[House Hearing, 118 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
BRING ABDUCTED CHILDREN HOME
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON GLOBAL HEALTH, GLOBAL
HUMAN RIGHTS AND INTERNATIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
of
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
May 23, 2023
__________
Serial No. 118-27
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Foreign Affairs
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available: http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/, http://docs.house.gov,
or http://www.govinfo.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-072PDF WASHINGTON : 2024
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey GREGORY MEEKS, New York, Ranking
JOE WILSON, South Carolina Member
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania BRAD SHERMAN, California
DARRELL ISSA, California GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
ANN WAGNER, Missouri WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
BRIAN MAST, Florida DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
KEN BUCK, Colorado AMI BERA, California
TIM BURCHETT, Tennessee JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
MARK E. GREEN, Tennessee DINA TITUS, Nevada
ANDY BARR, Kentucky TED LIEU, California
RONNY JACKSON, Texas SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania
YOUNG KIM, California DEAN PHILLIPS, Minnesota
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida COLIN ALLRED, Texas
BILL HUIZENGA, Michigan ANDY KIM, New Jersey
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN-RADEWAGEN, SARA JACOBS, California
American Samoa KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas SHEILA CHERFILUS-McCORMICK,
WARREN DAVIDSON, Ohio Florida
JIM BAIRD, Indiana GREG STANTON, Arizona
MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida MADELEINE DEAN, Pennsylvania
THOMAS KEAN, JR., New Jersey JARED MOSKOWITZ, Florida
MICHAEL LAWLER, New York JONATHAN JACOBS, Illinois
CORY MILLS, Florida SYDNEY KAMLAGER-DOVE, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia JIM COSTA, California
NATHANIEL MORAN, Texas JASON CROW, Colorado
JOHN JAMES, Michigan BRAD SCHNEIDER, Illinois
KEITH SELF, Texas
Brandon Shields, Staff Director
Sophia Lafargue, Staff Director
------
Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights and International
Organizations
CHRISTOPHER SMITH, New Jersey, Chair
MARIA ELVIRA SALAZAR, Florida SUSAN WILD, Pennsylvania, Ranking
AUMUA AMATA COLEMAN RADEWAGEN, Member
American Samoa AMI BERA, California
FRENCH HILL, Arkansas SARA JACOBS, California
RICH McCORMICK, Georgia KATHY MANNING, North Carolina
JOHN JAMES, Michigan
Mary Vigil, Staff Director
Allie Davis, Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Bernier-Toth, Michelle, Special Advisor for Children's Issues,
Bureau of Consular Affairs, U.S. Department of State........... 7
Morehouse, Jeffery, Executive Director, Bring Abducted Children
Home........................................................... 39
Hunter, Dr. Noelle, Director, International Child Abduction
Prevention and Research Office................................. 51
Apy, Patricia, Legal Expert on International Parental Child
Abduction...................................................... 65
APPENDIX
Hearing Notice................................................... 80
Hearing Minutes.................................................. 82
Hearing Attendance............................................... 83
ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Statement submitted for the record from Andrew Kim............... 84
Statement submitted for the record from Astrid Johnson........... 85
Statement submitted for the record from Brian Tavares............ 87
Statement submitted for the record from James Cook............... 89
Statement submitted for the record from Brian Sung............... 93
Statement submitted for the record from John Sichi............... 95
Statement submitted for the record from Jon Stefanick............ 97
Statement submitted for the record from Randy Collins............ 99
Statement submitted for the record from Rick Johnson............. 103
RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
Responses to questions submitted for the record.................. 104
BRING ABDUCTED CHILDREN HOME
Tuesday, May 23, 2023
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Global Health, Global
Human Rights, and International
Organizations,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:03 a.m., in
room 2200, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Christopher H.
Smith (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.
Mr. Smith. The subcommittee will come to order, and good
morning to all of you.
The purpose of this hearing is to examine the
implementation of the Sean and David Goldman International
Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act of 2014, also known
as the Goldman Act, with a special focus on the U.S. Secretary
of State's need to make progress in response to noncompliance
by foreign governments in cases of international parental child
abductions.
Without objection, the chair is authorized to declare a
recess at any point and all members will have 5 days to submit
statements, extraneous material, and questions for the record,
subject to the length limitations contained in our rules.
I ask unanimous consent that the gentleman from
Pennsylvania, who is on his way, Mr. Fitzpatrick, be allowed to
sit on the dais and participate in today's hearing, and without
objection so ordered.
I now will open the hearing and I am very grateful that all
of you are here today. Our director of the children's issues,
Michelle Bernier-Toth, thank you for being here and for the
work that you're doing on behalf of left behind parents and
abducted children.
This week, we will commemorate the National Missing
Children's Day, as we all know, and we will remember the
families that have been torn apart by the crime of
international parental child abduction. This crime affects
hundreds and hundreds of American families every year.
I want to thank the left behind parents who are with us
today and send a message to all of the left behind families
around our Nation that we will never stop working to bring
abducted children--your children--home.
Today we will hear testimony about the devastating impact
of international parental child abduction on families and
children and we will examine what more the U.S. Government can
do to prevent and address this terrible crime.
We will hear from parents who have personally experienced
the heartbreaking pain of being separated from their children.
They know all too well the financial, legal, cultural, and
linguistic challenges to bringing children home from a foreign
country.
Mr. Morehouse, Dr. Hunter, thank you for being here today,
for being so tenacious in this cause. You are truly
inspirations to all of us and your words cause us to act and
your witness cause us to act. So I want to thank you for that
leadership.
And I also want to thank Patricia Apy for joining us today,
an expert on this issue and a brilliant lawyer. She represented
David Goldman in the fight to bring back his son, Sean, from
Brazil. Thankfully, Sean came home. It was after 5 years.
But many children are--and she would win, I would just
point out parenthetically, in court after court after court and
still there was no return. So I do want to thank her for her
tenacity as well.
Ms. Apy testified at the first hearing that I held on
international child--parental child abduction back in 2009 and
I'm grateful that she is joining us today.
And just for the record as well, as we wrote to Sean and
David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and
Return Act her insights were so valuable in terms of the text,
the concepts, and the bill itself.
It took 5 years to get it enacted into law. It passed the
House two times, sat and languished in the Senate and, finally,
it did--it got the support of the White House and it was signed
into law.
We must remember that child abduction is child abuse and it
has devastating emotional, psychological, and even physical
consequences for both abducted children and their families left
behind.
These are American citizens looking to their government for
help when legal processes are unavailable or, as so often is
the case, have failed. And so we will also discuss the State
Department's progress of implementing the Sean and David
Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act
of 2014, a law that I authored, to provide executive branch--
the executive branch with the necessary tools to address the
problem of international parental child abduction.
The Goldman Act empowered the State Department to seek the
return of American children, yet, the department, in my
opinion, has not used the full of range of tools as Congress
has intended so there's always need for improvement and we need
also on the House and Senate side to be looking at how we can
improve what we do in terms of legislation and ensuring that
there's sufficient resources provided for this effort.
We are very, very grateful, and I am grateful, to have the
Special Advisor on Children's Issues Michelle Bernier-Toth, and
she will give us information as to how the department--because
she is walking point on this--is leading those efforts and the
progress and where the challenges and gaps might remain.
Since the Goldman Act was enacted there has been a decline
in the number of American children abducted overseas and that
is a good news story. But, sadly, the rate of return of parents
does--needs to improve.
In the State Department's latest annual report on
international child abduction, and I have read it, as required
by the Act it states that the 2022 Office of Children's Issues
handled a total of 657 active abduction cases involving 863
children and 216 of these cases were opened just last year.
It also states that 118 cases were resolved in 2022, which
resulted in the return of 165 abducted children to the United
States.
In 2022 there were over 3,500 children who were enrolled in
the Children's Passport and Issuance Alert Program and the
total number, according to the report, is now at 62,400. That
is a large number of children that are on that Alert program.
On the prevention side the report notes that the--in 2022
there were over 4,900 prevention-related increase. So people
are calling. We hope that they will call even more.
And let me just say I am grateful that C-SPAN is here today
and I hope more Americans who might find themselves in this
situation current, even past and future, will know that they
have a resource they need to make that phone call and begin the
process. So my hope is that some will be encouraged to do so as
a result of this hearing.
The State Department's annual report, which names specific
countries that are found to demonstrate a pattern of
noncompliance with their responsibilities to address cases of
international parental child abduction under the Hague
Convention, the most recent report names 14 countries as
demonstrating a pattern of noncompliance and six of them have
been on the list since the first report was published in 2015:
Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, India, Jordan, and Peru. The
Goldman Act provides the State Department with powerful tools
to advocate for abducted American children and urge countries
to comply with their Hague Convention obligations.
It specifically lists increasingly escalating action,
sanctions, from a demarche to a public condemnation to a delay
or cancellation of one or more bilateral visits to extradition.
Appropriations language since Fiscal Year 1921 has
authorized the Secretary to withhold certain bilateral
assistance funds for the central governments of countries that
the Secretary determines or not taking appropriate steps to
comply with the Hague Convention and to date I'm not sure any
have been withheld and I would encourage the administration to
use that tool as well to get the attention and to try to compel
positive action.
With hundreds of American children--American citizens--
still missing it seems unconscionable that the--that demarches
seem to be the go-to means and I do hope, again, all these
tools will be used to their fullest extent.
The State Department is also authorized under the Goldman
Act to pursue bilateral agreements with countries that are
unlikely to become Hague Convention countries or have
unresolved preconvention abduction cases, and Japan jumps off
the page on that one.
I want to ask the department why there are not more MOUs
with these countries. Why are we not pursuing more supplemental
bilateral agreements with countries like Japan?
And I led a trip to Japan years ago and we talked about--
this is before they signed on to the Hague--and one of the
bittersweet ideas--OK, we were glad they were moving toward
ratification, which they did.
But all of those cases that preceded ratification had the
potential of falling off the focus and any kind of path toward
resolution, and an MOU, certainly, would be greatly helpful
there to say let's solve this. You know, delay is denial and,
you know, injustice need not be forever for these families.
Japan has a truly disturbing track record on these cases,
even though it has not been listed as noncompliant in recent
State Department reports. There have been more than 500 U.S.
children kidnaped to Japan since 1994, which is when the U.S.
Government started tracking them.
Yet, Japan has made very little progress on them,
especially in the cases that predate, like I mentioned a moment
ago, the Hague's signing on to the Convention in 2014.
And then there has been slow progress in changing its
single parent custody laws. Parents like Jeffery Morehouse, who
will testify momentarily, and many others are left waiting for
years and years and years and years without action. The State
Department must use all of its tools at its disposal to finally
get this right and pursue more strongly for returns.
That is why I introduced and plan to reintroduce in
Congress--this Congress--the Bring Abducted Children Home
Amendments Act.
This bill will strengthen key aspects of the Goldman Act
such as requiring disaggregated data and increased transparency
from State, providing more resources for left behind families
and increasing Federal law enforcement cooperation.
Left behind families have been waiting for too long and we
just need to put a strong sense of urgency about getting this
resolved.
I do look forward to your testimony in a moment. But I'm
very, very happy to recognize the ranking member, Susan Wild,
for any opening remarks she might have.
Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and welcome to all of
you. I think it's appropriate that we have this hearing on the
week, that National Missing Children's Day occurs this
Thursday.
The subject of this hearing, I know, is personal for many
of you and for people in our communities and across our
country. I see that several of you have photographs of
children. Please feel free at any point to put them up,
demonstrate them. It's really important that we make this issue
as personal as possible. I know it's intensely personal for
you.
Like our last subcommittee hearing, which focused on human
trafficking, I believe this hearing reflects an area of wide
bipartisan agreement and I'm looking forward to working with
all of you and our colleagues to come up with solutions.
In the challenges that it poses--legal, ethical, personal,
and geopolitical--this issue is incredibly complex. Our task as
Members of Congress and policymakers is to view it through a
human lens while weighing the many competing forces that If not
correctly addressed can endanger the safety of those involved,
especially the children themselves.
That is why the grave risk exception is so critical and
why, while moving as robustly as possible, we always need to
guard against unintended consequences and ensure the Hague
Convention and measures against international parental
abduction are not making vulnerable parents more vulnerable and
are protecting people in situations of domestic violence.
Thank you to our witnesses for being here and thank you,
Chair Smith, for calling this important hearing. With that, I
look forward to a productive hearing and I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. Wild.
I'd like to now introduce our first witness, Ms. Michelle
Bernier-Toth, a highly distinguished career at--member of the
U.S. Department of State.
She began in 1987 and has served in consular positions in
Damascus, Syria, Doha, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, and UAE. She has
also served in the Foreign Service positions as well as the
Foreign Service Institute before converting to civil service in
2003.
As a civil service officer she has served as the deputy
director in the Children's--Office of Children's Issues,
director in the Office of American Citizens Services and Crisis
Management and as managing director Overseas Citizen Services
as well.
In December 2019 Michelle was named as the Special Advisor
for Children's Issues in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. She
has earned her bachelor's degree in Near Eastern languages and
literature from Yale University and a master's degree in Arab
studies from Georgetown University.
We're delighted to have you here and thank you. The floor
is yours.
STATEMENT OF MICHELLE BERNIER-TOTH, SPECIAL ADVISOR FOR
CHILDREN'S ISSUES, BUREAU OF CONSULAR AFFAIRS, U.S. DEPARTMENT
OF STATE
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild, and
distinguished members of the subcommittee, thank you so much
for the invitation to speak on an issue that is important to
all of us, that of international parental child abduction.
I have submitted a detailed written statement to the
subcommittee about the work that we have been doing, which I
ask to be included in the record.
Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member Wild, I have the privilege
to focus on this issue now as Special Advisor for Children's
Issues. It is a role I take seriously because ultimately is
about children, children and families, who, as you said, have
been the victims of and traumatized by international parental
child abduction.
Since becoming Special Advisor I have traveled extensively,
both virtually and in person, to meet with foreign governments
and officials in numerous countries, including those that you
cited as being still noncompliant, including many of those.
My message is always the same, that we owe it to the
children and their families to resolve these abductions and to
work to prevent them.
What I often find in these meetings is recognition of the
challenges that our foreign partners face, whether as Hague
Abduction Convention treaty partners or not--judicial delays, a
lack of understanding of the Convention, problems with locating
children or enforcing return orders, or simply a lack of
capacity in the countries' under resourced central authority.
These are among the challenges I find when I meet with
foreign government officials. They admit the problems and they
want to do better. My question for them is how can we help.
We want our treaty partners to succeed for the benefit of
the children and their families. We have supported judicial
training in countries where judges are not familiar with the
Convention.
We have trained central authorities on how to manage cases.
We have brought foreign officials to the United States to learn
from their counterparts. We connect countries that are
resolved--that have resolved enforcement problems with those
that are still struggling.
We highlight our concerns about understaffed and under
resourced central authorities with those who can make a
difference. We work closely with our colleagues in regional
bureaus and at our embassies to develop tailored strategies for
each country.
We use every opportunity at all levels to talk about
problems and look for solutions. Some of these conversations
are with key government officials. Others are with members of
civil society, members of the legal community, and other
stakeholders.
We use the media to raise public awareness and try to
influence government actors. I've written op-eds and conducted
interviews with major foreign newspapers targeting problems in
their countries, such as Brazil and Korea. We also use
demarches to formally convey our concerns and demands and to
make these a matter of record.
I know there are many who believe that we should withhold
assistance. I note that our foreign assistance is given to
promote our national interest, such as counter terrorism,
counter narcotics, regional security, issues I know that this
subcommittee is very much focused on.
We engage in promoting the rule of law, an important goal
that assists us in the implementation of the Hague Convention.
We weigh whether withholding assistance will achieve the
results we want by influencing those who can make a difference.
I do not work alone. A team of dedicated colleagues in the
Office of Children's Issues and throughout the department
support me in thinking creatively and acting constructively. I
know that progress does not come quickly enough for the parents
and children traumatized by international parental child
abduction.
My colleagues in the Office of Children's Issues are
committed to assisting left behind parents seek the return of
their children, which we know is too often a long and painful
process.
We wish it were otherwise. That is why I will continue to
press our treaty partners to live up to their obligations and
urge other countries to join the Convention and implement it
fully.
In doing so, I and my colleagues appreciate the support of
Congress in demonstrating that resolving and preventing
international parental child abduction is a priority for the
entire U.S. Government.
Thank you. I look forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Bernier-Toth follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
We are joined by Dr. Bera. Thank you for joining us today.
I have just some opening questions. Then I'll yield to my
colleagues.
You know, the 2023 report identifies 14 countries which
were determined to be noncompliant. Of those eight are
countries with the Hague Convention in force with the United
States.
In all but one of those cases the report identifies
judicial performance or delay as contributing to the
determination of noncompliance and I'm wondering, you know, in
the case where a judicial determination is not in conformity
with the treaty or the process applied is not compliant with
the treaty, is that case still defined as resolved?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. That is something we look at case by case
and when we--we have a team of attorneys in the State
Department and we often ask them to review a case to see
whether it is in fact compliant with the Convention and If we
have--If we start to see trends where that's not the case we
will raise that with the foreign government.
Thank you for the question about judicial delays. That is
something that we have identified as a problem, as you say, in
several countries, many countries. When I meet with judges in
those countries--and, again, I will note I have visited
Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, and India over the past
year--I find that it's typically not that the judges are
deliberately making the wrong decisions but that they do not
understand the Convention, which is why we have made such a
concerted effort to promote judicial training, judicial
education in those countries.
In Brazil, for example, the judges of the supreme court
have spearheaded not just writing guidance for judges
throughout Brazil but have hosted two separate workshops to try
to raise awareness among the judges in Brazil about how to
implement the Convention correctly.
These are the kinds of activities that we're trying to
support and promote not just in Brazil but in other countries
as well.
Mr. Smith. Let me just ask you, when there is a problem in
a resolution that's not been following, you know, the
fundamental principles of the Hague Convention where is that
documented? Does it go into a file? Does it--does it get--find
its way into the report or----
Ms. Bernier-Toth. It would be part of--it would be--
obviously, it'd be part of the case notes for the case. But it
would also be--the question is what happens next--what are the
next steps that we can take with that parent to try to find a
solution of some sort.
Mr. Smith. With regards to nontreaty countries what steps,
If any, have been taken to review the terms prior--of prior
MOUs entered into between the United States and Egypt and
Jordan?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. That is an excellent question. Memorandum
of understandings are one way to memorialize a joint commitment
to look at cases, to look at the issues, to try to find
solutions short of a binding or legal remedy because,
obviously, you're only using the legal remedies that are
already at your disposal.
They are a way to get people to the table to talk. I was
actually in the Office of Children's Issues in 2004 and 1905
when we entered into the MOUs with Lebanon, Egypt, and Jordan.
Because they were not binding they're only as good as the
commitment of both parties and I think we find times when, for
whatever reason, sometimes governments lose track.
But I can tell you I will be going to Lebanon and Jordan
next--early next month and this will be a topic of discussion.
But we do look at MOUs to say is this going to get us the
dialog that we need to try to resolve cases outside of the
Hague Convention.
Is it going to detract from any efforts--depending on the
country is it going to detract from ongoing efforts to get the
country to move to Hague? Do we need it?
Sometimes we have the understanding without the memorandum
and we have countries that we work with very collaboratively on
an ongoing basis without a piece of paper. So we do weigh all
of these factors when we look at each country and what might
work best in that circumstance.
Mr. Smith. Could you tell us how often does the Interagency
Working Group meet and would it be possible, you know, protocol
wise If perhaps I and my ranking member and others were to sit
in on one of those?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. The Interagency Working Group meeting,
which--again, thank you very much for that. The Act set that up
and it's been a wonderful success.
It really has strengthened our interagency working
relationships with a number--the wide range of agency partners.
Before the pandemic it was meeting biannually. With the
pandemic that has gone to an annual basis but we're hoping to
get back to the biannual pattern of meetings.
That said, I think even just those biannual or even just
the annual meetings really helped create the network of
contacts that we need on a day-to-day basis.
The next meeting is tentatively scheduled for early
August--the last one was in August 2022--and I can--we will be
hosting it. So I think we can have, you know, decision--
discretion over who comes. So thank you.
Mr. Smith. Appreciate that. Thank you so much.
You know, one of the provisions we have put in--embedded
into the Goldman Act was to encourage families, left behind
parents, to be in touch--for you to convey to that person, you
know, or persons If it's the whole family that their
Congressmen and two U.S. Senators might be of enormous help.
That is, you know, there's nothing but value added.
I do not think too many of us have messed up when it comes
to these cases. But it does add a certain sense of urgency
because of the power of the person just the advocacy we bring
to bear. How has that been working out?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. So that has become a standard practice.
Thank you very much. When the Office of Children's Issues opens
a new case, when a left behind parent contacts them and they
open the case on their behalf, they also provide information on
who their senators and Member of Congress is so that they can
reach out to them.
We really value the support that we have from Members of
Congress because it does make a difference. When I travel
overseas and meet with foreign governments I can very
accurately say this is an issue that is important not just to
the administration but to the Congress as well. It's an all of
government concern and that is very helpful.
Mr. Smith. Just let me ask you, Japan was designated as
noncompliant, as you know, in the 2023 report with reference to
a number of cases, quote, ``voluntarily resolved.''
How does the report define voluntary resolution, which is
consistent with the purpose of the treaty? While the report
indicates that judicial authorities rendered timely decisions
it also indicates that the U.S. is not aware of a single
abduction case in which a judicial order related to
international child--parental child abduction needed
enforcement.
To your knowledge, has there been a judicial determination
made pursuant to the treaty to return any abducted child to the
U.S. in the last year and can you direct me to where that
information is to be found in the report?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. So with regards to Japan, a voluntary
resolution would be where the parents actually came to some
sort of a decision regarding the child, whether that access
return or whatever the case might be, whatever the parents
decide, and, obviously, that's something that we appreciate
because it can be less traumatic for everybody.
Mr. Smith. If you'd yield on that one point.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Yes.
Mr. Smith. The undue pressure that many of these families
have experienced, these left behind parents, it may be years.
It's bankrupted them, perhaps, or, certainly, the pain and
agony. They're more likely to accept terms and conditions that
are less than fair.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I totally agree.
Mr. Smith. So how does--If it does not comport with the
treaty what's--you know, how do we remedy that?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. It is totally not an ideal situation, in
many instances. I, too, agree with that and, again, a
voluntary--it is where the parents have come to some sort of an
agreement.
As far as returns, you're absolutely correct that Japan
acceded to the Convention and then we realized that yes, they
had acceded but they were unable under their own laws and
processes to enforce return orders.
So judges might have been making the right decisions but
they weren't being enforced. That was something that we pressed
Japan on because, again, what's the point of the Convention If
their orders aren't being enforced?
Japan subsequently passed legislation to give teeth to
their enforcement orders and I'm pleased to say that since 2021
Japan has successfully enforced all U.S. Hague cases in which
there was an order--a return ordered. So that's a step forward.
Again, it's not something--we're not--we're still watching.
We're still monitoring. That's only been 2 years, and we want
to see what happens, you know, going down the road. But there
is some progress, though, that we want to take note of.
Mr. Smith. Thank you.
Ranking Member Wild?
Ms. Wild. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
As I was listening to you I was reflecting back on my own
legal career before I came to Congress, which spanned 30 some
years, and at the very early point of my legal career I did
some domestic relations work. Thankfully, that was a relatively
short period of my legal career.
But there was nothing more challenging than difficult
custodial arrangements and I cannot even imagine the added
piece of an international abduction and how that gets resolved.
And so I commend you on the work that you've done and are
continuing to do in this highly emotional space. You've been a
consular officer yourself. I understand that they are extremely
important in the process of ascertaining an abducted American
child's welfare and whereabouts abroad.
Can you discuss that a little bit so that those of us who
haven't been in that role understand what the consular officer
does and what kind of factors will contribute to his or her
success in that role?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Thank you for that question. We're always
happy to talk about what we do. We conduct welfare whereabouts
visits on children who have been parentally abducted at the
request of the parent and this is----
Ms. Wild. You mean the parent who----
Ms. Bernier-Toth. The left behind parent.
Ms. Wild. The left behind parent.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. The left behind parent. Sometimes we
conduct them when we have our own individual or separate
concerns about the child's welfare.
We have the authority under the Vienna Convention to do
that at any time If we have concerns. One of the challenges is
often that--is getting access to the child and sometimes
negotiating with the taking parent how and when and where we
can meet the child.
We emphasize that we are concerned about the child's
welfare and we also recognize that our visit with the child and
our report to the left behind parent about how the child is
doing, how they are faring, how they're doing in school, may be
the only information that parent has or has had about their
child in years.
And so it's so important that we get the details accurate
and that we convey to them as much as possible about the
child's conditions, how they're--you know, again, everything--
information we can get.
So we have guidance that we provide to consular officers.
We do a lot of training on this so they understand what their
role is, that they understand how to negotiate that visit to
make sure that we can get to see the child.
And I will note that even this week we are running our
primary training program on responding to intercountry--
international parental child abduction, focusing on Middle
Eastern countries, our post in the Middle East.
So that's going on right now. But, again, this is an
important part of that because these visits are really critical
in providing the left behind parent with information on their
child.
Ms. Wild. And that's assuming that you can ascertain the
whereabouts of the child?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. That is, and that is something that we,
obviously, will be working with. If we do not have the
information from the left behind parent, if they do not have
that information, that we would work with local authorities to
try to locate the child and we, you know, again, may have to be
very creative in that, sort of looking at various ways and
various contacts that child might have with other people to see
how can we find them--how can we find.
Ms. Wild. So is the consular officers' security a concern?
Safety and security?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. It is but it depends on the country. It
depends on the conditions. It depends on the individual case,
obviously, and that is something that a consular officer would
consult with the regional security officer as to what steps
might need to be taken in order to conduct that visit.
We also--I think one of the, if you will, silver linings,
such as it is, of the pandemic is that even if we cannot get
physically to meet a child we sometimes can meet them
virtually.
It does not entirely, you know, compensate for the in-
person, obviously, but it's sometimes better than nothing if we
cannot get anything else.
Ms. Wild. And if you have trouble ascertaining the
whereabouts of the child are there countries that are more
cooperative in assisting than others?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Again----
Ms. Wild. And assuming that the answer is going to be yes
can you tell us which countries are not particularly
cooperative?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I think where there--countries are not
cooperative it's often because they also have a problem in
locating children, period, which is one of the criteria we look
at in the ICAPRA report.
For example, countries that are--their law enforcement
capabilities are under resourced or untrained or perhaps they
do not see this as a higher priority as other law enforcement
matters.
When I was traveling in Ecuador and Peru this is something
I raised with local authorities, not that they cannot always
find children but when they have trouble we want to make sure
that they have the resources and that they understand this is
important, too.
So I do not have the list of countries off the top of my
head where this is an issue but----
Ms. Wild. OK.
Ms. Bernier-Toth [continuing]. But when it is an issue we
raise it.
Ms. Wild. And are there additional tools and resources that
need to be provided to consular officers in this role that they
do not currently have that are on their wish list----
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I'll have to take that----
Ms. Wild [continuing]. That would make the job easier?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I'll take that back and consult with my
colleagues.
Ms. Wild. OK. Please let us know, if you would.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I will.
Ms. Wild. I'm going to yield at this point, Mr. Chairman. I
have other questions but I'd like other members to have a
chance.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Bera? Thank you.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and, again, thank
you for the work that you're doing. Obviously, a very
challenging situation.
I'd like to address--I'm the senior Indian-American Member
of Congress and, you know, India has not acceded to the Hague
Convention and I, certainly, want to talk about that a bit.
You know, in my prehearing reading, you know, I read some
of the reasons the Indians have given for not acceding to the
Convention, one of them being that many of the taking parents
are victims of domestic violence in India. Still is a place
where you have a lot of arranged marriages.
You have, you know, brides that will go to a foreign
country, let's say the United States, where they really do not
have any other support system and, you know, work closely with
South Asian Indian-American organizations trying to address
domestic violence. So that's a very real concern.
That said, just from your perspective in working with
India--so I can see the scenario where a mother flees with
their child back to, you know, where their parents are in
India.
That said, you know, how do we address that issue of
domestic violence but also, you know, reuniting families? And,
you know, that, obviously, is a tough situation.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Well, thank you for that question and
thank you for your interest in India because, again, that is
one of my highest priorities is working with India and the
Indian government to resolve some of the really heart-wrenching
cases that involve both mothers and fathers as left behind
parents.
I think that's something that we constantly remind the
Indian government of. It's not all women taking their children
to India. It's also men.
Domestic violence in any case is a complicating factor. But
my point, as I raise with my interlocutors in New Delhi and
here in Washington when we have met for our bilateral--annual
bilateral dialog with the Indian government is that if a woman,
let's say, is the victim of domestic violence here in the
United States she needs to avail herself of the protection and
resources that are available in the United States.
We have Federal, State, and local programs to protect and
support victims of domestic violence. That feeling that they
have no option but to take their child to India or to whatever
country is not the option. It should not be the option.
And so we are actually talking about active outreach to the
Indian-American community about this issue because if we can
prevent these abductions we're so many steps ahead. But working
with the Indian government is definitely very, very high on my
radar screen. I've made it a career goal.
Mr. Bera. Certainly let us know or let my office know how
we can be helpful amplifying this issue within the diaspora
here in the United States because it is a very real issue.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. We will definitely be talking to you.
Mr. Bera. Great. Thank you. Are there specific things that
we should raise with the Indian government to address this
issue because that would be helpful?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. We would welcome the opportunity to meet
with the caucus to talk through some of this to see where we
can collaborate, and in our conversations with the Indian
government--again, we have our annual bilateral meetings where
this is always a top agenda item.
But besides that, we have ongoing fairly frequent
discussions with the Indian government in New Delhi, the
Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Women and
Child Development, which is the lead agency on this.
And we are--most recently our embassy in New Delhi hosted a
judicial seminar on international parental child abduction and
other child--children's issues, which brought together over 400
members of the legal community and civil society.
So we want to raise awareness within India about the
problems and really set the record straight on what's happening
and the trauma that this causes. So we will be--we'd love to
come to you to talk about how to amplify that message.
Mr. Bera. Great. Certainly, and I look forward to working
with you and doing what we can to kind of amplify that both
here within the diaspora but also within India.
Thank you. And I'll yield back, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Dr. Bera. I'd like to now
yield to Dr. McCormick.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you. Thanks for taking time out of
your busy schedule to be with us here today.
As a youth minister for 20 years and as a father of seven
this is a very near and dear subject to my heart. As a guy
who's seen people been brought in to the ER after being
trafficked it's even more sobering to me.
I'm always worried that we get it wrong in the government,
though, that we're not doing things that are effective. We're
just doing things that end up being messaging pieces because we
care.
Sometimes churches do the same thing, right, where we
donate a bunch of money and then we say, look, we helped, and
somebody bought a Ferrari and nobody actually got any downwind
consequence from what we sacrificed for.
In your opinion, since you're the expert--that's why you're
here--what do you think we have done right and what have we
done wrong or we could do better into the future as we're
trying to solve this very complex issue, which, when you're
dealing with foreign countries, as anybody who's been overseas
multiple times would know, in the military even when you have
force it's hard to get things done.
And I got a friend of mine who's a merc who does child
retrieval overseas of child trafficked people, over a hundred
women so far, and it is a complex business, and I'm not sure we
have a cornerstone on all the things we could do right. What
can we do better?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Thank you. That's a really good question.
What do we do right? I think that when we develop our
country engagement strategies, again, in consultation with our
regional bureaus in the State Department, with our embassies
abroad, and with our stakeholders--our left behind parents who
provide a very valuable input--when a government is--recognizes
that they have a problem, when they want to do better, it's
helping them identify what steps they can take and how we can
support them in doing that.
So whether there's judicial training, whether it's law
enforcement training, and trying to locate missing children--
all of those steps--I think one of the things that we could do
better, which, again, is a priority is drawing on the
experience and resources not just at the State Department, not
just of our law enforcement agencies that can provide training
and expertise to their counterparts, but, again, looking very
broadly at who's doing what and who can be part of this
equation, who can help resolve some of these challenges, again,
left behind parents are a very valuable resource and provide
very valuable information.
But it's also raising awareness, helping get the word out,
and I think, as was mentioned earlier, humanizing the issue so
that foreign governments understand the cost to the children
and to their families.
I was very moved, as we all were in the Office of
Children's Issues, when a mother whose child was returned from
a foreign country sent us a video of their return at the
airport.
It wasn't just the mother and child. It was the entire
family, the little girl's friends, her classmates, and you
understand how this impacts not just one family, not just a
nuclear family, but an extended family and a neighborhood and a
community and I think helping raise awareness to that fact is
something that we should all be doing.
Mr. McCormick. I apologize for not being here during your
opening remarks and perhaps you've already covered this but
what--if you could single out two or three countries that
specifically have been egregious in their behavior or their
inability or resistance to cooperating I would like you to name
them.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. That's a good question. I think our
report--even the cited countries, the countries that we have
cited in our report that I have visited, at least, have wanted
to cooperate. But they need guidance. They need support. They
need help in figuring out what to do.
Obviously, there are countries that are totally not
cooperative, Russia being one of them, and there are other
countries where we do not have diplomatic relations, such as
Syria, where any case is even more challenging because of that,
because we have to work through third parties to try to get
information.
Those are the countries that are extremely difficult and
not cooperative on anything. But, again, fortunately, we often
do not have many cases, If any, there as well.
Mr. McCormick. That makes sense. I imagine the majority
would be south of the border and in those countries. Is that
correct?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I think our countries in Latin America,
the majority of whom are Hague treaty partners, even those that
we have cited as being noncompliant my experience talking to
their governments has been--they do want to do better. They
want to do better.
Mr. McCormick. I was referring to volume rather than
actually----
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Oh, volume. Oh, yes. Oh, absolutely.
You're absolutely right.
Mr. McCormick. Thank you very much. I appreciate it.
And with that, I yield.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Doc.
Ms. Jacobs?
Ms. Jacobs. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for
being here.
First, I would just like to acknowledge my constituent,
Astrid Johnson, who's here in the audience. We're going to hear
her story in the second panel. But thank you so much for being
here and for your advocacy.
I want to followup on the question that my colleague, Dr.
Bera, asked around this question of domestic abuse. In 2020,
the official guide to good practice on the Hague Conventions'
grave risk exception was published and it clarifies that this
exception does not require, for example, that the child be the
direct or primary victim of physical harm If there is
sufficient evidence that because of a risk of harm directed to
a taking parent there is a grave risk to the child.
Last year, actually, one of my constituents fled another
country to the United States, fled another country to escape
her abusive husband, who eventually filed a Hague Convention
petition to obtain custody of their two children.
So I just want to ask you--I know you said the
recommendation is you tell people to avail themselves of the
services here in the United States. I think we know that those
aren't always perfect so--and as I've said, in the guidelines
that actually this is supposed to be taken in account.
So how do you view this grave risk exception? What steps
are you taking to ensure that that mechanism it provides
sufficient protection and how have you made sure we're playing
a constructive role in ensuring that these guidelines are
implemented as intended?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Thank you for that. That's--this is an
issue that is of concern, I mean, obviously, not just to us but
to the entire international community that works on the Hague
Convention. It's something that is frequently discussed.
With regard to 13(b), the exception for grave risk to a
child, which is intended to be used in exceptional cases,
obviously, domestic violence against a parent can affect the
child. We all know that.
The Convention talks about returning the child to their
habitual residence, not necessarily to the care of the other
parent, although often that parent does have custodial rights--
usually always does.
But one of the--one of the trends that has become
incredibly important in these cases, especially when there's
concerns about domestic violence, is direct judicial
communication.
When I worked in the Office of Children's Issues previously
this was a foreign concept in many countries. In fact, in many
civil law countries judges were prohibited from speaking to
other judges about a case.
With the creation of a Hague network--a Hague judge network
of experienced judges around the world in all the different
countries--partner countries--this has encouraged and
facilitated direct communications between judges.
So, for example, a judge hearing a case in a foreign
country who has concerns about the possibility or the
allegations of domestic violence can speak to a judge, in this
case in the United States, to say what protective measures will
be put into place.
If I order this child returned what kinds of protective
measures would be put into place to protect the parent and the
child, and that's something that has been very useful in
resolving these cases consistent with the Convention, returning
the child to their habitual residence, while still respecting
the protection of a victim of domestic violence.
Ms. Jacobs. And I appreciate that and I know it's a very
tricky part of this. I guess--in the case of my constituent
they fled another country to the United States and, obviously,
we know whereas the U.S. judicial system is imperfect in some
other countries there's not even a judicial system that
addresses domestic violence or takes it as a crime.
So how would that work in the case where you're fleeing
from a country like that to the United States?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. The judge in the United States might be
put--would be put into contact, could be put into contact with
a judge in the other foreign country to talk through and base--
and will make their ruling based on that discussion based on
what they learn and based on their own--they're the judge. They
can make these decisions.
Ms. Jacobs. OK. Thank you. I yield back.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. Jacobs.
Just let me ask you briefly, you know, when you talk about
a resolved case, we had a case of Bindu Phillips, who was from
just north of my district in New Jersey. Her two boys were
abducted when they were at the age of eight.
The police did a full investigation--the Plainsboro police
department, and she actually testified at previous hearings
that I've had, and it was criminality all over the place. He
ripped off everything, stole everything, left her penniless
and, above all--and this is all that mattered to her--abducted
their two children, Albert and Alfred.
For years she tried to regain some kind of contact. Failed
every time. She actually went there and discovered that he had
so poisoned those two boys against her--parental alienation
certainly can be defined as a poisoning of a child's mind
against the left behind parent--so much so that they did not
want to see her.
He lied about those to--about her, Bindu Phillips, and now
they've aged out. They're 23 and even one will be coming here
to United States to go to school. He does want to see her.
I've never seen a more broken woman. She has a deep faith
and she just prays for her children and even for her husband,
despite the fact that he kidnaped her children and I'm
wondering, you know, does that inform--like, when we're talking
to the Indian leadership, and I even--when Prime Minister Modi
was here I had met with the Ambassador with her and asked for
his intervention. Got none. Then when Modi was here briefly had
her talk to him and we gave him a letter and nothing happened
from that.
You know, I find that appalling. You know, when somebody
comes and says, here's a true injustice that has happened and
he turns a blind eye the way the prime minister did I have
concerns and we all should.
But Bindu Phillips continues to this day to be heartbroken
in the extreme like so many of the left behind parents, If not
all of them, and I'm wondering how that is looked at.
I mean, when you talk to the Indian government please bring
up her case, because when she went over there even some of the
in-laws were talking about taking legal action against her. She
is the most gentle, empathetic, kind-hearted woman you could
ever meet who just loved her chill and loved her husband. She
was broken by that, too. She never saw that coming.
So If you could respond to that, and then I have another
brief question. Today, Kyle O'Malley, who is also a resident of
New Jersey, is filing another appeal in Brazil in his Hague
case to return his two and a half year old daughter, Gia, to
her place of habitual residence, which is New Jersey. He has
won in one court in Brazil, then got a mixed review in a second
and now he's appealing it to the third.
What's troubling--it's all troubling but what's an
egregious, I think, manifestation of a judge's viewpoint, two
of the judges in their statements explaining their decision
against the case--his case--said that they believe that the
Hague is outdated.
It's an outdated method for resolving international
parental child abduction cases and does not apply anymore.
These are two judges making these statements in Brazil.
Have you had any discussions with the central authority in
Brazil about Kyle O'Malley and his daughter and what can be
done to remedy that malpractice on the part of those judges?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. So, on your first point, I think Ms.
Phillips' case definitely underscores the pain, the suffering,
the trauma, that not just parents but their extended families,
their communities, face in these cases.
When I have met--before I meet with foreign government
officials I very often, with support from my colleagues in the
Office of Children's Issues, meet with the left--some of the
left behind parents and then raise their cases with the
government as examples of the problems that not just one or two
parents are facing but any parent who has a child taken to that
country has experienced because I think it's so important that
my government interlocutors in foreign countries understand the
human cost, the human suffering that is incurred by these
cases.
So that is something that I try to do on a routine basis,
and, yes, I will raise--I raise any case that demonstrates the
systemic problems in a country because I think that's important
to put a human face on it.
As far as Kyle O'Malley, I'm afraid I'm not intimately
familiar with his case. I'd be happy to discuss it with your
office to see where we we're going. I am dismayed that two
judges have reportedly said that this does not apply or that
the Convention is outdated. Clearly, we have more work to do in
Brazil.
Ms. Wild. Just one followup. We do know, I guess, on a
brighter, hopefully, more optimistic note that the number of
international child--parental child abductions has declined
over the last decade.
I just want to ask you about the Children's Passport
Issuance Alert Program and whether that has been something that
has markedly contributed to the prevention of abductions.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. We, certainly, like to think it has. We
believe it has. The Children's Passport Issuance Alert Program
is one way that a parent can flag their child's--flag their
child's name in our system so that If anyone, the other parent
or somebody else, applies for a passport it puts a hold on that
processing, that application so that we can look at who has
legitimate rights to apply for that child's passport.
It does not necessarily prevent the issuance of a passport
but it puts a hold on it so we can examine the custody orders,
who has the legitimate permission to apply for that child's
passport, and If the applying passport does not have it then,
obviously, the passport--because of our two-parent signature
requirement it plays into that, that If one parent has not
given their consent and does not plan to then that passport
will not be issued.
Ms. Wild. Assuming the child has a passport will that flag
that a parent might put onto the system be in operation at--
when another parent--the other parent tries to remove the child
from the country?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. No, because once the passport--If the
passport has already been issued it will not stop the child
from departing, which is why we very much appreciate the
Goldman Act's creation of the prevent abduction program.
This is where we can stop abductions from happening. A
parent can enter their custody order with us. We share that
with Customs and Border Protection.
The child's information goes into the data base and they
can then be stopped at the airport If they're trying to leave
through a port of--an airport port of entry.
This makes a difference. In any given year we enter about
200-plus children's names into that program and that does make
a difference.
I read every day--every morning we get the overnight duty
report and part of that is the report from our prevention
officers as to the number of phone calls they've fielded from
parents but also calls from local law enforcement wanting to
know whether a child can leave or If there's something going
on, as well as from the ports of entry.
We have two officers who sit out at the National Targeting
Center and work side by side with Customs and Border Protection
to try to make those--to stop those abductions from happening
in the first place.
Ms. Wild. Are there behaviors that the officers are taught
to look for? In case there isn't a custody order that's been
put on file are there behaviors that they are taught to look
for?
Ms. Bernier-Toth. You know, I would defer to my colleagues
in Homeland Security on that.
Ms. Wild. Thank you. I had a feeling I was a little afar
with that. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Just one--I have a lot of other questions, which
I'll submit for the record, but just one final.
As you know, Jeffery Morehouse is testifying and he has
done an amazing job for everyone else but still has not been
able to secure even visitation for his son, Mochi. 2010 his
beloved son was abducted to Japan.
We have a situation in Japan--we have a situation where,
you know, he has won court cases. One of them was in 2010--2014
and 2017. He still has no access.
Can you prioritize his case as a--one, because he's such a
tremendous advocate for everyone else including himself, his
own son, but it seems to me Japan's got to resolve this. I
mean, talk about egregious case. If you could speak to that.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. I fully share your appreciation for all
that Mr. Morehouse does on behalf of left behind parents around
the world and with a special focus on Japan and we appreciate
working with him on these issues.
Again, one of the things that we do when a child who has
been abducted to Japan becomes an adult, reaches age 18 or
older, at age 18 we seek to contact them to send them a letter
to let them know that they are now an adult U.S. citizen with
the benefits of being a citizen and we also try to put them in
touch with their left behind parent. So that we offer to
facilitate that communication.
In some instances it's very difficult to locate the
individual. We make our best--we do our best efforts to send
those messages as many places as possible in hopes of reaching
them.
But, ultimately, once the person--you mentioned parental
alienation and the fact that often these children have had no
contact with their left behind parent for so many years, and
while some are eager and interested at that point in
maintaining and establishing contact, others it's hard because
they have been told all sorts of things.
So we try to do--we do that in every case in Japan where a
child reaches the age of 18 and becomes an adult.
Mr. Smith. Thank you. If you could really prioritize his
case because I--how many times have you testified even here,
Jeffery? He's been at the United Nations. He's been all over
the world and has met with Japanese interlocutors as well.
And I've raised his case. I went to Japan, raised his case,
and it's, like, I get blank stares. And it's just--you know,
justice delayed--this isn't even delayed. This is denied. So
please. OK. Thank you.
I'd like to now thank you for your testimony and I look
forward to work with you, going forward, and for that meeting
in August I look forward to it.
Ms. Bernier-Toth. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much.
I'd like to now welcome our second panel to the witness
table, beginning first with the very distinguished witnesses,
including Jeffery Morehouse. He's an award-winning film maker
and volunteers much of his time as executive director of Bring
Abducted Children Home.
Bring Abducted Children Home is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to the immediate return of internationally abducted
children being wrongfully detained in Japan.
He also strives to end Japan's human rights violations of
denying children unfettered access to both parents. Bring
Abducted Children Home works to increase public awareness
through outreach on the crisis of abduction. He collaborates
with the an alliance of international partners working to end
abduction.
And I mentioned a moment ago and he has been, you know,
tenacious in arguing for access and, hopefully, to reclaim
custody of his child, Mochi. But he works for everyone else too
in such a selfless way.
And, Jeffery, want to thank you for that leadership. It is
extraordinary. As I mentioned a moment ago, you've brought this
message everywhere including to the United Nations frequently
to try to get them to put more of an oar into the water to get
more done. Thank you.
We then will hear from Dr. Noelle Hunter, who is clinical
assistant professor of political science at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville Department of Philosophy and Political
Science where she teaches courses on U.S. Government, public
policy, and international relations.
She is the founder and director of the International Child
Abduction Prevention and Research Office at the University of--
in Alabama, in Huntsville and advances data-informed solutions
to the global problem of international parental child
abduction. It's an interdisciplinary research and practice
initiative to improve prevention, response, and resolution.
Dr. Noelle Hunter is also co-founder and president emeritus
of the iStand Parent Network, Incorporated--that's when I first
met her--a nongovernmental organization that empowers parents
to recover their children from international parental child
abduction and advocates for public policy reform to prevent and
end this crime against children and against families.
Dr. Hunter co-founded, like I said, the iStand Parent
Network and recovered her daughter successfully from abduction
to Mali in the year 2014.
We will then hear from Ms. Patricia Apy, who has been
partner in the Paras, Apy & Reiss since 1996, a professional
corporation specializing in the practice of family law in New
Jersey.
Ms. Apy's area of expertise is in complex international
interState family litigation. Ms. Apy has litigated, been
qualified as an expert witness, and consulted on international
family disputes throughout the world in many places including
Pakistan, where it is a very, very challenging place to be in
that court.
She frequently consults and is regularly qualified as an
expert on issues related to application of religiously based
family law systems. She speaks throughout the United States on
family dispute resolution in both Hague and non-Hague countries
and in assessing risk factors for international child
abductions.
She has also conducted over a thousand hours of continuing
legal education for the Judge Advocate General Corps and for
our armed services, and I would just point out when we have
worked on a number of military service members who have had
their children abducted it was Patricia Apy who led the way not
only with the Pentagon but also with Congress in showing the
way and forward when bad advice was being tendered by JAGs,
which led to worsening the situation. She has been a leader in
educating the military on this.
And I would just say, finally, when we wrote the Sean and
David Goldman International Child Abduction Prevention Act and
it took 5 years, as I mentioned a moment ago, to finally get
enacted into law--passed the House twice, sat in the Senate and
languished, we finally got it into law--the person who provided
unbelievable expert insight as to what we should include to
make the difference was Patricia Apy.
So thank you for that, and she's working with us on our new
bill. So thank you.
Mr. Morehouse?
STATEMENT OF JEFFERY MOREHOUSE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, BRING
ABDUCTED CHILDREN HOME
Mr. Morehouse. Thank you, Chairman Smith, Ranking Member
Wild, and the committee for inviting me here today to share my
personal experience and my expertise on the ongoing crisis and
crime of international parental child abduction.
I also want to acknowledge all of the parents and
supporters that showed up in person today at the hearing as
well as our partners internationally that are watching this
live all around the world with a specific focus on Japan.
Bring Abducted Children Home is a nonprofit organization
dedicated to the immediate return of internationally abducted
children being wrongfully detained in Japan and strives to end
Japan's human rights violation of denying parents unfettered
access to their children and children to their parents.
We also work with other organizations on the larger goal of
resolving international parental child abduction worldwide. I'm
a founding partner in the Coalition to End International
Parental Child Abduction along with Dr. Noelle Hunter and other
partners, including one that's here in the room today, uniting
organizations to work passionately to end international
parental kidnaping of children through advocacy and public
policy reform.
Internationally I collaborate with an alliance of
representatives and organizations in Australia, Canada, France,
Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United
States, working together to end parental child abduction to and
within Japan.
According to the U.S. Government there have been more than
500 U.S. children kidnaped to Japan since 1994. Japan is
internationally known as a black hole for child abduction. A
signatory to the Hague Abduction Convention since 2014, Japan
betrays its obligation to return victims and guarantee rights
of access.
As a senior embassy of Japan official informed me in a May
2018 meeting, they leave it up to the kidnaping parent. It's
estimated that 150,000 children per year and 3 million over 20
years are victims of loss of access to a parent in Japan.
This would include American parents living there who
continue to be robbed of parental rights by Japan's single
custody laws. The U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child
States children have the right to maintain a relationship and
direct and regular contact with both parents. Japan fails to
honor this and they are a signatory of this Convention.
Last year on October 13th I briefed the U.N. Human Rights
Committee in Geneva, highlighting key points from our
multinational multi-NGO report emphasizing the traumatic impact
on abducted children and parents and called on the committee to
end the ongoing suffering. Hold the government of Japan
accountable.
In their concluding observations the committee--they wrote
the committee is concerned by reports received regarding
frequent cases of parental child abduction, domestic and
international, and a lack of adequate response by the State
party, Japan.
The Goldman Act was signed into law 9 years ago in August
2014. Since then there have been at least 10 hearings, and I
think I've attended all of them, to get the State Department on
board with holding foreign governments accountable and
increasing reunifications and returns.
They've demonstrated through three administrations little
true commitment to do this. Twenty-three-year-old General
Accounting Office reports on international parental child
abduction shockingly illustrate the same entrenched resistance.
On December 2d, 2009, former Assistant Secretary Bernard
Aronson testified to the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission
hearing--Chairman Smith, I think, was chairman at that point,
too, in that hearing--and he said--and I'm going to quote his
exact words--``The current system to secure the return of these
abducted American children does not work and will not work
unless it's changed profoundly.
I do not doubt the sincerity or the dedication of the
professionals at the State Department who have led in the
responsibility for this problem.
But they do not have the tools or the power to do their job
effectively and unless Congress gives them the power and tools
we will be back here in 5 years or 10 years with another set of
hearings and another group of parents with broken hearts and
devastated dreams, and we'll be making the same statements that
we are making here today,'' end quote.
Congress provided these tools in 2014. They were not used
as intended. Now is the time to enhance them and be
prescriptive with how they are used.
Empower the Office of Children's Issues to be more
effective in addressing international parental child abduction.
Establish a Presidentially appointed Senate-confirmed
Ambassador-at--large to monitor and combat child abductions who
reports directly to the Secretary of State.
Standardize the process of making welfare and whereabouts
visits requests so the process continues automatically and
persistently every 3 months after the initial request until the
nonabducting parent requests in writing for it to stop.
Require the Office of Children's Issues to work in close
liaison with the Department of Justice to enhance a whole of
government response instead of agencies and departments
cocooned in silos.
Expand the annual reporting on international parental child
abduction to include a full accounting for all kidnaped
children, not just open cases. This is vital.
As noted in their annual report the Department of State
considers a case resolved and, quote, ``closed'' for the
following reasons: a judicial or administrative authority has
complied with the Convention and determined not to return the
child under the provisions of the Convention, and I'll just
comment on that.
It's interpretive. The Hague Convention is an interpretive
agreement. There's no international body that punishes
countries for failing to uphold the basic terms and agreements
of the Hague Abduction Convention. So it's interpretive when
these foreign countries create these judicial rulings to not
return kidnaped U.S. children.
Second reason--they close these cases and consider them
resolved. Parents reach a voluntary arrangement for the child
to remain. As the chairman mentioned, there's considerable
pressure on parents with these cases as they go on.
So we do not know If this is a pure reason that the case is
resolved and closed. But it's closed in the report. We need to
understand why these cases are closed. It will illuminate and
illustrate real patterns with countries.
The third reason they'll close cases the left behind parent
withdrew the application or request. Now, there may be
legitimate reasons for that. There can also be a lot of
pressure.
I know cases in Japan where there's intense pressure for
parents to withdraw their application and they're dangled with
a carrot, baited that they'll get some sort of judicial process
that turns out to be not enforceable, and this is common in
other countries as well. But we need to know why these cases
are being closed.
Four, the left behind parent could not be located by
Children's Issues for more than a year. This one's always been
puzzling to me. I know a lot of parents. I have been doing this
for, unfortunately, 13 years and I know Dr. Hunter knows a lot
of parents, too.
I also know a lot of parents that do not know who the heck
their country officer is anymore. They know me, as Ms. Bernier-
Toth mentioned, because I engage with them frequently.
But a lot of parents do not know. So we need to know, you
need to know, when cases are being closed because there has not
been communication, because I can assure you 99.9 percent of
parents still want to know where their children are. They want
response and action.
So maybe there needs to be a better effort to locate them
If they are closing a case for this reason. But let's see the
data on this.
And, last, when a left behind parent or child passes away.
Now, this does happen. I know of two cases. I know of a case
where a kidnaping parent is deceased--two, actually--and I know
one where the left behind parent, unfortunately, passed away.
But I would still think it's very informative to
disaggregate this information so Congress and the American
public can understand what's actually going on here when cases
are resolved.
Additionally, cases are closed when the victim reaches 18.
Now, we do not do that when stranger abduction occurs, do we?
We do not just suddenly say, well, they're 18. Wherever they
are we'll just forget about them. Why are exceptions made for
victims of international parental child abduction?
When an abduction case is closed without the child being
returned, as I said it's essential to know why. This is going
to create a clearer picture of the IPCA crisis with each
country and a more useful tool in prevention cases in family
courts considering travel restraints.
I'd just respond to something briefly that Representative
McCormick asked a question of the previous panelist on the
worst offenders, and I did not quite hear a clear response to
his question.
So I'll just reiterate what one of our predecessors,
Ambassador Susan Jacobs, said in a hearing in this committee in
2015.
She was asked the very same question and she responded
without hesitation. The top three worst offenders are Brazil,
India, and Japan. Her words.
So this is going to create a clearer picture of the IPCA
crisis with each country, a more useful tool in prevention
cases in family courts considering these travel restraints that
are essential to get children into the prevent abduction
program.
Somebody mentioned and asked about the Child Passport
Issuance Alert Program. That's an interesting and valuable
tool. The prevent abduction program is even more invaluable and
important. But it requires a travel restraint order from a
court.
One of the problems that I see--and I serve as an expert
witness in prevention cases and Patricia Apy is an attorney, an
expert in this area, and she can speak to this probably more--
but I have to spend time explaining to the court the numerous
reasons why the State Department resolves the case without the
child being returned.
If you disaggregate these numbers it will be very clear--
and a couple of you mentioned you were former attorneys or
practicing attorneys--it will be very clear in the numbers that
children are not coming back from these countries, that will
then help with prevention so that we do not have to spend time
explaining to the court what this report really says.
The way the reports are written often give a false
impression that the kidnaped child will come home, that the
parent can rely on the Hague Abduction Convention, a bilateral
agreement or respect for a U.S. court order and our laws.
It gets misinterpreted that If a country is not placed on
the noncompliant list that they are compliant. A tiered report
with disaggregated data modeled after the Trafficking in
Persons Report, or TIP Report, will help address prevention
concerns and If used with correct intent may provide incentives
for foreign countries to make changes.
Certainly, the State Department wants to prevent future
abductions so they ought to be more than willing to provide
this information.
We worked extensively to try and get them to release data
and a couple of years ago they did publish the number of cases
outgoing from the U.S. and the number returned by a year.
But they were unwilling to disaggregate the data that we
are asking for now. So we know that's coming. You mentioned
pending legislation, and appreciate that. So require--the next
point I want to get across is, you know, require the State
Department to use multiple tools that are already in the
Goldman Act.
Hearing after hearing this has been addressed both in the
Senate and the House in 2018, in particular, and they've
declined again. They are entrenched in using demarches for
countries who fail to repatriate and reunite us with our
children.
State views demarches as important and meaningful when year
after year they fail to move beyond them and foreign countries
still do not improve. Clearly, demarches alone are about as
valuable as junk mail.
Let's move beyond them and use substantive tools. In the
Senate's annual resolution Countering International Parental
Child Abduction month they again noted the Supreme Court of the
United States has recognized that family abduction is a form of
child abuse with potentially devastating consequences for a
child, which may include negative impacts on the physical and
mental and well being of the child and may cause a child to
experience a loss of community and stability leading to
loneliness, anger, and fear of abandonment.
Our cases are not custody disputes. The impact from this
crime on the victims is lifelong. In last week's article in The
Age by journalist Eryk Bagshaw, who's written multiple times on
this issue, Sasumi Wataya bravely shared his experience.
He says he was beaten when he asked about his father. Then
his last name was secretly changed, cutting him off from all
future contact. ``I lost my identity,'' he said. The pain that
this Japanese system causes children is beyond description.
Our coalition leadership has met with stakeholders in the
Department of Justice and the FBI many, many times. One
consistent point that we all agree on is the sentencing
guideline under 18 U.S.C. 1204.
The International Parental Kidnaping Crime Act should be
higher in order for this crime to be taken more seriously. The
sentencing guideline for a stranger abduction is up to 20
years.
It's a moderate and reasonable change to increase it under
the statute from three to 10 years for--and this is quoting
from the statute--``whoever removes a child from the United
States or attempts to do so or retains a child who has been in
the United States outside of the United States with the intent
to obstruct the lawful exercise of parental rights.''
Currently, the criminal statute excludes 16-and 17-year-
olds. In contrast, most States set the age of majority at 18.
It's moderate and reasonable to amend this to define a child as
a person who has not yet attained the age of 18.
Existing Federal law and the Department of Justice
guidelines for missing persons to be entered and maintained
into the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, data base
are routinely disregarded by local, State, and Federal law
enforcement.
Parents can be ignored completely or incorrectly informed
that they need a criminal charge or a custody order. If they're
lucky enough to get a response that leads to an entry into the
NCIC an officer or an agent in the future who inherits the case
might decide just to remove it without the child ever being
located.
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has
acknowledged this, that cases are routinely removed without the
missing persons being located. In talking to our friends from
the State Department before the hearing they also said yes,
they see the same thing.
Starting this past summer I spent 10 months going back and
forth with a detective in the Seattle area who inherited my
case who decided that my son was no longer missing when he
turned 18. He somehow magically had free will even though he
had spent the past 13 years being kidnaped.
So he removed him from this data base. This meant that
NCMEC, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children,
also had to remove his missing persons poster, taking away a
valuable, valuable tool to try and locate my son and reunite.
I shared with this detective the requirements under Federal
law and Department of Justice guidelines. One of NCMEC's
attorneys spoke with the officer to offer technical guidance.
I engaged an FBI agent at the violent crimes against
children unit, who I know, and a staff member at the Amber
Alert Training and Technical Assistance Program for their
views.
We all agreed we're all on the same page--this is what
should have been done. But not this detective. How many times
it's been repeated across America where parents of
internationally kidnaped children are not receiving this bare
minimum required under Federal law assistance.
The solution is simple and in alignment with the
stakeholders. Require the FBI to enter each case of a missing
child into the National Crime Information Center data base and
each missing person who has been removed but not located should
be reentered.
The Interpol yellow notices identifying my son as a missing
person was also removed by the FBI and the--from the office in
Seattle although he remains missing.
Let's fix this, too. Require the FBI to enter or reenter
and maintain each case with an Interpol yellow notice. Victims
of IPCA should remain in both the NCIC and Interpol until they
are returned or after reaching the age of 21.
Request the removal in person to a U.S. consular official
or Federal law enforcement officer. Mandating the FBI to
provide these tools will help victims better understand what
has occurred to them and the resources and rights that they are
entitled to as American citizens.
I was reminded of this in January of this year when a
victim contacted us insisting they had never been kidnaped.
This was a State Department verified case.
But it was this person's belief because that's what the
abductor taught them. If a parent is able to locate and
maintain first contact, hopefully, it goes well. But so often
it does not.
Reunification staff at National Center for Missing and
Exploited Children has previously shared with us that most IPCA
victims are taught by their kidnappers that the other parent
does not want them, they're dangerous and harmful, they're
dead, or that the other parent is unknown.
Maintaining the NCIC entry and Interpol yellow notices will
be useful tools in aiding authorities to support parents in
locating and reuniting with their missing children.
Do we want to be back here in a year, in 5 years, in 10,
discussing what needs to be done? We know what needs to be
done. Amend these laws. Let's do this.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Morehouse follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much.
For the record, we do--we have incorporated your
recommendations into our draft bill and I cannot thank you
enough. All three of you have provided unbelievably incisive
insights for us as to what needs to be done.
So your testimony and your words, your wisdom, has not gone
unacted upon. So we will push this hard to try to get it
enacted into law. So thank you.
Mr. Morehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Hunter?
STATEMENT OF DR. NOELLE HUNTER, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL CHILD
ABDUCTION PREVENTION AND RESEARCH OFFICE
Dr. Hunter. Good afternoon, and thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you for the opportunity to come again before this
distinguished committee.
I'd like to request that my statement be entered into the
congressional Record in full.
Mr. Smith. Without objection so ordered.
Dr. Hunter. Thank you, sir.
Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Wild, and members of this
distinguished committee, in the decades since my own daughter's
abduction and return I have had the privilege to be a voice for
victimized children and families.
I have felt this weighty privilege of speaking for so many
parents who have looked to you, Mr. Chairman, looked to
Congress, for leadership and oversight to require the State
Department, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland
Security, and all of their respective agencies that my
colleague spoke of who are charged with this issue to enforce
the laws concerning international parental child abduction,
kidnapping, and wrongful retention of American children held
abroad.
And, Mr. Chairman, I would just like to point out as we can
all see that the State Department left this meeting immediately
after the testimony of the Special Advisor. This is their
standard practice and it transmits a message to us about
priorities in word and in deed and I would just like to mention
that.
I am the director of the International Parental Child
Abduction Research and Prevention Office at the University of
Alabama in Huntsville, and, Mr. Chairman, if I can just say the
title of that office is a direct acclamation to you and to the
work that you've done on this issue.
We thought very carefully about what we would call this
office and it's not coincidental that ICAPRO, the name of this
office, is a reflection of ICAPRA, the Goldman Act that you
wrote, authored, and shepherded to passage and are still
seeking the robust implementation of.
And so I honor you, sir. I thank you so much for that and I
want you to know that as I've been working on this issue now
for 10 years while my daughter was abducted and came home--and
has come home you have been a beacon for us and at the times
when I was tempted to just go on about our lives because my
daughter is home it was your work, my dear colleague and
friend, Jeffery's, work and importantly these children that
kept me going.
And I would like to say that there are two returned
children in the office--are in this chamber today. I see Miyu
and Amani in the back, my dear girls who will be joining us for
a survivor camp that my organization hosts because once the
children do come home they still need help. They still need
resources.
And so it is in that sense and in that vein that I also
represent iStand Parent Network. IStand empowers parents to
return their children from international parental abduction and
advocates for legal and public policy reform to prevent and end
this awful crime against children and families.
And one more thing about ICAPRO before I move into my
formal remarks. This is the first university-based enterprise
to drive research and data-driven solutions to the problem of
international parental child abduction.
There's not another entity like this that exists and we
look forward to working with Congress to provide different
perspective research and data-driven information that can help
ameliorate this problem.
I am a survivor, sir, like my brave and beautiful daughter,
Muna, who on Christmas Day of 2011 was kidnapped by her father
from Morehead, Kentucky, to Mali, West Africa, when she was
only 4 years old.
Now, despite some initial delays, Mr. Chairman, I soon had
a court order for her return, cases with the FBI, the
Department of State's Office of Children's Issues, the National
Center for Missing Exploited Children, and local and State
cooperation as well.
In the Office of Children's Issues I had frequent
communications with my country officer--I had a great country
officer--and a working relationship with the embassy personnel
in Bamako.
This is very rare but it ought not be. This ought to be
standard practice and I appreciated the question earlier about
what can be--by the ranking member what can be done to empower
consulars and embassies abroad. There is so much more that can
be done there.
I do work closely with Members of Congress. In my own case
to bring my--I did work closely with Members of Congress in my
own case, Senator Rand Paul and especially my beloved senator,
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and your colleague,
Representative Hal Rogers.
The latter two stood shoulder to shoulder with me in a
creative pressure campaign for nearly 3 years, both directly
engaged with the State Department, the FBI, and even high-
ranking officials in the Mali government.
It was very clear, Mr. Chairman, to people on two
continents that this Kentucky delegation was serious about its
constituent's well being and her need to be home.
I was reunited with my daughter on July 11th, 2014, in
which can only be described as a whole of government approach,
which is why she's currently home, and this week she's
completing her last week of high school freshman year.
Every entity that could be mobilized for my daughter was
and we worked cooperatively. Why cannot that be the case for
other children, sir? Our government has the resources. It has
the capacity. What we have to overcome is the bureaucratic
discretion and the differential prioritization of resources.
What could possibly be more important than America's stolen
children? Unfortunately, my family's experience is rare and it
should not be.
This Nation, as I indicated, has systems, structures,
resources, and international standing to repatriate U.S.
children and hold nations accountable until they comply in
releasing America's stolen children.
Now, I've recently come to know my fellow parent John
Sichi. John's two children were abducted from San Francisco to
South Korea in 2019 and have yet to be returned to California.
They were both toddlers at the time of the abduction. His son
wasn't quite 3 years old and his daughter had just turned one--
babies.
Despite receiving a finalized Korean supreme court Hague
return order in February 2022 he has not been permitted to see
his children at all. He's been cutoff from them and, as was
indicated by my colleague, the lifelong emotional damage is
being done day by day. It's intense.
Since last October John has staged a protest--public
protest in Seoul walking for hours and hours on a portable
treadmill demonstrating the plight of every left behind parent
who is trying--and trying to reach their children, doing
everything they can but getting nowhere. There's a picture of
John on his treadmill in the galley today.
Even the Korean public are--and media are sympathetic and
supportive of his quest. Yet, the Korean government has shown
little regard for the Hague return order or his daily
demonstrations for his children.
Our nation has twice cited the Hague--this Hague partner,
Korea, for noncompliance including this year. What I find
remarkable and inspiring is that John has walked nearly 600
kilometers on this treadmill and people often ask him how he
keeps going day after day.
Sir, his answer is always the same. How could he give up on
his children when they need his help? This is, indeed, the
question that parents of internationally kidnapped children ask
and answer every day.
The impact of Mr. Sichi's visceral metaphor cannot be
understated. I hope we're all now thinking about John and all
the parents who are on this treadmill exerting all of their
heart, energy, time, money, and resources without their
children coming home.
And when I first learned of John's story I was filled with
admiration for this arduous and loving tribute for his abducted
children. That admiration quickly gave way to sorrow, empathy,
and frustration.
John Sichi's treadmill experience embodies those of too
many other parents and stands in stark contrast with my whole
of government approach leading to the response--leading to my
daughter's return.
But I'm not the only one, Mr. Chairman. Alissa Zagaris is
in the audience today. Alissa returned her son, Leo, home from
wrongful retention in Greece in 2013--in March 2013--after 20
months of alienation and separation through her fierce devotion
and unrelenting action and, importantly, a strong governmental
response.
Alissa is also a co-founder of iStand Parent Network. By
contrast, sitting near Alissa is Samina Rahman and her son,
Abadallah.
Mr. Chairman, this is a special day in this chamber because
this is the first time that Alissa and Jeffery and I and
longtime advocates have met Abadallah. You see, Samina was on
this treadmill for 9.5 years. She's been with iStand since the
beginning.
From April 2013 to December 2023 she was on the treadmill
while the United States and India traded hollow niceties about
resolving abductions. Over nearly a decade she watched India
get pass after pass, demarche after hollow demarche and watched
that nation race to the top--unfettered race to the top five
rankings for destination countries of abduction.
She had to watch from the United States as her small boy
grew into a teen, as he missed years of school, and most
tragically she had to watch her father pass away without ever
seeing the grandson he helped to raise until his abduction.
In the end, as was mentioned earlier, Abadallah is home
through a voluntary return, not through the hundreds of
thousands of dollars this mother has expended in U.S. and
Indian courts, not through the scam where she and other
parents, including another one in this courtroom--the scam that
bilked her out of precious resources by someone who knew
exactly how to exploit these loopholes in U.S. Government in
the still fragmented post Goldman Act inefficiencies in our
U.S. system. Knew exactly how to exploit those. And, certainly,
and regrettably not through the help of her own government,
Samina is sitting here today with her son because of her
indefatigable mother's love, her sheer fortitude, her resource
capacity, and because she, like many other parents, were moved
to do whatever is necessary.
How many other children yearn to be with their parent but
whose parents do not have similar means, support, or the
wherewithal to sustain their case through costly engagements
with two or more governments, language barriers, and fragmented
or nonexistent governmental responses?
Mr. Chairman, before I offer recommendations for improving
Federal response of Federal performance to aid victimized
American children and their families, there's one more
experience of a parent that I'd like to relate.
Astrid Johnson is sitting with me today. She is here in the
audience and she's on the treadmill. She's on the proverbial
treadmill.
In August 2021 Astrid's missing angels, Charlotte and
Georgia, were abducted to and remain in Dubai by their father
who's--by the way, who is not a resident of Dubai. He is
Australian, and used that opportunity to take them to a country
where he believed that he could abscond and retain these
children unlawfully from their mother.
Astrid has done everything that she can, expending her
resources, obtaining an international kidnapping warrant,
achieving favorable rulings in Dubai. The Dubai courts rejected
the father's unfounded custody petitions and further ruled that
it had no jurisdiction in the case.
It's my understanding that Federal marshals are standing by
ready to travel and execute that warrant. Her Congresswoman was
here a little bit earlier, Representative Jacobs, and if I
could speak to her and perhaps Ms. Johnson can speak to her
while we are here.
I'm very, very clear that one of the reasons that my
daughter is home is the full court press of my congressional
delegation. You know that, sir. You certainly do. You remember
Senator McConnell and Chairman Rogers and Senator Paul, they
went to bat for my daughter and Mali sent her home because all
three of them began to intimate that they were going to move
beyond a public statement and cast their eyes toward the United
States' largesse--governmental largesse toward those nations.
Put my baby on a plane and send her home. Same with David
Goldman.
Why cannot that still happen now? This is what I want to
convey to her representative and to her delegation and to all
of the representatives here.
Congress has the power of the purse. It has the gravitas
and it has the onus and the impetus to act justly for America's
stolen children. Even with the mechanisms in place for Ms.
Johnson the pace of Federal action and response to reunite her
and her children has been too slow.
Time, as you said, sir, so accurately is the number-one
enemy of internationally abducted children, and as her case
indicates inaction or slow action by the very entities charged
with assisting this vulnerable population is enemy No. 2.
And I discovered last night--actually this morning at 3
a.m., Mr. Chairman, I discovered I'm on the treadmill with
Astrid. At 3 a.m. this morning we had a call with the court in
Abu Dhabi.
Now, I mentioned Dubai earlier because that's where the
father attempted to unlawfully exert a false custody petition.
When Dubai turned him down he forum shopped and went right down
to Abu Dhabi.
We are on the phone at 3 a.m. on the treadmill for her to
have to continue to spend her money and her resources to
accomplish something that should have already been settled and
should already have been home.
I do not mind being on the treadmill with you but we need
to get off, and the way that we're going to get off is for our
government to hold nations accountable through the State
Department and that means holding the State Department
accountable.
It's time for resolute action by our government to bring
these children home. It's time for the State Department to act
on the UAE's twice cited noncompliance, including in the
resolution that my colleague mentioned earlier, the Senate
resolution.
It's time for UAE to reject the father's forum shopping and
fake travel ban requests. It's time for the United States to
stand with Astrid Johnson to bring Georgia and Charlotte home.
When the Goldman Act was enacted into law in 2014 we had
tempered expectations for its full and aggressive
implementation. Over the past 9 years, however, even our most
measured expectations for the State Department to fulfill its
mandates have been disappointed.
Instead, our children remain kidnapped in foreign nations,
separated from their seeking parents and extended families, and
parents remain on John Sichi's treadmill driven by a love for
their children and a hope that our government will be true to
what it says on paper. That's a quote from Dr. King, by the
way.
Mr. Chairman, it's time now to amend the Goldman Act to
bring abducted children home. I respectfully offer the
following recommendations to improve Federal response, prevent
abductions, and reunite children with loving families.
First, give Congress greater authority and oversight
capabilities to respond to and aid constituent requests. This
speaks to the notification. We were privileged, my colleague
and I, to have a briefing with Foreign Affairs Committee
staffers a few weeks ago and I posed the question to them about
how frequent or how aware they are of the notifications that
come to State that Ms. Bernier-Toth said. There weren't many.
Now, that does not mean the information did not come to
them but at what priority. And so the State Department complies
by letter of the law by sending these written notifications to
a Member of Congress as required by the Goldman law.
But that privacy waiver is a challenge for us and I know
parents in the audience have attempted to overcome this
challenge.
So if a parent does not sign a privacy waiver it may mean
that that information does not get to their Member of Congress
and even if the privacy waiver needs to be in place and stay in
place the State Department should still be requiring
information, still should be reporting on all the information
necessary.
Numerical--pardon me, numerical data can be shared about
how many constituents have reached out to the State Department.
That information can be shared.
Recommendation No. 2, sir--and this speaks directly to the
standup of ICAPRO at the University of Alabama in Huntsville--
fund the research. Congress must fund the research on
international parental child abduction so that we can
understand government performance and its impact on children
and families.
The testimony of the State Department today and over time
makes clear the necessity of independent research. As a
political scientist I'm keenly aware of bureaucratic discretion
and the way in which variation in case management has occurred
in this agency.
I was also puzzled by the Special Advisor's comments early
on in which she said something to the effect that, I know some
think that withholding aid is the way to go. Respectfully, sir,
it does not matter what we think. It does not matter what
Congress thinks.
The law says that there are escalating actions that must be
taken beyond the demarche. And so research will allow and
funded research will allow the performance of the State
Department to emerge in view and that's how Congress can fully
exert its oversight capacity.
The existing research is fairly limited because the
information we're getting is coming from the State Department,
who has a vested interest in minimizing the extent of the
problem and controlling the narrative. Independent research is
necessary and Congress must fund that.
Recommendation No. 3, fund training against relevant
sectors to effectively educate and prepare responders, the
legal community, and other relevant actors to consistently
uphold the law concerning internationally kidnapped children
and victimized families.
I respect what the Special Advisor said earlier about the
trainings that are occurring. What I do not know and what
Congress does not know is the frequency, the consistency, and
how well that training is landing.
But I'm not sure we can make those decisions or understand
how well that training that they bragged about is going without
some sort of performance reporting. The annual report does not
really--beyond, you know, a superficial discussion does not
really talk about that training--who, what, when, where, and
why. That is a need for research and that's a need for funded
research.
And, finally, help parents wage and win this costly battle
to reunite with their victimized internationally kidnapped
children by amending the Victims of Crime Act to include
international parental child abduction and make legal expenses
for the Crime Victims Fund available for parents in attempting
to repatriate their children.
I was fortunate to not have to expend as much money
although my costs was high, in the thousands of dollars. I sit
next to a colleague--I sit among parents who have spent
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If the Crime Victim Act is available for children who have
been domestically abducted why not for internationally abducted
children, arguably whose parents would need those resources
more?
Now, in closing, I met a new parent today on the treadmill.
Gabriel is here. Caleb Gaertner is here. His children Gabriel,
Gideon, and Lydia were abducted to Belize in 2018.
I want to be on the treadmill with him but we do not want
to be on here indefinitely. We need to move forward. Jazlene
Goyle is here. She is the grandmother of a reunited daughter
and they went to considerable lengths, often in direct
opposition to our government, to return their daughter.
John Stefanik is here and his daughter, Camille, has been
abducted to Costa Rica and I am appalled by Costa Rica's
behavior in not only protecting and sanctioning the abductor
but creating an environment in which Camille has been subjected
to further child abuse on top of the abduction.
Vikram Jagtiani is here and his sweet daughter, Nikita, he
sometimes has contact with, sometimes not, and as I indicated
Miyu and Amani are here and they're the testament to what can
happen when parents work to return their children home.
But all of us need you, all of us need Congress, and all of
us need the State Department, the Justice Department, and
Homeland Security to, again, live up to what it says on paper
in the Goldman Act and all of the laws that came before that.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you so much. I honor you and I
appreciate the opportunity to speak on behalf of these
children.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Hunter follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Dr. Hunter, thank you so very much for your very
eloquent testimony. Your recommendations are outstanding and we
are--since you have conveyed this to us before this hearing,
many of them, we're incorporating them into our reform bill and
our update bill to the Goldman Act.
So thank you for that and for focusing on all these
families that are here with their precious children and
pictures that they're holding for us to see.
It just brings home, again, this terrible crime, this
kidnapping, which leads to parental alienation and just--it
harms everyone, especially the child but also in a very
egregious way the left behind parents. So thank you for your
leadership.
I'd like to now yield the floor to Ms. Patricia Apy.
STATEMENT OF PATRICIA APY, LEGAL EXPERT ON INTERNATIONAL
PARENTAL CHILD ABDUCTION
Ms. Apy. Chairman Smith, Ranking Member Wild, and
distinguished members, I continue to be honored to have been
invited to return to offer testimony before the subcommittee to
respectfully address my observations and recommendations formed
from the perspective as an international legal practitioner.
I'm testifying in support of enhancing the protections
provided against the scourge of international child abduction
and in providing assistance in the prompt repatriation of
children and the restoration of families devastated by parental
abduction.
I intend to offer my observations, including referencing
legislative proposed amendments, to the Sean and David Goldman
International Parental Kidnapping Prevention and Return Act.
I am stunned at the length of time it has been since we
have reviewed and evaluated whether or not there needs to be--
there need to be revisions that reflect the world that we are
in now and the circumstances that we have seen historically in
the work of our government in addressing these issues.
I provided a summary of my anticipated testimony and would
respectfully request that it be included in the official
record.
Mr. Smith. Without objection.
Ms. Apy. At the close of 2022 and early in 2023 two events
transpired which have had a significant impact upon the way
child abduction is viewed and addressed under international law
as a global human rights issue and I would propose that both of
these examples demonstrate the necessity and importance of the
proposed amendments which are being considered and, hopefully,
will be enacted.
On March 17th, 2023, the International Criminal Court
issued arrest warrants against the president of the Russian
Federation, Vladimir Putin, and the Presidential commissioner
for children's rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for the war crime of
the wrongful deportation of children from occupied areas of
Ukraine to the Russian Federation.
Certainly, the world could not have been surprised by the
call to accountability of the Russian Federation and the events
taking place in Ukraine and, indeed, you were one of the first
before this Congress to reference the need to seek that
accountability.
However, the selection of the abduction of Ukrainian
children as the identified criminal action both elevated and
solidified a recognition of child abduction for the
traumatizing abusive action that it genuinely is.
Further, a careful review of the diplomatic declarations
filed with the Hague Conference on private international law
pursuant to the reciprocal treaty obligations of the Federation
and Ukraine pursuant to the Convention demonstrated the Russian
Federation, which acceded to this Convention in 2011, was
already signaling its intention as early as July 19th of 2016
to ignore protestations by Ukraine regarding the applicability
of the treaty within the area it had occupied and to treat any
allegations of international child abduction within the
occupied territories as purely domestic issues.
President Zelenskyy last week indicated that over 19,000
Ukrainian children had been abducted by the Russian Federation.
The scale of this abduction could not have been accomplished
spontaneously. It isn't done with a plan on the back of a
napkin. This was an orchestrated event by the same individuals
who serve as the oversight for the central authority of the
Russian Federation under this treaty.
It begs the question of how those in the State Department
who are responsible with regard to monitoring the Hague
Abduction Convention missed the signal across the bow that this
Convention would not be honored in those occupied territories.
On the other side of the world, on the 12th of December
2022 the Australian government indicated that Federal
legislation would be enacted to clarify procedural protections
for the purpose of ensuring that allegations of family and
domestic violence by parents accused of having wrongfully
removed or retained their children could be considered as a
priority before return orders would be made for children under
the Hague Convention.
The Australian government described their efforts as
providing safeguards to parents and children who assert that
they are fleeing family domestic violence when defending
applications brought under the Convention.
Notably, the statute is seen to confirm that a court which
is offered a defense to the obligation to return a child does
not need to determine that the family violence which has been
alleged by the taking parent has actually occurred as a
predicate before taking it into account.
While the Australian government provided renewed assurances
that the legislative enactments did not impact upon its
intention to comply with its obligations under the Hague
Abduction Convention, among practitioners like myself there are
serious concerns that the Australian legislation may be only
the most recent of systemic assaults against the application
and effectiveness of the Hague Abduction Convention.
There is a growing belief that the prevention of the
wrongful removal of children has been rendered more difficult
because of the disintegration of the underlying belief that
child abduction operates to harm children.
As Ranking Member Wild indicated earlier in this hearing,
this is an incredibly complicated diplomatic and international
legal issue.
However, there is a pathway forward. In my estimation,
overwhelming benefits are contained in the proposed amendments
to 22 U.S.C. 9111 to support efforts to minimize child
abduction and provide tools to enhance the ability to return
children who have been abducted.
I'm going to point out those legislative initiatives I
would as a practitioner in this field for 35 years identify as
particularly important.
First, the proposed amendments to the definitions and
reporting functions of the Department of State will provide a
more concise and understandable basis to evaluate the
legitimate State of reciprocity, which exists among and between
treaty partners.
It's important to recognize that--how the report is used.
It is not just used for congressional oversight. It's used by
judges and lawyers daily. It is embedded in statute--State
statutes, which assess risk of wrongful removal and return.
As a result, it is incredibly important to judicial
deliberation and determinations on parental access in those
circumstances. If we do not have the ability to actually
understand what the genuine numbers are, what the genuine
statistics are, and if we are not all on the same page as to
what terms such as voluntary resolution or resolution at all
really represent then the State Department, perhaps in an
effort to be diplomatic, are actually misleading our judges and
parents, rendering decisions and agreements by not providing
them genuine information upon which they can rely.
In particular, an accurate identification of what
constitutes a resolved case has already been discussed in the
testimony that you've heard and will permit a better
description and understanding of the obstacles to returning
children who are abducted and give a picture of how many
children are actually subject in real time to having been
wrongfully removed or retained.
The Special Advisor referenced case notes with regard to
judicial determinations which had been made to resolve cases in
answer to your question in evaluating whether or not a judicial
determination is actually substantially in conformance with the
treaty.
I did not understand the answer. Case law does not--does
not require an interpretive summary by the Department of State
and if it's being done who's doing it.
Where would the expertise come from to be able to evaluate
a foreign order and indicate whether or not it complies with
the treaty and why would you not then provide a list of cases
in individual countries that reflect that there has been a
judicial determination that may technically have resolved the
case but in fact bears no relationship to the actual treaty
obligations and the reciprocal obligations of the Hague
Abduction Convention.
I think it's important. I'll give an example that--Costa
Rica is a case--is a country in which their supreme court
recently declined to apply the Convention, establishing as a
matter of law that when there is an application by a taking
parent for asylum or immigration status protection on behalf of
a child it takes priority over the treaty obligations of the
Convention.
Now, what's really interesting about that is I did not see
it referenced once in the report. I think that's a big deal and
I believe that that issue is going to be raised potentially to
the Inter-American Court of Justice.
It should be referenced so that judges and lawyers and
parents who are addressing whether it's a request for a child
to visit Costa Rica or actually addressing a case know what
some of the legal challenges may be.
I also listened to your question to the Special Advisor and
the questions that were asked regarding identifying the
difficulties in certain countries or addressing the
difficulties and the issues of noncompliance.
She was reluctant. She was attempting to make excuses
even--as she said, even for the countries that they've
identified as noncompliant and here's the rub. She does not
represent the left behind parents.
She represents the United States of America and so she
ultimately is going to be acting not as an advocate in the
classic sense of that word but as a representative of the U.S.
Government reflecting the diplomatic priorities of the foreign
policy of the United States.
So here's the problem. There will always be a reluctance to
use diplomatic tools that are available in the existing
legislation because of the broader necessities.
So that's the primary reason I support wholeheartedly the
imposition of the tier system, which provides--and we have
ample demonstration in dealing with trafficking--provides an
objective mechanism so that any diplomat who is placed in the
position of having to evaluate or bring accountability to the
actions of a country will be able to say, I know you're working
hard but this is the--this is the objective test. This places
you in this tier. This is what is required when a country is in
that tier.
We have over a--nearly a decade since the original
legislation and there has been almost no use of any of the
enumerated sanctions available to the Secretary of State.
We haven't even been told what the mechanism is to present
to the Secretary the policy considerations and a request in
order to address this, the most egregious and systemic
violation of human rights.
It's clear that the institutional structure of decision and
policymaking within the Department of State makes it
exceedingly difficult to synthesize and formulate a broad
diplomatic strategy which unapologetically addresses the impact
of child abduction.
By constructing a deliberate and objective tiered system a
mechanism to sanction recalcitrant States is created while
still preserving diplomatic flexibility and nuance.
The amendments proposed addressing issues of family
violence actually began as discussions before the Tom Lantos
Commission on Human Rights over a decade ago in which hearings
conducted by this body under your leadership heard compelling
and scholarly testimony addressing the tension between the
International Child Abduction Remedies Act and the complexities
of addressing global domestic violence.
Unlike Australia's Federal legislation, the proposed
amendments do not alter the language of ICARA or alter the
responsibilities of the central authority that are met under
the treaty.
These legislation proposed amendments focus on providing
objective information and practical assistance with which
judges can quickly and effectively evaluate the protections
genuinely available for victims of domestic violence in their
considerations and deliberations and fashioning of
undertakings, which will allow them also to distinguish
pretextual arguments from genuine issues of domestic violence.
The amendment will better facilitate the ability of a court
to refer to objective information and assist it in deliberating
and addressing a request for return, fashion orders for the
organization of rights of access.
I would note also that the Special Advisor spoke about
judicial communication and its benefits. I cannot see where
under the existing legal process there would be a role for
judicial communication to serve in addressing the defense
raised to a return under the Convention.
In fact, the most important information for a judge to have
would be whether or not there is available in the country from
which the child has been removed--whether there is a
opportunity for domestic violence protections and whether or
not that can easily be done in the place from which the child
has been taken. That would be the way that that would be
addressed in incoming cases.
Cases in which there's been allegations of domestic
violence serving as a defense to the return of a child to the
United States the proposed legislation provides for a referral
to competent legal services for victims of domestic violence.
Those who are asserting that they are victims of domestic
violence as a means of ensuring that all information crucial to
the court in protecting the child when a return is ordered is
available.
The legislation calls for a study, which will further
amplify the life-altering impact which child abduction has upon
its victims beyond any period of wrongful removal or retention
and I champion the--Dr. Hunter's request that that be done with
all deliberate speed.
I would note the interagency meetings are--have been less
and less effective, have occurred less frequently, and have
done nothing to address the appalling disconnection between DOJ
and the State Department on issues involving child abduction
and consideration of criminal prosecution.
It is unfathomable to have a conversation with DOJ and have
them tell you that this is in State Department's lap and then
talk to State Department and have them tell you it is with the
DOJ.
This was supposed to be addressed as part of the
interagency issues. Ensuring the use of law enforcement
resources and criminal prosecution to assist in the return of
children who have been abducted swiftly and professionally
provided has not occurred.
This will have the additional advantage of incurring United
States attorneys to actually use the existing Federal law
because, frankly, most are recalcitrant in doing so, in part
because they do not understand the relationship between the
Abduction Convention and the necessity or appropriateness of
criminal prosecution.
Finally, by enhancing the attention of the Department of
Justice to work in collaboration with the Department of State
in pressing for the extradition of child abductors and
unflinchingly prosecuting those who've acted in disregard of
orders, preventing the removal of children from the United
States, there will be an enhanced deterrent to consideration of
parental abduction by parents and there will be the
understanding by the Department of Justice that child abduction
is not a private matter between two parents who are disgruntled
in the dissolution of their partnership or marriage.
The importance of a dedicated Ambassador-at-large has been
demonstrated by the enormity of this issue and the testimony
that you've received today.
While extraordinarily skilled and experienced career
diplomats have served in the role of Special Advisor on issues
involving children, there has to be a renewed expertise and
focus on child abduction as a human rights issue inspired and
executed by someone who will be recognized on the global stage
as having the authority commensurate with the complex issues of
international law which are implicated.
I listened carefully to the question that was addressed as
to seeking an MOU. I did not hear an answer with clarity. But
what was important to understand in the three countries that
were referenced--Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt--all have
complicated religious law that is embedded in the resolution of
child custody issues.
It's important to have an opportunity to walk through those
issues in an MOU and to develop a process identified by the
country as to how the issue of addressing custody, wrongful
removal, and retention may be done.
My view is that the expertise in confronting the challenges
of religious law may be something that has not been addressed
properly and, perhaps, working closely with the Office of
Religious Freedom, working closely with the human rights desk
at the Department of State, would enable engaging religious
leaders in those countries in working those problems in
crafting an MOU in addition to actually providing a draft
because I know that I haven't seen one drafted by anyone since
those three countries entered the original agreements.
In conclusion, a reading of 2023 ICAPRA report of the
Department of State demonstrates that in several countries,
including some which we would otherwise undoubtedly describe as
diplomatic allies, if not friends, international child
abduction persists unchecked and the existing protocols and
remedies have not been effected to curb it.
The actions which are now necessary in addressing systemic
difficulties must be new ones. The world has been reminded by
the International Criminal Court that child abduction is a
crime and is in and of itself an inherent violation of human
rights capable of causing inordinate pain and suffering with
generational consequences.
Ironically, those who are facile with the Hague Convention
on the civil aspects of international child abduction had the
opportunity to see it coming in declarations which were lodged
within the last 8 years which predicted the weaponizing of
Ukraine's children and that's what happens in these cases.
These children are weaponized.
There's also circumstances, and speaking to questions by
Mr. Bera, India's numbers are going up exponentially and there
is an increased use of trafficking in the context of
international child abduction for the purposes of obtaining
financial remuneration.
A child is abducted and demands are made to the left behind
parent to provide financial assistance or support in exchange
for promised but rarely provided access to the child. That's a
child trafficking violation and should be included among the
identifications of the harm that's being provided.
I was deeply proud when the United States Ambassador to the
United Nations, Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield, her colleagues,
along with the delegations of the United Kingdom, Albania, and
Malta, walked out of the Security Council briefing being given
by the Russian Federation Presidential Commissioner Lvova-
Belova.
But there are other actions that can be taken that stand in
the face of the constant excuses that are provided for what is
clearly the lack of compliance. I do not understand the content
of the Japan report.
The request to understand what voluntary resolution means
in these cases or the question that you asked about the seeming
inconsistency between references of appropriate judicial action
and no case--listen carefully.
She said there were return cases but she did not answer
your question indicating that a return had been accomplished by
judicial action this year and to my knowledge there has not
been one to the United States that was pursuant to a judicial
determination under the treaty alone.
There was a danger to be found in distinguishing different
forms of child abduction or excusing abduction of a child by a
parent or a relative as somehow less serious.
This legislation empowers those within our government--our
judicial officers, our law enforcement officers, our officers
of Homeland Security--as well as those addressing child
abduction throughout the country on the State and local levels
to have the tools necessary to prevent child abduction and
restore those children wrongfully removed and retained to their
homes.
I would ask that there be serious consideration to
requiring a list from the Department of State in response to
today's hearings of those resolutions that are based on alleged
judicial action in treaty countries that they have recognized
as to be nontreaty compliant and for which countries those
judicial determinations have occurred because without that
there is absolutely no ability to determine whether or not a
country is actually in treaty compliance. This is a reciprocal
treaty.
We are long past merely calling someone out as being
noncompliant. It is important now for the Department of State
to consider whether or not in circumstances in which there is
no actual reciprocity whether or not there has to be a
reconsideration of our treaty responsibilities--reciprocal
responsibilities to a ongoing condition of decades of lack of
consideration of the treaty.
I thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Apy follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much, Ms. Apy, for that. Very
comprehensive, and we have much to followup on from all three
of our very distinguished experts who have given so much to
this cause.
So I know I cannot thank you enough for your leadership. We
have embedded in our draft bill three tiers. It mirrors to some
extent what we did with the Trafficking Victims Protection Act,
and I am the prime author of that bill or the law that was
enacted in the year 2000.
But even there we ran into problems. During the Obama
Administration there was a time where the graders discovered
through an investigative report that 14 different countries
were artificially given passing grades that did not deserve
them for other diplomatic issues.
For example, Oman got it because they helped facilitate the
talks with Iran and the United States and other countries in
Europe for the nuclear deal.
Malaysia got it because--got an inflated not earned grade
off tier three, which is the worst, simply because they wanted
to be part of the TPP, a trade agreement.
Cuba got it because of a rapprochement that we had done as
a country with Cuba exchanging Ambassadors and the like. It
was, like, well, OK, fine. But they still have that egregious
trafficking issue there, both forced labor and sex trafficking,
and China got artificially inflated to a passing grade, which I
found appalling.
I chaired two hearings that year and into the next year.
The second was next time get it right, and we focused on the
fact that you cannot falsify the information. It's got to be
comprehensive. It's got to be real.
It's got to be accurate, and then what you do with it in
terms of sanctioning, because that has a sanction regime as
well, you know, is at the discretion of the department and the
administration but not the TIP Report--the Trafficking in
Persons Report--not this report either.
So I think we will get to a better place with tiers. But it
still will require, I believe, an enormous amount of oversight,
and as I think all of you have indicated the prioritization
issue is so important. This cannot be something that is done
where no one else in the building is affected.
You know, the Secretary of State did a wonderful cover
letter to this--Secretary Blinken. But, you know, does he raise
it?
We just had the Ambassador--the president of Korea here for
a joint session of Congress. He had multiple meetings with the
President and everybody else down the chain of command and did
anybody raise it?
I did not get to speak to him. I would have. I did not get
to speak to him. I wish I had that opportunity. But as we know,
Korea is on the--and they have a new government. I mean, the
Moon government had huge problems with human rights and its
obsession with reuniting with North Korea, with Pyongyang,
which I found appalling, you know, without--who's going to
influence who?
Is South Korea going to become more like North Korea or the
other way around, which we would hope North Korea would become
like South Korea. But, again, they're on the list and they are
a friend.
I remember when they were put on the tier three list during
George W. Bush's administration and then we know
parenthetically Israel was put on the trafficking worst case
scenario as well--tier three.
Both of those countries went overboard to get off the list
because they were--potential sanctions were very, very real as
a possibility and both South Korea and Israel worked overtime
to pass new laws and to implement a very good.
So I think we need tiers and I think we then need robust
oversight to make sure that they are not manipulated in order
to garner some kind of diplomatic gain with the country in
question.
Ms. Apy?
Ms. Apy. I just wanted to add that no one who does this
work believes that the numbers in this report are accurate. No
one. And it's really important to understand that in many of
these countries the applications--especially nontreaty cases
the applications are not made because there is not an
identifiable mechanism.
The other thing is that parents are not actually guided
through the process or provided accurate information with
regard to bringing an application.
So I think the most--one of the takeaways here is, yes,
prevention has increased. Yes, there have been excellent
efforts made in that regard. But these numbers are not accurate
and as a result that is impacting both on prevention as well as
return.
Mr. Smith. Dr. Hunter?
Dr. Hunter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just have to
heartily agree with my colleague on the panel and she just said
it so plainly.
No one believes these numbers are accurate, and when I read
the report it's also--I'll use your term--appalling that the
information is recycled from year to year to year. So the
content, the narrative, is very similar.
I could lay down the 2015 report and the 2023 report and
there is verbatim, you know, content there. But then, more
importantly, the numbers are not accurate and this speaks,
again, to the recommendation to fund independent research
regarding not just State Department performance but Federal
performance overall and then even extending that to how are
other countries adhering to these treaty obligations, to what--
at what cost if they do not.
And so I would just like to heartily agree and then say
that this is absolutely why independent research is necessary
for this problem. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Mr. Morehouse?
Mr. Morehouse. Thank you.
If I could add to that, and thank you for bringing it up,
Patricia. You know, that was really spot on.
You know, no one believes these numbers. I spent over an
hour talking with an attorney on a case that I was brought into
in Tennessee who had talked with the State Department and told
everything was fine with Japan. They were noncompliant.
By the end of the conversation he said, I need about a day
to process what you just explained to me. It's that confusing
when people that aren't experts like Ms. Apy look at this
report.
Also, as we were entering into the hearing I was talking to
the Special Advisor a little bit and, interestingly, she
brought up the comment of rhetoric versus action. She was
speaking as somebody in the department and I heard a lot of
rhetoric from her.
It was as though we were given a glimpse through a peephole
through a door. She mentioned in response to a question about
returns that since 2021 all return orders that were made were
enforced with Japan. We need to kick the door open and see
what's really going on.
What about the judicial rulings that were never made to
require a return even be attempted? What about James Cook and
his case, who's testified in this subcommittee more than once,
who was the first known case with Japan whose children were
ordered returned and then it was overturned at the appellate
level and at the supreme court level of Japan and those
children never came home?
What about my good friend, Bjorn Echternach, in Germany,
who had a return order and whose kidnapping parent was able to
abscond with the children and disappear into Japanese society
and the Japanese government did nothing?
What about the other 500 American children who still remain
cutoff? She did not want to talk about that. She's only
highlighting a small glimpse of the story.
So, yes, disaggregating the numbers, modeling it after the
TIP Report, I think, is essentially important so that as Ms.
Apy mentioned, you know, attorneys and judges that are bringing
these prevention cases in can see very clearly from the report
this is what's going on if we're considering allowing a child
to travel to country X and that is not what the State
Department has been choosing to do.
They could have done that since 2014. There have been
numerous hearings that you have led as well as hearings in the
Senate that have implored them to do it. There have been
countless meetings we have had as coalition partners asking for
them to release the numbers.
So here we are. You've drafted legislation. It's clear
years of work have gone into this and we look forward to that
being introduced and, hopefully, passed swiftly by this
Congress and enacted into law so we can better protect American
children from being kidnapped in the future and also create
more substantive robust response from our government, a whole
of government response, to start repatriating and reuniting
kidnapped American children.
Mr. Smith. Just a couple of points. Then I'll give you the
floor for any final comments.
We have raised so many issues with Japan over the years.
I'll never forget Captain Paul--Captain Paul Toland. Here's a
guy that was given bad advice by his JAG. He was deployed to
Yokohama.
His wife, sadly, has passed away and now the grandmother
has sole custody or at least de facto and he has not been able
to see his daughter, Erica, for all these years, like you,
Jeffery.
All these years, and a gross violation of his human rights,
his daughter's human rights, and there's so many others like
that. And, you know, it breaks you. I do not know how you
persist.
I cannot say how much I admire your courage and your
strength because you're not just helping yourself and you are
trying to help your daughter--your son, I should say. But
you're helping all the other people who have been left behind
as well.
Michael Elias--my chief of staff, Mary, and I went to Japan
with Michael Elias' mother because we thought that might be
less confrontational to have her try to visit with their kids,
two of them, and we were shown the door.
You know, it was outrageous, frankly, that the Japanese
government--we met a few people in the Diet and elsewhere that
were empathetic and sympathetic and then our embassy kept
saying, but they're going to sign the Hague Convention.
That's what we got to move toward. Yes, if they do that
that's great. Leaves him behind and you, potentially, forever.
So I--you know, I just cannot tell you how disturbing that is.
And we did talk a lot of other internationals. You know, we
have met with all the embassies that were in the area and they
had the same problem, and we talked about MOUs and the need for
an MOU that was doable, actionable, that would really make a
difference and we got a lot of yawns.
So I am very concerned about now it comes down to
prioritization. You know, I have found in human rights--I've
been in Congress 43 years.
When you talk about human rights there are so many people
in the diplomacy orbit who just want to make that a page six
footnote somewhere rather than the mainstay of our relationship
with a country.
We see it with China today with human rights being
relegated to--what's that--you know, let's just trade more even
despite all of Xi Jinping's monstrous behavior and his--you
know, what he's doing to the Uighurs and everyone else.
So I just bring that up. You know, it needs to be a
priority and, you know, we need people walk--you know, who are
willing and that starts with the President.
And you--I think it was--Dr. Hunter, you talked or someone
mentioned, you know, through successive administrations because
we have raised this with Trump, too, and his people and did not
get a satisfactory implementation either.
So we're going to keep at it. I'm going to form--I just
thought of it while we're sitting here--a caucus of Members of
Congress and, hopefully, the Senate as well for left behind
parents and abducted children.
And I would say it's important. We wrote Section 104, a
report to congressional representatives, that the Secretary of
State--this is law. This is in the Goldman Act. Shall submit
written notification to the Members of Congress and Senators or
resident commissioner or delegate as appropriate representing
the legal residents of the left behind parent, and it goes on.
The whole idea was to get us involved and, Dr. Hunter, you
talked about how important it was to have Mitch McConnell, to
have Hal Rogers and Senator Paul all pushing and surging on
behalf of your daughter. We need that everywhere.
So I do hope, you know, that the administration will see us
as value added and then some, I would hope, because we then
control the purse strings.
One of my colleagues put a--you know, threatened Lebanon on
behalf of one of his--you might want to speak to it--it was
excellent, and all of a sudden his constituent, who had a
situation where they were very concerned that as his daughter--
her daughter, you know, the woman who's--who had children
abducted they were going to be put into marriage and then he'll
never--he'll never see them.
They got those children back because the Congressman from
Florida stepped in aggressively and said, OK, Lebanon, we're
going to go after your purse strings. We're going to make it
count because it counts for us.
So I think you wanted to say something?
Ms. Apy. Yes. Dr. Hunter raised an issue that isn't
reflected in my report but I think it's important regarding the
resources that parents have to expend in order to be even
remotely hopeful in seeking a return.
The United States took a reservation to the Hague Abduction
Convention with regard to the provision of attorneys' fees and
attorneys' assistance in the form of legal aid. I think it's
really important to reconsider this many years later that
issue.
The United Kingdom, which does provide legal aid, Sweden,
which does provide legal aid, provided on the basis of every
parent who is asserting a petition under the Convention is
entitled to have counsel who are expert in the issues of the
treaty and its application under the domestic law are paid by
the government.
Now, what that does is that the fastest return orders, the
most consistent law in the world, comes out of the United
Kingdom, comes out of Australia, comes out of Sweden, all
countries that assure the provision of legal services.
You cannot underestimate the possibilities of return being
enhanced when you're able to understand the issue quickly,
obtain the right representation, and make the right--you know,
make the right efforts.
I said in one of the prior times that I've testified that,
effectively, what we have made these parents do is become their
own Department of State. They have had to make all of the
connections. They've had to engage whatever assistance they
believe they can and talk to anyone and everyone who would
listen.
We're not talking--if in fact these numbers that they're
giving us are accurate then you would propose that the United
States Department of State should be able to quantify the
number, to provide adequate legal assistance based on those
numbers for the opportunity for parents to have legal
representation in the courts in order--and by the way, American
citizens whose children are abducted to the United Kingdom are
covered under legal assistance and I have a case right now
where the children were very quickly returned.
That's one of the things that I think has to be looked at
seriously. There's an excellent volunteer program that's
instituted and I serve on and a number of other individuals do
but it's not the same as having an opportunity to know that
you're going to have resource and that resource is going to be
able to quickly and effectively bring an application. I think
it's time to relook at the reservation.
Mr. Smith. Yes?
Mr. Morehouse. If I could comment on that, and thank you
for bringing that up. I think that is really important to
understand.
I had a case about 2 years ago that came to our
organization with Japan and, in the end he said, I just cannot
afford to, and there's a lot of that, and I do not have an
answer for that right now. You know, that's why whether it's
reviewing what Ms. Apy mentioned or hopefully opening up the
Federal Crime Victims Fund to make funds available, but I do
like the idea that she's brought up.
Hopefully, that leads to actually vetted attorneys in those
countries because one of the problems I've seen with the State
Department, at least with Japan and I think this is true of
other countries, they take all comers that want to be listed as
potential legal resources on the embassy website and then they
put a big disclaimer on the top.
And so what we have had to do with Japan is through our
colleagues working in Japan and other countries is we have
built an internal list of attorneys that we know that are
fighting on the right side of this and have some level of
expertise in the area.
But right now parents are just left to fend for ourselves.
You get better support if your car is broken into than if your
child is kidnapped.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Mr. Morehouse. Anything, Dr. Hunter?
If not we'll----
Dr. Hunter. Yes. Thank you, sir. Just a very brief closing
statement.
I just want to say that this hearing has energized our
parent community. We watched the interest which is demonstrated
by parents here today.
We watched it expand online and it's been a weary time for
a lot of parents between the time that we have had the Goldman
Act enacted and now, and I know that there is hope among
parents, a resurged hope that the bill that you are going to
reintroduce and the actions that are taken here are going to
redirect this issue.
And so, you know, in appreciation for you and for all the
members of the committee and especially for all of the parents
and families who against hope and against what is before them
continue to believe that their children can come home. So thank
you so much.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, Doctor.
I want to thank all three of our very distinguished
witnesses. I can assure you we will redouble our efforts. Your
insights are absolutely priceless. Your direction, your fervor,
your compassion, is just--it's extraordinary and we're going to
try to make a difference.
Jeffery?
Mr. Morehouse. Sorry, Chairman Smith. I just had a couple
more comments, if I could.
Mr. Smith. Sure.
Mr. Morehouse. Thank you. The Special Advisor mentioned in
response to a question about children that--victims that reach
18 and they're making the effort to contact them, this is
something that I'd worked on years ago. Our colleague in
organization, Randy Collins, worked on it in his case.
I recently had one of our coalition partners, Children at
Borders, contact me and say he reached out, asked his country
officer--his children were kidnapped to New Zealand--and was
told there's no such program.
So this is problematic that they're giving testimony to
suggest that they are as a matter of course reaching out to
children victims after 18 if their own country offices are not
doing this. So it's a little confusing their answers.
So I know this is part of the legislation. I look forward
to that moving forward. Additionally, the interagency meetings
that has been touched on several times in today's hearing, we--
Dr. Hunter and I, through our coalition of organizations, had
requested to them a couple of years ago that we'd be allowed to
sit in as observers, if not participants.
We were told that was reserved for some nonprofit
organizations but not others. When we pinned them down more
their response was, well, we invite NCMEC to come. But they
said, essentially, you're not welcome but if you'd like to
submit questions.
I just want to point out that tomorrow there's going to be
a celebration, the Department of Justice introducing the
updated fifth edition of the Family Guide to Missing Children.
Dr. Hunter and I and our organizations have been part of this.
International parental child abduction is now being added
to the guide--this is a DOJ-funded guide--for the first time in
its history and our organizations are going to be listed as
resource organizations in it.
So I would argue we probably have a right to have a seat at
that table at this point.
Mr. Smith. I will officially make that request.
Mr. Morehouse. Thank you. And if you could also consider
asking them if they are actually having Presidentially
appointed representatives from the departments as mandated by
the act at these meetings. We do not believe they are, based on
our conversations.
I think there was just one other point I wanted to request.
There were several parents that asked if they could make
statements. Is it possible for written statements to be
submitted by whatever deadline you want to set?
Mr. Smith. Yes. I would hope that it could be done. I ask
unanimous consent that additional testimonies--that's what
you're talking about--be made a part of the record and without
objection, so ordered.
So if you can get those to us as quickly as possible so
they become part of the record.
Mr. Morehouse. Thank you. We'll do that. Thank you.
Dr. Hunter. Thank you.
Mr. Smith. Thank you, and God bless you and thank you so
much.
[Whereupon, at 12:40 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]
APPENDIX
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STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD FROM ANDREW KIM
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STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD FROM ASTRID JOHNSON
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STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD FROM BRIAN TAVARES
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STATEMENT FOR THE RECORD FROM JAMES COOK
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BRIAN SUNG
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JOHN SICHI
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JON STEFANICK
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RANDY COLLINS
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RICK JOHNSON
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RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS SUBMITTED FOR THE RECORD
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