Jahi Turner has just gotten an age-progression. After seven years. That’s too long. I’m glad to see it, but he should have had one five years ago, and the one we have now should be an updated one.
I’m aware this does disqualify him for Jahi’s Pages, but as he is our inspiration for that section, he will remain up. I have made some changes and added the age-progression, however.
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?
There are a few long-standing cases that involve a child missing with a parent that are not on the For the Lost site. In many circumstances, I will label such a family abduction. What makes them ruled out?
In some cases, insufficent evidence exists to determine whether there was really an abduction. El-Jahid Allah, for example, was last seen with his non-custodial father, but I can determine nothing besides that. For all I know, they were homicide victims. So unless a warrant is issued for his arrest, I will leave it off. Maribel Oquendo-Carrerro is listed in a few places as abducted by her father, but on NCMEC she’s just listed as endangered with no message about the dad. Once again, unless there is proof provided, I can’t put it up. In Kayla Rosa’s case, I can’t even figure out what parent she was with, or if they have since been found. (Sites have listed both her mother and her father as the parent she was last seen with.)
In some others, I doubt it was a family abduction at all. James and Ptah Diamond, for example. Ptah was visiting his father in Arizona at the time; he normally resided in Cleveland. Researching the case online one day, I came across a post by James’ mother that detailed suspicious circumstances in the case. It’s possible both will turn up, but I doubt it. I’d like to be proven wrong. (The post was on a web site that has since vanished and I’ve never found another copy, however I remember most of the details.)
Some past cases I left off the site because I believed the parent abducted the kid to kill them. The Porter kids, for example. I was proven right. I wish I wasn’t, but in that case they did not qualify.
I added a part to the FAQ section in our site about cases like that. I mentioned that in the unlikely event that the “abductor” was actually along with their child a victim of homicide, I would resolve the case with a note to that effect if found and merely remove with the note if suspicious circumstances came up. I named a specific case there (Paul and Sarah Skiba) but when I wrote it I was actually thinking of a particular case. It’s since been resolved and I feel free to name it now. That case was the one of Joseph Kennedy. I treated it as a family abduction and the only evidence to the contrary was the mother’s family insisting foul play was possible. They created a sliver of doubt in my mind, and I added the note to that effect. Of course, it was an abduction, Joseph and his mother were both fine, and they were found in Mexico. I’m still keeping it up there, though. I could stil be proven wrong.
Several recent missing persons cases have led me to think about the effects of a missing person or child on their families. Especially when a child goes missing, family are considered suspects. Of course this is true for a large number of cases, but there are still runaway juveniles, children who wander off, and the rare non-family abduction. For young children who can be ruled out of the first two categories right away, the rest of the family is put under the microscope. In cases such as the one of the Groene children and Jessica Lunsford, the childrens’ fathers were taken to task for a variety of things, but neither were involved at all. While it is reasonable to look at the family (after all, probability indicates a family member may have had something to do with it) it should not be assumed they had to have been involved. If an adult woman goes missing, likewise there is much focus on any signficant other she may have or had. Once again, statistics indicate this is a reasonable focus, but even if they get ruled out the nasty remarks continue.
I have seen frankly disgusting remarks concerning the families of the missing many times, none of which I will ever link to or report here. The worst comments are inevitably made when a child simply vanishes with no trace. Even in cases where it’s obvious a family member harmed the child I never see the level of vitriol those cases can produce. Perhaps in these cases it’s easier to direct anger at a mystery.
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.
On the For the Lost web page is the excellent essay by Meaghan Good, The Middle Eastern Abduction Myth. It is still unfortunate that the myth that most parental abductors are Middle Eastern males persists. I was curious how this applied to our site specifically. What percentage of cases possibly involve the Middle East, and do the gender ratios seem unbalanced?
For this I looked at all 375 cases on the site. The only ones included in this sample were ones taken or possibly in the following countries: Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Qatar, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain. While Iran is technically a Persian nation and not a Middle Eastern one it is considered as such by most of the population and thus it has been included. Turkey was excluded for being considered a European nation and both Afghanistan and Pakistan were excluded for being Asian nations. Twenty three cases met this criteria. Of those, seventeen involved fathers and six involved mothers. So while it appears that fathers are more common abductors amongst children taken to Middle Eastern countries, the total of children taken to them is a small amount compared to the whole picture.
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.
In 1983, Sally Abrahams published the book Children in the Crossfire – the Tragedy of Parental Kidnapping. It is unfortunately still one of the only comprehensive books on the subject. I wrote a brief review of it, which I will post below.
This book was written in 1983, but much of the information in it is still useable. It was the first nonfiction work to examine the problem of parental kidnapping, and it remains one of the few today. Abrahms tells the stories of families and their missing children, their searches and the lingering effects afterward. Those stories are simliar enough to many told today, and in a way that is the most heartbreaking part. Some of the advice is outdated, but most is still applicable. If you are in a family abduction situation today, or just want an overview of the problem, this is still the best book on the subject.
What I did not address in the review is the fact that many things have changed that the book addresses. What are those, and how many things are still the same?
The most obvious and pronounced difference is the reaction of law enforcement to family abduction cases. In 1983, a parent still had to do all the leg work to find a missing child. When the police did take a report (many did not as it was viewed as a family matter and not a crime) that was often it. Now law enforcement takes reports and enters them into the National Crime Information Center database right away. Parental abduction is a felony in almost all states, and kidnapping warrants are issued as soon as possible. The book also mentions at the time FBI Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution warrants were nearly impossible to obtain for this crime. Now not only are they regularly issued, but the FBI web page has one section strictly devoted to featured abductors.
The second change is in technology. Age-progression software has helped recover children missing for long periods of time. The Internet provides a quick resource for anyone who thinks that a child they know may have been abducted. Many stories now say that a person thought the situation was odd, went online and looked up missing children, and found said child. In the past, even if someone was suspicious there was no way to check if they were missing, which could lead to a successful recovery. The Amber Alert system that is activated for missing children who are believed to be in danger is another new advance that helps to recover children. The NCMEC had not been formed at the time of this book, and is now the resource for most or all of the technologies above.
Unfortunately, many things she addresses are still the same. International abduction is still a situation where children are rarely recovered. Most countries will not deport a citizen in an abduction case, and the Hague Treaty is often invoked but rarely put into effect. A father in the book states that short of actually chaining your kid to you, you can’t prevent this, and this is still sadly the case. The motviations of the abductors are still the same, giving all sorts of reasons why their abduction was justified when in reality it is anything but. And the attitudes of others are often still that it can’t be that bad if the kid is with a parent. Despite the recognition of parental abduction as child abuse, and legislation passed thereof, most people who are not in law enforcement refuse to see it as a problem. This is one reason why a new book on the subject is needed; Abrahms covers the problem well even for today, but much of it is out of date and the book itself is no longer in print. Hopefully someone will fill that need someday.
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.