Tragedy of children abducted from dads and taken to Japan

 

http://www.atimes.com/article/tragedy-of-children-abducted-from-dads-and-taken-to-japan/

 

Tragedy of children abducted from dads and taken to Japan

 

Parents from the US and around the world are firewalled from children held by estranged spouses – and Japanese parents face similar agonies

 

By PETER J. BROWN and JAKE ADELSTEIN JANUARY 16, 2019 4:06 PM (UTC+8) 

Keisuke Christian Collins with his father Randy Collins. The two have not met since 2008, when the boy was abducted by his mother. Photo: Randy Collins

Japanese leaders and diplomats regularly lambast North Korea for the abduction of their citizens by state spies – one of countless human rights abuses committed by Pyongyang.

What is less known is that hundreds of American children have been abducted to Japan in defiance of international conventions, while at home, hundreds of thousands of Japanese children suffer from de facto parental kidnappings.

American Randy Collins of Santa Ana, California, is all too familiar with the situation. He last saw his son, Keisuke Christian Collins – then five years old – in June 2008.

Only three days after a California court had ruled – for a third time – that his son was “not to be removed from the County of Orange, State of California, or the US,” his ex-wife, Reiko Nakata Greenberg Collins, fled with their son to Japan.

Only in 2015, after he learned the exact whereabouts of his son, did Collins fly to Japan to try to see him. He was unsuccessful.

“The Japanese government flagged my passport upon entry to Japan and advised Reiko I was there. She then ran away (with Keisuke) for the entire time,” Collins told Asia Times.

“When I tried to leave the country, the Yotsukaido police contacted the airline and tried to detain me at the airport. When I asked for what reason, they would not tell me. After I showed the airline employee the phone number of the US Embassy in Tokyo and said that this is my next call, the police finally allowed me to board my flight.”

The Orange County Sheriff’s Department has a warrant for Reiko’s arrest, she is on the FBI’s list for “Parental Kidnappings” and Interpol has her on its “Red Notice” roster.

But Tokyo is silent.

“Even though she is hiding in plain sight, the Japanese government will do nothing. I have not seen or heard from Keisuke in over 10½ years. All I have ever wanted is to be able to have a relationship and be a dad for my only child,” Collins said.

“Japan must be held accountable for its disregard of fundamental parental rights and its continued support of these illegal abductions.”

A shameful record

For years, Japan has been one of the most intransigent countries regarding international parental child abductions – which is exactly how the US described Japan during a US Senate hearing in 2014. Tokyo looks particularly dubious in light of the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

“Japan is non-compliant,” with the convention, Collins asserted, citing the abductions of about 400 US children since 1994.

After a February 2018 meeting with US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said: “There will be no economic assistance for North Korea until it addresses the abduction issue” – a reference to Japanese citizens abducted by North Korea to train its spies.

“I agree with Prime Minister Abe,” said Collins. “And there should be no US economic or military assistance with Japan until Japan addresses the abduction issue. Why should Japan be held to any less of a standard than North Korea? North Korea returned five of those 17 who were abducted nearly 40 years ago. Japan has returned zero.”

“There is a serious flaw in Japan’s implementation of the convention,” said Suzanne Lawrence, a special advisor for children’s issues at the US State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs.

“This is unacceptable and I am deeply concerned that, as a result, there is a pattern of Japan not complying with its obligations under the Convention,” Lawrence said while testifying at a recent US government hearing on international child abductions. She added: “I am pleased to report that there is progress.”

Tokyo’s double game

Not everyone agrees. In mid-2018, for example, a public seminar took place in Paris organized by Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations. An audio recording obtained by Jeffery Morehouse, executive director of “Bring Abducted Children Home,” formed in 2011, indicated that Tokyo was coaching its citizens about how to abduct their children to Japan and how to prevent their return.

“By creating a seminar that advised potential abductors how to circumvent a (convention-compliant) return order, the government of Japan exhibited a shocking and blatant disregard for this international agreement,” said Morehouse.

Morehouse knows. He was granted sole custody of his 6½-year-old son “Mochi” Atomu Imoto Morehouse in the State of Washington in May 2007. In June 2010, he dropped him off for a week-long visit with his mother. That was the last time Morehouse ever saw Mochi.

“Six days later, I received a phone call from the police that no parent wants to receive: My son and ex-wife had been reported missing. I knew immediately what happened. She had kidnapped our son to Japan,” he said. “In that moment, my life was shattered.”

Passport and travel restraints in the court order to bar his ex-wife from leaving the state of Washington with Mochi had proven ineffectual. “When the Seattle Consulate of Japan denied her passport request she simply went to the Japanese consulate in Portland, which issued her one in violation of passport issuance policy,” he said.

Associates sometimes tell Morehouse that at least his son is safe with his mother. He strongly disagrees.

“He is not safe. Imagine being a child and your mother steals you away to a foreign country and then tells you your father does not want you anymore, or that he is dead,” he said. “Your whole life is now built on a foundation of lies. This is not what a healthy, nurturing parent does. It is child abuse.”

Despite winning landmark rulings in Japan in 2014 and 2017, Morehouse alleges “there was no intent to offer justice … it does not matter how a child ends up with the abductor in Japan, they will not uphold laws and treaties to return children to their rightful home. In the end, the court refused to reunite Mochi and me. I do not even know where he is being held.”

As a result, BAC Home emerged as a nonprofit organization dedicated to the return of internationally abducted children – not only American – from Japan. By early 2018, a new organization known as “The G7 Kidnapped to Japan Reunification Project” had united parents and organizations from Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US.

Japanese suffer, too

Morehouse noted that many Japanese are deeply ashamed of these abductions. Indeed, it is not only international parents suffering. Due to domestic laws and enforcement – or lack thereof – thousands of Japanese are victimized by estranged partners.

Even when a Japanese parent is granted custody of a child, the other parent often refuses to comply. Police are powerless.

“When a taking parent refuses to comply with a return ordered pursuant to the convention, Japanese authorities have very limited means to enforce the order,” Lawrence, the US expert, conceded.

The problem is huge. “Research of Japanese government statistics from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare indicates that an estimated 150,000 children per year lose access to one of their parents after divorce,” John Gomez, chairman of NGO Kizuna Child-Parent Reunion, told Asia Times. “Over 20 years, that makes an estimated three million children.”

Last September, a subcommittee of the Ministry of Justice Legislative Council started reviewing civil execution laws, which might alleviate some problems. Still, joint custody remains illegal under Japan’s divorce laws.

But questions are being raised. In July 2018, the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest newspaper, reported on its front page that Tokyo was considering introducing joint custody to prevent custody battles and actions tantamount to the kidnappings of children by one spouse.

“Many laymen who are foreigners in Japan have a misunderstanding that foreigners are discriminated against, but that is not a comprehensive description of the scenario,” said Gomez. “Many Japanese married to a Japanese spouse are also affected.”

This, of course, provides no comfort to non-Japanese parents whose children have been abducted. Nor does it excuse Tokyo from international treaty obligations.

“Japanese judges and attorneys representing abductors manipulate the ‘best interest of the child’ to rule that the child should remain alienated and ignore how they ended up with the abducting parent,” Morehouse said. “Japan’s response to the convention is all misdirection.”

Silent voices

In Japan, Asia Times attempted to reach the Japanese parents in this story with phone calls and a visit to the last known address of one parent. There was no response at press-time.

When Asia Times attempted to contact related officials in the Japanese embassy in Washington, the attempt was rejected by the former head of chancery, Takuya Sasayama. He said he had left the embassy, declined to identify his replacement and refused to forward questions to appropriate contacts.

Morehouse testified that it was Sasayama who had informed him that “access depends on the mother and child’s wishes” – which Morehouse describes as a clear violation of the convention.

Meanwhile, what is glaringly absent from the debate are the voices of affected children.

“In the beginning of my most recent legal battle in Japan, my son, who was 13 at the time, was asked by his attorney, ‘Do you ever think about your father?’” Morehouse said. “As tears rolled down his face he replied, ‘Sometimes I dream of him at night’.”

Tillis reignites fight against international parental child abduction

https://riponadvance.com/featured/tillis-reignites-fight-against-international-parental-child-abduction/

Tillis reignites fight against international parental child abduction

By Ripon Advance News Service  |  January 4, 2019

U.S. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) this week told the U.S. State Department that its approach to return American children abducted abroad back to the United States isn’t working and more needs to be done.

“As United States senators, we cannot simply sit by and watch the State Department continue to issue ineffective demarches while countries continue to shelter those who abduct our citizen-children. We are committed to ensuring the return of every American child abducted abroad and we will not stop working on their behalf,” Sen. Tillis wrote in a bipartisan Jan. 2 letter sent to State Department Secretary Mike Pompeo. U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) also signed the letter.

Each year, several hundred American children are abducted by one parent and taken to a foreign country, according to a statement from Sen. Tillis’ office, which added that such abductions may negatively impact a child’s mental, physical and emotional health and well-being.

Congress in 2014 approved the Sean and David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act, which provided the State Department with tools to compel foreign governments to return abducted American children back home, according to the senator’s statement. Such tools include official public censures and withdrawing development assistance.

Nevertheless, since the legislation became law, the State Department has continued to use demarches — or diplomatic communications — as its sole means of attempting to secure a child’s return, according to the senator’s statement.

“Unfortunately, a comprehensive review of past annual reports shows that the State Department rarely, if ever, goes beyond issuing a demarche,” the senators wrote to Pompeo.

And demarches aren’t effective, according to the senators’ letter, which noted that some countries, like Japan, have received several demarches, “but no additional, formal action was taken to address the problem of parental child abduction to Japan,” which continually harbors abducted American children.

In fact, both a 2018 State Department annual report and action report show that the department still isn’t using all of the tools it has at its disposal to rectify the situation, they pointed out.

“This approach is clearly failing,” the lawmakers wrote. “The number of children kidnapped from and then returned to the U.S. has shown no measurable improvement over the years. Simply issuing demarches, raising cases with foreign government officials and empty threats are not bringing children home.”

The senators urged the Department of State to utilize the tools and resources provided by law to bring home abducted American children.

“We hope you recognize the seriousness of the issue and will make it one of your top priorities,” according to their letter.

Japan Central Authority-Practical Information

SOURCE: http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act=conventions.authprint&cid=17

Japan – Central Authority & practical information

Central Authority(ies):

Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Contact details:

Address: Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2-2-1 Kasumigaseki Chiyoda-ku
TOKYO
100-8919 Japan
Telephone: +81 3 5501 8152
Fax: +81 3 5501 8148
E-mail: –
General website: http://www.mofa.go.jp/
Contact point: Consular Policy Division
Languages spoken by staff: Japanese (by telephone)
Japanese and English (by fax)

Practical Information:
(The following information was provided by the relevant State authorities or was obtained from the replies to the 2003 and/or 2008 Service Convention Questionnaires)

Forwarding authorities
(Art. 3(1)): the judges
Methods of service
(Art. 5(1)(2)):
Formal Service (Art. 5 (1)(a))
The Minister for Foreign Affairs refers the document to the competent court of justice. Service is then effected either by post (special postal service, Article 49 of the Mail Act; a report of service is drawn up by the postman) or through a marshal.

Informal delivery (Art. 5(2))
The Minister for Foreign Affairs refers the documents sent to it to the competent court clerk. The court clerk informs the addressee of the documents to be served and the addressee then either presents himself / herself to the court or requests that they be forwarded to him / her. In the latter case special postal service will be effected (Article 49 of the Mail Act; the postman will draw up a report of the delivery).When the person to be served refuses to accept the documents, or fails to appear or to apply for forwarding the documents to him / her within three weeks of the date on which he/she was informed, the documents will be returned to the applicant.

Service by a particular method (Art. 5(1)(b))
When it is so requested, a marshal will effect service by delivering the document directly to the person after ascertaining that he / she is the addressee.

Translation requirements
(Art. 5(3)):
Full translation is required for any document to be served under Article 5(1)(a)(b). We serve the translation to the addressee together with the original.

Japan has not concluded any agreements under Article 20(b).

Costs relating to execution of the request for service
(Art. 12):
In principle, the applicant incurs no charges because the National Treasury bears costs of service. However, in the case of service by a marshal, a fee is charged and should be reimbursed. To that end, the court which effected the service sends a bill of the costs to be reimbursed to the applicant together with the certificate referred to in Article 6.

When executed by a marshal, the amount to be paid for the performance of service is 1,800 yen (service in working hours on weekdays) or 4,200 yen (service in night times, weekends or holidays) plus the marshal’s travel expenses, which is 37 yen per kilometer from the competent district court to which he / she belongs.

Time for execution of request: About four months
Oppositions and declarations
(Art. 21(2)): Click here to read all the declarations made by Japan under the Service Convention.
Art. 8(2): No opposition
Art. 10(a):
No opposition

“Japan has not declared that it objects to the sending of judicial documents, by postal channels, directly to addressees in Japan. As the representative of Japan made clear at the Special Commission of April 1989 on the practical operation of the Service and Evidence Conventions, Japan does not consider that the use of postal channels for sending judicial documents to persons in Japan constitutes an infringement of its sovereign power.”

“Nevertheless, as the representative also indicated, the absence of a formal objection does not imply that the sending of judicial documents by postal channels to addressees in Japan is always considered valid service in Japan. In fact, sending documents by such a method would not be deemed valid service in Japan in circumstances where the rights of the addressee were not respected.”

(See Conclusion and Recommendation No 57 of the 2003 Special Commission.)

Art. 10(b): Opposition
Art. 10(c): Opposition
Art. 15(2): Declaration of applicability
Art. 16(3): No declaration of applicability

Derogatory channels (bilateral or multilateral agreements or internal law permitting other transmission channels)
(Arts. 11, 19, 24 and 25)

Disclaimer:
Information may not be complete or fully updated – please contact the relevant authorities to verify this information.

Consular Convention between Japan and the United States of America

Consular Convention between Japan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

Agreements or arrangements concerning judicial assistance between Japan and; Swiss Confederation, Kingdom of Denmark, Republic of Italy, Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, Federative Republic of Brazil, Kingdom of Thailand, Federal Republic of Germany, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Syrian Arab Republic, Kingdom of Norway, Australia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Republic of Austria, State of Kuwait, Republic of Iraq, State of Israel

Useful links:

(This page was last updated on 15 May 2009)

Japan – Competent Authority (Art. 6)
The District Court which has rendered judicial aid with respect to the service is designated as the authority competent to complete the certificate in the form of the model annexed to the Convention, pursuant to the first paragraph of Article 6.

Japan – Competent Authority (Art. 9)
Ministry of Foreign Affairs
2-2-1 Kasumigaseki Chiyoda-ku
Tokyo
100-8919 Japan
tel.: +81-3-3580.3311

New paper by Colin Jones

http://law.nus.edu.sg/asli/working_paper_d.aspx?sno=WPS031

 

 

ASLI Working Paper Series Publication Title Towards an “Asian” child abduction treaty? Some observations on Singapore and Japan joining the Hague Convention Publisher Asian Law Institute Series WPS031 Publication Date Aug 2013 Author/Speaker Colin P.A. Jones This paper will briefly compare the regimes adopted by Japan and Singapore for adopting the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, together with the two countries’ underlying family law systems in order to consider whether an “Asian” approach to the treaty may develop in the future. View/Download (PDF) File :

Family Law Quarterly article about Japan’s appoach to adopting Hague Convention

http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/family_law_quarterly/vol46/3fall12_boykin.authcheckdam.pdf

Deleted U.S. Embassy statistics being reposted on our blog

During the past year the U.S. Embassy in Japan deleted a page from its website that included statistics for the U.S., Canada, France, Australia, and the United Kingdom showing the tremondous growth in the number of international child abduction cases by Japanese spouses since 2000, with the number of cases having quadrupled from 2005 to 2009.

It is not clear why this information is being suppressed, but CRC of Japan has retrieved this information and is reposting it on our blog, at the following link:

Rapid Increase in Child Abductions to Japan

Delay in signing Hague child abduction treaty could provoke sanctions

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/fl20120904hn.html

 

HOTLINE TO NAGATACHO

Delay in signing Hague child abduction treaty could provoke sanctions

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda,

The government submitted legislation to the Diet in March of this year to allow for accession to the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. It has been five months since then and the legislation has been sitting on a shelf collecting dust ever since.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has previously said it is “treating the issue as its top priority.” Parliamentary Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Kazuyuki Hamada also stated on April 9 that “We are determined to push it forward because the issue is hugely relevant to the values of not only our country, but also those of the international community.”

Evidence that the United States government is unconvinced of Japan’s sincerity has recently been highlighted by a new Senate resolution. Bipartisan Senate Resolution 543, dated Aug. 2, 2012, to express the sense of the Senate on international child abduction was introduced by California Sen. Barbara Boxer and 14 other senators, including 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

In the resolution, Japan is mentioned no less than three times: “Whereas Japan, India and Egypt are not parties to the Hague Abduction Convention and were also among the top 10 countries to which children in the United States were most frequently abducted in 2011”; “Whereas, in many countries, such as Japan and India, international parental child abduction is not considered a crime, and custody rulings made by courts in the United States are not typically recognized by courts in those countries,” and; “Whereas Japan is the only member of the Group of 7 major industrialized countries that has not ratified the Hague Abduction Convention.”

The resolution also quotes the U.S. State Department’s Report on Compliance with the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction from April 2010: “Research shows that abducted children are at risk of significant short and long-term problems, including ‘anxiety, eating problems, nightmares, mood swings, sleep disturbances (and) aggressive behavior’. ”

How much longer will foreign governments such as those of the U.S., Canada, Great Britain, Australia, France and New Zealand continue to believe Japan’s assertions that it will sign the Hague Convention? Evidence suggests that many countries’ patience is coming to an end. In the U.S. Congress, House Resolution 1940 calls for legislation that includes presidential actions up to and including economic sanctions against countries that condone child abduction, such as Japan.

How many more children will be abducted to Japan while the Japanese government breaks promises to the international community and does absolutely nothing on the issue? Perhaps it is time to hold Japan accountable in a way which they will understand: economic sanctions. Continued delay on this issue will likely ensure that this possibility becomes a reality.

BRUCE GHERBETTI

Tokyo

Bruce Gherbetti is the father of three children abducted to Japan in 2009. Since that time, Bruce has moved to Japan to maintain contact with his children. He has also helped to form two organizations to fight for children’s human rights in Japan and has lobbied Diet members including former Justice Minister Satsuki Eda. Send comments on this issue and Hotline to Nagatacho submissions of 500-700 words tocommunity@japantimes.co.jp

“Abnormalities” traced back to Fukushima radioactive fallout

News reports like this are extremely worrisome to U.S. left-behind parents as well as parents in other countries with abducted dual citizen children being held in Japan.  A number of these children are believed to be living in or very near the Fukushima radiation zone.  The best interests of the child need to be considered by both the Japanese and foreign governments in cases such as this where the child’s future health is at risk.  Particularly troubling is the finding that “abnormal” traits doubled among the second generation born, with radiation damage intensifying in future generations.

http://news.yahoo.com/japan-nuclear-accident-abnormalities-butterflies-traced-fukushima-plant-153553981–abc-news-topstories.html

Japan Nuclear Accident: ‘Abnormalities’ in Butterflies Traced to Fukushima Plant

By Akiko Fujita | ABC News – Mon, Aug 13, 2012

Japanese scientists say “abnormalities” detected in the country’s butterflies may be a result of radioactive fallout from the Fukushima nuclear disaster last year. In a study published in Scientific Reports, an online journal, researchers say “artificial radionuclides” from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant caused “physiological and genetic damage” to pale grass blue butterflies.

Scientists first began tracking common butterflies around the nuclear plant two months after the disaster. They collected 121 insects, and found 12 percent of them had unusually small wings. That number jumped more than 5 percent when butterflies collected from the plant site had offspring of their own.

In another group of butterflies collected six months after the disaster, scientists found 28 percent had “abnormal” traits. That number nearly doubled among the second generation born.

“At the time of the accident, the populations of this species were overwintering as larvae and were externally exposed to artificial radiation,” the researchers wrote in their study. “It is possible that they ate contaminated leaves during the spring and were thus also exposed to internal radiation.”

It has been 17 months after the worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl, and its effects on human health have largely been considered minimal, with no radiation-related deaths or illnesses reported so far. But traces of radioactive cesium exceeding government safety levels have been detected in seafood off the Fukushima coast, limiting the catch for fisherman there.

Tiny amounts of cesium of 137 and cesium 134 were detected in more than a dozen bluefin tuna caught near San Diego in August last year. The levels were 10 times higher than tuna found in previous years, but well below those the Japanese and US governments considered harmful to human health.

Key U.K. jurist hopeful of Japan’s Hague entry

http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/nn20120731a9.html

 

Key U.K. jurist hopeful of Japan’s Hague entry

 

By WILLIAM HOLLINGWORTH

Kyodo

LONDON — Japan’s plan to sign an international treaty on cross-border parental child abductions has been welcomed by England’s most senior international family law judge.

Lord Justice Sir Mathew Thorpe said recently it is a “positive move” that Japan is going to join the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The convention seeks to protect children from the harmful effects of being spirited by an estranged spouse across international boundaries by providing procedures to bring about their prompt return to their home country or country of habitual residence.

Thorpe, who is head of international family justice for England and Wales, said: “The campaign was led by the United States and Canada . . . and I think they will be hugely relieved to see the global law extending into the Far East. It needs it. It’s already in Hong Kong and Singapore.

“It will bring Japan into treaty relationship with 87 other countries, and that enables people to recover to Japan children who have been wrongly removed from Japan by one or other parent.”

Thorpe, whose office deals with legal inquiries, correspondence from judges, lawyers and other officials in the field of international family law, said the convention has been a “huge influence for good” by providing legal remedies where none was previously available.

“It (abduction) is an extraordinarily abusive thing to do to a child. And from the 1960s and 1970s, with the increasing mobility and decreasing price of air travel, you see the emergence of a global problem for which the global community felt bound to seek a solution and the end product is the 1980 convention,” the jurist said.

Thorpe and judges from other signatory countries regularly meet to review how the treaty operates and look at ways to improve both judicial and administrative performances.

The issue of international parental child abductions has been a growing problem in Japan due to the increasing number of international marriages.

The media have reported several cases where Japanese women living in the West, and unhappy in their relationship, have decided to take children to Japan without getting court permission.

Often they make this decision because they believe — often misguidedly — that the court will deny them their application to relocate with their child.

Or they may be relocating to another jurisdiction in the hope that the court in that country will reverse previous custody decisions.

Thorpe describes any act of international parental child abduction as “irresponsible and wrongful behavior” and urges all parents to go through the courts and seek permission before removing their children from the country.

At the moment, because Japan is not part of the convention, non-Japanese parents, many of them fathers in Western countries, have little chance of getting their abducted children returned to their country of habitual residence. And this is why many countries have been pressuring Japan to join.

However, once Japan has signed up to the convention, it will have to set up a “central authority” that will work to locate abducted children and initiate legal proceedings to get them returned.

The central authority will also act as a point of contact for Japanese parents seeking the return of their children abducted by an estranged foreign spouse.

Speaking at his room in the Royal Courts of Justice, Thorpe said: “Japan must have an effective and efficient central authority. That’s the cardinal prerequisite. And they should have concentrated the jurisdiction to deal with Hague cases to a small number of courts at a high level within the justice system. The judges need to be prepared and trained for the work.”

As it stands, the convention is not retroactive, but Thorpe holds out some hope for the British fathers whose children have been abducted.

“At the moment, British fathers are dependent on consular endeavor and the Foreign Office will continue to handle their cases. But once Japan has acceded, maybe there will be a much higher degree of cooperation at a diplomatic level,” he said.

“It would be perverse of the Japanese foreign office not to offer aid in those cases only because the abduction predates Japan’s accession. I would have expected the Japanese foreign office would say, well, they are tantamount to Hague cases and we will give diplomatic aid,” Thorpe said.

“They (Japanese diplomats and academics) have researched Hague exhaustively. Government officials, academics and diplomats have all been carrying out the most profound investigations, talking to judges, central authorities, academics, not just in this country, but in the United States, Canada and Europe. The Japanese could not have prepared the way more painstakingly,” he said.

Must see documentary video: “Sayonara Baby – Japan”

This incredible documentary has been/is being internationally censured but seems to be available through these links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3g3g_0r01c

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNDA2MzE2Nzcy.html

 

For those who are unable to view the documentary online, here is the transcript:

Transcript

WILLACY: The cherry blossoms are out for all to see. It’s a spectacular sight that lifts the spirits of Japanese and travellers lucky enough to be here. It’s difficult to imagine a time when Japan was completely isolated from the outside world, but under Sakoku from the 17th to the 19th centuries, no foreigner could enter nor any Japanese leave the locked country on the penalty of death. Eventually Japan opened up and foreigners returned but many of the old insular ways continue to this day.

Just ask parents trapped in the anguish of failed marriage, locked out from the lives of their children and with nowhere to turn.

ALEX KAHNEY: “So I thought my wife can’t kidnap my kids. I’ll just go to the police. The first two or three months I was shattered. The first six months I was numb”.

REGAN: “And when I got home I kind of just fell apart and my true feelings of you know not being able to trust him or being really angry with him came out”.

CRAIG MORREY: “Basically it all came down to I don’t want to be with you, I don’t want to be with you, I’m leaving. I didn’t even know my daughter was born”.

WILLACY: Tonight we reveal how Japan has long condoned one parent snatching children away from the other, not just from within its own jurisdiction but from around the world. This is the story of how Japan became a haven for parents abducting their own children and of the paralysing heartbreak and helplessness of those parents left behind.

Under Japanese law there’s no such thing as dual custody. The courts here almost universally award all legal rights over a child to the one parent – meaning the other parent is frozen out of their child’s life. Often the only contact the forgotten parent is allowed is a few photographs of their child every year.

Craig Morrey isn’t just a father. He’s a 24 hour a day carer for his profoundly disabled son Spencer. After terrible complications during birth, Spencer was left with catastrophic brain damage and severe cerebral palsy.

CRAIG MORREY: “He can’t swallow, he can’t move on his own. He obviously can’t sit up. He can’t close his eyes and obviously kids can be very, very resilient but in Spencer’s case he was essentially born dead”.

WILLACY: The Chicago native and reproductive biologist came to Japan 15 years ago to further his research, but he quickly fell for and married a Brazilian-born Japanese woman. While they were both struggling to care for their first born son, Craig Morrey’s wife discovered she was pregnant with their second child and it proved too much for her.

CRAIG MORREY: “So she started to say she wanted a divorce, she wanted to leave. She talked about wanting to you know not necessarily commit suicide but to die”.

WILLACY: Five months into her pregnancy, his wife disappeared leaving Craig Morrey to care for Spencer on his own and shut out of the birth of his second child.

CRAIG MORREY: “I didn’t even know my daughter was born. I found out that she was in the hospital and I went to try to see her with Spencer and she had called security and I was denied to see my daughter”.

WILLACY: “How old was she when you finally got to see her?”

CRAIG MORREY: “Six and a half months in a courtroom for 15 minutes with her mother wailing in the background. Not the ideal circumstances to meet your daughter”.

WILLACY: Craig Morrey has a night job. He’s unable to afford specialist care so he takes his son along to the bar he runs in the town of Okazaki. In between pulling beers, he has to clear Spencer’s airways to ensure he doesn’t suffocate. Despite his wife abandoning their son, the court awarded her guardianship of their baby daughter Amelia and now, still fighting that ruling, Craig Morrey has been placed in an extraordinary dilemma by the court – if he takes his son to the United States where he can get better care for him, he’s been told he’ll lose the right to see his daughter.

CRAIG MORREY: “I’m sort of put in the situation where I either have to abandon my daughter and leave her with someone who I don’t think is a particularly good role model at the moment or go back and get better care for Spencer which is just, for a lack of a better word idiotic”.

WILLACY: But this isn’t just a system layered with rulings many parents regard as idiotic – it’s a system in which court rulings are often flouted or ignored by parents who abduct their children. Englishman Alex Kahney is leaving Japan after 19 years. He’s lost his job, he’s broke and so he can’t afford to stay and that means he’s leaving behind everything he cares about – his two daughters.

ALEX KAHNEY: “They just love their daddy. They were real daddy’s girls. Every time we got in the car there’d be a fight who could sit next to daddy in the front”.

WILLACY: Two years ago with his marriage to his Japanese wife falling apart, Alex Kahney returned home from work one day to an empty house and an empty bank account.

ALEX KAHNEY: “I thought uh oh, something’s wrong here. I went to the police. I said to the police, ‘my wife’s taken my kids out of the house without my permission and we’re not divorced. There’s no agreement in place, there’s no court order and she’s refusing to let me speak to the children’. The policemen laughed. They both had a good chuckle about it”.

WILLACY: Alex Kahney says his marriage broke down after his wife reneged on an agreement to raise their children in England for a while. We tried to get his estranged wife’s side of the story.

YUMI: “We’ve heard your husband’s side of the story. Now we’d like to hear both sides of the story”.

WILLACY: But like other Japanese spouses we contacted, she refused to be part of this programme. Despite a court order giving Alex Kahney monthly access, his wife hasn’t allowed him to see his children since she snatched them two years ago. So his frustration has turned to desperation. It’s a harrowing scene as the father tries every now and then to connect with his daughters as they leave school. [Alex walking alongside them outside school trying to talk to his daughters] His daughters don’t want to listen. They run from their father without saying a word.

ALEX KAHNEY: “They just ignore me. They just ignore me. A child ignoring her own father, you know I’ve been disowned. I’m nothing. I might as well be a ghost”.

COLIN JONES: “When we talk about family law in Japan today, it’s a slight exaggeration but there really isn’t any. There is no body of law called family law”.

WILLACY: At this protest in one of Tokyo’s busiest districts, so-called left behind parents – both Japanese and foreign – have joined forces. They’re a very vocal part of an effort to stop Japan remaining a black hole for international and domestic child abduction. The country’s been under pressure from foreign governments and parents to sign the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. The Convention sets out the rules for the prompt return of kids abducted across international borders by one of their parents. Every top industrialised country in the world – except Japan – has signed it. Japan says it plans to but nobody here is holding their breath and the courts have been very reluctant to break the mould. According to local media reports, there’s not been one recorded case of a Japanese judge ordering the repatriation of an abducted child.

COLIN JONES: “Who wants to be the first judge to order a crying child to be taken away from a crying Japanese mother and given back and sent overseas? Nobody, there’s nobody in the system I think who benefits from being the guy who ordered the crying child to be taken away”.

(DISTRESSED WOMAN AT MICROPHONE BREAKS DOWN)

WILLACY: It’s not the sort of meeting they’re used to inside Japan’s parliament complex.

WOMAN: “I just want to spend a normal time with my children every day. And I don’t understand why this has happened”.

WILLACY: These parents of abducted children and a handful of Japanese MPs have come today to learn more about the Hague Convention. The man they’ve come to listen to is Colin Jones, a professor of law and Hague specialist from Kyoto’s Doshisha University – but his message isn’t encouraging.

PROFESSOR COLIN JONES: “Alienations will not end just with this. I don’t think there will be much improvement in international abductions”.

WILLACY: Professor Jones believes Japan could treat the Hague Convention very much like it does the international treaty on whaling – in other words, by using loopholes to largely ignore it and by putting national interest ahead of global cooperation.

PROFESSOR COLIN JONES: “You see this attitude up through the leadership levels in some situations, so it wouldn’t surprise me if the same thing happened with the Hague Convention”.

WILLACY: American mum, Regan Haight, didn’t take long to realise she could never rely on the Japanese legal system to get her children back. Her Japanese husband abducted their son and daughter from their home in Utah and took them to Japan where the police made it very clear to Regan Haight that they regarded this as a family matter.

POLICE: “I’m sorry, we don’t consider your case an abduction or even a crime”.

WILLACY: With no help from the US Government or Japanese authorities, Regan Haight decided to take matters into her own hands. It was a radical and very risky course of action.

REGAN HAIGHT: “I was told that I could do a snatch and grab kind of thing that was ….could be traumatic and most likely unsuccessful …and get myself into trouble”.

WILLACY: Regan Haight turned to this man, former British military special forces operative Steve Johnson is known in the business as a child recovery specialist.

STEVE JOHNSON: “Japan has a reputation around the world as being difficult, some say impossible to recover children from. I am robust, I’m head on, I’m in the face of anyone I’m going up against and I don’t leave until I get the job done”.

REGAN HAIGHT: “It gave me confidence and you know what I needed was support from somebody whose main goal was to help me”.

WILLACY: Steve Johnson soon joined Regan Haight in Japan where the case took another dramatic twist. Regan Haight’s husband Shuta revealed the children had been abducted a second time – this time by their Japanese grandmother who was effectively holding them for ransom.

REGAN HAIGHT: “At one point she told me that I had to sign over, sign my name off the house and that I could see the kids. You know so we did that. Then she wouldn’t let me see the kids after that. You know we had to pay her fifty thousand dollars, then we could see the kids and you know I didn’t…. I didn’t have that money”.

WILLACY: After a period of subtle negotiation, Steve Johnson decided to apply the blow torch at a street side rendezvous filmed by other abandoned parents documenting the traumatic consequences of child abduction.

STEVE JOHNSON: [to Shuta at a road side meeting] “Your mother must understand that things are about to get bad. TV cameras are going to be here, the police are going to be called. Then Interpol will take over. The easiest thing for her to do Shuta is to hand over the children this afternoon, and it all goes away. Everything disappears. If your mum wants to swipe the kids up and run away – then good luck to her”.

WILLACY: With that the ultimatum was delivered and the deadline set. But the odds were well and truly stacked against Regan Haight. How would her ordeal end?

Australian Chayne Inaba believes he knows the perils of pushing too hard to right the wrong of child abduction.

As this video indicates family life seemed pretty happy and contented for the medical trauma specialist. Four days later his wife abducted their daughter Ai and brought her here [family home].

“This is your family home over there?”

CHAYNE INABA: “Yep that’s the family home, the home of the Inova family”.

WILLACY: “And if you went to the house there’d be big problems?”

CHAYNE INABA: “There’d be major problems which I would say the police would be involved and a lot of nasty things would happen yeah”.

WILLACY: Chayne Inaba has already had a run in he thinks was all about scaring him off. Not long after being warned by his wife’s family to stay away from his daughter, he was attacked inside his own home.

CHAYNE INABA: “I walked inside, closed the door, walking down towards the living room and I was attacked by a brick from the bathroom. I had two black eyes, fractures – I had a lot”.

WILLACY: He has his suspicions about who was responsible but the police weren’t interested.

CHAYNE INABA: “The brick had skin and hair and blood on it and they said, to my knowledge, that they told the Australian Consulate that the brick wasn’t the weapon”.

PROFESSOR COLIN JONES: “Parental abduction is an effort to eliminate the other parent from the child’s life and the sad cases we see here repeatedly are the child can’t talk to their father or sometimes their mother anymore. They’re taken away at a young age, they don’t get exposed to their foreign parent’s native language, they only speak Japanese. The foreign parent doesn’t speak Japanese. It’s a destruction of one half of the child’s identity to do that”.

WILLACY: Government MP Masae Ido is a leading sceptic of the Hague Convention and a chief defender of Japan’s approach to family law.

MASAE IDO: “While Westerners call it abduction it’s common among the Japanese that a mother and child return to the mother’s parents’ home after a divorce”.

WILLACY: She has a better understanding of this issue than most because as her political opponents gleefully advertise on the internet, she snatched her three children away from her first husband.

MASAE IDO: “Like other parents, I left a note so the other parent knew where the children were and understood that they were at a safe place. Not many people think of this as kidnapping or a crime. If anything, they think it’s not a bad thing. It’s really a custom”.

WILLACY: It’s a day out for happy families at the Osaka aquarium, but the group handing out these balloons is also dishing out a blunt message. Craig Morrey and other left behind parents have launched a public education campaign about an issue few Japanese are even aware of.

CRAIG MORREY: “Do you know that they only have a sole custody system in Japan”.

FATHER: “I’m sorry, I don’t really know”.

WILLACY: This custom of sole custody has torn apart parents and children from all corners of the world. But while local awareness of the issue is limited, Japanese do figure prominently among the victims. Every year 150,000 divorced Japanese parents join the ranks of the dispossessed.

RYOMA TAKAHASHI NEW: “My love for my children and my desire to see them has not changed”.

WILLACY: Ryoma Takahashi is one such parent and because of his profile, the recent abduction of his children has sparked media interest. His wife took their sons for a short break but never returned and the renowned local artist has now been frozen out of their lives.

RYMOA TAKAHASHI: “My mind went blank – what I thought and what to do – it was really blank. It was as if I lost sight of tomorrow… I lost sight of the future. I didn’t know what to do. The point is that my children were abducted by her and they were stolen from me. It’s become a country where whoever abducts children wins. In my case the judge told me on the first day, ‘You haven’t seen your children for seven months now. Did your children contact you? No, right? Your sons don’t want to see you anymore’.”

WILLACY: He’s trying desperately to win back his children but his wife has countered with a claim of domestic violence. The abuse? That Takahashi suggested his wife should give up work because of the stress it was causing her.

RYMOA TAKAHASHI: “She’s accusing me of verbal violence – but just what is verbal violence? It seems like my suggestion that she quit her job was verbal violence. I think it’s a major problem that the police accept that as domestic violence”.

PROFESSOR COLIN JONES: “Basically anything can be abuse. Verbal abuse is covered…. financial abuse. I’ve seen literature which includes ignoring someone as a form of abuse”.

WILLACY: For Regan Haight there was a happy ending. After months of trying to get her son and daughter back from the clutches of her Japanese husband’s family, the efforts of her private child recovery specialist paid off. The children were surrendered.

REGAN HAIGHT: “It was, it was amazing. It was a surprise. I didn’t expect them to walk through this door. I was expecting that you know that this was going to go on for a long period of time and then the sliding glass door opened and they came through and it was just, it was a relief. It was just, it was amazing”.

WILLACY: For the man who helped get her children back, it’s proof that kids can be saved from Japan’s black hole of abduction.

STEVE JOHNSON: “There is only one way to recover children that have been abducted and that’s to get on a plane, to land in country and get on with it, and confront people and upset people, ruffle feathers”.

WILLACY: But the happy endings are rare indeed, overwhelmed by the thousands of stories of heartbreak, American Craig Morrey will continue to care for his son Spencer and continue to fight to be with his daughter Amelia and he’ll continue in his struggle to change the system in Japan.

CRAIG MORREY: “Every three minutes a child loses contact with a parent in Japan through divorce. Every three minutes. And you know the government doesn’t want to acknowledge that because they don’t know how to deal with it and they’re not willing to deal with it”.

CHAYNE INABA: [footage of his children] “Sometimes it’s hard to watch”.

WILLACY: Chayne Inaba continues to fight for his daughter in the courts but he knows he may not get to see her for many years.

CHAYNE INABA: “And she’ll know that her father [upset]…… her father did everything humanly possible to keep the family together and protect her. She’ll know that”.

WILLACY: They once loved to play music together but for Englishman Alex Kahney, it’s sayonara to Japan and the daughters he can’t see and who will no longer speak to him. While recently packing up his Tokyo home he discovered a note left for him by one of his daughters before she was snatched away. He turned it into a song for them called “Someday We Can Meet”.

ALEX KAHNEY: “I didn’t want you to be out of my life, or for me to be out of yours. It wasn’t me that did this to you. I’ve done my best to get you back. I think about you all the time. If you want anything I’m here and I’m looking forward to that day”.