For the Lost Blog

Although this article about Luna Fox is over a month old, it is still relevant and I have several reasons for posting it.

Link to article

A Kailua-Kona man who spent much of the past three years in courts from Hawaii to the Netherlands attempting to regain custody of his daughter finally did so last month.

On Oct. 8, William Fox, 31, was informed by Dutch authorities that his 6-year-old daughter, Luna Fox, had been located and admitted to a hospital in Deventer, Netherlands, suffering from complications related to Type-1 diabetes.

Fox had not seen the child since December 2006.

This article is of interest for several reasons. One is that it shows the mindset of an abductor – the e-mails from Von Amstel insist on sole custody and full possesion of Luna’s passport. This indicates a desire for control of custody over anything else – while she tries to justify her actions in several different ways, ultimately she is not concerned with the overall welfare of her child. (There are also no claims of abuse, either then or now, so that can be ruled out as a motivating factor.) Second it shows court action, and the correct ruling. I have often said that if an abductor is a foreign citizen and they flee to their home country, they usually win over the non-citizen parent, a phenomenon I have dubbed “citizenship rule.” The third, most chilling aspect, is that of the circumstances of recovery. Luna was in school at the time and could receive treatment for type one diabetes when it was noticed. Type one is the kind that requires insulin injections and is typically more serious than type two. It is fatal if untreated. Had Luna and her mother been on the run and hiding, would her mother have recognized the signs and gotten treatment? Or would she have died in that time, or gone into a diabetic coma and been seriously harmed? This is a happy ending, but it brings the specter of a much darker one. I hope that I will not ever post a story of this type with a more tragic ending.