The Issue
IROCS hopes to raise awareness of the issues surrounding parental child abduction so that fewer children are taken from the lives they know and love; so that more parents are aware, more governments and more police and border services are aware, and so that more people who think that abducting their children overseas might be an answer to their problems, might be aware that parental child abduction is a form of child abuse.
Approximately 300 children a year are abducted by a parent. These are the reported cases. The real number is thought to be much higher.
The literature regarding the psychological effects of parental abduction on children is horrific to any left-behind parent helpless to retrieve his/her child.
In 1999, Nancy Faulker, PhD, presented a paper entitled ‘Parental Abduction is Child Abuse’ to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. She stated that, depending on the case, the effects of parental abduction can range from loss of community and trust, to more profound disorders including stress and anxiety disorders, and fear of abandonment which can plague a child long into adulthood.
Some of the deleterious effects of parental child abduction on the child victim:
- depression;
- loss of community;
- loss of stability, security and trust;
- excessive fearfulness, even of ordinary occurrences;
- loneliness;
- anger;
- helplessness;
- disruption in identify formation; and
- fear of abandonment” (Huntington, 1982 quoted in Faulkner, 1999).
Faulkner, Nancy ‘Parental Abduction is Child Abuse’ Paper presented to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. 1999. http://www.prevent-abuse-now.com/unreport.htm (Retrieved: August 22, 2009)
“As adults, many victims of bitter custody battles who had been permanently removed from a target parent, whisked away to a new town and given a new identity, still long to be reunited with the lost parent. The loss cannot be undone. Childhood cannot be recaptured. Gone forever is that sense of history, intimacy, lost input of values and morals, self-awareness through knowing one’s beginnings, love, contact with extended family, and much more. Virtually no child possesses the ability to protect him- or herself against such an undignified and total loss”
(Clawar & Rivlin, p. 105). Quoted in Faulkner, 1999.