Jaycee Dugard’s abduction is horrible but really rare

I found this very sensible editorial pointing out just how uncommon cases like Jaycee’s are, and saying we need to focus more attention on the victims of parental abduction, who tend to suffer a great deal of psychological trauma even if they’re not physically harmed. (Case in point: poor Richard Chekevdia was held in a tiny room for two years and never let outside after his mom abducted him.) Of course instances like the Dugard case are much more shocking and titillating to the public. But if the public knew the truth about parental abduction and the harm it causes, they would probably be shocked.

Jaycee’s hometown threw a parade to celebrate her rescue. 2,000 people showed up. She wasn’t around to see it, though. She’s hiding out with her mom and kids, presumably getting reconnected. I actually wouldn’t be surprised if she went on to lead a more or less normal life. Most of the survivors of concentration camps did okay afterwards, marrying again, getting jobs, having more kids, etc.

A roundup of resolves

It sometimes happens that I get several resolved cases dumped on me all at once. Today is one of those days. We’ve got:

Alice Louise Donovan, 44, who was kidnapped from Conway, South Carolina on November 14, 2002. Her abductors were too thoroughly frightening young punks, Brenden Basham and Chadwick Fulks, who’d broken out of jail and gone on a multi-state crime spree of robbery, car theft, burglary, kidnapping and murder. The suspects were arrested two days later. They were later convicted of carjacking resulting in death in Alice’s case. Bone fragments found in Horry County, South Carolina in January have just been identified as Alice’s. Basham and Fulks are both on death row now. Another of their victims, a West Virginia college student named Samantha Burns, is still among the missing.

Michael Ray Larsen, 49, a transient who disappeared from Fort Bragg, California in August 2003. His skeletal remains were found near a homeless encampment in Fort Bragg last week, and were identified this week. There was no indication of foul play. It looks like he might have fallen off a cliff.

Tiairra Jo Garcia, 19, disappeared from Pasco, Washington on June 22, 2008. Her dirtbag boyfriend and three of his associates were charged in connection with her disappearance. The police believe Tiairra’s boyfriend accidentally shot her and then let her die without trying to get help for her. Tiairra’s remains turned up in Mount Rainier National Park. The boyfriend was sentenced to eight years in prison and one of his friends got one year for their roles in her death. It hardly seems to be enough.

Brody Shaun Shelton, 3, and his sister Logan Willow Shelton, 1, were kidnapped by their mother from Las Vegas, Nevada on March 19, 2004. The children have been found safe, according to the NCMEC; I have no other details.

Peres/Cozzi identity mystery solved

The saga is over: DNA testing established that Carol Ann Cozzi’s little girl is her biological daughter and not Bejohna Peres. Brianna has been returned to her mom. Thanks to Annie for pointing out the up-to-date article.

I guess it’s a good thing that the police and everybody did their jobs in this instance and followed up on a good lead towards Bejohna’s whereabouts. But it is really a shame what the Cozzis went through. The true crime goddess Ann Rule wrote once that crimes have a kind of butterfly affect that leads to all sorts of unintended unforeseen consequences, not just for the criminal and victim either. This is a perfect example: because a woman in Texas ran off with her daughter in violation of a court order, a woman in Canada was subjected to an intrusive police investigation and had her child taken from her.

Meanwhile, little Bejohna remains among the missing.

Bejohna Peres/Brianna Cozzi identity still up in the air

Earlier I wrote that the police think a little girl in Ontario, who is supposedly called Brianna Cozzi, is actually Bejohna Peres, who’s been missing from Texas since 2007. She was taken by her non-custodial mother. Well, the jury is still out on the child’s identity. They’ve taken a DNA sample and are waiting for results while continuing to investigate the case. Brianna was taken from her supposed mother, Carol Ann Cozzi, about a week ago, and Carol got a one-hour visit with her since then but nothing more.

Brianna apparently looks remarkably like Bejohna. I really hope she really is Bejohna and therefore wasn’t taken from her mother’s care without reason, but I kind of doubt it. “Yesterday, Carol Ann brought photographs of the child — who she says is a year older than Bejohna but bears a striking resemblance — and everything from birth certificates to social security cards to a driver’s licence to authorities in Hamilton.” Either this woman is very brazen, or she has access to an excellent forger, or she really is who she says she is.

I really hope those DNA tests come back soon.

Missing child Bejohna Peres possibly found in Canada

Bejohna Peres disappeared from Houston, Texas in 2007. She was three years old at the time and is believed to have been abducted by her non-custodial mother. Well, Bejohna may have been found in Ontario, Canada. According to this article (which misspells the child’s name as “Brejohna”), police have taken a little girl into protective custody and are trying to determine whether she is Bejohna. The little girl was in the care of Carol Ann Cozzi, who says she’s the child’s mother and her name is Briana. She gave the police a birth certificate to support her claims. There doesn’t seem to be any doubt about Cozzi’s identity. If the girl is Bejohna, how did she end up with Cozzi and where is her mother? This would not be the first time a parent abducted their child only to foist it on someone else.

The article contains additional info about Bejohna’s disappearance. She and her three siblings were in the care of their grandmother when their mother took all four of them. The three other children were found safe in Las Vegas, Nevada in November 2007, but Bejohna and her mother have yet to be located.

It’s not really clear why the police think Briana is Bejohna. I really hope she is. Otherwise, a mother and child have been separated needlessly and probably traumatized by the experience.

Sanchez children’s identity confirmed

Authorities have confirmed the identities of the three children’s bodies found in Richard Robert Sanchez’s car, which I mentioned in this post. Of course it’s his three sons. Richard Robert’s identification is still pending. We will probably never know if this was an accident or a murder/suicide, but due to the circumstances I’m guessing the latter.

Some of the comments on the aforementioned article are just dreadful. Some people are accusing Sanchez’s wife of murdering him and the boys and also framing him for the rape against her sister. Other people saying Richard Robert was a “great guy” who was driven to do all the things he did because of his wife’s infidelity. (One commenter actually said, I quote, “This had to happen.” I’m really hoping this person was being sarcastic.) Because of course, when a woman is unfaithful, a guy has to go out and rape her sister, and then kill himself and his kids, he can’t help himself.

I don’t know the personal situation of the Sanchez family. Perhaps the mother really did go out and sleep with every guy in town. But no matter what she did, she did not deserve this, and there was absolutely no justification for the father to go out and do what he did.

Terrible news

It hasn’t been confirmed yet, but it looks like the children Daniel Sanchez, Christopher Sanchez and Richard Anthony Sanchez, as well as their father, have been found deceased. This Associated Press article, from the Unsolved in the News blog, is the only one I can find.

The brothers were abducted by their father, Richard Robert Sanchez, in 2001. This was considered a much more worrisome case than the typical family abduction because Richard Robert had been charged with raping his sons’ maternal aunt in front of her child. Well, on Thursday, police looking for another vehicle found Richard Robert’s SUV in a lake with four bodies inside. No prizes for guessing who they are. It looks like they died shortly after they were abducted. I think I’ll wait on the resolved notice till after confirmation, though.

I wonder if this was a simple motor vehicle accident, or a murder-suicide. We may never know. Those poor boys. Their poor mother. Another tragic example of how, contrary to popular belief, kids are NOT necessarily safe when their non-custodial parent snatches them.

So heinous on so many levels

The murders of Tyler Payne and his sister Ariana are the most horrible I’ve read about in a long time. Sickening doesn’t even describe it — there are no words to describe it. They disappeared in 2006 and Ariana’s body was found in February 2007 and the murderers have both been convicted, but I didn’t hear about any of this until a few days ago when someone sent me a link to a MySpace page about Tyler, whose body has never been found.

Both children were beaten severely by their father and perhaps his girlfriend, then locked in a closet and left to starve to death. Ariana’s body had twelve broken ribs, a broken shoulder blade and a compressed vertebra, and who knows what injuries Tyler suffered. Their father said Ariana died first and he left her body in the closet with Tyler for a week before he also expired. I cannot imagine the horror those children went through, particularly Tyler, huddled with his sister’s corpse in the dark. He was four or five when he died. Ariana was about three. Both kids look absolutely adorable in their pictures. Tyler looks a lot like my nephew Zachary did at that age.

To make matters even worse, this was totally preventable. I mean, child abuse deaths usually are, but these ones especially so. The kids’ mom had custody, and their dad stole them from her. She called the police to get them back, and the police called CPS who, in violation of the custody order, instructed the police to leave the kids where they were. *headdesk* One article quoted a police officer as saying something like, “If the mom had insisted, we probably would have gotten them or at least threatened to arrest the dad.” Nice try blaming the victim there. People shouldn’t have to INSIST that the police do their damn jobs. If the cops had recovered the children, or if CPS hadn’t butted in where they didn’t belong, both of them would be alive today. Tyler and Ariana’s mother settled a lawsuit with CPS, but I’m sure she would rather have her kids alive again.

Reina and Christopher had a two-year-old son together who was not abused. He was healthy and well-fed when his parents were arrested. Why the little boy was deemed worthy of receiving food and other necessities of life but his older half-siblings were not has never been explained.

The defendants, Christopher Payne and his girlfriend Reina Gonzales, don’t sound especially bright. Reina apparently consistently tests as mentally retarded. Ariana’s body was discovered in a storage locker when Christopher was dumb enough stop making the rental payments. After he was arrested, the only story Christopher could come up with is that his kids deliberately starved themselves to death because they missed their mom and he “did everything” to try to make them eat (everything except take them to a doctor or a hospital, I guess) but they died in spite of his all his heroic efforts. When a police officer asked Christopher if he thought he had killed his children, he said no, but that he “might have neglected them” by failing to seek medical attention for their malnutrition. Uh-huh. Keep digging, Chris. At his trial (Reina pleaded guilty and testified against him), the defense used the slightly more plausible theory that Reina had beaten and starved the kids without Christopher’s knowledge. They also said Christopher’s life should be spared because he’s a heroin addict and he had a bad childhood. It didn’t work, of course. He’s on death row now. Good riddance. The needle’s too good for types like him.

It’s a terrible world out there. I think I’m going to go look at Cute Overload now and try to forget this for awhile.

Hague Convention kids

On several NCMEC posters you’ll see this: “The child’s [parent] has applied for his/her return to the United States under the international civil treaty: The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction. Do not pick up based on this information.” These posters are unique in another way: instead of a law enforcement contact number, you’re directed to call the NCMEC itself with information.

Very few people, including very few family court judges, know what the Hague Treaty is. It was drafted in the early 1980s in response to the abduction of children to other countries by their own relatives. A typical case is when two people from different nations marry, live in one of their countries, have kids, then split up, and one parent returns to his or her home country and takes the kids, in violation of a custody agreement from the country where the couple had lived before the break. Until the Hague Treaty was drafted, there was pretty much nothing the left-behind parent could do. Now that we have the Hague Treaty, there’s almost nothing the left-behind parent can do.

The left-behind parent is, I believe, supposed to get a lawyer and file papers, proving they have custody of the kid in Country 1, and that Country 1 is the kid’s “place of habitual residence,” and they ask Country 2 to honor the Hague Treaty and return the child to Country 1. A gentlemen’s agreement, basically. The problem is, Country 2 can choose not to honor the request, and there’s nothing anyone can do if it says no, except appeal it in the courts in an expensive and lengthy process. From my own observation, the only nations that consistently honor the treaty and return abducted children to their home countries are the United States and Great Britain. Fathers seeking their children, I’ve heard, are at a particular disadvantage. I’ve read that there hasn’t been a single case where a searching father was able to recover his child from Mexico under the Hague Treaty. Even if the child does end up being returned, it can take years.

Furthermore, the Hague Treaty of course only applies for nations that have signed it. The Mexico has signed and, I think, Australia and most of Europe. I believe Japan and South Korea haven’t signed, and I don’t think China has either, nor most African and Middle Eastern nations. If your child is abducted to a country that didn’t sign the Hague Treaty, then you’re really SOL. (Particularly if you’re a woman and your ex is a Muslim who’s taken the kid to a country that practices Sharia law. But that’s another story.)

I suppose the Hague Treaty, impotent as it is, might have been the best people could do. The situation is fraught with problems. We’re dealing with two different countries here, two different legal systems, and of course, except under very special circumstances, one country’s legal rulings cannot be enforced outside its borders. To make matters even more complicated, many nations consider child custody disputes to be a private matter between families, not something for the law to get involved with.

When a parent files a Hague Treaty application for the return of their kid, the case comes before a court in the country where the child’s being held. Of course judges there would tend to favor their own citizens, and many of them don’t know about the Hague Treaty anyway. Furthermore, because the legal process takes so long, there’s every chance that the child might have been living in Country 2 for years before the case comes up before a judge. The Avendano children for instance, whom I plan to add to Charley tomorrow, have apparently been living in Mexico for longer than they ever lived in the United States, their so-called “place of habitual residence.” Of course a judge will be scratching his head over this, and in cases like that there would be genuine concern as to whether it’s in the best interest of the child to separate it from one parent and country it’s been living in for a long time, and return it to another parent and a nation it hasn’t seen in many years.

In short, it’s a mess.

Of course, the Hague does have some successes. Just not nearly as many as there ought to be. Failing this option, a parent has a few other things they can do, such as try to negotiate with the other parent, or hire commandos to “counter-kidnap” the child.

Most of the Hague Treaty children listed on the NCMEC aren’t “missing” in the sense most people think. Their location is often known, and sometimes the searching parent is allowed to have short visits with them. But they’re still missing in the sense that they’re not where they’re supposed to be. International child abduction hurts everybody. If only there were a better solution.

Miscellaneous ramblings

I have been idle these past few days. I hadn’t blogged in eleven days, and I hadn’t updated in three, until today. No particular reason, I’ve just had other things to do. (Like answering emails from girls who wish to die and want me to recommend the best method of suicide. But that is neither here nor there.)

I think I will have to add a Contact Page to Charley. Right now I’ve just got my email on the frontpage. However, I’ve been getting way too many inappropriate emails lately. By which I mean people sending me tips on particular cases, potential matches to Does, etc. I say in my FAQ that I am not the person to send such information to, that a tipster should contact the law enforcement agency listed in the casefile. But no one ever reads FAQs really, I guess. I don’t even bother to respond to such emails. Maybe if I put up a Contact Page saying explicitly: “Don’t send me tips that would be better placed in the hands of the police,” people will actually listen. On the plus side, I haven’t gotten any lawsuit threats in ages. A particularly vicious emailer last month said “I hope you get sued,” but I decided that didn’t count since he didn’t say HE was going to sue me.

Today I added Giovanni Gonzalez to Charley. It’s actually a day too early, but the NCMEC gives an August 15 date and by the time I found out he’d actually gone missing on August 16, I’d already done a lot of work on the casefile so I figured, why not, I made this site so I can make the rules and break them if I want.

Giovanni’s case reminds me of the infamous Caylee Anthony and also Sam and Lindsey Porter, who disappeared from Missouri in 2004. Their father sat in jail for months, telling all sorts of outrageous stories about where the kids were, just so he could torture their mother. I think it was eighteen months later that he finally confessed he’d shot both children and he lead the cops to their bodies. Ernesto Gonzalez sounds like the same kind of man, except I’m not at all sure Giovanni’s dead, and I’m quite sure that if he’s dead it didn’t happen the way Ernesto says. In any case, I believe Giovanni has got to be somewhere very close by. Ernesto was a meatpacker; he didn’t have a lot of cash lying around for an expensive trip, and even if he’d had I think the police would have tracked his spending by now. He had no car and he used a bicycle or public transport to get around. So he could only have taken the kid so far. So either Giovanni is being concealed by a third party (but who?) or he’s in a shallow grave or a landfill in the Lynn area. Hopefully the threat of ten years in prison will loosen Ernesto’s tongue, but Daniel Porter didn’t talk even after he’d been threatened with forty years.

Nothing else to say at present.