The Last Place You'd Look (11 page)

The entire missing persons reporting system is stacked against the parents of runaways. Most police agencies have few resources to dedicate to finding kids who have left home. Once they turn sixteen, many states consider them adults and won’t look for them without a strong indication of foul play. If a child who is old enough to be on his own is found, often the department has no legal right to tell the parent where the child is or give any details other than to ask the child to contact the parent. It’s even worse when the runaway has crossed jurisdictions.

Police will do courtesy checks for officers in other jurisdictions—that is, if an officer has a lead on a child’s whereabouts in another city, that jurisdiction will send an officer to try and locate the child. But unless there is something more to the case that’s as much as the other jurisdiction is going to do. Runaways form a huge national problem. Many times they turn into homeless street kids or support themselves by becoming involved in drugs, prostitution, and other crimes. The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention concurs with the National Runaway Switchboard’s (NRS) lower-end estimate that about 1.6 million American kids run away from their homes each year, but of that number, the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing (POP) says about a third are technically missing. Of the remaining two-thirds, either the parents know where the kids are or the child is a “throwaway”—a kid whose parents or guardians don’t want him or her in the home. Other sources lean toward the high end of the NRS’s estimate—2.8 million—and believe the number of runaways is much higher than official statistics indicate, since some parents and guardians avoid police involvement and don’t report the child as missing. Although law enforcement officially works with parents to locate these kids, many agencies find themselves constrained by a lack of money and manpower from doing much follow-up.

Even though Hawkins’s daughter was a child who had no business on the streets, she discovered her foster-parent status made her even less likely than other parents to engender support from criminal justice agencies or other authorities. On the runaway ladder, foster parents occupy the bottom rung.

“There are no supports, no help for parents like me. There is no Amber Alert, no donations to pay for posters and ads, no all-night vigils, no articles. No one gets worried about a foster kid who runs away, no one thinks I should care, no one wants to hear what I’m doing to find her, [and] no one thinks I should even let her back into my life. My friends and family mean well when they say they are worried for my safety and that I should turn my back on her, but this is my daughter,” Hawkins says.

According to a report authored by Kelly Dedel (a criminal justice consultant with a doctorate in clinical psychology) for the nonprofit POP, which works with criminal justice agencies to find solutions to issues confronting police agencies, “Juveniles in substitute care (e.g., foster care, group homes) are more likely to run away than juveniles who live at home with a parent or guardian. The chances of juveniles in care running away are highest in the first few months after placement, and older juveniles are more likely to run away than younger juveniles. Juveniles who run away from substitute care are more likely to run away repeatedly than juveniles who run away from home. Although they are only a small proportion of the total number of runaways, those who run away from care also tend to stay away longer and travel farther away than those who run away from home.”

Overwhelmed and underfunded police agencies tend to see foster kids a lot—many times as troublemakers and runaways. Most are not as lucky as Hawkins’s daughter Maggie; without anyone to advocate or search for them, they often slip into a statistical dead zone.

Maggie, who is seventeen as of this writing, has spent time in jail and is predisposed to return there in the future, if she doesn’t meet a more sinister end on the streets—a potential that Hawkins realizes and fears.

“She is my child and I love her, but the constant emotional turmoil brought on by wondering where she is and what she’s doing is wearing me out,” Hawkins admits.

Hawkins knows her situation with Maggie is not the norm. Although many kids who run away have substance abuse issues or harbor mental illnesses, others who take to the streets see it as an escape hatch from difficult situations. Dr. Peter Ferber, a Massachusetts-based child psychiatrist, says he believes that children who are mentally whole do not abandon relationships with parents in a family that is healthy and has good relationships. Sure, the occasional rebellious moment or blowup may produce a momentary fracture, and the child might threaten to leave or go to a friend’s house for a day or two. But in the long run, the kids who end up on the streets with no intention of ever coming home are, in Ferber’s opinion, the products of homes with severe issues.

Broken homes, sexual abuse, parental substance use, and violence—all contribute to the growing problem of runaways in this country, according to Ferber. “In many cases, there is a selfish, self-centered parent who is unable to see the kids as separate sentient humans with a separate viewpoint and a separate set of needs.”

At other times, outside pressures can cause a child to make a poor decision.

“I’ve seen any number of kids just before or just after college entrance who seem to have been functioning well until that point. They are away for a couple of months and find themselves unable to study or make friends and can’t tolerate the separation from their home or parents,” says Ferber.

Ferber adds that a lot of runaways leave when they are angry or when they are restrained from activities their parents see as harmful. He, like Barton, points to specific pathologies as leading indicators of children who might be more inclined to run away from home.

Children who have attention deficit disorder are impulsive, as are children with bipolar disorder and conduct disorders. “Unrecognized learning disorders can lead kids to fight with their parents and run away,” says Ferber, who adds that “impulsive kids are much more likely to become involved with drug cultures.”

Living on the streets isn’t glamorous or exciting, but many kids who end up there get caught up in the drugs or fall into the hands of those who exploit children. When the economy is in a downturn, experts say, the number of runaways increases, which is unfortunate because a down economy often translates to less money allocated for youth services that deal with runaways.

The NRS, which fields calls from kids who have left home or are considering leaving home, says that among their crisis callers, increasing numbers are turning to panhandling, the sex industry, and selling drugs. In 2008, they reported that the majority of their crisis callers were ages fifteen to seventeen, and, as Ferber affirms, the most commonly reported crisis involved family issues and abuse.

Youth shelters, youth crises centers, and other private and public initiatives to return runaways to their homes have been established in every state and major city in the nation. And cities are where most of the kids end up—not in crisis centers, but on the streets of New York or Los Angeles, Miami or Minneapolis, Dallas or Seattle. Runaway hotlines offer kids a chance to contact their parents or talk to an adult who can give them advice or the opportunity to connect with a sympathetic ear. Greyhound Lines offers a free bus ticket home to runaways, and there are other organizations that help reunite kids with their families, but the truth is that the runaway has to want to come home for any of this to work.

For parents looking for their runaways, the best advice is to grab a page from Ahearn’s book and take what they know about their kids and use it to map their most probable paths. Where do they have ties or where have they expressed a desire to visit? What are their habits, likes and dislikes, passions and needs? Looking for them the way Ahearn traces a skip—the precept of thinking like the enemy in order to defeat him—might elicit success.

As for the children nobody’s looking for, the throwaways, the unreported missing and foster kids who aren’t lucky enough to have someone like Kelly Hawkins in their corners, the future holds little but a short life on the streets and the eventual victimization that comes with that lifestyle.

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“I wish I could just run away.” It’s a sentiment almost everyone has experienced. Even the most privileged of the privileged, Princess Grace of Monaco, once expressed wistful envy of the lifestyle of those with no ties to responsibility. For adults crushed under the weight of modern demands, the idea of a life that starts at ground zero, ready to be reconstituted in a fresh new form, has merit. But few make the move, and of the ones who do, their families are often left to search and wonder what happened.

For the teens that take off, the reality of living outside the family unit is often tragic. Many panhandle, commit petty crimes, or sell their bodies in order to stay alive. Kids who get caught up in drug and alcohol abuse or turn to prostitution begin a downhill slide—crime and homelessness send many to the morgue, used up at much too early an age.

With the exception of those who flee abusive situations, adults who walk away from it all leave behind pockets of victims: parents, spouses, children, and the others who love them. When a kid runs away, he or she also often
becomes
a victim. Either way, those who disappear on purpose add to this country’s expanding missing persons population.

Children who are victims of family abduction are uprooted from their homes and deprived of their other parent. Often they are told the other parent no longer loves them or is dead. Too often abducted children live a life of deception, sometimes under a false name, moving frequently and lacking the stability needed for healthy, emotional development.—
Family Abduction Prevention

T
o the best of Stephen Watkins’s knowledge, his former wife, Edyta Ustaszewski, is in Poland with their two sons, Christopher and Alexander. Stephen has not seen the boys since March 2009. He discovered they were missing when they did not show up for school. Their disappearance, however, did not come as a surprise.

“The threat [of abduction] was there initially; there were a lot of little clues,” says Stephen, who lives outside of Toronto.

Stephen did not sit and wait for the boys to vanish. Because he had anticipated their possible abduction, he worked to minimize the damage, documenting details about the boys’ mother, trying to anticipate when she might make her move. He says Edyta, born in Poland, holds joint Canadian-Polish citizenship and, in addition to the main languages of both countries, also speaks French and German. Prior to allegedly taking the boys, Stephen says Edyta enrolled them in a Polish school where they learned the language. She also enrolled them in the Boy Scouts—the Polish Boy Scouts. When Stephen and the courts asked her for the boys’ passports, he says she claimed she did not have them.

There were other indicators that Edyta was planning to run with the children, says Stephen. She threw him off-balance by leveling criminal allegations at him, each of which, he says, were investigated by police and the Children’s Aid Society and unsubstantiated.

From left, Christopher and Alexander Watkins. Courtesy of Stephen Watkins.

“Every single type of allegation was [brought] against me. They were so far-fetched,” Stephen says.

Stephen, who had sole, court-ordered custody of the boys, says his attorneys warned him that his ex-wife might do such a thing. Now he worries about what she might be telling his children about him.

“I just want my kids found,” he says.

The regional agency that is handling the Watkins boys’ kidnapping is conducting an ongoing investigation into the abduction. They have gathered banking, credit card, and flight data in connection with the case, but Stephen says he knows little about the information they’ve gathered because they refuse to share it with him or his attorneys. Police tell him that releasing it could impede both their investigation and eventual prosecution.

“I feel there is more emphasis in making sure you have a very solid court case than in trying to find the kids,” Stephen says.

According to Stephen, no one knew where Edyta was living prior to her disappearance. She paid no child support and, Stephen claims, she was “playing games” with both him and the court. Stephen last saw his children on March 6, 2009, when they went to spend the weekend with their mother. Edyta’s elderly father, who is Polish but lives in Canada, picked up the boys. Stephen discovered something was wrong at 9:30 a.m. the following Monday when the children’s school called to say they were absent.

Stephen called Edyta but received no answer. He then contacted his attorney and the police, and the search was under way.

Stephen and the authorities theorize that Edyta’s father drove them over the Canadian border into Rochester, New York, where they boarded a plane to Germany. His father-in-law was charged criminally in connection with their kidnapping. Thus far none of the leads generated by Stephen’s contacts there have produced any solid evidence as to their whereabouts.

Stephen is both angry and confounded that Edyta and the boys could have escaped by crossing the border and boarding a plane out of the country, especially because Edyta’s Canadian passport had been revoked by the Canadian government. She should not have been legally able to fly. Stephen also had court orders preventing the boys from using their passports, but none of that mattered once the airplane in which they were passengers took off.

“No Amber Alert was ever issued as law enforcement authorities told me it was too late for that. They were already gone,” Stephen observes.

Because Stephen suspected Edyta might flee with the children, he prepared in advance by completing the paperwork required to file under the Hague Convention, an international treaty that, among other things, governs the return of children illegally abducted by a parent and taken to another country. He says so far the convention has not been much help.

Although Stephen had the paperwork ready, the Polish authorities did not accept it because it was written in English. They required that it be translated into Polish. “By that time we had lost two to three months [due to paperwork delays],” Stephen says.

Stephen has hired a private investigator to look for the kids and says he does not have any leads. Although he has not yet traveled to Poland to look for his children, Interpol—the International Criminal Police Organization—has become involved in the case.

Stephen has done everything he can think of to keep his case in front of the public, including building a Web site devoted to the boys’ abduction, creating videos in multiple languages, and staying in touch with the news media. Most of his coverage, he says, has been local. While he doesn’t disparage the local Toronto coverage, he also points out that it isn’t terribly beneficial since his case involves international child abduction.

“The kids’ pictures are at every single airport here and in the United States and also at border crossings, because when I go [to the United States] I can see them on the wall,” he says.

“But the kids aren’t here. We know where they are—they’re in Europe.”

Photographs of Christopher and Alexander stare out at shoppers in Canadian Walmarts, and they’ve been featured in bank statements and cable bills—in total, twenty-one million envelopes mailed out in Canada. Again, says Stephen, while all publicity is good, he is having a more difficult time getting coverage where he needs it: internationally.

“My story tends to get lost in the mix,” he says.

Stephen’s professional background is in computers, so he’s savvy about getting his kids’ names out in front in search engines. “If you type my kids’ name in, they’re pretty much going to be on page number one,” he says. Stephen spends much of his spare time maintaining the Web site devoted to recovering the boys, www.Watkins-Missing-Children.com.

Searching for the boys isn’t cheap, either. So far he has committed both a massive amount of time and money to finding them. He says it has cost him and his family about $200,000 thus far, and he knows there will be more expenses ahead.

“We’re going at a snail’s pace,” he says, summing up his frustration.

When Stephen looks back at what has happened, he says he has one piece of advice for other parents facing similar situations: don’t let it happen to you.

“Don’t lose your kids. Don’t have them abducted in the first place. Make sure you have everything in order. There were so many times the court system, the police, the borders, the passports . . . so many times this could have been stopped. We fell through the cracks and the judicial system failed here,” he says.

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Since 2004, New Jersey resident David Goldman nourished a single-minded goal: to bring his little boy back home. His son, Sean, had been taken to Brazil by his mother, David’s former wife. Once there, she remarried—this time to a Brazilian attorney—but she died giving birth to another child. Despite the fact that David is Sean’s birth father and his mother’s family had no legal claim to Sean in U.S. courts, the family members managed to block his return to his father for five years. During those five years, David spent thousands of dollars and worked around the clock for his son’s return, using a dedicated network of friends and strangers who recognized the injustice of Sean remaining in Brazil with his maternal grandparents rather than being returned to his New Jersey home.

David kept up the publicity, appearing on news shows, building a Web site, and fighting for his son through the Brazilian court system. On Christmas Eve 2009, due in large part to the support he received from his publicity campaign, which attracted the sympathy of many Brazilian people as well as the personal intervention of U.S. Congressman Christopher Smith (R–NJ), David was allowed to take his son home. Since then, he and his supporters have continued to tackle the issue of parental abductions to other countries. They also have supported Smith’s bill, HR 3240. If enacted, the bill would improve the chances of victims of international child abductions being repatriated and reunited with their U.S. parents both in countries that are signatories of the Hague Convention, as well as countries that are not signatories to Hague.

The Bring Sean Home Foundation (www.bringseanhome.org), which advocated for Sean’s return, says, “Sean Goldman was the first child ever to be returned from Brazil, [and] not one child has ever been returned from Japan, not in fifty years.”

Japan has proved one of the most difficult countries with which to deal in matters of parental abduction. Under present Japanese law, the noncustodial parent has no rights—not even for visitation. Furthermore, the Japanese legal system allows the parents of biracial children brought into Japan to retain custody because to do otherwise would, as Japanese courts have stated in the past, remove the child from a stable home environment, even when the parent who kidnapped the child did so in violation of a U.S. court order.

Recently the United States urged Japan to sign a treaty that would allow for more equitable treatment of both parties in cases involving the children of Japanese citizens and foreign spouses. Joining with France, Canada, and Great Britain to urge Japanese cooperation in connection with these abductions, the United States cited a report that charged Japan with the seventh-highest rate of international parental abductions involving U.S. children. Mexico ranks first on that list. Countries that have also proved uncooperative in returning abducted children to their U.S. parents include India, Slovakia, Honduras, Russia, and Switzerland.

Parents of children who are the victims of international parental kidnappings often don’t know where to turn or even how to begin the process of locating and recovering their kids.

Stephen Watkins recognized the signs that his former wife might flee and take their boys, so he attacked the problem before it grew. Although his efforts proved ineffective in preventing their abduction, they gave Stephen many of the tools he needed to launch a thorough search for the children.

Since Stephen is Canadian, he worked within the framework of Canadian law in preparing for the anticipated abduction of his sons. In the United States, when there is a possibility of an international abduction, experts say it is important to retain an attorney to ensure that custody and visitation rights are spelled out in any court documents. It is also essential that a court order contain a “statement of the basis of the court’s jurisdiction and the manner in which notice and opportunity to be heard were given,” according to the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP). That provision helps clarify jurisdictional issues that will arise down the road.

The OJJDP also suggests asking the U.S. State Department to flag the child’s passport (although, in Stephen Watkins’s case, his children were transported over the Canadian border into the United States and allowed to travel to Europe even though the kids’ passports were no longer valid). The OJJDP’s publication,
A Family Resource Guide on International Parental Kidnapping
, is a free government publication that offers information and advice to parents who believe their children may become victims or whose children have already been abducted. Much of the advice offered also applies to any parental abduction, including the steps one should take if a parental abduction attempt is anticipated. Much of it is good, old-fashioned common sense and contains steps parents should implement anyway, even if they do not suspect their child could be targeted for kidnapping. The OJJDP, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and other experts say these include the following preventative measures:

• Have current, high-quality color photos of your child. Take both front and profile views.

• Make a video of your child. Keep both the video and photos current.

• Determine that the child knows his or her name, address, and telephone number.

• Record your child’s description: in addition to the obvious traits like height, weight, and coloring, also record other identifying data, such as whether the child uses corrective lenses, and any birthmarks he or she may have. Remember: missing persons can sometimes be located because of quirks or habits they have. When describing your children, also record favorites, including music, television shows, and toys they may favor; any medical conditions they may have or medications they may take; allergies; food preferences or dislikes—anything that might make a child stand out in someone’s mind.