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On Monday, November 6, 2006, Children’s Rights Council sponsored
an international symposium on Capitol Hill. This symposium was free and open to the public. Titled "International Parental
Kidnapping and Custody Trends Around the World," it included representatives from the U.S. State Department, ICMEC, NCMEC,
the French government, and the Israeli government. Although Senators Warner and Allen of Virginia both forwarded a written
invitation for this symposium to Ambassador Ryozo Kato of the Embassy of Japan, the Japanese government declined to send any
representatives. Four of the attendees at this event were American parents with cases involving the abduction/retention of
their children to Japan.
Panelists included:
Rafael Hafez, Press Officer, The Embassy of Israel
Christian
Joly, Advisor for Non-Government Affairs, the Embassy of France
Brian Jenkins, president, F.A.C.T., CRC of Canada
Walter
Benda, CRC of Japan, whose two kidnapped children are being held in Japan .
Lawrence Whyte, father of abducted child recovered
from Russia
Moderator: Myrna Murdoch of Hawaii , Director of International Affairs, CRC
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Panel presentation by Walter Benda of Children's Rights Council
of Japan:
Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests, my name is Walter Benda. I am co-founder of Children’s Rights
Council of Japan.
I would like to introduce a few observers who are attending our symposium today. I would appreciate
if you could please stand up so we can recognize you.
First, we have some attendees who are representing the State
Department as well as various organizations working with international abduction and custody cases:
Andrea Mihailescu,
State Department’s Office of Children's Issues, is the primary State Department
contact for American parents with cases
involving Japan.
There are also two other nonprofits that work on international parental abduction issue:
Christina
Portz, International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children
Ebbony Jackson, National Center for Missing & Exploited
Children
I would also like to introduce some of the other left-behind parents here today, who are seeking visitation
and access rights with their children in Japan:
Paul Toland
Brett Weed
Patrick Braden
All 3 of
these fathers are American citizens with American citizen children who have been abducted to Japan, or are being retained
in Japan, in violation of their parental rights.
I would like to give you a little background about CRC of Japan.
CRC of Japan was co-founded by David Brian Thomas, a British citizen, and myself, a U.S. citizen, on May 5, 1996. We picked
that date because May 5 is Children’s Day in Japan. We felt it was important that all children in Japan be remembered on
that day, especially those who do not have regular, direct access to both of their parents.
Brian and I both had
our children parentally abducted in Japan over 10 years ago. After we could not find any organizations in Japan, which could
offer us support or help, we researched organizations in other countries. One organization that especially impressed us was
Children’s Rights Council in the U.S. We really liked the “best parent is both parents” philosophy of Children’s Rights Council
and the accomplishments the organization had made in the U.S. on behalf of children of divorce and separation. We thought
it was a good model to follow. Working together with David Levy, we established what was to become the first international
chapter of CRC, and this year we celebrated our 10th anniversary as the first international chapter of Children's Rights Council.
CRC
of Japan, over the years, has dealt with dozens of cases of international abduction.
We have been featured in media
reports on CBS television and in magazines and newspapers including the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, International
Herald Tribune, Japan Times, Daily Yomiuri, Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Daily, Tokyo Journal, and many others. We are greatly
indebted to the media for their ongoing and dedicated coverage of these issues, and all the media has done to help raise public
awareness.
David Brian Thomas and I have extensive personal experience litigating our custody cases at all levels of
the Japanese court system. Both of us have litigated our cases to the Japanese Supreme Court.
We have submitted expert
testimony as international experts on international child abduction and custody and visitation issues involving Japan for
legal cases in several U.S. states as well as Japan.
CRC of Japan maintains an informational website (www.crcjapan.com)
and a free online discussion group ("crc-japan" at www.yahoogroups.com).
We have been involved in numerous cases and
conferences involving international abductions.
Our first major press conference was on March 9, 1998 at the Foreign
Correspondents Club in
Tokyo. Several parents affected by international parental kidnapping in Japan spoke at the conference.
On
March 1, 2000, I testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee regarding international parental kidnapping issues and
the Elian Gonzalez case.
On October 2, 2002 CRC of Japan was among the invited attendees at the first White House
Conference on Missing, Exploited, and Runaway Children.
More recently, on Dec. 3, 2005, both David Brian Thomas and
I participated at an event held at the Embassy of Canada in Tokyo, titled "Seminar on the Hague Convention and International
Child Abductions." Attendees included representatives from the Japanese government as well as over 20 embassies stationed
in Japan, many members of the news media, attorneys, psychologists, a number of left-behind parents with children in Japan,
and others interested in these issues.
On April 28 of this year, President Bush made the following statement:
"It
is hard to believe that a country would foster abduction. It's hard for Americans to imagine that a leader of any country
would encourage the abduction of a young child. It's a heartless country that would separate loved ones."
While President
Bush’s comments were made by him after he met in the Oval Office with a family member of a Japanese citizen who had been abducted
to North Korea, for those of us who have been forcibly separated from our children in Japan, these statements very well could
apply to the way we feel about the treatment we have received at the hands of the Japanese government
The term abduction
is very much in the Japanese public dialog right now because of the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens. Parents
like Paul Toland, Brett Weed, Patrick Braden, David Brian Thomas and myself deeply sympathize with the Japanese victims of
these abductions. We also share the very same pain and grief because of forced separation from our loved ones. Circumstances
may be different, but the net effect on the left-behind family members is the same, regardless of whether they are Japanese
or American.
For many years now, despite persistent attempts by the U.S. and other foreign governments, Japan has refused
to join the Hague Convention, which calls upon member nations to return children who are victims of international parental
kidnapping to the country of habitual residence.
Japan has refused to recognize foreign court orders, foreign arrest
warrants, and extradition requests in international parental kidnapping cases.
Japan has refused to enforce relevant
international treaties it already has signed, such as the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child, which requires member
nations to provide for ongoing contact between parents and children who are separated by legal process.
When children
of international marriages are abducted to Japan by the Japanese spouse, or retained there in violation of the foreign parent's
rights, the foreign spouse is essentially powerless in terms of obtaining any Japanese government cooperation to locate their
child, much less enjoy the most minimal of access rights through the legal system Japan provides foreigners.
The latest
statistics from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children paint a gloomy picture of the lack of success U.S. parents
have had in these cases.
According to NCMEC’s international case database only one recovery was ever achieved involving
children taken from the U.S. to Japan. This recovery resulted from the re-abduction of the child by the searching parent.
The following is a direct quote from NCMEC:
“To date, there has not been a single recovery from Japan that
resulted from a civil legal proceeding or following the issuance of a criminal warrant for the taking parent.”
Children's
Rights Council of Japan estimates that there are dozens of such new cases in Japan each year, involving not just U.S. citizen
children, but children from all over the world. Cumulatively, over the last 10-20 years, we estimate there are well over
10,000 such cases involving children of international couples in which the Japanese partner has kidnapped the child to Japan,
and/or is retaining the child in Japan, Practically all these children grow up completely isolated from their foreign parent
throughout their childhood. It is not known how many, if any, ever re-establish a meaningful relationship with their foreign
parent once they reach adulthood.
It is very much in Japan’s best interests that it begin to cooperate internationally
on these matters. In fact, there are very few developed countries still left which have not become signatories of the Hague
Convention and which continue to refuse to cooperate with other countries to resolve international custody and kidnapping
disputes. These few remaining countries, such as Japan, are not only facing more and more international criticism, they are
also beginning to experience retaliatory measures against their citizens by the legal systems in other countries.
In
the United States a growing number of states are beginning to legislate measures that restrict the visitation rights and relocation
rights of children to countries who are not in compliance with international standards pertaining to the rights of non-custodial
parents. The state of Tennessee, for example, has implemented a statute which disallows a proposed move to a foreign country
in a custody case if that country has a public policy which does not normally enforce visitation rights of non-custodial parents,
or which otherwise presents a substantial risk of specific and serious harm to a child that is involved, California and Texas
as well have enacted similar measures, and we expect more and more states to follow suit.
There are many changes CRC
of Japan would like to see occur in Japan, more than we have time to talk about today, but I would like to at least mention
a few of the main ones.
1. Access centers, modeled on those that have been established by CRC in the U.S. Children’s
Rights Council, along with many of its U.S. chapters, has established over 40 access centers which provide “transitional parenting”
until conflicting parents, or parents who are re-entering their children’s lives after a long absence, can work out transfer
arrangements in their own homes. Many centers also offer supervised access, where a parent cannot leave the premises with
the child, but child and parent are spending time with each other.
2. A public registry of missing and abducted children,
modeled on the system in use in the U.S. by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, where missing and abducted
children are listed on a website, with information on how to report them to the authorities when they are found. There currently
is no such registry in Japan, and Japanese law enforcement is under no obligation whatsoever to complete a missing persons
report when a parent reports a missing child to them.
3. Enactment of the Hague Convention by Japan, along with real
compliance by Japan with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to provide ongoing contact between foreign
parents and their children.
Of course we would like to see enforceable visitation rights, a presumption of joint custody,
as well
as meaningful parenting plans required in all divorce and separation cases in Japan, but this requires legislated
changes in the Japanese civil code. As foreigners we are not in a position to directly lobby for such changes, but we wish
to work with Japanese organizations that share these goals.
Thank you very much for this opportunity to present these
issues to you in this public forum.
With public forums like this, and continuing publicity by the ever growing number
of left-behind families of children abducted to Japan, hopefully the day will come when Japan too will begin to take steps
to reunite families, much as North Korea has done.
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