorpe

According to the OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse, no Oregon children were reported missing in 2008, 2009 or 2010, until Kyron Horman was abducted in June 2010.

Tell that to Diane Sawyer and Sharyn Alfonsi….


===========

Sean Cruz led the workgroup on Oregon’s landmark anti-kidnapping statute Senate Bill 1041 “Aaron’s Law”, named for his late son Aaron Cruz. The provisions of the bill resulted in large part from the multiple failures of both the family law and criminal law systems in the wake of the abduction of his four children.

The bill was sponsored by Senator Avel Gordly and passed on a dramatic end-of-session unanimous House vote in 2005.

With Aaron’s Law, Oregon is the only state in the nation where abducting a child creates a civil cause of action.

Under Aaron’s Law, any victim can hold his or her abductor(s) financially accountable in civil court, including those who provided logistical, financial or planning support to the abductor(s) or who otherwise participated materially in the crime.

Sean hopes to see the provisions of Aaron’s Law applied nationwide and reduce the number of parental and family abductions from its rate of more than 200,000 child victims a year to zero.

He also believes that Aaron’s Law provides the legal means for victims of child sex trafficking to hold their pimps and other abusers financially accountable for their crimes, having violated the Custodial Interference I statute.

No information about Senate Bill 1041 appears on the OSP website.

Abducted child vs stolen car: A problem of priorities

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

“Guns drawn, everyone out and down on the ground!”

That’s how the officer described what would happen if the police encountered whoever was driving my freshly-stolen car, just last week.

He wanted me to know this because, although finding the car myself would be extremely unlikely, it does happen, and if I did happen to find it, I should report that fact before driving it anywhere, because I could also find myself facing an abrupt out-of-the-car-and-down-on-the-ground-at-gunpoint situation, and however unlikely that might be, it would be good advice to keep in mind.

Less than two hours after I had reported it stolen, information about my recently-departed red Subaru was already in the Law Enforcement Database and police agencies had been alerted from the Canadian border down to Mexico, and from the Oregon coast eastward to the Mississippi River.

As I listened to the officer, I reflected back nearly fifteen years ago, when I had reported the disappearance of my four children to local law enforcement, taken in what I would learn was a Mormon abduction as much as it was a parental and family abduction, and how differently law enforcement handled the case.

The bottom-line point I want to make here is that while Oregon law enforcement agencies maintain and share lists of stolen vehicles, there is no comparable list of abducted children anywhere throughout the state.

This dichotomy exposes one of the major gaps that abducted children fall through, particularly if the suspected kidnapper is a parent or family member.

The structural problem lies in the fact that local law enforcement agencies handle each case of abducted or missing children in their own way, with little or no sharing of information with other agencies or with the Oregon State Police Missing Children’s Clearinghouse.

The OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse has added only one new name to its short list in the past three years.

The Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions became aware of the problem in 2004 and considered legislation to correct it, but was dissuaded as reported to the Senate President:

“The Task Force considered legislation that would have required that all local law enforcement agencies report missing children to the Oregon State Police Missing Children’s Clearinghouse.

“However, after the State Police and the Department of Justice met and discussed the issue, they determined that the State Police could obtain this information by an administrative process that will automatically notify the Missing Children’s Clearinghouse of all reports of missing children made by state, county and local law enforcement agencies. Consequently, the Task Force decided that this legislation is not needed.” –Final Report, Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions, 2004.

It is important to understand what is being stated here:

1. The Task Force wanted to require that all Oregon local law enforcement agencies report all cases of missing or abducted children to the OSP Missing Children’s Clearinghouse, because they were not doing so on their own.

2. The OSP stated that they could get the information from local law enforcement by administrative rule, convincing the Task Force not to press legislation.

3. The OSP never implemented the rule, which would have created a list of all cases of abducted or missing children reported in Oregon.

The Task Force determined that Oregon has its per capita share of the more than 200,000 cases of parental and family abductions that take place in the USA each year, yet the Oregon State Police has added only one name, that of Kyron Horman, to its Missing Children’s Clearinghouse list in the past three years.

A few months ago, a father from southern Oregon whose 3-year-old daughter went missing with the child’s mother in July contacted me. Local law enforcement had told him that his missing child did not “meet the criteria” for any actual action by law enforcement, including adding his missing child to the State Police list of missing Oregon children, or notifying law enforcement in other jurisdictions of the missing child…and yet there was a child missing….

The phrase “does not meet the criteria” struck me when I took the call, because I was already planning to write about the subject, which came up during a press conference on the Kyron Horman abduction on July 23, when Sheriff Dan Staton
responded to a series of questions, including this one:

Q: How many other children are considered missing/endangered in Multnomah County at this time, aside from Kyron? 


“There are no other cases that meet this criteria,” he said.

“This criteria” may have included the fact that one of Kyron’s close family members is a police detective, giving the family instant credibility with law enforcement.

Coupled with the fact that Kyron’s disappearance was originally thought to be a stranger abduction (since no one else was missing), the family’s call to 911 quickly led to the largest search for a missing child in the history of the state.

The OSP could hardly ignore that.

The Oregon State Police Missing Children Clearinghouse maintains a list of abducted or otherwise missing children, which stands currently at 41 children.

More than half of these children have been missing for decades, and the only child that has “met the criteria” to make the OSP list in the past three years is Kyron Horman….

The US Department of Justice has reported no decrease in the number of abducted children, tallied at more than 200,000 annually for more than a dozen years, signaling that not enough is being done to address the problem.

People abduct their own children or other family members in large part because they are likely to get away with it, to suffer no consequences for their part in the crime, partially explaining why the number is so high.

The failure of law enforcement to utilize the same technological resources that enable them to instantly notify agencies across every jurisdictional level or locale about my stolen Subaru, to reach the same agencies with reports of abducted or missing children is difficult enough to understand.

The Task Force report documents the fact that OSP and the Department of Justice became aware of both the problem and the solution through the course of the Task Force’s work, and yet have done nothing to correct it.

We all live complicated lives. Imagine for a moment how complicated your life would be if your child was abducted, and you found out that your child’s’ name wasn’t on the list, because there was no list.

It is not a question of knowledge or awareness; the Task Force report and the OSP’s addition of just a single name in the past three years indicates that this is a problem of policy, a problem of priorities, a matter of choosing to value stolen property over stolen lives.

--Sean Cruz, November 2010

Kyron Horman, the List of Abducted Children and "Meeting the Criteria", part 1

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

Every now and then a child is abducted somewhere in Oregon, and some weeks or months later, I receive a phone call from the child’s parent….

Their story is always the same: It has been weeks or months since they last knew the location of their child…the child disappeared with the other parent, who has fled the state…they’ve been to the police…they’ve been to the courts…they cannot find anyone in the system who is willing to help…the media doesn’t see a reason to get involved…and yet their child is still missing….

They contact me because they have been searching for help on line, and their search has led them to Aaron’s Law, Oregon’s landmark 2005 anti-kidnapping statute, named for my late son Aaron Cruz, and to my blogs, and they’ve read about the law, and they are calling me because they are desperate for advice….

Most don’t have the money to hire a lawyer, much less the resources to hire a private investigator to go out and find their abducted child, and they are mostly men, men who are trying to keep their lives steady while facing the reality, the horror, that they may never see their child again….

Some, like the most recent case, a father who called me a week ago from southern Oregon whose 3-year-old daughter went missing in July, have been told by local law enforcement that their missing child does not “meet the criteria” for any actual action by law enforcement, including adding their missing child to the State Police list of missing Oregon children, or notifying law enforcement in other jurisdictions of the missing child…and yet there is a child who is missing….

The phrase “does not meet the criteria” struck me when I took the call, because I was already planning to write about the subject, which came up during a press conference on the Kyron Horman abduction on July 23, when Washington County Sheriff Dan Staton responded to a series of question, including this one:

Q: How many other children are considered missing/endangered in Multnomah County at this time, aside from Kyron?

“There are no other cases that meet this criteria,” he said.

The Oregon State Police Missing Children Clearinghouse maintains a list of abducted or otherwise missing children, which stands currently at 41 children.

More than half of these children have been missing for decades, and the only child that has “met the criteria” to make the list in the past three years is Kyron Horman….

The Oregon State Police website has a “spotlight” featuring five of these missing children, with Kyron’s name at the top of the list:

Samuel Boehlke has been missing for just over four years.

Jeremy Bright has been missing since 1986.

Karla Coronado has been missing for more than six years.

Carlos Cortez-Leon has been missing for eight years and two weeks.

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


At the bottom of the Spotlight feature is a link labeled “Click here to see all of Oregon’s missing children” that takes you to the page where 41 children are identified, where 40 of those children are the same children, year after year, where the Oregon State Police declares that these are all of the missing children, there are none other to be worried about….

But that list does not come close to identifying “all” of Oregon’s missing children, and it never has…it contains only the names of those children who have “met the criteria”….

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has a list of missing Oregon children, but it is a different list....

At the same time, law enforcement is aware that Oregon has its proportional share of parentally and family-abducted children, a number that the US Department of Justice calculates at more than 200,000 children a year, nationwide; you can do the math….

The fact is that no one has a list of all of Oregon’s missing and abducted children, no one…. No law enforcement agency in the state is required to keep or maintain a list, and so no list of missing children exists….

Only the list that “meets the criteria”….