For the Lost Blog

Recently there were two recoveries in family abduction cases not on the For the Lost site, those of Anna and Hopi Gray, twins abducted by their mother from Arkansas, and Karen, Laura, and Leigh Matusiewicz, abducted by their father and grandmother from Delaware. In both articles I have provided links to, there are comments on them. In both cases, a commentator insinuates that the parent must have had a good reason for running off. But in the Matusiewicz article, those people are far outnumbered by the ones who say the dad is scum and should be punished for his crime. I agree with the majority of commentators there. Their father was actually telling people that the girls’ mother committed suicide, and was not working where they were found in Nicaragua. I’m grateful they were found before the girls could fully grasp the implications of a death by suicide – suicide by a parent is known to be detrimental to the child, and if years passed and their mother who “killed herself” suddenly reappeared alive the psychological effects would be devastating.

And in the Gray article? Well, you probably have already guessed that most people say she must have run off for a good reason. The kids were found living in a van, filthy, and couldn’t tell the police when they had last eaten. While those conditions are fairly bad, I sadly accept them as one of those things that are all too common in these cases. But several of the commentators say, essentially, “I know it looks bad, but she might have had a good reason to do so…” With the circumstances they were found in, one might think that it was obvious they were not being protected from anything. And it’s still assumed. Because the abductor has two X chromosomes.

Am I one of the few who finds this deeply disturbing?

Francisco Javier Andrade Vega is the name of an eleven year old boy that was abducted from Baja California in 2000 by a convicted child molester. He remained missing until this year, when he was found safe in Chicago. He had no identity papers when picked up by police, but he gave them his name and he was found in the FBI’s database of cases.

Let me repeat this. He was found safe. After nine years. Missing from a non-family abduction. And there has been almost no press about this. The articles I have found that gave the above details are Mexican papers; I can find no English sources. If I didn’t know Spanish those articles would be unaccessable. And I live in Chicago. And I have heard nothing.

I rarely go on tangents about missing children publicity. I have accepted that there is a heirarchy, and that most of the cases I get involved with – family abductions, people who just vanish, older non-family abductions – are not ones that burn up the pages. And not all of it is based on race. However, in this case I can make no other conclusion but being based on race. He was abducted for nine years, and it would have been easy for his abductor to kill him once he stopped being useful. He would then have become one of the many unidentified individuals that litter the police records. But none of this happened. Him being found safe is as close to a miracle as was Shawn Hornbeck’s case.

So, I ask, why haven’t you heard of him? Why hasn’t almost anyone?

Please note sarcasm.

This wonderful jewel of a website, run by parental kidnapper Emmanuel Lazaridis (who has posted on this blog before) says she was never missing because – get this – her mother knew where she was. By this standard only a few people are missing, because I would say in ninety-nine percent of the cases of missing people at least one person knows where they are, even if they don’t say.

I will also note that he apparently sent a sixty-three page lawsuit to a paper that reported her disappearance and her mother’s search. I eagerly await my own sixty-three page lawsuit. I hope he also gets one from the real NCMEC site as he has copied their source code without permission.

I will admit I have much to learn in regards to missing persons. My basic beliefs have not changed. I think it is a serious problem, that even though most missing children are runaways and family abductions does not mean that they are unimportant, and both those issues have needs that need to be addressed. However, every now and then a case comes along and tells me to assume nothing. It will shake up my perceptions of other cases.

Ricky Holland is one of them. I am still not sure why I believed his parents’ story of running away. He was a seven year old child and even if he did run away from home it was a sign of far more serious trouble than what I would consider in an adolescent. It took me months to start to question the story. And of course it was a lie. He had been abused and killed, and the former at least should have been obvious to me right away. I may not have directly known him but I know through that assumption I indirectly was one who failed him.

Shasta Groene is the other. In some ways this is a reversal of the above case because I took nothing at face value and jumped to the conclusion she and her brother were dead, killed by the intruder. I will give myself a little credit for not suspecting a family member and thinking it was a stranger or a friend of the family, but no more. Like with Ricky, I failed. She was not dead; is not dead, and the only reason her brother is is because we all assumed they were. The motto of our site is “If you look for a person, you may find a body. But if you look for a body, you may miss a person.” I had used that phrase for almost two years and it took this case to brutally remind me I was not always operating under it.

If there is no real evidence a child was killed, I don’t presume it for the most part. I never rule it out but with no credible evidence I can’t really consider it either. Evidence, however can be in non-physical forms. Like in the classic battered child syndrome, evidence of past abuse can make me assume the child was killed, even if no actual physical evidence exists. Michelle Pulsifer, for example. And I now add Adam Hermann to the list. All reports say siblings say he was abused. He wasn’t reported missing for ten years. Just like Michelle. The parents claimed he ran away but not only couldn’t be bothered to try to locate him if that were indeed true they told others the state took him. And if it had only been a few days or weeks I would still reach that conclusion mostly because of his past abuse.

Ricky and Shasta both tell me in very different ways to never assume too much. And I think about them and Adam. I may not be able to do anything but advocate for finding his remains and charging his parents, but at least I know better now than to think otherwise.

Rest in peace, Adam. You deserved far better than what was given you.

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.

International abduction case has happy ending

An international abduction case came to a happy ending today.

Roberta Lima, along with her two daughters, Domminique and Pietra, all of Dover, arrived at Logan International Airport around 1 p.m. amid a flurry of friends and family.

With tears in her eyes, Lima said she can finally sleep at night now that her girls are back in her arms.

“When I got to American soil I finally felt safe, and that’s what this country is all about,” Lima said.

I am very happy about this, especially since citizenship rules apply in Brazil as much as anywhere else, and most of the time authorities won’t even look for the child if the non-custodial parent is a citizen of the country. She is a brave woman and I give all credit to the many who have helped her and kept her daughters from becoming possible cases on the For the Lost site.

Abducted Orland Park Girl, mother reunited

A 2-year-old Orland Park girl missing since Saturday and abducted by her father was reunited with her mother today after her father was arrested in Ohio shortly after midnight, Orland Park police said.

Said K. Ayesh was being held by Ohio State Police on an Illinois warrant for child abduction. Extradition procedures have begun, Orland Park police said. Two other adults were also taken into custody, police said.

The amount of things I am pleased with in this case are numerous. While I can’t be happy that the father abducted anyway, the amount of restrictions placed on him are what kept him from taking his child to Jordan and never returning. Since he is a citizen of that country, they would have made no effort to find him, much less arrest. The mother acted well and took many precautions, including private detectives trailing him. Parental kidnapping should be taken seriously and any threats should be looked on as warnings. I wish Nadin and her mother the best in upcoming days.

After finding the article I showed before on Jesse Griffin-Sebuliba, I decided I had to learn more about the case, and googled his name for some articles. Time magazine ran one very interesting one.

Sad End to Milwaukee Child Custody Case

The story details that he also has failure to thrive, osteopenia, and that the fractures (there were three, not two) look to be both old and not treated. Failure to thrive can occur in well-treated children, of course, but its presence requires a complete medical workup. Osteopenia is normally found in menopausal women. So it is not unreasonable to say Jesse was neglected.

But when I google his mother’s name, I find she has a legion of supporters. They support her accusations that the father is abusive and may take Jesse back to Uganda, his home country. However, when they do print the mother’s accusations about others, it becomes a bit clearer she is not fully sane. Among her charges is that the guards threatened to poison her food, which is why she stopped eating what they gave her and only ate snacks brought to her. Fear of being poisoned is one of the most common forms of psychosis, and the measures she took to avoid this “threat” seem extreme but what a sufferer might easily do in such a situation. Many of these supporters treat this as a reasonable charge, as if guards would want to poison a prisoner in jail for what is not considered by most a serious crime and they would have the means to do so and not get caught. The supporters all now have one thing they say in common.

That is, nothing.

Doctors have determined the fractures are old ones. The presence of his multiple malnourishment conditions indicate that Jesse was not well taken care of. If you claim the mother is the innocent in this case, you either have to rationalize this or accept that you were wrong. Apparently most have chosen to do the latter.

Any woman who abducts her child seems to develop a support network. While they are more visible nowadays due to the internet, many no doubt remember when Faye Yager tried to make herself as visible as possible on this issue not too long ago. I have spoken out about these women, and how I do not condone their actions, before. As a result, I have been accused of being biased against mothers (my being female nonwithstanding) or not doing my homework. The truth is, when a father abducts their child they rarely attract a large support network. I am sure there are a few people who do support them, but for the most part people assume that he’s done it to get back at the mother. (Frustratingly, very few seem to view it as a big deal for anyone, but at the very least they don’t assume he did it for a good reason.)

This is a picture of Jesse. Take a good look at him. The truth of family abduction can be conveyed in Jesse’s story. Let’s hope we are able to learn from it.

I posted several weeks back about the case of four children abducted by their mother for the fourth time, the Riggs children. Today I read an article that stated they had been found safe.

Amber Alert ends with mom, children found in Washington

A woman who allegedly took her four non-custodial children, triggering a recent Amber Alert, was located tonight in Olympia, Wash.

Shirley Riggs is in police custody, according to a release from Independence police. Her four children — ages 7, 10, 12 and 15 — are safe and in protective custody.

I hope that this time she is not allowed more unsupervised visits at the very least. Ideally, she would serve jail time but with most parental abduction cases this does not happen. In any event I am glad the case is over. Hopefully I will not have to post that they have gone missing again.

I have said many times that parental kidnapping is child abuse, there is no excuse for it, and that abductors are motivated out of selfishness and greed rather than the well-being of a child. Cases like this come along and prove it for me.

Woman at center of custody dispute arrested

A woman who spent eight months in jail for refusing to disclose the whereabouts of her infant son has been arrested, and the child — missing for more than a year — was recovered after a confrontation in which police were forced to Taser the woman in order to release the child from her grasp.

The boy, now 2, is in the custody of the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare and is expected to be reunited with his father within the next few days, according to Legal Action of Wisconsin attorney DeAngela Ellis, who has represented the father in the custody dispute, which has lasted nearly the boy’s entire life.

I will note part of this story is incorrect – the woman was not tasered until the child was taken away from her. His name is Jesse Griffin-Sebuliba, and the article now says he has rickets and two fractures, but is expected to recover. Since he was listed as an endangered missing child and I had no other knowledge of the case, I did not think to include him on the site. (Another case, with even more tragic circumstances, I did eventually find out and include the child, Jessica Vargas Biatriz, on our site. She is sadly still missing.) Rickets is a condition caused by lack of vitamin D, which can be obtained from sunlight and fortified foods such as milk. Dark-skinned children are more susceptible to it in the winter months, but even so it is not usually a problem in developed countries except in cases of malnutrition, as many foods are fortified with the vitamin. Whether his bones broke because of rickets, physical abuse, or a combination of both, I am not sure. There is no excuse for this type of behavior. The mother was obviously more concerned about spiting the father than about caring for her child. I have seen in a few other abduction cases children abanoned to strange relatives by the parent, in some cases not even in their home country, as well as a case where children were dropped off by themselves by the Mexico-Texas border to cross by themselves! They were thankfully found by Border Agents who said they were trying to dig under the fence with their bare hands.

If you think this is not a serious crime, please read this case, read other cases, google names like Adam Haseeb, Deirdre Crowley, Luis Cisneros, and Ronald Simmons and see if you can still say that. I highly doubt you will.