Press Release

Bringing home American children who are abducted to foreign countries was the topic of a congressional hearing chaired Thursday by Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ) with U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary Carl C. Risch, international child abduction expert Patricia Apy, and devastated ‘left behind’ mother Ruchika Abbi testifying before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission.

  “The Goldman Act specifically lists increasingly escalating actions, from a demarche – or a protest through diplomatic channels – to a public condemnation to a delay or cancellation of one or more bilateral visits and even the withdrawal, limitation, or suspension of foreign assistance to the central government of a country. Extradition is another tool,” said Smith, who authored the Sean and David Goldman Child Abduction Prevention and Return Act (P.L. 113-150), passed five years ago today by Congress and nearly five years after he helped David Goldman of New Jersey reunite with his son Sean in 2009 following a five-year parental abduction to Brazil. “Yet these tools, beyond demarches, seem to be seldom if ever used by the State Department.”

  Over the last decade more than 11,400 American children were abducted internationally by a parent. The State Department estimates only one-third of the children abducted since 2015 have been returned to the United States within two years.

  “I really do want to call upon the members of our State Department to see themselves as advocates for heartbroken American parents and their children, and to remind them, a tough approach works,” said Smith, who with Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) co-chairs the commission. Smith is also Ranking Member of the Global Human Rights Subcommittee. Click here to read Co-Chairman Smith’s opening remarks.

  In 1988, the United States ratified the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction to try to address abduction for the quick return of abducted children and for rights of access for left-behind parents. The treaty allows the child to be returned within six weeks to his or her country of habitual residence for the courts there to decide on custody. “The Convention has helped some left behind parents be reunited with their children. But there are many who are still left behind,” Smith said. “Some Hague Convention parties are simply not enforcing legitimate return orders.

  Smith cited nations with poor track records such as Japan, as well as others like Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru which have ratified the Convention but which fail to live up to their commitments. He also named countries which have not signed the Convention that are listed in the State Department’s recently released 2019 Report on International Child Abduction—required under Smith’s Goldman Act—as demonstrating a pattern of non-compliance and habitually fail to enforce return orders, including Egypt, India, Jordan, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates.

   “In short, abducted American children are not coming home from these countries and other countries where the Convention operates weakly, or with which the U.S. has no bilateral agreement of any kind,” Smith said

  The lead witness, Carl C. Risch, Assistant Secretary at the Bureau of Consular Affairs, discussed some prevention methods the State Department uses in the Office of Children’s Issues, where they have dedicated a team focused on preventing parental child abduction in close collaboration with U.S. law enforcement, especially U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Risch said in 2018, the Prevention Branch fielded over 5,200 prevention-related inquiries, nearly a 50 percent increase over 2017. Since its inception, they have enrolled over 45,000 children in the Department’s Children’s Passport Issuance Alert Program.

  Regarding asserting pressure to return American children, Risch said “if a country is cited in the Annual Report on International Child Abduction, such citation may result in its removal from the H-2 [visa] eligible country list, and the Department would not recommend its inclusion in the list.” He also stated that “while continuing to engage with foreign governments on international parental child abduction, where appropriate we will insist that this issue be placed on the agenda and make it part of bilateral discussions where it might not otherwise have been.” Citing an example, he said that “we might insist that child abduction matters be included before we agree to hold a bilateral security discussion meeting. I believe this will send a strong message that addressing child abductions is critically important to our government. Our engagement will be persistent and forceful.” Risch’s statement will be posted here after the hearing.

  Ruchika Abbi, mother of a child abducted to India five years ago, said that after “years of fighting since then, of fearing, begging, and giving in, 3 more years of alienation, heartbreak and disappointment, I concede that hope deferred is now hope lost for me. While I will never give up on my daughter, Roshni, I have lost all hope that during these critical formative years of her life, I can ever be a mother to her, to shape her world view, to influence her thinking or support her development.”

  She said the State Department has not done enough: “Left-behind parents have tried every avenue possible as recommended by the U.S. State Department, from pursuing civil, criminal, mediation and other remedies, to no avail. The U.S. State Department on the other hand hasn't tried all the avenues and has in fact dragged its feet on using the full power of the Goldman Act,” she said. Click here to read Abbi’s statement after the hearing.

  Patricia Apy, International Family Law Attorney, Paras, Apy and Reiss also testified, noting “This Committee was the first one ever to address the international abduction of a child to countries which were not Treaty signatories. Testimony identified many countries with whom the United States enjoyed positive partnership in economic or strategic efforts including Japan, India, Pakistan, to name but a few, for which the obstacles to recovery of a child were considered total.”

  “What this Committee’s work illuminated was that there were hundreds of parents and children, similarly situated to Sean and David Goldman, and without legislative action, there would be thousands more,” Apy said. She also said, “The heart of the Goldman Act, is the comprehensive annual report to Congress which provide is intended to provide objective comprehensive information regarding the number of abduction cases, an assessment of the obstacles which may be presented to the return of a child abducted, and the efforts which have been taken and recommended to be taken in diplomatically and practically addressing those obstacles.” Click here to read Apy’s testimony.

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