• Security incident: ISF was recently accessed by intruders. Please change your password, and change it anywhere else you used it. Read more

The Australian "custody sisters"

I have a friend from long ago whose wife took the kids and went to Norway with them when she had visitation. He had custody.

This was 1981 and he was not allowed to see his children at all until they were adults.

And there was nothing he could do to get them back.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
....if I did have a child, and he or she were kidnapped by their mother, and after two years the child wanted to stay with their mother rather than come home, I might take a moment to ask myself why that is. And I'm not sure I would be content with glib answers that turn on the premise that children don't know what is best for them.

I can also say with confidence that I would never condone a process that ended with the child being dragged away by the police, kicking and screaming.

I would think, "this is barbaric, it cannot possibly be in the kid's best interest, and the kid will hate me when he/she grows up."
Click to expand...

I agree, and one thing is for certain. That father has taken steps to make sure that his daughters hate him, and will hate him for the rest of their lives.

And why should the media NOT show this in all its ugliness. This kind of child abuse need to be out in the open for everyone to see, not hidden away where people can get away with it.
 
Last edited:
WildCat said:
We know just as much about that as we do their feelings towards the father. If you can speculate, why can't I?
Click to expand...

Your speculations are a bit wilder and a bit more salacious, since a repeated feature of your speculations is underage girls and their boyfriends, but there's no law against you enjoying those speculations.

However I don't think it's very rational to ignore people's clearly stated preferences on the basis that you can imagine some weird set of circumstances in which they are crazy, or have been "poisoned", or they are brats, or whatever. It's possible but unless you have some evidence you're just making up fairy stories to your own taste.
 
smartcooky said:
I agree, and one thing is for certain. That father has taken steps to make sure that his daughters hate him, and will hate him for the rest of their lives.

And why should the media NOT show this in all its ugliness. This kind of child abuse need to be out in the open for everyone to see, not hidden away where people can get away with it.
Click to expand...
The only person who took steps to break apart this family was the mother when she took the girls to another country and didn't return. It's tragic that such a simple legal case could take over 2 years to resolve, but that's not the father's fault.

And you have no idea how this will work out, you're just speculating. You sound like the people who said Elian Gonzalez was going to grow up screwed in the head because he was (rightly IMHO) returned to his father. But at least that case didn't drag on for years.
 
smartcooky said:
I agree, and one thing is for certain. That father has taken steps to make sure that his daughters hate him, and will hate him for the rest of their lives.

And why should the media NOT show this in all its ugliness. This kind of child abuse need to be out in the open for everyone to see, not hidden away where people can get away with it.
Click to expand...

That was entirely the Mother's doing.

Alienation of affection.

She should have HER parental rights terminated.
 
Kevin_Lowe said:
Your speculations are a bit wilder and a bit more salacious, since a repeated feature of your speculations is underage girls and their boyfriends, but there's no law against you enjoying those speculations.
Click to expand...
Holy crap, thinly veiled accusations of pedophilia for speculating that teenage girls might have boyfriends? :rolleyes:

Kevin_Lowe said:
However I don't think it's very rational to ignore people's clearly stated preferences on the basis that you can imagine some weird set of circumstances in which they are crazy, or have been "poisoned", or they are brats, or whatever. It's possible but unless you have some evidence you're just making up fairy stories to your own taste.
Click to expand...
What person's "clearly stated preferences"? The mother's? Grandma's? You've seen interviews with the girls?
 
I think the mother has behaved horribly, not only in abducting the kids initially but in not preparing them in any way for the possibility of returning, and inviting the media to witness their distress! She could have made things so much easier for them herself, had she chosen to. I'm not convinced that leaving the kids in the custody of someone who's behaved as she has - separating them from the family and country they were brought up in, and preventing them from seeing their father for years - would be the best thing for them anyway. The court will decide (and I'm sure will take the kids' feelings at that stage into account), but she certainly hasn't done herself any favours.

Here's another fairly recent case, where the father took his daughter to Pakistan when she was three while the mother thought they were going on a day trip. She was eventually found three years later and returned, by this stage of course having little memory of her mother and not even speaking English. Should she have been allowed to stay in Pakistan? Given the choice, I'm sure it's what she would have preferred.
 
WildCat said:
We know just as much about that as we do their feelings towards the father. If you can speculate, why can't I?
Click to expand...

OK, so your question was along the lines of "how do you know there's no bigfoot."

For a moment I dared to hope you might have something of interest to contribute, but that was foolish of me, and I won't waste any more of your time.
 
katy_did said:
I think the mother has behaved horribly, not only in abducting the kids initially but in not preparing them in any way for the possibility of returning, and inviting the media to witness their distress! She could have made things so much easier for them herself, had she chosen to.
Click to expand...

What is wrong with inviting the media? This was a situation where public authorities were conducting the public's business on a public street.

Given the nature of the business, I'm sure the authorities would have liked to keep it out of sight, but the whole reason civilized countries have a free press is so they can't do that.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
What is wrong with inviting the media? This was a situation where public authorities were conducting the public's business on a public street.

Given the nature of the business, I'm sure the authorities would have liked to keep it out of sight, but the whole reason civilized countries have a free press is so they can't do that.
Click to expand...

As their mother, she could have made things far easier for them if she'd prepared them for the possibility of returning and calmed them, perhaps even made plans to accompany them rather than making it necessary for police to come and drag them away literally kicking and screaming. That would have been in the children's best interests. Instead, she was more interested in increasing and exploiting their distress because it made for a better media spectacle.

It's not as if the upsetting scene was inevitable, it was orchestrated to be so because the mother felt it helped her case. Footage of the girls and their mother calmly boarding a plane to Italy wouldn't have made the headlines, I guess.
 
katy_did said:
As their mother, she could have made things far easier for them if she'd prepared them for the possibility of returning and calmed them, perhaps even made plans to accompany them rather than making it necessary for police to come and drag them away literally kicking and screaming. That would have been in the children's best interests. Instead, she was more interested in increasing and exploiting their distress because it made for a better media spectacle.

It's not as if the upsetting scene was inevitable, it was orchestrated to be so because the mother felt it helped her case. Footage of the girls and their mother calmly boarding a plane to Italy wouldn't have made the headlines, I guess.
Click to expand...

That's what I thought, too. Unless she had really poor legal advice it must have become obvious that there was a strong likelihood that the custody dispute would have to be settled in Italy and that the girls would have to return there, and that they should have been prepared for that eventuality.
 
smartcooky said:
For those who appear to think the mother is always wrong, you might want to look into the case of Eric Foretich and Elizabeth Morgan.
Click to expand...
No, the parent who takes the kids to a foreign country to avoid having a court decide custody is always wrong.
 
katy_did said:
As their mother, she could have made things far easier for them if she'd prepared them for the possibility of returning and calmed them, perhaps even made plans to accompany them rather than making it necessary for police to come and drag them away literally kicking and screaming. That would have been in the children's best interests. Instead, she was more interested in increasing and exploiting their distress because it made for a better media spectacle.

It's not as if the upsetting scene was inevitable, it was orchestrated to be so because the mother felt it helped her case. Footage of the girls and their mother calmly boarding a plane to Italy wouldn't have made the headlines, I guess.
Click to expand...

Well, if Mom wanted to make the cops look like thugs, it worked.

But the kids themselves were the ones who made a fuss. I don't think that was scripted by their mother. I think they did that because they did not want to go to Italy to be with their father, they were desperate to stay in Australia with their mother, but they were powerless to do anything about it, so they pitched a fit in the vain hope that the authorities might show a little mercy and capitulate.
 
Charlie Wilkes said:
I don't have any children. I have never wanted them.

But if I did have a child, and he or she were kidnapped by their mother, and after two years the child wanted to stay with their mother rather than come home, I might take a moment to ask myself why that is. And I'm not sure I would be content with glib answers that turn on the premise that children don't know what is best for them.

I can also say with confidence that I would never condone a process that ended with the child being dragged away by the police, kicking and screaming.

I would think, "this is barbaric, it cannot possibly be in the kid's best interest, and the kid will hate me when he/she grows up."
Click to expand...

Go stockholm!
 
ponderingturtle said:
Kids get dragged kicking and screaming to things they then enjoy all the time. When one parent starts kidnapping their kids it is already a messed up situation. I is just surprising to see so much support fir kidnapping.
Click to expand...

Exactly this. And how much of this kicking and screaming is actually done out of a snese of obligation to the mother? I'd bet most of it. My son used to weep when he had to leave his mom on monday mornings but 30 seconds after she was out of sight he was all smiles. He was sad because she wanted him to be sad.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

ISF - Join now!

Every member here is approved by hand. No bots, no spam, just people who care about evidence and honest debate.

Membership is free!

Create your free account

Back
Top Bottom