COLIN P.A. JONES, The Japan Times, Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Several months ago I made a bet with a friend about how the Hague Convention on international child abduction will be applied after Japan finishes implementing it through domestic legislation. My bet was this: If a Japanese court ever does order the return of a child wrongfully brought or retained here, the first case will be one in which both parents are non-Japanese. Needless to say, I hope to lose.

Despite the Japanese press trying to reduce the complex problem of international parental child abduction to one of Japanese mothers fleeing from abusive foreign husbands, the nationality of the parents involved in child abduction cases should not be an issue under the convention. The treaty is about the best interests of children and is rooted in a couple of fairly simple notions: that what is best for children should be decided in their country of habitual residence, and that this residence should not be subject to change by the unilateral — possibly illegal — actions of just one parent. This is not just a matter of abstract fairness either, since most of the evidence a court might find relevant to deciding what is best for a child after parental separation is likely to be where the child has been living, whether it is school or medical records or the testimony of relatives, teachers, counselors or other people who know the child and their family.

In Japan, however, the “best interests” that tend to get primacy are those of the people who make and apply the law rather than of children. This is why it has always been difficult for me to imagine that Japan joining the Hague Convention will actually result in children being taken away from Japanese mothers and returned to foreign countries (even though all this might mean in many cases is that the taking mother has to apply to a foreign court to relocate to Japan with the children).

Whatever the convention or any domestic law says, it is unlikely to ever be in the interests of a judge or other bureaucrat involved in an abduction case to be the person who makes that decision in any particular case even if they accept the principles of the convention in the abstract. This is why I made my bet: If both parents are foreign (or Japanese for that matter — cases where both parents are Japanese residing abroad would also be covered by the convention) then the simplistic “us vs. them” dynamic being touted in the Japanese press will not apply, making a return decision that much easier to make.

The country will certainly need to show some return orders to avoid being criticized for turning the Hague Convention into the family law equivalent of the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling, where aggressive use of the “scientific whaling” exception has rendered Japan’s membership something of a bad joke internationally.

Worrying signs

Insofar as they provide numerous opportunities for people in positions of authority to avoid taking responsibility for returning a child, there is little that surprises me in the legislative proposals recently announced by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) and the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). Indeed, the fact that implementation is being split between two different ministries is an early indicator that its application will be patchy.

The MOFA position on the access rights under the convention is useful for illustrating the bureaucratic attitude underlying the government’s whole approach. According to the position paper issued by the MOFA deliberative council on Jan. 19, a left-behind parent (LBP) seeking contact with their child in Japan will need to submit to the MOFA a form setting forth, among other things, (a) the legal basis under home country law for claiming entitlement to see their own children, and (b) their basis for asserting that the taking parent is interfering with such contact.

This may seem reasonable on first glance, but if the LBP is seeking a return order as well as immediate contact, this separate requirement seems kind of stupid. Furthermore, if the child has been brought to Japan before any divorce or custody proceedings were commenced in the home country, the LBP may have nothing to show. Finally, requiring the LBP to show that the taking parent is preventing contact is a bit much because they have already taken the child to an island on the other side of the planet — hello?

But then, of course, how access would be realized is a bit of a mystery. Although as “central authority” under the convention the MOFA is obliged to help locate children in Japan, it may not actually provide that information to LBPs seeking return or access — unless the taking parent consents.

For their part, the MOJ legislative proposal should leave plenty of leeway for judges to avoid ordering a return in any given case. Not only that, but even if a return is ordered, taking parents are accorded numerous opportunities to appeal, request that the order be suspended or even reconsidered due to a change in circumstances.

It’s good to talk?

Cutting through much of the detail, it appears that the judicial side of implementation may involve a lot of business as usual for the family courts in Tokyo and Osaka charged with handling Hague cases. One indicator of this is an oddly-phrased part of the proposal stating that “at any time, with the consent of the parties a court may on its own authority submit a return case to family court mediation.” If it does so, the return proceedings are suspended while the mediation proceeds. This would seem to give judges in return cases the ability to coerce parties (through the implied threat of an unfavorable ruling) into the often fruitless but time-consuming mediation that parents have to go through in non-Hague cases, rendering the prompt returns envisioned by the convention unobtainable.

The MOFA proposal is also big on encouraging mediation, referring not only to family court mediation but out-of-court dispute resolution mechanisms as well (really cynical prediction: at some point retired MOFA officials start to pop up as Hague case mediators).

Mediation always sounds nice in comparison to more formal, adversarial litigation and the convention certainly endorses amicable resolutions. But a mediated result is not necessarily a just result, particularly if it is achieved through one party being pressured into compromising principles they might reasonably have expected a court to uphold.

Mediation also generally requires a certain amount of goodwill on both sides, meaning it is optimistic — naive, even — to expect much of it in a case of cross-border child abduction. Furthermore, in a regime where the ministry encouraging you to seek mediation is the same one telling you it can’t divulge where your children are and asking you to justify why you think you are entitled to see them at all, there may not be much good will left on the part of many LBPs.

The desire for a mediated result is not unique to Japan. Officials in other Hague signatory countries have told me that many return cases are actually resolved through mediation. Since most takings are by mothers who are the primary caregivers, a request for a return order is often by a father who may actually be willing to accept the mother’s relocation as long as he continues to have a meaningful relationship with his children — something that could often have been provided for if the mother had first asked a court in the child’s home country for consent to an international relocation.

It is worth emphasizing that despite often being portrayed as involving a “Japan vs. foreign country” choice for the children involved, the Hague Convention is not about where a child should live, but about where that decision should be made. Unfortunately, because meaningful enforceable access does not exist in Japan, it is hard to see how mediation can offer LBPs any comfort that their relationship with their children will be protected in Japan.

Whale-size caveats

Much of what is in the MOFA and MOJ proposals might be tolerable if it were accompanied by a clear statement of principle that returns are the rule and nonreturns the exception. While the actual statutory language remains to be seen, based on the proposals it appears that what are essentially exceptions under the convention will not be characterized as such in the domestic legislation.

Under the convention a judge may decline to order a return for a limited number of reasons, including if doing so would subject the child to a grave risk of harm in the country of origin. The MOJ takes this exception and steers a research ship through it by allowing courts to refuse a return order if repatriating the child could result in the child or the taking parent being subject to violence or abusive language or conduct from the LBP.

Leaving aside the expansive scope of the term “abuse,” it should be remembered that much of the evidence needed to establish this exception is likely to be in the child’s home country (as would be evidence of abuse by the taking parent, a possibility which seems to be ignored in the debate despite the fact that 60 percent of child abuse cases in Japan concern mistreatment by mothers). Courts can also consider whether it would be difficult for either parent to raise the child in the home country, a standard so vague that it potentially covers any other situation that can’t be dealt with under the vaguely-defined rubric of “abuse” (indeed, it sounds very much like it could involve a “best interests of the child” inquiry of the type the convention is supposed to forestall).

The convention also allows a judge to refuse to return a child if he or she objects and has reached an age and degree of maturity that their views can be taken into account. I predict that “respecting the child’s wishes” will be a recurring theme in justifying nonreturns, even in cases where the children are quite young. This is because one of the things I have long found depressing (OK, infuriating) about Japanese family courts is the frequency with which the well-educated, well-paid and supposedly well-intentioned people making decisions about children end up essentially foisting that responsibility on the children themselves. Respecting the wishes of the child again sounds very nice until you start asking whether it also applies to things like eating vegetables and going to school (or hey, saluting the flag and singing the national anthem while we are at it).

Different strokes

It may be helpful to look at Japan’s proposed nonreturn reasons in another light. As everyone knows, Japan has exit controls. If a non-Japanese parent gets stopped at the airport because they are trying to leave the country with their half-Japanese children but can’t prove the Japanese parent has consented, will saying “we need to return to my home country because my husband is abusive” be enough to convince immigration officials to let them on the plane? It seems unlikely, doesn’t it? “You live in Japan; go to a Japanese court, get help from a Japanese domestic violence program” is a perfectly plausible official response here, yet it would be the exact opposite of how Japan proposes to deal with the same situation the other way around.

For those who think the above scenario is unlikely, it should be noted that under the MOJ proposal Japanese courts will be able to issue orders prohibiting a taken child from being removed from the country. This is not unreasonable — courts will likely want to prevent self-help remedies by LBPs that could just make things worse for the children concerned. However, the fact that the proposal allows taking parents to apply for such orders contributes to an overall picture of an implementation regime that assumes the taking parent is acting properly and needs to be protected until the LBP proves otherwise, subject to the handicaps of cost, distance and language that the convention is supposed to help alleviate.

Meet the new boss

Perhaps I am too pessimistic and Japanese courts will actually issue return orders. Whether they can be enforced is another matter. Here the proposed regime appears to start with the hope that taking parents will comply voluntarily with a return order. If this does not happen, the proposal envisions that the family court will do what they already do when their orders are being ignored: send someone to investigate the reason. This may result in the court issuing a “compliance recommendation” — a seemingly pointless suggestion that a party comply with the court order that is already being ignored.

If this has no effect (which is often the case, unsurprisingly), the final remedy available under the proposals is “indirect enforcement.” This involves a court bailiff visiting the taking parent and seeking to take the child away from them. Noncompliance may result in the imposition of a fine, which is not very effective if the taking parent has no money or assets to seize.

The MOJ proposal is clear that bailiffs may not use any force on a child. Furthermore, the bailiff can only try to enforce the return order when the child is with the taking parent. This means that going to the child’s school or day care and collecting the child there (a common abduction scenario) is not an option. The proposal thus apparently envisions that children must participate in the drama of their mothers being badgered into handing them over to some man from the court. Best interests indeed.

Habeas corpus, but toothless

To be honest, despite being voluminous, what leaps out about the MOJ and MOFA proposals is how little change they actually seem to propose. A great deal of what is being proposed seems to be things that Japanese courts and authorities could already do under existing law if they wanted to, reformulated in the context of the Hague. Japanese authorities could probably locate abducted children if they want to and courts already order mediation, indirect enforcement and so forth. In fact, in my view Japan could already be returning children without joining the Hague — all it would have taken is for the Supreme Court to allow for habeas corpus to be used to remedy international abductions, just as it is sometimes used in domestic abduction cases.

Habeas corpus, the “great writ” of Anglo-American law, is supposed to be a procedural remedy for arbitrary detention by police and other government actors, by empowering courts to expeditiously review the circumstances of detention and order the detainee to be immediately freed if it is unlawful. In Japan, however, with prolonged detention a common feature of criminal justice and one in which courts themselves are complicit, the use of habeas corpus is now safely limited mostly to situations in which the detaining party is not the government. In this form it has survived as an occasional remedy for parental child abduction cases.

Habeas corpus resolves many enforcement problems by subjecting the “detaining” parent to criminal penalties for failure to bring the child to court for a hearing, where they can be handed over to the other parent if the court so decides (in practice, if the court orders such a hearing it usually means that the decision to hand the child over to the other parent has already been made, rendering the hearing itself a meaningless formality).

The fact that the Supreme Court has never found an international case to meet the threshold of unlawfulness it deems necessary to grant habeas corpus relief — despite having separately found both domestic and cross-border abductions by a parent to be criminal kidnapping — is simply an indicator of a lack of will on the part of the Japanese judiciary, rather than a lack of statutory or procedural tools. Thus, while I suppose that Japan finally joining the Hague Convention should be viewed as a step forward, my expectations remain limited.

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KATHY TOMLINSON – CBC, January 9, 2012

Two Canadian fathers whose children were allegedly abducted by their mothers and taken to European countries say authorities have done little to try to enforce court orders and bring them back.

“I’m holding my hands up going, ‘Can somebody please do something about this?’” said Calum Hughes, whose five-year-old daughter Livia was allegedly abducted by her mother from B.C. and taken to Italy in 2009.

“Somebody is not doing their job behind a desk,” said Gary Mezo, from Thunder Bay, Ont. His two-year-old son Gary Jr. has been in Hungary for a year. Court records confirm his mother took him there without his father’s permission.

“I believe Canada has to put its foot down — finally — and do whatever is written in law what has been ordered in court.”

There is a two-year-old Canada-wide warrant for the arrest of Hughes’s ex-wife, Sibylla Verdi, for child abduction. He hasn’t seen Livia for 2½ years.

“It’s the first thing I think of when I wake up and the last thing I think of before I go to sleep at night,” said Hughes, of Kelowna, B.C.

Fathers have legal custody

Hughes is a hospital administrator and Mezo a successful businessman. Both were granted sole custody of their children by Canadian courts, but they said those orders have proven meaningless.

“A Canadian Supreme Court full custody ruling has no teeth,” said Hughes. “There’s not a lot of consequence that I see for a parent to just pick up and leave.”

Mezo alleges his ex was planning to abduct his son for more than a year.

“Before my child left, I told the police several times, please do something,” he said.

He has an affidavit and emails from a boyfriend of his child’s mother, showing she planned to leave and then claim abuse.

“He felt so bad that he couldn’t live with himself. He said that he had to do something about it. He wants me to have my child back,” said Mezo.

The Missing Children Society of Canada said while it has seen a steady increase in calls about international parental abductions, there is effectively nothing in place that could have prevented the abductions.

Child’s rights ‘at risk’

“The child’s rights are at risk here,” said private investigator Ted Davis. “A woman or man who wants to take their child [outside Canada or the U.S.] can simply jump on a plane and leave.”

Davis said his office is working on 60 cases of international abductions from Canada, dating back six years.

The latest RCMP figures show there were 237 reports of parental abduction in Canada in 2009 and 41 per cent of the children were under the age of five.

More than half the cases were resolved or withdrawn within a day. RCMP spokesperson Julie Gagnon said she didn’t know how many of the remaining children were taken to other countries.

She said when there is a warrant, as in the Hughes case, the RCMP can ask Interpol to put a “red notice” in the system, so the alleged abductor could be arrested at any border crossing.

She said, depending on the country and the case, extradition can also be initiated.

Dads desperate

However, Hughes said he heard nothing from the RCMP after a charge was laid against his ex-wife two years ago.

“They have done nothing,” said Hughes. “What message are we sending to everybody out there? If you don’t get a court order that you like, take your kid and leave the country? You will suffer no consequence? Is the Canadian justice system OK with that?”

RCMP spokesperson Dan Moskaluk insisted the investigation is still active.

“Resources involved in advancing this case since 2009 has involved RCMP investigators from the Kelowna detachment to assistance from our international policing branch liaison officer in Italy,” Moskaluk said.

CBC News sent messages to Sibylla Verdi, but received no response.

Mezo said he tried to get Thunder Bay police to pursue abduction charges in his case, but the investigating officer told him she couldn’t get approval. He believes that is partly because his wife falsely alleged he was abusive.

“It boils down to one thing — no reasonable grounds to get a charge approved,” said Thunder Bay police spokesperson Chris Adams. “These cases are very problematic. We don’t have the authority to enforce custody in another country.”

“It’s a very expensive proposition to initiate extradition on an abduction charge,” said Davis. “It’s not a priority [to police]. They don’t like getting involved in family cases when it’s not a life-threatening situation.”

Davis said under the current system, where parents can make applications for the child’s return under the Hague Convention, it takes two to three years and several thousand dollars to get children back, and it can only be done with signatory countries.

System slow, expensive

“If there’s no one stirring the pot, then no one is working the case,” he said. “The system is effective, but slow and very, very expensive.”

Both fathers made Hague applications. Italy refused to send Livia home, though, because the court believed his Italian ex-wife’s assertion that Hughes was an unfit father, allegations that were rejected by a Canadian court.

“That’s all needless details and garbage,” said Hughes. “I’ve spent over a hundred thousand dollars and how many hours in court. I’ve ended up with nothing in terms of a relationship with my daughter. ”

Mezo’s application is stalled in the Hungarian court system, which has sympathized with the Hungarian-born mother of his son.

“The Hungarian court said that ‘well there is no warrant out for her. She didn’t do anything wrong in Canada. So therefore we take it all with a grain of salt whatever the judge ordered in Canada,’” said Mezo.

His son’s mother, Boglarka Balog, sent an email to CBC News, again claiming abuse.

“The [Hungarian] court will value the behaviour of Gary that was violent so much in Hungary too, not only in Canada,” she wrote.

“Countries protect their own,” said Davis. “The stumbling block in Hague cases is when the court [overseas] is convinced there’s risk to the child [if returned].”

Call for exit controls

Hughes and Mezo said Canada should put some type of exit control in place, to try to stop parents from leaving with children they don’t have custody of.

“I was devastated when I learned [Livia and her mother] were gone because I knew what that meant,” said Hughes. “If they had been stopped, this would have all been prevented.”

“It’s happening everywhere [in the world]. But nobody is doing anything about it. Somebody has to step up and put their foot down and say enough is enough,” said Mezo.

Airlines and governments advise travellers to have a consent letter from the other parent if they want to fly with a child alone, but that system is voluntary.

“It’s smoke and mirrors — and those letters can be forged,” said Davis, who agreed exit controls are needed. “We have a file cabinet full of international cases.”

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) confirmed airlines can do nothing to stop a parent from leaving with a child, even when they don’t have a letter.

“Since there’s no governmental requirement, the airlines have no legal mandate to be checking these,” said spokesperson Perry Flint, who added airlines could open themselves up to lawsuits if they refuse to let a paying passenger board.

A U.S. government agency recently proposed establishing a “no fly” list – for parents the courts have ruled are likely to abduct their children.

CBC News asked several federal departments if something like that is being considered for Canada. Transport Canada said it is not and Public Safety said that would not be its department.

Government officials at the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade said they are currently dealing with 138 international child abduction cases, from a total of more than 900 children’s issues cases, which include cases involving the welfare of Canadian children abroad, custody, prevention and abduction cases.

“Despite the many challenges, DFAIT successfully closed 13 cases last year,” said the statement, which was issued after the CBC story went to air on Monday morning.

“These types of cases are exceptionally difficult and can often be met with frustrating roadblocks. We continue to work with and on behalf of those Canadians who are trying to get their children back,” said spokesman John Babcock.

Both fathers said their children have been let down by a system that is ineffective and hasn’t made children’s rights a priority.

“I’ve tried everything by the book,” said Hughes. “This [going public] is my last hope to ever see Livia.”

“I wouldn’t have imagined in my dreams that my country would let me down or let my son down,” said Mezo. “It’s hard to go to work and pay taxes … when this country is not backing you up.”

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IAN HITCHEN – Winnipeg Free Press, December 17, 2011

BRANDON — A western Manitoba woman was arrested in Los Angeles late Thursday night after she allegedly abducted her seven-year-old son and attempted to take him overseas.

Brandon Crown attorney Garry Rainnie said quick work by the RCMP allowed authorities to intercept the woman before she flew to Australia with her son.

“They did an awful lot of good work in a very short period of time,” said Rainnie, one of the Crown attorneys who gave advice to police as they worked on the case.

“I think they acted very quickly once the complaint was made.”

Blue Hills RCMP were notified Wednesday evening that a woman had possibly abducted her son. The boy’s father had called police, concerned that his estranged wife and son had left the area with many of their personal items and passports.

RCMP began an investigation that also involved several United States law-enforcement agencies, the federal Department of Justice, Manitoba Justice and the Canadian Border Services Agency.

On Thursday at 10 p.m., the 47-year-old woman was arrested at the Los Angeles International Airport by American officials and remains in custody. She will now face charges under the Criminal Code for parental child abduction, and arrangements are being made to have her extradited back to Canada, police said.

The woman is not being identified to protect the identity of the child.

Brandon lawyer Derek Cullen confirmed the father was on his way to Los Angeles on Friday to pick up his son.

It’s not clear how close the woman and child came to leaving the continent. However, Rainnie said the woman had purchased tickets to Australia and he understands she was set to depart early Friday morning. Had mother and son made it to Australia, the legal process of having the son returned to Canada would have been far more difficult, he noted.

Rainnie said the boy’s father and mother are still married but separated. The mother lives in one part of western Manitoba, while the father lives in another.

However, no custody order is in place and the father is entitled to equal custody of the child, Rainnie said.

Rainnie expects the boy will be able to live with his dad once he returns to Canada.

It’s not clear exactly how the woman and child entered the U.S.

Rainnie said it appears the mom and son drove across the border into North Dakota and then might have flown to Los Angeles.

Rainnie said he’d like to know how the mother entered the U.S. with her son.

Often, when only one parent arrives at the border with a child, proof of permission to enter the U.S. from the other parent is requested. It appears the mother didn’t have the father’s permission to take their child out of Canada.

None of the allegations against the mother has been proven in court.

Earlier this week in an unrelated case, another child was abducted, albeit briefly, in the city of Brandon.

A five-year-old boy was kidnapped off a street by a man in a vehicle, but was found 45 minutes later — physically unharmed — walking a few blocks away by officers with the Brandon Police Service.

No arrests have been made.

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The Japan Times, Tuesday, Dec. 13, 2011

Dear Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, Minister of Justice Hideo Hiraoka, Minister for Foreign Affairs Koichiro Gemba, Minister of Health, Labor, and Welfare Yoko Komiyama, and the government of Japan,

I pose the question: How many children in Japan cannot be with both of their parents on the Children’s Day national holiday?

In other words, how many children have lost a meaningful relationship with one of their parents?

Apparently, there may be 2.2 million children or more from 1992 to 2009, including 4,200 American dual-nationals. This has occurred as the result of divorce as well as child abduction, both international and domestic.

The estimate is based on statistics from the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW) and Supreme Court of Japan. Each instance is a human rights violation, the loss of a child’s access to both parents at all times.

Many in Japan and around the world do not know this human rights problem is happening because it is masked by terminology. The issue is often described as a custody dispute in Japan — a civil matter — when in fact the world outside would refer to it as a child abduction. The scenario is institutionalized and sanctioned by every family court divorce ruling.

First, one must understand the conditions. If a parent takes a child from the other parent, this custodial interference is not illegal in Japan, so abductions are not counted. Therefore, it is difficult to know how many there have been.

We also know that after divorce only one parent retains custody, and there is no enforceable visitation. Hence, denial of access after divorce is not counted either, and can be done with impunity.

How many children in Japan are affected by this? Let’s look at MHLW divorce statistics and Supreme Court of Japan visitation rulings.

From 1992 to 2009 there were 4,358,276 divorces in Japan. There were 230,672 divorces involving one spouse who is not Japanese, and 7,449 divorces where one spouse is American. There are about 250,000 divorces per year in Japan. There is one child per divorce on average consistently throughout the time frame in question.

Half of the children of divorce in Supreme Court of Japan visitation appeal cases from 1999 to 2009 have ended up through the court process with less than 12 visits per year with their noncustodial parent. Typical visitation rulings grant children between 12 and 52 hours per year with their noncustodial parent after divorce, but in half of the cases visitation is less than the low end of that range.

These rulings show how much visitation the highest court in Japan thinks children should have. Maintaining a meaningful parent-child relationship with that much visitation is simply not feasible.

A pie chart that appeared on NHK’s “Close Up Gendai” show on Sept. 8, 2010, shows a survey in which 58 percent of respondents stated that they do not have visitation with their children after divorce in Japan. With a divorce rate at about one-third the rate of marriages and one child per marriage and divorce, multiplying the divorce rate by the percentage visitation rate indicated in the NHK survey means that about one-fifth of children in Japan do not have a relationship with both parents. The family is the fundamental unit of a society, but it is not being protected, with dire consequences.

If we multiply the number of children by 50 percent — those who have less than once a month visitation according to Supreme Court data — then we can estimate those who do not have regular visitation with their parent. From 1992 to 2009, this has affected an estimated 2.2 million children in Japan, including 115,000 children of dual nationality, and 3,825 children with one American parent.

The U.S. State Department also reports that 374 American children have been abducted from the U.S. to Japan since 1994. This makes an estimated 4,200 American children (3,825 + 374) who have lost the relationship with their American parent.

What is the meaning of Children’s Day, where families are given a holiday to celebrate their children, while the joy for many is taken away by a judicial system that has deprived 2.2 million families of a reason to rejoice?

The breeze that suspends carp streamers (koinobori) across the country on that day is a hollow promise of parenthood and the howl of a desolate childhood for those who long to be cherished by their kin.

A CONCERNED, LOVING PARENT

Submissions to Hotline to Nagatacho should address issues that affect your life in Japan or be in response to government policies. Please imagine you are actually writing to a government official — be it a local school board head or the prime minister himself — to bring attention to an important matter.

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The abduction of children by one of their parents is one of the few offences to combine grave consequences for victims with lenient treatment for offenders.

In some cases, parental abductors emerge from hiding when their child is fully grown, give themselves up and walk away with minimal, if any, jail time.

Some in the family law community worry that lenient treatment of parental abductors makes a mockery of judicial custody orders as well as the suffering of a parent whose child has been stolen away for months or years. Nor, do the penalties reflect a loss the child may not even realize she has suffered, said Phil Epstein, a veteran family lawyer.

“Criminal penalties have been dramatically light,” Mr. Epstein said. “The family law bar would generally say that the sentences do not reflect the gravity of the offence and the rupture that deprives the child of a healthy relationship with one parent.”

About 50,000 children are abducted each year in North American, mostly by their mothers, Mr. Epstein said. “My guess is that about half are found and half are not,” he said. “This is a serious problem.”

The consequences for a parent whose child is abducted can be cataclysmic. They may not know for years whether their child is alive or dead. They often scour the country or the planet following up the slimmest leads or tips – as Joe Chisholm, did after his ex-wife, Patricia O’Byrne, allegedly disappeared with their daughter 18 years ago. The woman, who had moved to Victoria, B.C., is in jail, awaiting trial in Toronto.

Parental abductors are easily distinguishable from most other criminals. Unlike the average ne’er-do-well, they tend to be well-educated, articulate and able to afford a top lawyer who can weave strong sentencing submissions around their being a first-time offender with little likelihood of re-offending.

“The story is almost universally that I did this to protect the child,” Mr. Epstein said. “Once in a while, this may be true; the mother has legitimate concerns. But quite often, the problem in these cases is the mother has a pathology where she believes the father is a danger to the child. If you give her a lie detector test, she would pass it with flying colours.”

The maximum sentence is 10 years in prison, but conditional discharges are common. In a decision last month – R v Dara Lynn Neundorf – the Ontario Court of Appeal even gave an absolute discharge to a woman who had abducted her two sons and kept them in Singapore for several months.

Mr. Epstein said that it can be difficult to prosecute parents because they may have convinced young children that the deprived parent was mean or dangerous. “If the child is 12, 15 or 16, a good psychologist can tell whether the child was brainwashed or had legitimate concerns about the other parent,” he added.

Joseph Di Luca, a Toronto criminal lawyer, said an abductor can create a reasonable doubt about whether she was genuinely abused. Allegations of abuse are easy to make and difficult to disprove, he said. “It’s a real challenge to go back years later and sort this out,” Mr. Di Luca said. “Courts have to be cognizant of the dangers of relying on allegations of abuse in those circumstances.”

Another unusual aspect of parental abduction cases is that a parent deprived of a child may fear alienating the child even more by demanding harsh treatment for the other parent. Sometimes, the deprived parent even tries to win his way into the child’s heart by asking that the abductor not be punished at all.

An Ontario judge familiar with the offence said it is very difficult to discern motives and gauge the damage done to an abducted child. “A judge has to be prepared, where necessary, to impose a sentence despite what the child says,” said the judge, speaking on condition of anonymity. “But imposing a sentence when the abducted child is weeping in your presence is not an easy thing to do.”

The judge said that trial judges have their hands tied by precedent. If they depart from established sentencing ranges, they risk being overturned on appeal. If a judge hopes to make a harsh sentence stick, the judge said, it is best to link it to the contempt that parental abductors show for court-issued custody orders.

“Sentencing is especially tough when you see a child who has been brought up well,” he added. “There is almost a temptation to see it as a victimless crime. But that’s clearly not true. It’s not just an estranged parent who is a victim, but the child – whether or not they appreciate it.”

Denied bail late last week, Ms. O’Byrne’s defence counsel, Edward Greenspan, said he will appeal the decision based partly on how rare it is for a parental abductor not to be released pending his or her trial.

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Stephen Watkins had spent two and a half years dreaming of the reunion he’d have with his sons, who, along with Mr. Watkins’s estranged wife, went missing from their Toronto home in 2009.

But when Mr. Watkins was finally reunited with his boys in late November, the encounter was bittersweet: he said they were distant, angry and confused.

Alexander and Christopher Watkins, it is alleged, were driven by their maternal grandfather from Toronto to Detroit, flew with their mother to Germany and travelled from there to Poland in March 2009.

In 2010, the RCMP added the boys’ mother, Edyta Watkins (who was allegedly going by her maiden name, Ustaszewski, in Poland), to its most-wanted list and issued a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest.

“It’s one thing when your children go missing in a city or in a province, let alone a country. Trying to find your kids internationally is incredibly difficult,” Mr. Watkins said in an interview Sunday from Poland.

This summer, he learned his sons were found living with their mother in Warsaw. Canada does not have an extradition treaty with Poland so the Polish government has not sent Ms. Watkins back to Canada.

Despite having won full custody of his children in an Ontario court almost three years ago, Mr. Watkins is now in Poland waging a custody battle against his wife all over again.

In March 2009, during one of her twice-a-month court-ordered weekend visitations, Ms. Watkins allegedly fled the country with her sons. Mr. Watkins, who said he had feared for years his wife might abduct their children, had added his children to a few missing children database watch lists as a precaution.

The boys’ school called one Monday morning to let him know they were absent.

“As soon as I got that call I knew the abduction was happening,” he said.

Without full recognition of the Canadian charges against his wife, Mr. Watkins said, the custody battle has become a matter of he said/she said.

He said his wife has “brainwashed” his children into fearing him. The handful of visits Polish courts have granted him with his sons have been unpleasant.

Staff from Foreign Affairs and the Canadian embassy in Poland have aided him in his mission to get his children back, he said. Representatives from the embassy have sat in on every court date.

In his view, York Regional Police (Mr. Watkins lives in Newmarket), the RCMP and Foreign Affairs have done all they can, but it isn’t enough. He has sent multiple letters to the Prime Minister in hopes that he will make an official request to the Polish government to send the children back to Canada.

Staff from the Prime Minister’s Office could not be reached for comment.

A judge is expected to make a decision on Dec. 15, but Mr. Watkins isn’t optimistic about the outcome either way.

“Because they’re still in the care and custody of my ex-wife, if the courts order my sons back to Canada, they can disappear. So it seems as though I’m doing a losing battle here either way,” he said.

After his children went missing, Mr. Watkins he scaled back his work in marketing to build a social media campaign to track down his children. In the past few weeks in Poland, he said he’s spent about $20,000 in transportation, legal fees, translation of court documents and hiring a security guard to accompany him on court-ordered visits with his children. It reveals the most frustrating thing about child abduction cases, he said.

“The cost to find missing kids falls on the left-behind parent.”

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VICTORIA — Joe Chisholm has been told that the daughter he has not seen since May 13, 1993, wants to contact him.

Counsellors with the Canadian Centre for Child Protection told Chisholm that his daughter, [name withheld], who grew up in Victoria under the assumed identity of [name withheld], is doing okay, but is still in shock.

On Thursday, her mother, Patricia Joan O’Byrne, 54, was arrested at home by Victoria police, who were working with the Toronto Police Service to solve an 18-year-old parental abduction case. O’Byrne was known to neighbours and colleagues as Pamela Whelan, a public information officer for the provincial government at several ministries.

On Thursday, Toronto police and counsellors sat down with [name withheld], who was valedictorian of her 2009 graduating class from Victoria High School. She was told her father had been looking for her for 18 years. Her mother and father had married and lived in Toronto. They separated and had joint custody of her when the mother is accused of disappearing with her, violating a custody order. [name withheld was 20 months old. At the time, Chisholm had a four-year-old son, Jesse, from a previous relationship.

A September tip to Calgary-based Missing Children Society of Canada eventually led to O'Byrne's arrest. She is to appear Monday in Toronto's College Park courthouse for a bail hearing.

Reached at home Saturday, Chisholm said the child protection counsellors have been doing a great job keeping him in touch with his daughter.

"We've been sending little notes and messages to her along the way," Chisholm said. "They said she was in shock. I mean, we're still in shock, even though we were prepared for this. Jesse and I are walking on eggshells. She didn't know everything about her past and more is being revealed, and that's shocking."

Chisholm sent [name withheld a note telling her he was looking forward to meeting her. He also told her he cannot imagine what she's going through. Chisholm's parents, Don and Joan, have sent her family photographs and a note.

"She hasn't responded yet. I've heard she wants to. It's just a matter of time," Chisholm said. "Everything is indicating she's just getting ready for that day, whether it's the weekend or a couple of weeks from now."

Chisholm said his whole family is beside themselves.

"Every family gathering in the last 18 years has been like a funeral. It's hard to get all excited and huggy and happy when someone's missing."

He hopes his daughter has good friends to help her through her extraordinary situation. Counsellors are continuing to support her, he said.

"They made sure she was talked down and not left to her own devices. She hasn't done anything wrong. She hasn't committed a crime. She's the victim," said Chisholm. "My biggest concern is that she has all the time she needs."

Chisholm expressed empathy for his ex-wife and hopes the circumstances will not ruin his daughter's relationship with her mother. "I mean, she's a good kid — you've got to give her mom credit."

Chisholm does not plan to attend O'Byrne's court appearance Monday. He has sent her a message.

"If she wants to talk to me, I'll talk to her, face-to-face without cameras. We've got a lot to talk through. But if she's livid and self-justified, it won't help. It would just exacerbate the situation. I'm not going to go and jeer at her in the courtroom. I'll talk to her, when she wants to talk to me — just like my daughter."

Chisholm created a blog on a social media site dedicated to finding [name withheld]. There are videos containing photos of Jesse and baby [name withheld] playing together and photographs of O’Byrne.

Chisholm said the tip that led police to Victoria probably came from someone who was on O’Byrne’s side, but became ticked off at her.

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MILWAUKEE, Wisconsin — For the first time since his ex-wife spirited their daughter away to Japan nearly four years ago, a Wisconsin doctor was able to tuck his little girl into bed after a bitter court battle that brought her home just in time for Christmas.

“Karina is at home and it’s a miracle,” Moises Garcia told reporters Saturday.

Garcia fought passionately — and spent about $350,000 — to get his daughter back after her mother, Emiko Inoue, took the five-year-old girl to Japan in February 2008.

The liver transplant doctor learned to speak Japanese so he could communicate with a daughter whose English was slipping away.

He hired lawyers in Japan and flew across the Pacific nine times to press his case and try to see his daughter. He enlisted the help of the US State Department and his native Nicaragua. He became active in an advocacy group — Global Future — run by US parents whose children were taken to Japan.

Garcia won a major victory in 2009 when the Japanese courts — which did not recognize the US court that granted Garcia full custody — determined he should have visitation rights. And he kept fighting when his ex-wife appealed and the case dragged on for years.

In all that time, he only saw his daughter three times. The longest visit was for just under two hours at a hotel restaurant. Another visit lasted ten short minutes at a school open house.

Karina is the first US child abducted by a Japanese parent who was returned to the United States with the aid of the court system.

Her case remains an anomaly, however, because Karina likely never would have been returned if her mother hadn’t flown to Hawaii in April and been arrested on child abduction charges.

Inoue spent months in a Wisconsin jail until she reached a plea deal with prosecutors: her parents would send Karina home to Garcia and Inoue would be given probation instead of a lengthy prison sentence.

“This kind of thing should not happen in this civilized world,” Garcia said.

Japan is the only member of the Group of Eight industrialized powers that is not party to a 1980 convention requiring countries to return wrongfully held children to their countries of usual residence.

Mindful of international criticism, Japan has agreed in principle to sign the Hague treaty.

But the move would only apply to future cases and not to the more than 120 ongoing cases in which US parents are seeking children in Japan.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton raised the issue again at a meeting Monday with Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, pressing Japan to “take decisive steps” to accede to the treaty and “address outstanding cases.”

Congressman Christopher Smith, who has been active for years on child abduction cases, said the Garcia case is “an additional wake-up call for the Japanese government that they need to move expeditiously to resolve these cases.”

“Other parents are still spending another Christmas living in agony as their children remain unlawfully detained by abducting parents,” Smith, a Republican from New Jersey, told AFP.

Smith, the author of landmark legislation a decade ago against human trafficking, said he planned to move ahead next year on a bill that he hoped would give the US government greater tools to resolve abduction cases.

Under the legislation, the United States would be required to assess every country’s efforts on child abductions — regardless of whether it is party to the Hague convention — and potentially impose sanctions.

“What this does is make it a country-to-country fight rather than David vs. Goliath,” Smith said.

Until laws change in Japan — and family courts gain the power to enforce custody rights — it will be nearly impossible for other parents to be reunited with their children, Garcia said.

“When my ex-wife was arrested we finally got the enforcement that was missing from the Japanese courts,” he said at a press conference in a Milwaukee hotel.

“If my ex-wife had never been arrested, Karina’s alienation would have been completed.”

The stress of the past few months have taken a toll on Karina, who has lost weight and is anxious about the move to the United States, Garcia said.

They are slowly getting to know each other again. But despite four years apart, some things haven’t changed. She still lines up all her dolls on her bed and she remembered their bed-time ritual.

“She left the blanket open for me to close it. That was the moment I knew she was at home.”

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MASAMI ITO, The Japan Times, Thursday, December 29, 2011

In July 2003, Paul Toland arrived to an empty home at the U.S. Navy’s family housing facility in Yokosuka, Kanagawa Prefecture. Gone were his Japanese wife and baby daughter. What was left was a note: “Contact my lawyers.”

Since then, Toland, a navy commander, has been fighting to get his daughter back — and he’s not alone. Hundreds of other fathers from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France and other countries are also fighting the same battle.

“Hundreds of children have been abducted and none have ever been returned (from Japan),” Toland, now based in Maryland, said in a phone interview earlier this year. “It’s frustrating — you know that you are in a losing battle.”

For years, Japan was the object of international criticism for not joining the 1980 Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction that prevents cross-border parental kidnapping.

But in May, the government announced its decision to begin preparations for signing the treaty, which would make it the last country among the Group of Eight industrial powers to join the international convention.

Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda in October said he would submit the legislation to the Diet when it opens in early 2012.

But for the international community, signing the treaty is only a step in the right direction. A larger problem for many is that the Hague Convention is not effective retroactively — meaning that even if Japan joins the pact, it won’t help parents like Toland.

“Signing the Hague is just a very small step — there is so much else that needs to be done,” Toland said. “The true test will be how many children do they actually return and how well will they work with us fathers in the existing cases.”

U.S. President Barack Obama has reportedly urged Noda to take measures to ensure current cases get dealt with. But Noda has been evasive on that point.

“As indicated, the treaty is not effective retroactively . . . and we are in the middle of making preparations to sign the Hague Treaty, as well as discussing what kind of appropriate measures can be taken for past cases,” Noda said during an interview in October with The Japan Times and several other media outlets.

The recent case in Wisconsin, where Moises Garcia was reunited with his daughter, who had been abducted by his Japanese ex-wife, marked the first time an American child was returned to the United States. But observers believe this was an exceptional case since the child was returned after the mother was arrested in Hawaii on child abduction charges.

Frustrated with Japan’s foot-dragging, Toland and about 100 other left-behind parents in 2010 formed Bring Abducted Children Home (BAC Home), a group specifically focused on children taken to Japan by former spouses. This group has lobbied the U.S. government to put pressure on Japan to deal with the problem. Members have been holding quarterly meetings with top government officials and politicians to get updates and discuss the issue.

U.S. Rep. Chris Smith stressed in an email interview with The Japan Times that the U.S. would continue to make sure that all current cases are settled.

Signing the treaty “is not enough. We must have resolution of the current cases,” Smith said. “Congress will not let up until current cases are resolved. We cannot and will not forget our children.”

Smith, a Republican, has been at the forefront of cases involving international child abductions. In 2009, he played a key role in successfully bringing back a boy who had been abducted to Brazil by his mother from his American father.

To ensure the compliance of the Hague Convention by member states, Smith in May sponsored the International Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act of 2011, which is being deliberated in the House of Representatives. The bill includes 18 types of action that can be taken by the U.S. president against uncooperative countries, ranging from public condemnation and the cancellation of official visits to economic sanctions.

“Allowing abduction without consequence only encourages abduction — tearing apart families and wounding the hearts and minds of children. Abductors should not be rewarded,” Smith said.

The lawmaker also suggested that Japan and the U.S. sign a “memorandum of understanding” to address the current cases that would not be covered if Japan ratified the treaty.

According to a Foreign Ministry official in Tokyo, this sort of bilateral agreement has been made between some member states and Islamic countries that are not party to the Hague Convention. However, the official was not aware of any discussions in Japan to establish such an agreement with the U.S.

“If asked what we can do about current cases, all I can say is that (the left-behind parent) should use the current domestic law and file a lawsuit to the family court to see or have that child again,” the official explained.

In the past seven months, Japan has been focused on drafting the bill necessary to be submitted together with the ratification to the Diet. The legislation would map out the details of the new “central authority” in the Foreign Ministry, which would oversee treaty-related cases as well as list the circumstances in which Japan can reject the return of the child.

Even if the bill is submitted to the Diet next year as planned, its fate remains murky. Public opinion over this issue is divided and some members of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan are opposed to it, as well. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has proposed that a three year moratorium be imposed before Japan’s ratification takes effect for preparations and to seek better public understanding.

The Japanese government, however, wants the treaty to take effect “within a practical time frame as soon as possible,” the Foreign Ministry official said. “The longer we wait, the more people will go through difficult times.”

But time is not on the side of left-behind parents.

Toland’s daughter, taken when she was just 9 months old, is now 9 years old. Four years after the abduction, Toland’s wife committed suicide, but instead of giving him — the sole living parent — legal guardianship, the mother of his late wife was granted custody.

Since his wife took their daughter in 2003, he has only seen his child three times: twice in a videotaped courthouse playroom with the grandmother and a courthouse employee while his wife and her lawyers watched through a one-way mirror and once when he was able to catch her on the street just long enough to give her a Christmas present.

And after the devastating March 11 earthquake and tsunami, Toland flew to Japan to see his only daughter and make sure she was OK. Instead, his former mother-in-law completely shut him out, refusing to let him even see his daughter, Toland said.

While his daughter remains thousands of kilometers away in Japan, Toland said he hopes that the U.S. government and Congress will continue to put pressure on Japan to make sure that it keeps its promise.

“If you have your own child stripped away from you, your human rights are violated,” Toland said. “It’s not a personal issue to us, it’s a human rights issue. Every parent has the right to their child and every child has the right to know and love both parents.”

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MASAYUKI TANAMURA ?Professor, Faculty of Law, Waseda University

The Yomuri Online (Waseda Online) December 9, 2011.

A Japanese woman arrested

A Japanese woman who had taken her daughter back to Japan during a divorce suit was arrested by United States law enforcement officials when she visited Hawaii in April 2011. She is reportedly now undergoing a criminal trial in Wisconsin and expected to receive a sentence in late November. (For this case, an official plea bargain was concluded on November 23rd, 2011, at a court in Wisconsin in the United States, stating that the mother hands the daughter over to the father in the United States within 30 days.) This 43-year-old Japanese woman married a man in Wisconsin in 2002. The husband was born in Nicaragua and has U.S. citizenship. They have a daughter, who is now 9 years old. The relationship between the husband and the wife deteriorated, however, and the husband filed with the state court for dissolution of their marriage in 2008. Immediately after that, the Japanese woman went back to Japan with their daughter allegedly because of the husband’s domestic violence. In June 2009, the state court delivered a sentence, which has already become final, approving the dissolution and awarding sole custody of the daughter to the father, and ordering that the daughter be handed over to the him immediately or in Japan. In response to this, the woman filed another lawsuit in Hyogo Prefecture in Japan claiming divorce, designation of custody, and payment of expenses for raising the child, as well as a lawsuit calling for a switch of the parental custody. The court in Japan awarded parental custody to her, against which the husband filed a protest. The daughter is now living with her relatives in Hyogo, and reportedly has not been notified of the series of lawsuits and her mother’s apprehension. In any case, whatever judgment the courts may deliver, the situation of a girl caught in the middle of such conflict between her own parents is heart rending.

Increasing cases regarding international child custody and visitation

In the first place, why did such an unfortunate case occur? Will this sort of problem not arise if Japan joins the Hague Convention on international child abduction? What is the nature of the Hague Convention, and what are the pros and cons for members of the convention? First, the background for the case mentioned above includes an increase in international marriages due to globalization. The number of international marriages in 2009 amounted to 34,393, and there are 30,000 to 40,000 international marriages a year. On the other hand, international marriage breakups and divorces are also increasing. The number expanded to 19,404 in 2009, leading to continuous increase in cases related to international child custody and visitation from 640 in 2007 to 774 in 2008 and 846 in 2009. A breakup of an international marriage tends to easily slip into fierce disputes because of cultural friction or difficulty in cross-cultural communication. Inconsistency of legal systems among nations also makes problems harder to solve. For example, European nations and the United States have adopted the principle of joint parental rights, joint custody, and joint nurturing between parents after divorce, and they are in the process of establishing legal and social support systems to protect the best interests and rights of the children, including support for consensus building on issues relating to child custody and visitation, and improvement of visitation assistance schemes.

In this situation, in Europe and the United States, a parent who took a child away without consent from the other parent or approval from a court would be regarded as committing a crime and subjected to severe punishment. To the contrary, Japan has adopted the principle of sole parental authority after divorce, and seemingly has not ensured adequate and effective systems for problem solving and social support regarding parent-child visitation and handover of children. Taking children away without permission also does not constitute a crime and is not regarded as illegal, except for extraordinary cases. Moreover, in terms of the parent-child relationship after divorce, Japan has deeply rooted unique sentiments of parents and children, ideas held by persons involved, and customs, such as nurturing by the mother and a strong tie between a mother and children, which are not found in Europe. This fact indicates vast differences between Europe and Japan.

The Hague Convention with 86 member countries

The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction was adopted at the Hague Conference on Private International Law in October 1980, and entered into force in 1983. This convention currently has 86 member countries around the world, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France, Italy, Australia, Germany, and Russia. The objective of this convention is to prevent international child abduction and enable cooperation among nations to take abducted children back to their country of residence quickly. The Hague Convention provides that member states shall preserve the stability of children’s life and the continuity of a nurturing environment, and the Central Authority shall be responsible for cooperation for the immediate return of the children. The convention also guarantees the right of visitation between parents and children, and attempts to prevent causing further child abduction, taking into consideration the feelings of a parent who is not living with the children. The convention adopts the Central Authority system as an administrative mechanism for the return of children. In this system, each party state designates its Central Authority for fulfilling obligations under the convention, and the Central Authority shall take every appropriate measure to ensure the prompt return of children, including promoted cooperation among member states’ judicial administration authorities, location and identification of children, prevention of danger or damage through tentative measures, facilitated voluntary return or dispute resolution, exchange of information on the social background of children, and ensured safety in child return.

The Hague Convention shall not be applicable unless there is any infringement on the right of custody or visitation, a child in question is already 16 years of age or older, or there is illegal abduction or detention beyond borders. Furthermore, the convention is never applied retrospectively to illegal abduction that occurred before joining the convention. The stance of the Hague Convention is that a final decision shall not be made about the future of children but an order shall only be issued for prompt return to the country where the habitual residence was located originally. Nevertheless, a court may exceptionally reject issuing an order to return children, in the cases that over one year has passed since abduction and a child in question has been accustomed to a new environment; parents have not executed the custody right upon abduction; there is an agreement or ex-post facto approval; return of a child is likely to cause damage to the child’s physical or mental state or to place the child in an intolerable situation; a child in question is opposing the return; or the return is against the basic principles regarding human rights or the guarantee of fundamental freedoms.

The pros and cons of the convention

What benefit would the Hague Convention offer Japan upon joining? As a party to the Hague Convention, Japan would be able to drive cooperation and collaboration with the Central Authorities in other member states, and to solve problems related to international child abduction or visitation more quickly and smoothly. What is more, Japan would also be able to request the speedy return of children who were abducted illegally beyond Japanese borders. Within the country, membership would help improve legal or social support systems for parental rights or custody. On the other hand, however, the convention requires parties to care of and assist children and the abductor, or taking parent (TP), when they had been isolated overseas and returned to their home country. For a taking parent who has finally regained a peaceful life after managing to escape from the domestic violence or relentless interference of their spouse in caring for the child, the taking parent could lose his or her peaceful life if the child were returned to the former country of residence. Whereas the benefits of joining the convention include the promotion of international cooperation, trust earned worldwide, and compliance with the world standard, the expected downsides may affect the protection of Japanese nationals, the unique conception of family, the respect for the view on the relationship between parents and children, and inadequate measures against domestic or other sorts of violence, etc. Currently, as Japan decided to assign the role of the Central Authority to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the government is hastening to develop domestic law for implementing the responsibilities and authorities of the Central Authority and cooperation with other relevant agencies, as well as return procedures under the Hague Convention including the concentration of jurisdictions, trial processes, reasons for rejection of return, and arbitration. The Hague Convention is not only an international and diplomatic issue, however, but rather it is also closely related to domestic issues, especially the nature of the relationship between parents and children after divorce and social and legal support in Japan. To prevent a case like that mentioned above in the future, it is necessary to drive division of responsibilities and cooperation among relevant organizations, focusing on the protection of children’s interests.

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