[Congressional Record Volume 146, Number 56 (Tuesday, May 9, 2000)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3683-S3684]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
REUNITING AMERICAN CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS
Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, throughout the dispute over Elian Gonzalez,
I have argued that he should be reunited with his father Juan Miguel, I
have made this argument because I believe that children belong with
their parents, barring evidence of unfitness. I also made this argument
because I was concerned about how American parents are being treated
internationally.
At the Judiciary Committee hearing held on the Elian Gonzalez case on
March 1, I also urged that we consider the potential impact of that
case on those of U.S. parents fighting to gain custody of their
children in other countries. In fact, at that hearing I made sure to
invite a U.S. parent who has struggled for years just for the right to
see his children in Japan, and who believes, as do other American
parents in similar circumstances, that to preserve American credibility
we must practice what we preach and reunite Elian Gonzalez and his
father.
I worked for months on such a case of an American child who was taken
abroad by an estranged parent. Had it not been for the active
intervention of the Government of Egypt, the child would not have been
reunited with his American mother. Reuniting Elian and his father was
the best thing for Elian and also the best way to advance American
interests--and the interests of American parents whose children have
been taken abroad without their consent.
At the March 1 hearing, I quoted Mary Ryan, the Assistant Secretary
of State for Consular Affairs, who had testified in the federal court
case regarding Elian Gonzalez that a failure to enforce the INS'
decision that Elian Gonzalez should be reunited with his father would
``be inconsistent with the principles we advocate on behalf of the
United States and could have potentially lasting negative implications
for left-behind parents in the United States and for U.S. citizen
children taken to foreign countries.''
I believe that the American government should stand behind that
principle and seek to bring children and their parents back together. I
am proud that the government has reunited Elian and his father, and I
think the pictures of the two of them together have proven beyond a
doubt that this was the right result.
But I am deeply concerned that the energy and effectiveness that our
government showed in reuniting Elian and his father does not always
seem to apply to its attempts to reunite American children and their
parents. Indeed, recent articles in the Washington Post indicate that
our State Department should take a far more active role in helping
American parents who--in violation of international law--are being
deprived of custody of their children.
The Washington Post tells the story of Joseph Cooke, a New York man
whose then-wife took their two young children to Germany and, without
Mr. Cooke's consent, turned the children over to the state because she
felt unable to care for them. For a year and a half, Mr. Cooke was
unable to find out what had happened to his children, as his wife
refused even to tell him where they were. When he finally was able to
locate them, he sought custody of them in both American and German
courts. Although he obtained a custody order from an American court,
which under the Hague Convention is binding upon Germany since the
children had resided in the United States for all of their young lives,
the German courts have refused to grant him custody. Instead, they have
ruled that the children should stay with their foster parents, in part
because during the drawn-out German legal process, the children learned
German, went to German schools, and grew attached to their foster
parents. The court felt that reuniting these children with their father
would result in ``severe psychological loss.''
The State Department's reaction to this case hardly befits the
importance of the issue involved. Despite Germany's obligations under
the Hague Convention, a State Department spokeswoman told the
Washington Post, ``We're not the courts. It's up to the courts to make
those kinds of decisions.'' The very point of the Hague Convention is
to provide countries with a diplomatic opportunity to question the
rulings of courts outside the country were the children habitually
reside. The Convention is rendered meaningless if our State Department
is not willing to act as a strong advocate for American parents. As the
Post reported, only 80 out of the 369 children--22 percent--who were
the subject of Hague applications from American parents from 1990 to
1998 have come back to the United States, and that number includes
those children who were voluntarily returned. Meanwhile, U.S. courts
have returned 90 percent of children who were the subject of Hague
applications in other countries.
In other words, while America obeys its treaty obligations, it has
failed to enforce our own treaty rights. This is not a minor problem,
either. The State Department says that it has 1,148 open international
custody cases, and there are surely far more cases that have not been
reported to the government. The State Department should be doing
everything within its power to help American parents. I implore our
government to pay more attention to this issue, and I ask our allies to
abide by their own duties under the Hague Convention.
I ask unanimous consent to enter an editorial on this matter from
today's Washington Post into the Record.
There being no objection, the editorial was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
[From the Washington Post, May 9, 2000]
Stolen Children
When Congress was considering legislation that would have
kept Elian Gonzalez in this country, State Department
officials argued that such a precedent could disrupt their
efforts to intervene in cases where American parents have had
children abducted abroad. A sound argument, with one big
problem: It turns out that in many of the 1,100 open cases in
which American parents are fighting to get their children
back from recalcitrant court systems in other countries, the
State Department isn't making much effort on the parents'
behalf. The heartwrenching story of Joseph Cooke and his
children, told Sunday in this newspaper by Post reporters
Cindy Loose and William Drozdiak, highlights an unusually
egregious problem with German-American custody battles in
particular: In at least 30 cases, advocates say, German
judges have flouted basic tenets of the 1980 Hague treaty on
international abductions, to which their country is a
signatory, and kept children from parents who had
overwhelming claims to them. But the Cooke story also reveals
an almost incomprehensibly lackadaisical U.S. Government
response to the
[[Page S3684]]
human tragedies that arise when a parent cannot get his or
her rights enforced.
The Hague Convention calls for quick resolution of custody
disputes in the country where a child ``habitually resides.''
The law lacks teeth: An official at the U.S. Embassy in
Germany told a Post reporter that he viewed the Hague
Convention as ``a voluntary compliance sort of thing.'' Up
the ladder, it's the same: U.S. ambassadors fail to raise
individual cases or to make diplomatic noise over these
cases. German officials say they cannot intervene in the
court system. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer,
meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright this week,
echoed that view when the secretary raised the Cooke case--
though Mr. Fischer said he was touched by the Cookes'
``personal tragedy.''
American reluctance to apply diplomatic pressure makes no
more sense than German excuses about ``interfering'' in the
judiciary. Public and private pressure through diplomatic
channels on behalf of sundered families can indeed have an
effect; so could legislation to require judges to be trained
in the applicable laws. When an ally such as Germany flouts
good conduct in this regard, the issue should rise to the top
of the diplomatic agenda, not be shunted aside.
____________________