Stolen Voices, the movie, pt 2: the sixth victim: Mom

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon-- I was my mother's sole caregiver at the time my children were taken into concealment in Utah, had been so for a year.

My mother's voice on this tape, with its references to my birthday and the death of Richard Nixon, dates the series of messages to May 1994, about 8 months before she came to live with my children and me.

My mother, whose name was Olive Cruz, died four years after her grandchildren disappeared without seeing them again, without hearing their voices again, without an iota of respect or caring from her former daughter in law.

For my mother, there were no birthday cards, no phone calls, no Mother's Day or other holiday recognition. For her, now that the children were totally in Mormon hands, there was nothing, all the way to the end of her life.


My mother had suffered with poor health her entire adult life. My earliest memories of my mother are of visiting her in the hospital, of standing in the ivy outside her room, waiting for my turn for Dad to lift either my brother or me up to the window so we could see her. In those days, children were not allowed in hospital wards. We could only smile at each other through the window. I remember the window, in my father's arms, and the ivy, waiting for my turn.

As the years went by, there were many visits to the windows, to the ivy.

She had ulcers on both her ankles that never healed over decades of treatment, and some years the broad arc of our family story during my childhood was about her battles with gangrene, worry over whether the doctors would amputate her right leg or her left. She would never give permission for the amputation, not to her dying day, choosing to live with the pain and the poison instead.

She was widowed in 1975, following my father's final, fatal heart attack.

By 1990, her multiple illnesses kept her housebound. Osteoporosis caused the vertebrae in her neck to collapse, so that she could only raise her head off her chest by pulling it up with both hands.

Her health became so fragile by 1994 that moving her long distances by car was impossible. She would either have to be flown in short flights as a passenger with special needs, or travel by ambulance with skilled care.

I became my mother's sole caregiver in the spring of 1995. We had a three-generational household, my mom, my kids and I, living in Washington County not far from where Gina's third marriage, to my children's first step day, was coming apart.

During that time we had together in 1995, before my children disappeared, my mother hospital was hospitalized twice, for emergency surgery, for tachychardia. For weeks at a time she needed daily physical therapy session, always on the verge of re-hospitalization, and multiple doctor's visits for wounds that would not heal.

The doctors continued to urge her to allow them to amputate, but she never gave permission, stating that she wanted to be buried with all of her parts intact.

Housebound, the only company she had that year was with her grandchildren and me, and Gina and her Mormon friends took all of that away. With the kids gone, my mom was doomed to long hours alone, every day, every moment that I was away from the house.

That was fine with Gina and her Mormon friends. She and they had other priorities, and my mother was just so much collateral damage. Our four children were collateral damage to be sure, but their main purpose to Gina was to be used as weapons, and to provide cover for her Mormon friends. They were only too happy to oblige...Chris and Kory Wright, Evelyn Taylor, David Holliday and the others....

There would be no price to high for my children to pay once they arrived in Utah, at the home of Chris and Kory Wright.

Within four months of her divorce from Step Dad #1 in Oregon, Gina was married to Step Dad #2 in Utah. No price too high....

Step Dad #2, Steve Nielson, would slap my children around for the next two years or so, and Gina would allow him to get away with it. No price too high....

Utah Child Protective Services, in practice a working arm of the Mormon Church, would allow him to get away with it also. That's how things are done in Utah. No price too high....

I wrote 37 letters to Angela Adams, the Guardian ad Litem that Utah CPS appointed to look after my abducted children, begging her to help arrange contact between my children and their grandmother, but she ignored all of that, as she ignored every other indicator that something was wrong here.

My mother spent the last two years of her life in a hospital bed.

She is buried next to my father in a cemetery in Fairfield, California, where the tombstone reads"

"sunshine fresh flowers green grass
together at last"

To the best of my knowledge, her grandchildren have never visited her grave.

And the Mormon Church proclaims: "Families are forever...la tee da...Families are forever...."

Here's the link to Stolen Voices, the movie, pt 2: the sixth victim: Mom



Stolen Voices, the movie, pt 2: The sixth victim: Mom

www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-C53aOLSLE

Stolen voices, the movie, pt 1: Before the abduction, we were a family for forever

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--I loved the sound of my children's voices so much that I saved the messages that they left for me on my answering machine. About a year and a half after my kids left these messages, they disappeared into Utah.

This is the first part in a series of movies I am producing to document the lives of my children before their abduction.

I'm limited to the photos, videos and audio recordings that I had before they disappeared. The last year that I saw a school photo of any of my children was 1995.

The people who abducted my children and concealed them in Utah did everything they could to destroy every emotional link between my children and I.

That is typically what happens in parental and family abductions. The emotional abuse led to long years of isolation and suffering and ultimately to the death of my son Aaron Cruz.

My children's abductors claimed that my children didn't love me and that there was no emotional bond between us. You can hear the love in their voices and as a parent you can gauge for yourself how damaging this experience was--and is--for them.

My children were taken in a Mormon shunning that continues to this very day. My former wife joined the Mormon church about six years into our marriage and became a 100% zealot nearly overnight. Nothing else mattered to her.

The shunning began after I left her church, was taken to the point where my children vanished in a kidnapping organized by Mormons in three states: Oregon, Washington and Utah.

My children were isolated in remote Mormon enclaves and forced to renounce me, my family and the lives you hear on the tape.

Aaron died a needless, preventable death. All he needed was decent medical care, some love without strings attached, and permission to not be forced into Mormonism like my other children were. Aaron resisted the pressure and suffered the most damage.

I should say that Aaron was the most visibly damaged, because I have little information to gauge the damage that my other children suffered.

The innocent children whose voices you hear suffered the loss of their father, were not permitted to mourn the loss, and were forced to adopt whatever stories were invented to suit the needs of the Mormons who helped their mother get away with a kidnapping.

This group of Mormon criminals included Chris and Kory Wright, David Holliday, Evelyn Taylor, Cindy Anderson, Tony and Connie Micheletti, and Steve Nielson, who as my children's second step dad slapped them around throughout his marriage to my ex-wife, who now goes by the name Gina Foulk.

Under the accords of the Geneva Convention, that behavior would be classified as torture.

I've written extensively about the abduction of my children, of the Cruz family. I've testified before Senate and House Committees and before the 2004 Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions. I led Senator Avel Gordly's workgroup on parental and family abductions and saw Senate Bill 1041 "Aaron's Law", named for my beautiful boy who died in Utah in 2005, passed into law.

I hope to see Aaron's Law enacted nationwide.

Here's the link to Stolen Voices, pt 1:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxiqIti0BmI

Parental Abduction Wisdom, pt 10: A Deliberate, Particular Cruelty

by Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

Abducting a child is an act of deliberate cruelty, and it is an act of particular cruelty in cases where the child is abducted by a parent, by any of the child’s family members, or by persons known to the child or the child’s family.

Stranger abductions are in a category all their own, as there is no expectation that the stranger will feel any sense of empathy for the suffering child, and that the act will be merciless is a foregone conclusion. A stranger abduction nearly always leads directly to the torture and murder of the child. The cruelty is both deliberate and expected.

Parental and family abductions, and those that involve other persons known to the victims, however, are crimes that are both deliberate and particularly cruel, because the perpetrators possess certain knowledge that they going to cause the child to suffer the loss of a parent, and they very deliberately cause that harm to take place.

Abducted children will be told--and often convinced, because the kidnappers control all access to the child--that a beloved parent is dead, or no longer loves them, and they willingly put the child through that suffering.

Their cruelty is both deliberate and particular. They know that the child is suffering a great tragedy and they know that they are its cause. Yet they will profess that they love the abducted child.

In the case of the abduction of the four Cruz children, for example, their abductors deliberately and knowingly caused the children to suffer the loss of their father.

While every abduction has its own causes and effects, some common motivators are rage, jealousy, and religious fervor. All of these factors were present in the abduction of my four children, none more important than religious fervor.

After our divorce, an Order for Joint Custody protected my children and made their lives orderly and secure for five years.

Then, abruptly, more than 14 years ago, while being divorced by her third husband, my former wife disappeared with our four children, taking them on a hellish journey to a series of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah, beginning with the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, and on through a gauntlet of three Mormon stepdads in three states. A deliberate, particular cruelty.

Gina Micheletti...Gina Cruz...Gina Micheletti...Gina Frischknecht...Gina Micheletti...Gina Nielson...Gina Micheletti...Gina Foulk (now living in El Dorado Hills, California)....

Despite the Order for Joint Custody, once they disappeared into theocratic Utah, I never saw so much as a school picture of any of my children ever again.

If they do exist, those photographs would show children putting on brave faces to please those who now controlled their lives, but in their eyes and half smiles you would see terrible, completely needless suffering....

Parents and family members who abduct children generally don’t want to murder the child, but they do want to murder the child’s relationship with and memory of the parent they are intending to kill.

It is a deliberate, particular cruelty....

Fourteen years after four children vanish from Oregon--someone notices!

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

Fourteen years after my four children vanished from Oregon, and five years after the death of my son, Aaron Cruz, and the passage of Oregon’s landmark anti-kidnapping Senate Bill 1041, Aaron’s Law, named in his honor, the abduction of 7-year-old Kyron Horman has stirred up some media interest in the issue of children abducted by family members and persons known to the victims.

Radio host Diane Dennis made the Aarons Law media breakthrough on the topic when she interviewed me yesterday, July 31, 2010 on her Family Focus 101 program on KUIK 1360 AM. The link to the interview is below.

Diane, you are the first to take an interest! Thank you!

Later on the same day, one of the Portland TV stations broke the news (!) that, according to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, more than 2,000 US children are reported missing every day! That may be news to a lot of people, but not to those of us who have suffered the disappearance of a child, or to the child victims themselves, who grow in number every day.

The National Center and the US Department of Justice has put the figure of children abducted by their own parents, family members or persons known to the victims at more than 200,000 a year, every year, for more than a decade now.

Either way, it adds up to a lot of traumatized and seriously abused children, like my own, whose kidnapping was first reported after they vanished without a trace on February 12, 1996.

The fact is that, in sheer numbers, the most dangerous kidnappers are a child’s own parents, and this is news only if you haven’t been paying attention to the issue.

Parental and family abductions can be divided into two categories: those involving a single perpetrator, and those that involve two or more perpetrators, acting together to carry out a criminal act and any subsequent criminal acts.

Aarons Law makes Oregon the only state in the nation where abducting a child creates a civil cause of action. This means, in layman’s terms, that only in Oregon can you hold a person financially accountable for abducting your child.

Practically speaking, if the whereabouts of your child and the child’s kidnapper(s) is unknown, there’s little that you can do but pray that local law enforcement doesn’t give up (they usually don’t even get started).

If you become aware, however, that the kidnapper(s) had help, had associates, had others providing logistical, financial or planning support, and you can identify them and locate them, then Aaron’s Law is your answer.

The criminal custodial interference and kidnapping statutes require evidence “beyond a reasonable doubt” and unanimous agreement by a jury for a conviction. That is far too often a bar too high for the prosecution to get over, and thus many investigations end right there, even though the children remain kidnapped.

Aaron’s Law, however, creates a civil cause of action, and a judgement can be reached in court with a lower standard, by showing “by a preponderance of the evidence” that a person did in fact participate in the criminal taking, enticing and keeping of a child from the child’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid order for joint custody.

I know that if Aaron’s Law had been on the books in 1995, the people who planned and executed the abduction of my children, who committed those crimes and the crimes that followed, would have never gotten involved in the first place.

They would have known that I would never give up on my children, and that I would have sued them for everything they could ever hope to own, for the damage and trauma they inflicted on my children, on my family and on me.

That fact would have kept my children safe in their homes, among their family and friends, growing up and living normal lives, instead of lives lived in concealment in a succession of remote Mormon enclaves in Utah, lives that led to the death of my son Aaron.

Here are some easy examples:

After my children disappeared, mail addressed to them at their mother’s last address was not forwarded to Utah, where they were being concealed. The kidnappers had thought about how forwarded mail might lead to discovery, and my children’s mail was actually being forwarded to an address in Hillsboro, Oregon, to a person named Evelyn Taylor, Mormon Relief Society President at the time of the abduction.

I later learned that it is not illegal to receive mail intended for abducted children, but Evelyn Taylor was filthy beyond her eyebrows in enticing my children out of their homes and on the road to Utah. She would have faced a lawsuit filed under Aaron’s Law had the statute been on the books, and a lot of subsequent embarrassment, probably loss of standing in her church. That eventuality would have had a strong deterrent effect.

I learned that my children’s first stop on their circuitous, hidden journey to Utah was at the home of Tony and Connie Micheletti near Salem, my former wife’s impotent brother and sister-in-law. It was here, on February 12, 1996, that my children first learned that they were being moved to Utah.

Tony and Connie Micheletti would have been looking at a lawsuit under Aaron’s Law, had the right to file a civil suit for the abduction of a child been on the books back then, and with that the leverage to force information as to the whereabouts of my children out of them. I would have seized their rancid, reeking, cat-filth-infused house and burned it to the ground.

The next example of how Aaron’s Law would have deterred the abduction of my children is that of Kory and Chris Wright, Mormon zealots and friends of my ex-wife’s and the principal planners of the kidnapping. The Wrights live in Vancouver now, but at the time of the abduction they lived in a remote area in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah.

The first place that my children were concealed in Utah was at the home of Chris and Kory Wright. These stupid, self-absorbed individuals actually wrote out sworn statements describing how they welcomed my children into their home and local Mormon church congregation, where they held leadership positions.

It is a felony to take, entice or keep a child from the child’s lawful custodian or in violation of a valid joint custody order. Utah and Washington statutes add the word “conceal” to the statute.

Nothing could have been simpler than to assemble “a preponderance of evidence” to show that each of these people were involved in a criminal enterprise.

For that matter, had law enforcement taken an interest in the case, it would not have been difficult to show that each of these persons were guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

You can hear what I had to say in the interview, here:

http://hillsboro.kuik.com/production/famsecrets/Family_Focus_0731.mp3

Aaron’s Law exists to act as a deterrent to non-stranger child abductions. It is not likely to be effective against stranger abductions, which take place about 100 times a year in the US.

More than 200,000 children are victims of non-stranger abductions every year, however, and Aaron’s Law can be an effective deterrent to many of those.

I hope to see the principles of Aaron’s Law applied nationwide, and that we might see that 200,000 number knocked down to zero.

Thanks again to Diane Dennis.

The Kyron Horman abduction at the 8-week mark

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

I am feeling a great deal of empathy for the family of Kyron Horman, who spoke at a press conference today, eight weeks after their 7-year-old son was abducted.

Eight weeks after my four children disappeared from Oregon 14 years ago, my lawyer was able to obtain a PO Box number in Eden, Utah. It was our first clue to the general location of my children, somewhere in the mountains east of Ogden.

I later learned that mail was being received there, but not actually picked up by anyone, and that the letters I had been writing to my children's mother's last address were actually being forwarded to a woman in Hillsboro, a person named Evelyn Taylor.

By then, I had already learned that several people were involved in the kidnapping, that it had been in the works for months.

I learned even later that it is not illegal to receive mail intended for abducted children.

Later still, I learned that more than 200,000 US children are abducted by family members or persons known to the victims every year, and that the majority involve multiple perpetrators.

You learn these things one at a time when your children disappear.

A lot of numbness sets into your bones at the eight-week mark. The world feels completely empty.

And it stays that way.

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 9: When the police figure it out

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

The Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office announced yesterday, more than 50 days after Kyron Horman disappeared, that they were now convinced that a crime had taken place in the disappearance of Kyron Horman.

While it took law enforcement more than a month to decide that the disappearance of a 7-year-old child was a criminal matter, Kyron's family knew it right away.

When your child disappears, like mine did 14 years ago, you know right away that a crime has been and is being committed. Sometimes the police never figure it out….

Most of us who are parents knew by the end of the first day Kyron went missing that a crime had been committed, somewhere, somehow, by someone.

This child was not lost, had not wandered off on his own, this child had been taken, whether by a stranger or by a person known to the child, we did not know, but what we knew for certain was that a crime was being committed against this child and against this child’s family.

ALL of us who are parents of kidnapped children, parents of children who have vanished with or without a trace, we knew right away.

The police needed more than a month to come to that conclusion, in a case as obvious as Kyron Horman's.

They are MUCH slower when the issues aren't so clear-cut, like when the children have vanished along with a parent or family member.

The police will take reports of missing children and there’s a filing system for those reports, where they usually wind up.

But if a family member, if a parent is gone with the child(ren), then local law enforcement rarely forwards the report on to the Oregon State Police, which explains why so few abducted children are ever listed on the OSP website, which also explains why the Sheriff’s Office is unaware of any other children missing in Oregon “that meet the criteria.”

Many of those children are gone forever.

And that’s a crime, the same crime that began on the day each child disappeared, a continuing crime, crimes with beginnings but no end.

Try to tell them that when your child disappears, you'll see....

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 8: To murder the soul

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

Former Portland police detective C.W. Jensen recently gave his opinion regarding the presumptive motive for the abduction of Kyron Horman:

“If you are really, really angry at someone, you can kill them, or you can kill their soul by taking their child away, and that’s what I’m afraid happened here.”

Every year, more than 200,000 US children are abducted by family members or persons known to the victims. The crime is horrific, but only a tiny percentage receive any attention by the media, the public or law enforcement.

In all of these cases, the abductors intend to murder the soul of the victim parent by causing their child to disappear, and are willing to murder the soul of the child victim as collateral damage.

High-conflict custody battles are common; parents use their children as weapons in far too many cases, but the abduction of a child is indeed tantamount to murder.

When my four children disappeared on February 12, 1996, 14 years ago, kidnapped by my former wife and a group of Mormon officials in three states, no one was interested. Four children vanished. Zero interest. Ho hum.

My former wife wanted to murder my soul, and was willing to put our children through hell to do so; the Mormons that Kory and Chris Wright organized to carry out the abduction wanted to re-engineer my children’s personalities, at a cost to my family that was irrelevant to them, and through a process that led to the death of my son Aaron Cruz.

Those Mormons included Evelyn Taylor and Mormon Bishop David Holliday in Washington County, Mormon Bishop Donald Taylor in Clark County and Utah resident Steve Nielson, who would become my former wife’s fourth husband, who I would later learn slapped my children around throughout their marriage.

Retired Portland police commander Cliff Madison, interviewed today about the Kyron Horman case, made a comment that resonated with my experience, referring to the revelation that Terri Horman, Kyron’s stepmom, might be involved in the 7-year-old’s disappearance:

“They’ve just been hit with a big right hook, because all of a sudden the possibility of someone within the family being involved. It is a shock, because we all refuse to believe that until it is thrown in our faces.”

It is that refusal to believe, on the part of law enforcement, the media and the public, on the part of the courts, that refusal to believe that a family member would kidnap a beautiful child, that stands in the way of recovery and of achieving justice in many, many cases.

That refusal to believe that a family member would do such a thing causes the wheels to turn slowly, if at all.

In most cases, the family is entirely on its own. No cops, no detectives, no media, no public outcry…ho hum….

In the months and years that followed the disappearance of my children, I nearly died from shock, from grief, from bereavement, from depression and from suicide, when I had run out of hope and was overwhelmed by the pain.

My mother died four years after the abduction began, without seeing or hearing from her grandchildren again. That fact alone speaks to the character of the people involved in the abduction.

Remember that kidnappings are continuing crimes, crimes with a beginning but no end….

The abduction of Kyron Horman has thrown the fact in our faces, that a person in a trust relationship with a child, a family member, could inflict harm on this scale, and law enforcement, the public and even the media are getting involved.

There was a time when they could have expended just a little bit of energy and saved my family, could have saved Aaron’s life….

Now there is Aaron’s Law on the Oregon books, soon to be modeled in other states, and with it a drive to end parental and family abductions in this country.

I hope that they find some time to take an interest in that, too.

Parental abduction wisdom, pt 7: Complicated Grief and a Continuing Crime

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon—

I began the Parental Abduction Wisdom series in 2009, but the subject was so painful that I had to step back after posting the sixth installment, “The Little Girl in the Blue Dress”, nearly a year ago.

Kidnappings are continuing crimes, however, and the damage to the Cruz family continues to mount with the passage of every minute of every day.

The present case involving the disappearance of 7-year-old Kyron Horman illustrates the concept of a continuing crime very clearly: the public generally understands that this child is just as kidnapped today as he was when he disappeared several weeks ago. The crime continues….

My experience, as the victim of a parental, family and Mormon kidnapping, has been entirely different. Few have understood the continuing nature of the crime, many have wondered at why I haven’t let the crime (and my children) go, and some have expressed frustration that I haven’t “moved on.”

I want to note here that each of my critics can pick up the phone and speak with their living children any time that they want to…and that none have experienced the disappearance of their child….

Before I saw the Oregonian article linked below, I had never heard of "complicated grief syndrome", but I realize that it attaches to cases of child abduction, like mine, which began with the abduction of my four children in a Mormon kidnapping.

Unlike deaths, time and aging bring no closure to kidnapping victims. There is no "coming to peace with it." Only the mending of the relationships can bring closure.

Kidnappings are "continuing crimes", meaning that the crime has a beginning but no end, not before the victims are reunited and the kidnappers see justice served.

I want Mormon kidnappers Kory and Chris Wright in particular to take notice of that last statement. The crime has no end. Justice…will…be…served!

So long as people believe that they will get away with abducting a child, they will do so. In the case of Mormon zealots like the Wrights, they will relish pulling off a child abduction, if the purpose is to absorb the child into their belief system.

More on this later.

I am reviving the Parental Abduction Wisdom series with this post. There is no end in sight.

Here is an excerpt from the Oregonian article on Complicated Grief Syndrome:

“We are built to love, biologically programmed to attach. To lose that relationship, as everyone does, is to meet sorrow.

“Early in grief, humans yearn for the one who died, until we recognize that search is futile. Psychiatrist M. Katherine Shear says this transformation occurs in the brain circuitry and we eventually come to peace. ‘Death is a part of life and we have the mechanisms to come to terms with it,’ says the Columbia University professor.

“But in the 1990s, Shear and other researchers realized that about 15 percent of the bereaved suffer ‘complicated grief,’ stuck in a loop of despair. Their longing for the loved one overcomes all other desires. They either avoid any mention of the dead or become totally preoccupied. They daydream about being together and have suicidal thoughts. Brain imaging shows their reactions differ from people who progress through the grieving process. Researchers want complicated-grief disorder and its treatment included in the 2012 American Psychiatric Association diagnostic manual.

“No one tracks how losing a young, healthy child in war can push parents and other survivors to suicide. Yet, complicated grief almost exclusively occurs after the loss of a person's closest, most rewarding relationships. Losing a beloved child is one of the most obvious risks, and losing an only child, greater still.

"’Debra wanted to be with Michael,’ George says, ‘Wherever he was.’"

The complete article is titled: " Measures of Sacrifice: Answering the call to military binds a patriotic Oregon family", here:


http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2010/07/measures_of_sacrifice_answerin.html

Father's Day 2010, child abduction and Aaron's Law

By Sean Cruz

Portland, Oregon--

I last had a reason to celebrate Father’s Day 14 years ago, other than honoring my own father and grandfather, not since my four children disappeared into concealment in Mormon Utah in February, 1996.

Abducted children are never permitted to celebrate any memory honoring a left-behind parent, much less a holiday, and the day becomes radioactive for all its victims. No cards, letters, gifts or phone calls will get through in either direction.

Abducted children suffer the devastating loss of a parent, but are never permitted to mourn. My children were compelled to celebrate Father’s Day with a succession of three stepdads in three states, no trace memories of me or my family allowed.

The abducting parent, family members and other criminal associates involved in an abduction will work hard to destroy every emotional connection the child(ren) have to the left-behind parent, and with it any possibility of a normal childhood, of a normal life.

A kidnapping is a continuing crime, with lifelong consequences, and for many victims, like my son Aaron, life-ending consequences.

I have learned that I have a grandchild, name unknown, being raised in concealment in a Mormon enclave.

My son Aaron would have made someone a fine father, with his big heart and irrepressible good humor, had he been given the chance to live a normal life, to become a father himself.

I am working my way out of a five-year period of mourning the death of my son, and have begun preliminary work on the introduction of Aaron’s Law into the California State Assembly, gathering allies, planning, looking at legislative concepts that would increase the effectiveness of the law.

I have connected with the Polly Klaas Foundation and spoken with Marc Klaas,
Polly’s father and Founder of the KlaasKids Foundation. Both organizations are national leaders on the issue of child abduction. See for yourself here, and become aware of the issues at stake:


http://www.klaaskids.org/

http://www.pollyklaas.org/

May 25 is National Missing Children Awareness Day

Statistics from the U.S. Department of Justice help shed light on the problem.

Missing children

•An estimated 797,500 children were reported missing each year.1
•More than than 2,000 children are reported missing every day, but thankfully the vast majority of them are recovered quickly.
Non-family abductions

•An estimated 58,200 children were taken in one year by someone outside the family2
•An estimated 115 children experienced a stereotypical kidnapping, the rarest type of abduction potentially posing great risk of serious harm.3
Family abductions

•An estimated 203,900 children were victims of family abduction, where the child was taken by a noncustodial parent.4
•24 percent of these abductions lasted one week to less than one month.5

US State Department notes "epidemic" of child snatching

"Parental kidnapping is one of the worst forms of child abuse." --US State Department

The U.S. State Department has recognized that parental and family abductions in the USA are occuring at epidemic rates and provides information (see excerpts) through the web link below:

"Sixty percent of all children in the United States now spend some time in a single parent home. In these single parent families (354,000 cases reported in 1988), one parent has taken unilateral action to deprive the other parent of contact with the couple’s child, in half of these cases (163,200), according to one study, the intent of the abducting parent was to alter permanently custodial access by concealing the child or taking the child out of the state or out of the country."

"The rise in international child abduction can be attributed to the increase in marriages and divorces between bi-national couples. These marriages, by their nature, come with cultural, ethnic, and religious differences. The ease of international travel and the fact that many dual national children possess two passports facilitate abductions."

"When non-custodial parents resort to kidnapping, they believe they are acting in the best interests of their children. Although a minority of parenta1 kidnappers may actually save their children by taking them out of the reach of the other parent, the motives of most parents who steal their children are not at all altruistic. Parents find a myriad of reasons or self-justification for stealing a child from another parent Some abductors will find fault with the other parent for nonsensical transgressions; others will steal a child for revenge."

"Although most parents who steal their children attempt to justify their actions as the only way to ensure the best interests of the child, the child’s best interests are usually not considered. In fact, the best interest of the child mandates that parents ask themselves what the consequences of the abduction will be on the child. If parents had the foresight and emotional empathy of the impact of lying to a child across time and deriding the custodial parent, then they would not do it."

"Parental abductors have several common characteristics: the abductors are likely to dismiss the value of the other parent to the child. They believe that they know, more than anyone else, including a judge, what is best for their child. Second, the children abducted are likely to be very young (2-3 years old), since they are easy to transport and cannot verbally protest or tell others of their history. If older, such children, often manipulated, have colluded with the abducting parent. Finally, the abductors work with an extensive social network of other persons for practical assistance and to keep their whereabouts hidden."

US State Department: Parental child snatching "one of the worst forms of child abuse."

I hurried to my son's gravesite

By Sean Cruz


I hurried to my son’s gravesite as the sun was coming up

Today was—would have been—was, and now forever will always be was, nevermore is, his birthday, and I would mark it with a vigil until sunset, with a vigil and a song, with a song and a lament, and with these words:



I hurried to my son’s gravesite as the sun was coming up

I brought him flowers, a glass vase, music and incense, an orange

I hurried to my son’s gravesite as the sun was coming up

I brought him photographs, dried fruit and nuts, and my blind Airedale Rex

I hurried to my son’s gravesite as the sun was coming up

I brought him a painted stone, and sips of tequila to share on his birthday

The sun was coming up



My son lies near the top of the hill

Among strangers he lies near the top of the hill

My son lies near the top of the hill

Among strangers he lies near the top of the hill



In the late afternoon came a grieving father

To a grave nearby came a grieving father

A son forever four lay beneath a marble racecourse

An oval with his fifty favorite cars embedded forever

Selected personally by the grieving father

Maintained personally by the grieving father

He worked in silence with his brushes and oils

The headstone cut racecar shape, a heart broken forever

In the late afternoon came the grieving father

Father of a four years forever child



Like a sailor who lies buried where he washed ashore

On this lonely knoll far from any semblance of home

My son lies near the top of the hill

Among strangers he lies near the top of the hill

My son lies near the top of the hill

Among strangers he lies near the top of the hill


----------------

The vigil took place on March 21, 2010, Aaron’s birthday, at a cemetery in El Dorado Hills, California. The four-year-old’s father was one of the few persons to visit the cemetery that day, and no one came to remember my son but me.

I wrote this piece on April 20, 2010.

It was five years ago today, on April 20, 2005 that I received a phone call from the police in Payson, Utah, who told me that my son was found comatose and unresponsive there in his mother’s vacant former home. Aaron had a serious seizure disorder aggravated by years of medical neglect, emotional abuse and abandonment inflicted during his kidnapped years in Utah.

He was pronounced dead on April 25, 2005, and buried near Sacramento on May 3, 2005, a location convenient for his mother and her fifth husband, Aaron’s 3rd stepdad, a man who never knew my son.

There is no closure on a kidnapped child. The death of the child does not create closure.

The death of a kidnapped child only adds another dimension to the tragedy, to the trauma.

A kidnapping is a continuing crime, and so are its consequences.

Aaron’s grave lies no more than twenty miles from Sacramento, from the state Capitol, and it is there that I will seek the introduction of legislation making California the second state in the nation to adopt Aaron’s Law.

Watch me work!