by Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon--
Mainstream Mormons may not grow their own child brides like Warren Jeffs, but Mormon zealots can be just as dangerous, and a non-Mormon has little chance to find justice in Utah (read Mormon) courts.
My four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction more than 15 years ago, eventually suffering life under a series of three Mormon step dads in three states.
My late son Aaron Cruz died in his mother’s empty house in Payson, Utah, from “undetermined causes”, and a phalanx of Mormon lawyers hired by 5th-husband Ben and Gina Foulk, who now live a country-club, Rotary life in El Dorado Hills and Cameron Park, California, are determined to keep it that way, with the circumstances of his death unknown and uninvestigated.
My son Aaron Cruz is memorialized in Oregon's landmark anti-parental-and-family-kidnapping Senate Bill 1041 "Aaron's Law", passed in 2005.
Oregon is still the only state in the nation that offers its children this level of protection from parental and family or other non-stranger kidnappings. Under Aaron's Law, taking any abducted child out of the state of Oregon creates a civil cause of action, and you should really think hard about how you want to protect your child from abduction by religious zealots, your ex or any other criminal.
Showing posts with label Cameron Park. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cameron Park. Show all posts
Sunday, August 7, 2011
Monday, July 25, 2011
Nightmares of an abducted child, Terri Horman and the Casey Anthony trial
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon--
Some minutes after I woke from the nightmare this morning, I wrote some lines while the memory was still fresh. I’ve had several hundred of these since my four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction more than fifteen years ago, but there was something about this one that felt different, and it took some time for me to put it together….
This, I came to realize, was the first nightmare to trouble my sleep since the conclusion of the Casey Anthony trial, the young mother who couldn’t find the time to report the disappearance of her 3-year-old daughter Kaylee, whose skeletal remains were found months later, her lips and nose duct-taped shut, packed into a plastic bag and dumped by the side of the road.
What was different about this dream was that where my ex-wife Gina Foulk was in it, she had that emotionless Casey Anthony/Terri Horman demeanor, was indifferent to the fact that a small child was missing, although clearly unhappy with the inconvenience resulting, and aggravated at the notion that she might be thought somehow lacking in her role as a mother, an epic of pathological self-absorption….
Nicole Kidman had that look, too, in two of her movie roles: To Die For, and The Others. She was a dead ringer for my ex in those movies, almost like she’d studied scenes from our lives, watched home movies, in preparing for her parts.
Seeing the images of Kaylee Anthony over the course of the search, arrest and trial was always painful for me, and I never lingered on any of them or the horror story itself, but it was always there, has been there since July 2008, when Kaylee’s grandmother contacted the police and the media took an interest….
I saw my baby girl in every one of those pictures of Kaylee Anthony…so many memories triggered…Allie was a week past her eighth birthday on the day the Mormons took her away from the father who loved her, and set her on a path of three Mormon stepdads in three states. Memories of her early childhood were still very fresh.
These are the lines I wrote earlier this morning:
“Nightmares of an abducted child...struck early this morning....
“Sometimes they are focused on a single child, sometimes all four...
“This one was about Allie, missing with her mother for days in the dream, and I was reporting this to the police, over and over...feeling all the shock and horror...over and over...desperate...talking to the police, over and over...then I woke up, exhausted...and the nightmare is real....”
In actual fact, when my four children disappeared from Oregon in February 1996, they were driven more or less directly although by a circuitous route to the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, somewhere in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, who had been in on planning the abduction for months beforehand.
While all of their friends were in school and safe at home, the Mormons were shuttling my children from place to place, knowing that they were violating a joint custody order that had been in place for five years, which is a serious felony, worth five years in prison, but infrequently and very poorly enforced.
The statute of limitations expires on these crimes after three years, even if the child is not recovered. Try to make some sense of that reality….
My children never recovered from the trauma academically or emotionally; and, of course, Aaron is dead, left behind ill and alone in that crappy little Mormon town on the edge of the desert, Payson Utah….
Years later, after many fruitless online searches, one panned out… I located kidnapper Kory Wright right here, where he works at Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver:
https://www.columbiaultimate.com/about-us/management-team.aspx
I counted coup….
But today my thoughts are still buffeted by this most recent nightmare…and that look in these eyes….
http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/contact.nxg
…the look of pathological self-absorption, epic…. You would never know there was a child in distress from these people.
Portland, Oregon--
Some minutes after I woke from the nightmare this morning, I wrote some lines while the memory was still fresh. I’ve had several hundred of these since my four children disappeared into Utah in a Mormon abduction more than fifteen years ago, but there was something about this one that felt different, and it took some time for me to put it together….
This, I came to realize, was the first nightmare to trouble my sleep since the conclusion of the Casey Anthony trial, the young mother who couldn’t find the time to report the disappearance of her 3-year-old daughter Kaylee, whose skeletal remains were found months later, her lips and nose duct-taped shut, packed into a plastic bag and dumped by the side of the road.
What was different about this dream was that where my ex-wife Gina Foulk was in it, she had that emotionless Casey Anthony/Terri Horman demeanor, was indifferent to the fact that a small child was missing, although clearly unhappy with the inconvenience resulting, and aggravated at the notion that she might be thought somehow lacking in her role as a mother, an epic of pathological self-absorption….
Nicole Kidman had that look, too, in two of her movie roles: To Die For, and The Others. She was a dead ringer for my ex in those movies, almost like she’d studied scenes from our lives, watched home movies, in preparing for her parts.
Seeing the images of Kaylee Anthony over the course of the search, arrest and trial was always painful for me, and I never lingered on any of them or the horror story itself, but it was always there, has been there since July 2008, when Kaylee’s grandmother contacted the police and the media took an interest….
I saw my baby girl in every one of those pictures of Kaylee Anthony…so many memories triggered…Allie was a week past her eighth birthday on the day the Mormons took her away from the father who loved her, and set her on a path of three Mormon stepdads in three states. Memories of her early childhood were still very fresh.
These are the lines I wrote earlier this morning:
“Nightmares of an abducted child...struck early this morning....
“Sometimes they are focused on a single child, sometimes all four...
“This one was about Allie, missing with her mother for days in the dream, and I was reporting this to the police, over and over...feeling all the shock and horror...over and over...desperate...talking to the police, over and over...then I woke up, exhausted...and the nightmare is real....”
In actual fact, when my four children disappeared from Oregon in February 1996, they were driven more or less directly although by a circuitous route to the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright, somewhere in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, who had been in on planning the abduction for months beforehand.
While all of their friends were in school and safe at home, the Mormons were shuttling my children from place to place, knowing that they were violating a joint custody order that had been in place for five years, which is a serious felony, worth five years in prison, but infrequently and very poorly enforced.
The statute of limitations expires on these crimes after three years, even if the child is not recovered. Try to make some sense of that reality….
My children never recovered from the trauma academically or emotionally; and, of course, Aaron is dead, left behind ill and alone in that crappy little Mormon town on the edge of the desert, Payson Utah….
Years later, after many fruitless online searches, one panned out… I located kidnapper Kory Wright right here, where he works at Columbia Ultimate in Vancouver:
https://www.columbiaultimate.com/about-us/management-team.aspx
I counted coup….
But today my thoughts are still buffeted by this most recent nightmare…and that look in these eyes….
http://www.eldoradohillsseniorcare.com/contact.nxg
…the look of pathological self-absorption, epic…. You would never know there was a child in distress from these people.
Sunday, June 5, 2011
Mormon abduction, self injury and lousy medical care
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
Self injury became an issue for me when I learned that my son Aaron had been cutting himself with a knife during his captivity in Utah, the victim of a Mormon abduction, his despair and loneliness so intense that he would carve deep wounds into his beautiful arms, like the girl in this story in Indian Country Today:
“When she was 14 years old and living in a boarding school in Arizona, Alex Exendine cut her forearms with everything from broken mirrors to scissors to cope with her grief. The Lakota teen from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had lost her best friend to a brain tumor, and the grandmother who helped raise her died shortly after.
“’I was so lonely,” Exendine told the Rapid City Journal. “I just never thought anyone understood how I felt.”
“Now 19, Exendine shared her struggle and how she overcame self-injury with Indian leaders and medical experts at the self-injury prevention conference "Wakanyeja Ihawicakta Pi, Looking Out for Our Children: a Cultural Learning Opportunity on Self-Injury Prevention” in Rapid City, South Dakota from May 12-13.
“Exendine told the Journal that her internal suffering and bottled feelings led to physical self-harm. “I felt like I had no emotions anymore,” she said. “I started cutting and I’d at least feel something.”
I first saw the knife-wound scars on my son’s arms while he lay comatose in Payson, Utah, in 2005, stared at them for much of the five days he lay there unresponsive. And then the doctors pronounced him dead.
They looked like those in the illustration, except Aaron’s were all above the elbow, on both arms. Deep, wide scars as much as four inches long. Many scars were laid across other earlier scars, indicating that this behavior had gone on for a prolonged period of time.
I counted 15 large scars.
Abducted children get lousy medical care.
Learn about how Alex Exendine overcame the urge to self-mutilate; see the complete article and illustration by Marty Two Bulls at Indian Country Today here:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/more-than-skin-deep-indian-leaders-address-self-injury-prevention/
Portland, Oregon—
Self injury became an issue for me when I learned that my son Aaron had been cutting himself with a knife during his captivity in Utah, the victim of a Mormon abduction, his despair and loneliness so intense that he would carve deep wounds into his beautiful arms, like the girl in this story in Indian Country Today:
“When she was 14 years old and living in a boarding school in Arizona, Alex Exendine cut her forearms with everything from broken mirrors to scissors to cope with her grief. The Lakota teen from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation had lost her best friend to a brain tumor, and the grandmother who helped raise her died shortly after.
“’I was so lonely,” Exendine told the Rapid City Journal. “I just never thought anyone understood how I felt.”
“Now 19, Exendine shared her struggle and how she overcame self-injury with Indian leaders and medical experts at the self-injury prevention conference "Wakanyeja Ihawicakta Pi, Looking Out for Our Children: a Cultural Learning Opportunity on Self-Injury Prevention” in Rapid City, South Dakota from May 12-13.
“Exendine told the Journal that her internal suffering and bottled feelings led to physical self-harm. “I felt like I had no emotions anymore,” she said. “I started cutting and I’d at least feel something.”
I first saw the knife-wound scars on my son’s arms while he lay comatose in Payson, Utah, in 2005, stared at them for much of the five days he lay there unresponsive. And then the doctors pronounced him dead.
They looked like those in the illustration, except Aaron’s were all above the elbow, on both arms. Deep, wide scars as much as four inches long. Many scars were laid across other earlier scars, indicating that this behavior had gone on for a prolonged period of time.
I counted 15 large scars.
Abducted children get lousy medical care.
Learn about how Alex Exendine overcame the urge to self-mutilate; see the complete article and illustration by Marty Two Bulls at Indian Country Today here:
http://indiancountrytodaymedianetwork.com/2011/06/more-than-skin-deep-indian-leaders-address-self-injury-prevention/
Thursday, May 5, 2011
A slain son, a father's heartbreak and the end of poetry
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
Grief-stricken Mexican poet Javier Sicilia read a poem dedicated to his murdered son last Saturday, and then declared that this would be his last, that “Poetry does not exist in me anymore.”
I understand how he feels, find much in common, remember when the poetry died in my life…and how long it took to come back….
24-year-old Juan Francisco was found in an abandoned car along with six other bodies, their heads, faces, hands and feet bound with tape, suffocated to death under that tape, among the latest victims in the ongoing war that has its foundation in American demand for drugs and the many billions of dollars U.S. citizens are willing to export in order to feed their habits.
These seven are believed to be innocent, “collateral damage” in the incessant violence between the gangs, the cartels, for control of the smuggling routes, and the Mexican government, the battle for the soul of Mexico itself “so far from God, so close to the United States”….
More than 35,000 people have been murdered in Mexico in just the last five years, most often with guns supplied by U.S. gun dealers, and by criminal enterprises nearly entirely funded with U.S. dollars, smuggled back across the border or transferred electronically to offshore tax havens by corrupt American banking officials.
And now there is Mr. Sicilia’s last poem:
El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra
Nos la ahogaron adentro
Como te (asfixiaron),
Como te
desgarraron a ti los pulmones
Y el dolor no se me aparta
sólo queda un mundo
Por el silencio de los justos
Sólo por tu silencio y por mi silencio, Juanelo.
El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra, es mi último poema, no puedo escribir más poesía...la poesía ya no existe en mi.
The world is no longer worthy of the word
They suffocated it inside us
Like you (they asphyxiated)
Like you
they slashed your lungs
And pain won’t cleave from me
only a world is left
By the silence of the just
Only by your silence and by my silence, Juanelo.
The world is no longer worthy of the word—is my last poem, I can’t write any more poetry...poetry no longer exists in me. (Javier Sicilia)
I understand the grieving poet’s sentiments so well…nearly fifteen years went by following the loss of my children in a Mormon abduction…and more than five years passed after the death of my son Aaron, a death preventable had he received medical care of minimal competence…before I could find my way to the poetry, to the lyrics, to the music once again….
No one knows how long these things take….
No one knows how much time will pass before Mr. Sicilia finds the poetry in his soul once again….
A year ago, I would have been among the first to say, “Never…it will never exist in me again”….
But today I taste the bittersweetness of life with purpose and compassion…I hear songs, melodies, feel the pulse of the drumbeat in my heart…lyrics close to the surface, where tears used to abide…and down the road, perhaps, another poem will rise for Mr. Sicilia, as it has for me….
I greet the day gladly.
Portland, Oregon—
Grief-stricken Mexican poet Javier Sicilia read a poem dedicated to his murdered son last Saturday, and then declared that this would be his last, that “Poetry does not exist in me anymore.”
I understand how he feels, find much in common, remember when the poetry died in my life…and how long it took to come back….
24-year-old Juan Francisco was found in an abandoned car along with six other bodies, their heads, faces, hands and feet bound with tape, suffocated to death under that tape, among the latest victims in the ongoing war that has its foundation in American demand for drugs and the many billions of dollars U.S. citizens are willing to export in order to feed their habits.
These seven are believed to be innocent, “collateral damage” in the incessant violence between the gangs, the cartels, for control of the smuggling routes, and the Mexican government, the battle for the soul of Mexico itself “so far from God, so close to the United States”….
More than 35,000 people have been murdered in Mexico in just the last five years, most often with guns supplied by U.S. gun dealers, and by criminal enterprises nearly entirely funded with U.S. dollars, smuggled back across the border or transferred electronically to offshore tax havens by corrupt American banking officials.
And now there is Mr. Sicilia’s last poem:
El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra
Nos la ahogaron adentro
Como te (asfixiaron),
Como te
desgarraron a ti los pulmones
Y el dolor no se me aparta
sólo queda un mundo
Por el silencio de los justos
Sólo por tu silencio y por mi silencio, Juanelo.
El mundo ya no es digno de la palabra, es mi último poema, no puedo escribir más poesía...la poesía ya no existe en mi.
The world is no longer worthy of the word
They suffocated it inside us
Like you (they asphyxiated)
Like you
they slashed your lungs
And pain won’t cleave from me
only a world is left
By the silence of the just
Only by your silence and by my silence, Juanelo.
The world is no longer worthy of the word—is my last poem, I can’t write any more poetry...poetry no longer exists in me. (Javier Sicilia)
I understand the grieving poet’s sentiments so well…nearly fifteen years went by following the loss of my children in a Mormon abduction…and more than five years passed after the death of my son Aaron, a death preventable had he received medical care of minimal competence…before I could find my way to the poetry, to the lyrics, to the music once again….
No one knows how long these things take….
No one knows how much time will pass before Mr. Sicilia finds the poetry in his soul once again….
A year ago, I would have been among the first to say, “Never…it will never exist in me again”….
But today I taste the bittersweetness of life with purpose and compassion…I hear songs, melodies, feel the pulse of the drumbeat in my heart…lyrics close to the surface, where tears used to abide…and down the road, perhaps, another poem will rise for Mr. Sicilia, as it has for me….
I greet the day gladly.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
On counting coup on a kidnapper
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—I used to own a .357 magnum revolver, but not long after my children disappeared in what I had come to learn was a Mormon abduction, I gave the weapon away to my brother, lest I be tempted to use it, either on myself while in the depths of hopelessness and despair, or on one or more of the people responsible for the crimes they were inflicting on my children and my family.
I have never regretted this decision.
As weeks turned into months turned into years, fighting through four jurisdictions in three states, with my children’s kidnappers enjoying safe harbor in theocratic Utah and my children suffering terrible abuse, I had many opportunities to think about this single fact.
There were many long, strongly magnetic moments when the grief and pain were unendurable, and I might have found a solution in that holster long ago had it still been in my possession.
And there were many sharp hours of contemplation, my anger grown cold, considering what events might take place should I decide to go out and impose a form of frontier justice on the criminals who were most responsible for the abduction and the subsequent abuse of my children, none of whom was my former wife.
These persons were Mormon zealots Kory Wright and Steve Nielson and my former brother in law Tony Micheletti, and I contemplated this Trifecta for years, but took no action other than to continue to fight through an indifferent and ineffective legal system, compromised by Mormon cronyism and the paranoid, self-absorbed and delusional mindset that is the foundation of that religion.
Outside of these moments, these hours of weakness and vengefulness, I held to my core integrity, passed down to me from my late parents and grandparents, and it was in those reflections that I found the strength to act honorably, and to work to make something good and lasting result from these terrible crimes.
In 2003, I had the great good fortune to be offered an opportunity to work for Oregon State Senator Avel Louise Gordly, a transformational and widely respected leader known as “the conscience of the Senate”, and it was in that year that we began work on legislation addressing the issue of children abducted by family members and persons into whose care the children had been entrusted.
I have written elsewhere and in depth regarding the history of that legislation, the Senate Task Force on Parental and Family Abduction, the death of my son Aaron Cruz, and the passage of Senate Bill 1041 in 2005, known as “Aaron’s Law” in his honor, and will not repeat it here, other than to make these points:
Aaron’s Law is designed to address the failures of both the family law and criminal law systems in preventing and resolving child abductions that involve known perpetrators, a crime that continues to take place at the rate of more than 200,000 cases each year.
An abduction is a continuing crime, an offense that has a beginning but no real end, a fact in conflict with the reality that law enforcement and the courts take little interest in these cases, hence the large annual numbers.
I am often contacted by parents whose child or children have been taken into concealment by the other parent, looking for advice, running out of hope. Their painful stories all have points in common with mine: law enforcement is apologetic but does not act; they cannot find a lawyer who is willing to listen; when and if they do get before a judge, the judge is indifferent, even judgmental; every avenue burns up precious time, time scalding hot, in weeks and months, and yet there is a child missing….
This adds up to more than 200,000 cases of child abduction a year, every year….
Several years ago, I became aware that Kory Wright, after having concealed my children in his home in Utah, their first stop in Mormon Country, had moved into the Portland area, and was employed at Columbia Ultimate across the river in Vancouver, where his ugly, criminal face was displayed on the company website.
Without Kory Wright, the abduction of my children would not have taken place. Senate Bill 1041 was deliberately written with his actions in mind, criminal acts that Aaron’s Law is designed to prevent, and here he was, having suffered no consequences for his crimes….
I chose October 6, 2009 as A Good Day to Die….
In the days and weeks leading up to the day, I reflected on all that had taken place, thought about a wide range of options, a very wide range….
President Bush had recently been pelted with an Iraqi journalists’ shoes, and I thought of that option, too, the night before the day…but tossing my shoes at Kory Wright would have been poorly understood in American culture….
I decided to count coup, to count coup with a copy of Aaron’s Law, written for Kory Wright and for people like him, as the honorable course…only one criminal in this confrontation…a non-violent but pointed confrontation….
I began the dialogue, in the lobby of the Hilton Hotel, with this statement: “My name is Sean Cruz. You kidnapped my children, motherfucker.”
An abduction is a continuing crime, and a criminal is responsible for all the damage that ensues from his or her criminal act….
Many a grieved parent would have brought a weapon, would have made the news for a couple of days, maybe…I brought the law instead, Aaron’s Law….
Here is the series of essays that described the incident and the ensuing trial (note that the “slap” was a rhetorical slap, not physical; the rhetoric created some confusion at trial):
Sean Cruz confronts man who kidnapped his children
Kidnapper confrontation earns commendation from judge
Not guilty!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Report to the Oregon Senate on Parental and Family Abductions
Report of the Oregon Senate Interim Task Force
on
Parental and Family Abductions
To: The Honorable Peter Courtney, President, Oregon State Senate
From: The Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions
The Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions (“The Task Force”), chaired by Senators Gordly and Morse is pleased to report to the President of the Oregon State Senate, the Honorable Peter Courtney, that it has completed its assigned task of reviewing the current state of Oregon law as it relates to the serious problem of parents abducting their own children in order to negate the lawful orders of Oregon courts regarding child custody and parental visitation rights. We have enclosed a list of the members of your Task Force, with biographies, and labeled it attachment “A.”
Since June of this year, The Task Force has conducted four hearings and during these hearings has taken testimony from witnesses concerning the extent of the problem, reviewed current federal and state law, reviewed current state policy, reviewed and debated possible changes to state policy and law and has made recommendations concerning changes to this policy and law.
Furthermore, The Task Force finds that often parents involved in a divorce, or parents of children born out of wedlock who are involved in custody disputes, often take out their anger with each other through their children; some retain or flee with their children to ensure the access and control that has been denied them, or they fear will be denied them; others even abduct their own child in order to interfere with the other parent’s right to custody or parenting time.
We further find that this is extremely detrimental to the emotional and mental well being of the children, and at time may even put the life of the child in danger.
In order to lessen the incidence of parental abductions and to lessen the damage done to these children who are the victims of parental abductions, your Task Force has taken the following actions and makes the following recommendations:
1. We have asked that the Joint Interim Judiciary Committee introduce, on behalf of The Task Force, LC 847 and LC 858 and recommend their enactment into law. We have attached copies of each LC and labeled them attachments “B” and “C” respectively.
2. We recommend that the Commission on Children and Families continue to work with Take Root, King County, Washington, the Oregon mental health treatment community and the Oregon law enforcement community to develop a better understanding of the trauma victims of parental abduction suffer and how best to treat this trauma. And, as part of this process, develop with the Oregon State Bar a symposium for the legal community, the mental health treatment community and the law enforcement community.
3. We recommend that you, on behalf of The Task Force, encourage the Judicial Branch and the Oregon State Bar to assist in educating judges, prosecutors and family law practitioners concerning the problem of parental abduction, its impact on children, and the need to better understand and utilize current statutory provisions relating to the prosecution of the crime of custodial interference and the enforcement of parenting plans and orders.
4. We recommend that you, on behalf of The Task Force, inform the Oregon Congressional Delegation of our support of the Polly Klaas Foundation’s proposed federal legislation, “The Family Abduction Prevention Act of 2005.”
Legislative Recommendation 1
LC 847 would extend the statute of limitations for the crime of custodial interference in the first and second degree from four years to six years after the commission of the crime or, if the victim at the time of the crime was under 18 years of age, anytime before the victim attains 24 years of age or within six years after the offense is reported to a law enforcement agency or other governmental agency.
This would mean that the statute of limitations for custodial interference would be the same as it is currently for sex offenses. Your Task Force believes that the rationale for doing this is the same for the statute of limitations on sex crimes. A child who is removed from the lawful custody of one parent by another is a victim. That child is similarly situated to many underage victims of sex crimes. The perpetrator of the crime is the child’s parent. Too often, at the time of the offense, the victim is unaware that they have been abused or that they have a right to seek redress. LC 847 would give a person, who as a child was a victim of a parental abduction, the ability to seek prosecution when the person is an adult and better able to understand the ramifications of the abduction.
Legislative Recommendation 2
LC 858 amends the current definition of what is an “injury” within Oregon’s Victim’s Compensation Act to include the injury a child incurs when that child is the victim of custodial interference. Currently, the injury a child receives, when the child has been abducted by one of the child’s parents, does not necessarily include physical injury. The injury is more in the nature of mental trauma or mental injury. Nonetheless, the injury is real and may be even more long lasting and damaging than physical injury. LC 858 is intended to include this injury within
Oregon’s Victim Compensation Act so that children who have been abducted by their parent, in violation of Oregon’s custodial interference statutes, can be compensated.
Task Force member, and Executive Director of the Oregon Commission on Children and Families, Mickey Lansing, on behalf of The Task Force, met with the Board of Social Workers and the Board of Psychologists concerning the current training their respective professions receive regarding the treatment of victims of parental abduction. What she found was a general lack of awareness of the problem.
With the assistance of Task Force member Liss Hart-Haviv, of Take Root, an advocacy group for victims of parental abduction, Ms. Lansing contacted Take Root’s Law Enforcement Consultant, Officer David Barnard of the Missing Children’s Unit of the King County, Washington sheriff’s office. He described the King County program where a mental health provider accompanies sheriff’s deputies when retrieving a victim of a parental abduction. Ms. Lansing added that Take Root, as part of its program for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in King County, is developing a curriculum to train law enforcement and mental health workers and would share it with us.
Ms. Lansing stated that, although parental abduction was not within the Oregon Commission on Children and Families purview, she would continue to work with Ms. Hart-Haviv, the mental health treatment community, and the law enforcement community to develop a program similar to that which King County has developed. Ms. Lansing has volunteered to report back to the Co-Chairs of The Task Force, Senators Gordly and Morse concerning the progress of her
endeavors even after your Task Force has completed its work and gone out of existence.
We applaud her for her efforts and look forward to her report. Furthermore, we recommend that you, on behalf of The Task Force, encourage the appropriate Senate committee to receive this report during the 2005 legislative session.
Recommendation 3
The Task Force heard testimony from the Oregon Department of Justice and the Oregon State Police, Missing Children’s Clearinghouse on the Federal Parent Locator Service, a federally mandated program operated through the Oregon Department of Justice, Division of Child Support, that assists in locating missing children. The service is available for use by the courts and the law enforcement community.
The Department of Justice stated that it will promote greater awareness of the service through articles in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, a publication distributed to all judges and attorneys in Oregon. The department added that a similar article will appear in the Oregon District Attorney Association publication. The two agencies stated they will work together to educate law enforcement officers about the locator service.
At one point, The Task Force considered legislation that would have required that all local law enforcement agencies report missing children to The Oregon State Police, Missing Children’s Clearinghouse. However, after the State Police and the Department of Justice met and discussed the issue, they determined that the State Police could obtain this information by an administrative process that will automatically notify the Missing Children’s Clearinghouse of all reports of missing children made by state, county and local law enforcement agencies.
Consequently, The Task Force decided this legislation is not needed (Seven years later, the State Police has not kept its promise to the Task Force).
The Task Force heard testimony that one of the leading causes of parental abduction is the failure to enforce parenting time orders and agreements. Some parents take children to ensure the access and control they feel they are entitled to pursuant to their parenting plan that, in their opinion, is not being enforced.
The Task Force considered a legislative proposal pertaining to judicial authority to enforce parenting time orders and agreements. However, after reviewing existing legal remedies, The Task Force is of the opinion that current law is adequate to address failures of parents to abide by parenting agreements.
In particular, The Task Force is of the opinion that parental abduction, by either the custodial or non-custodial parent, may constitute “immediate danger” to the child and warrants a change of custody pursuant to ORS 107.097 or ORS 107.139.
What is lacking is an understanding of how current legal remedies can be used to more thoroughly enforce parenting plans and orders. In order to rectify this, The Task Force asks you to communicate with the Judicial Branch, the Oregon State Bar and the Oregon District Attorneys Association on the need to make judges, prosecutors and family law practitioners aware of existing remedies and the need to enforce these provisions.
Furthermore, we suggest that the Oregon State Bar be encouraged to develop, in conjunction with the mental health treatment community and The Commission on Children and Families, a symposium on the legal and mental health aspects for the prevention of parental abduction and the treatment of its victims. To assist you in this endeavor, we have attached a draft letter to the State Court Administrator, Kingsley Click, and to the Executive Director of the Oregon State Bar, Karen Garst.
Recommendation 4
The Polly Klaas Foundation is a national nonprofit corporation that is dedicated to finding missing children and helping to prevent them from being missing in the first place. It accomplishes its goals by promoting public policies, educating the public, and providing families, law enforcement and communities with the ongoing support and expertise needed to protect our children. Since its founding in 1993, The Foundation has helped more than 4,500 families find missing children.
The Polly Klaas Foundation will reintroduce before Congress, “The Family Abduction Prevention Act of 2005.” This bill was developed in consultation with Take Root and would fund grants to states for programs that:
(1) Extradite individuals suspected of committing a family abduction back to the state from which the child was taken;
(2) Investigate family abduction cases;
(3) Train state and local law enforcement agencies in responding to family abductions and recovering abducted children, including the development of written guidelines and technical assistance;
(4) Conduct outreach and media campaigns to educate parents on the dangers of family abductions; and
(5) Flag school records.
The Task Force urges you, on behalf of The Task Force, to inform the Oregon Congressional Delegation of our support of this legislation.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, in 1999 an estimated 203,900 children were victims of family abductions with 20 percent of the abductions involving more than one perpetrator.
Although there are no numbers for Oregon regarding parental abductions, The Task Force is of the opinion that the rate of parental abductions in Oregon mirrors the rate for the country. In other words, there appear to be at least 5,000 parental abductions in Oregon every year.
These abductions are illegal; they cause a tremendous amount of grief and anxiety for the parent or guardian with legal custody, and they cause immeasurable damage, both psychological and sometimes physical, to the abducted child.
We hope, Mr. President, that your Task Force has not only made you more aware of this very much-ignored problem, but has made others also aware. We believe that your Task Force can confidently say that, through its efforts, those responsible for tracking missing children have developed a more efficient process for doing so. We hope that you will ensure that the legislation we are proposing is given due consideration during the 2005 legislative session, and
we urge you to communicate with the Oregon State Bar and the State Court Administrator’s Office to urge them to inform their respective constituencies regarding parental abduction.
Finally, we, once again, urge you to inform our Congressional Delegation of the need to enact “The Family Abduction Prevention Act of 2005.”
Date: December 2004
on
Parental and Family Abductions
To: The Honorable Peter Courtney, President, Oregon State Senate
From: The Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions
The Senate Interim Task Force on Parental and Family Abductions (“The Task Force”), chaired by Senators Gordly and Morse is pleased to report to the President of the Oregon State Senate, the Honorable Peter Courtney, that it has completed its assigned task of reviewing the current state of Oregon law as it relates to the serious problem of parents abducting their own children in order to negate the lawful orders of Oregon courts regarding child custody and parental visitation rights. We have enclosed a list of the members of your Task Force, with biographies, and labeled it attachment “A.”
Since June of this year, The Task Force has conducted four hearings and during these hearings has taken testimony from witnesses concerning the extent of the problem, reviewed current federal and state law, reviewed current state policy, reviewed and debated possible changes to state policy and law and has made recommendations concerning changes to this policy and law.
Furthermore, The Task Force finds that often parents involved in a divorce, or parents of children born out of wedlock who are involved in custody disputes, often take out their anger with each other through their children; some retain or flee with their children to ensure the access and control that has been denied them, or they fear will be denied them; others even abduct their own child in order to interfere with the other parent’s right to custody or parenting time.
We further find that this is extremely detrimental to the emotional and mental well being of the children, and at time may even put the life of the child in danger.
In order to lessen the incidence of parental abductions and to lessen the damage done to these children who are the victims of parental abductions, your Task Force has taken the following actions and makes the following recommendations:
1. We have asked that the Joint Interim Judiciary Committee introduce, on behalf of The Task Force, LC 847 and LC 858 and recommend their enactment into law. We have attached copies of each LC and labeled them attachments “B” and “C” respectively.
2. We recommend that the Commission on Children and Families continue to work with Take Root, King County, Washington, the Oregon mental health treatment community and the Oregon law enforcement community to develop a better understanding of the trauma victims of parental abduction suffer and how best to treat this trauma. And, as part of this process, develop with the Oregon State Bar a symposium for the legal community, the mental health treatment community and the law enforcement community.
3. We recommend that you, on behalf of The Task Force, encourage the Judicial Branch and the Oregon State Bar to assist in educating judges, prosecutors and family law practitioners concerning the problem of parental abduction, its impact on children, and the need to better understand and utilize current statutory provisions relating to the prosecution of the crime of custodial interference and the enforcement of parenting plans and orders.
4. We recommend that you, on behalf of The Task Force, inform the Oregon Congressional Delegation of our support of the Polly Klaas Foundation’s proposed federal legislation, “The Family Abduction Prevention Act of 2005.”
Legislative Recommendation 1
LC 847 would extend the statute of limitations for the crime of custodial interference in the first and second degree from four years to six years after the commission of the crime or, if the victim at the time of the crime was under 18 years of age, anytime before the victim attains 24 years of age or within six years after the offense is reported to a law enforcement agency or other governmental agency.
This would mean that the statute of limitations for custodial interference would be the same as it is currently for sex offenses. Your Task Force believes that the rationale for doing this is the same for the statute of limitations on sex crimes. A child who is removed from the lawful custody of one parent by another is a victim. That child is similarly situated to many underage victims of sex crimes. The perpetrator of the crime is the child’s parent. Too often, at the time of the offense, the victim is unaware that they have been abused or that they have a right to seek redress. LC 847 would give a person, who as a child was a victim of a parental abduction, the ability to seek prosecution when the person is an adult and better able to understand the ramifications of the abduction.
Legislative Recommendation 2
LC 858 amends the current definition of what is an “injury” within Oregon’s Victim’s Compensation Act to include the injury a child incurs when that child is the victim of custodial interference. Currently, the injury a child receives, when the child has been abducted by one of the child’s parents, does not necessarily include physical injury. The injury is more in the nature of mental trauma or mental injury. Nonetheless, the injury is real and may be even more long lasting and damaging than physical injury. LC 858 is intended to include this injury within
Oregon’s Victim Compensation Act so that children who have been abducted by their parent, in violation of Oregon’s custodial interference statutes, can be compensated.
Task Force member, and Executive Director of the Oregon Commission on Children and Families, Mickey Lansing, on behalf of The Task Force, met with the Board of Social Workers and the Board of Psychologists concerning the current training their respective professions receive regarding the treatment of victims of parental abduction. What she found was a general lack of awareness of the problem.
With the assistance of Task Force member Liss Hart-Haviv, of Take Root, an advocacy group for victims of parental abduction, Ms. Lansing contacted Take Root’s Law Enforcement Consultant, Officer David Barnard of the Missing Children’s Unit of the King County, Washington sheriff’s office. He described the King County program where a mental health provider accompanies sheriff’s deputies when retrieving a victim of a parental abduction. Ms. Lansing added that Take Root, as part of its program for the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in King County, is developing a curriculum to train law enforcement and mental health workers and would share it with us.
Ms. Lansing stated that, although parental abduction was not within the Oregon Commission on Children and Families purview, she would continue to work with Ms. Hart-Haviv, the mental health treatment community, and the law enforcement community to develop a program similar to that which King County has developed. Ms. Lansing has volunteered to report back to the Co-Chairs of The Task Force, Senators Gordly and Morse concerning the progress of her
endeavors even after your Task Force has completed its work and gone out of existence.
We applaud her for her efforts and look forward to her report. Furthermore, we recommend that you, on behalf of The Task Force, encourage the appropriate Senate committee to receive this report during the 2005 legislative session.
Recommendation 3
The Task Force heard testimony from the Oregon Department of Justice and the Oregon State Police, Missing Children’s Clearinghouse on the Federal Parent Locator Service, a federally mandated program operated through the Oregon Department of Justice, Division of Child Support, that assists in locating missing children. The service is available for use by the courts and the law enforcement community.
The Department of Justice stated that it will promote greater awareness of the service through articles in the Oregon State Bar Bulletin, a publication distributed to all judges and attorneys in Oregon. The department added that a similar article will appear in the Oregon District Attorney Association publication. The two agencies stated they will work together to educate law enforcement officers about the locator service.
At one point, The Task Force considered legislation that would have required that all local law enforcement agencies report missing children to The Oregon State Police, Missing Children’s Clearinghouse. However, after the State Police and the Department of Justice met and discussed the issue, they determined that the State Police could obtain this information by an administrative process that will automatically notify the Missing Children’s Clearinghouse of all reports of missing children made by state, county and local law enforcement agencies.
Consequently, The Task Force decided this legislation is not needed (Seven years later, the State Police has not kept its promise to the Task Force).
The Task Force heard testimony that one of the leading causes of parental abduction is the failure to enforce parenting time orders and agreements. Some parents take children to ensure the access and control they feel they are entitled to pursuant to their parenting plan that, in their opinion, is not being enforced.
The Task Force considered a legislative proposal pertaining to judicial authority to enforce parenting time orders and agreements. However, after reviewing existing legal remedies, The Task Force is of the opinion that current law is adequate to address failures of parents to abide by parenting agreements.
In particular, The Task Force is of the opinion that parental abduction, by either the custodial or non-custodial parent, may constitute “immediate danger” to the child and warrants a change of custody pursuant to ORS 107.097 or ORS 107.139.
What is lacking is an understanding of how current legal remedies can be used to more thoroughly enforce parenting plans and orders. In order to rectify this, The Task Force asks you to communicate with the Judicial Branch, the Oregon State Bar and the Oregon District Attorneys Association on the need to make judges, prosecutors and family law practitioners aware of existing remedies and the need to enforce these provisions.
Furthermore, we suggest that the Oregon State Bar be encouraged to develop, in conjunction with the mental health treatment community and The Commission on Children and Families, a symposium on the legal and mental health aspects for the prevention of parental abduction and the treatment of its victims. To assist you in this endeavor, we have attached a draft letter to the State Court Administrator, Kingsley Click, and to the Executive Director of the Oregon State Bar, Karen Garst.
Recommendation 4
The Polly Klaas Foundation is a national nonprofit corporation that is dedicated to finding missing children and helping to prevent them from being missing in the first place. It accomplishes its goals by promoting public policies, educating the public, and providing families, law enforcement and communities with the ongoing support and expertise needed to protect our children. Since its founding in 1993, The Foundation has helped more than 4,500 families find missing children.
The Polly Klaas Foundation will reintroduce before Congress, “The Family Abduction Prevention Act of 2005.” This bill was developed in consultation with Take Root and would fund grants to states for programs that:
(1) Extradite individuals suspected of committing a family abduction back to the state from which the child was taken;
(2) Investigate family abduction cases;
(3) Train state and local law enforcement agencies in responding to family abductions and recovering abducted children, including the development of written guidelines and technical assistance;
(4) Conduct outreach and media campaigns to educate parents on the dangers of family abductions; and
(5) Flag school records.
The Task Force urges you, on behalf of The Task Force, to inform the Oregon Congressional Delegation of our support of this legislation.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, in 1999 an estimated 203,900 children were victims of family abductions with 20 percent of the abductions involving more than one perpetrator.
Although there are no numbers for Oregon regarding parental abductions, The Task Force is of the opinion that the rate of parental abductions in Oregon mirrors the rate for the country. In other words, there appear to be at least 5,000 parental abductions in Oregon every year.
These abductions are illegal; they cause a tremendous amount of grief and anxiety for the parent or guardian with legal custody, and they cause immeasurable damage, both psychological and sometimes physical, to the abducted child.
We hope, Mr. President, that your Task Force has not only made you more aware of this very much-ignored problem, but has made others also aware. We believe that your Task Force can confidently say that, through its efforts, those responsible for tracking missing children have developed a more efficient process for doing so. We hope that you will ensure that the legislation we are proposing is given due consideration during the 2005 legislative session, and
we urge you to communicate with the Oregon State Bar and the State Court Administrator’s Office to urge them to inform their respective constituencies regarding parental abduction.
Finally, we, once again, urge you to inform our Congressional Delegation of the need to enact “The Family Abduction Prevention Act of 2005.”
Date: December 2004
Monday, December 6, 2010
The last days of Aaron Cruz: Interlude 1: Quality Time
By Sean Cruz
Portland, Oregon—
Anyone with a large family would know how difficult it is to have quality time alone with each of your children separately, times when it is just the two of you and the time and experience together is genuinely “quality” time for everyone.
As a divorced single parent with two boys and two girls and an order for joint custody, time with my children was always at a premium, and how to satisfy each of their differing interests, wants and needs simultaneously always a balancing act as the months and years went by.
Aaron created a way for him and me to share some regular quality time together, and he made it happen on his own initiative during the year before he and my other children disappeared into Utah.
During the school year, the joint custody order stated that the children would reside with me immediately after school on Fridays and through the weekends at varying lengths.
Every Friday, after picking up my children, we would stop at a grocery store on the way home, so each of the kids could have input into what foods we would have for meals and snacks during our time together. The kids and I would negotiate our preferences as we walked through the store so that everyone left happy about something.
This is how grocery shopping became part of our quality time together as a family, except for my mom, who was housebound from her chronic illnesses. I was my mother’s sole caregiver in those days.
Aaron hungered for something more than food, however. He hungered for more time with me, just the two of us, and he developed a plan to carve that time out every Friday. I was skeptical at first, but he worked his plan to perfection.
He found out what each of his sisters and his brother wanted from the store, and he asked them for backups if their first choices weren’t available. Aaron put a lot of effort into his interviews with his siblings, because he wanted to eliminate each of their desires to go shopping with us, this week and every week.
These could be very complex arrangements, fascinating to listen to their negotiations, how they planned their snacks, with much bartering and swapping and sharing after the grocery run.
Under his system, Aaron and I would drop the other kids at home with my mother, where Natalia and Tyler would generally make a beeline for the video games and Allie would play with my mom’s dachshund Sox, and all of the kids together would provide love and companionship for their grandmother, and he and I would make our grocery run for my family, for our family. Everyone was content at the very same time.
Our last grocery run together was Saturday, February 10, 1996. Aaron, Natalia, Tyler and Allie disappeared two days later, on their way to the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright in a remote area in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, I would later learn. This was the first place that my children were concealed.
I think about Aaron every time I set foot in a grocery store, ever since those days we were together as a family.
I miss his companionship and how he would explain to me in exquisite detail what item was for which child as he placed things into our shopping cart.
I could enjoy this time with Aaron free of anxiety for the other kids and for my mom, because they were home together and they were all safe. I would hold off shopping for myself until Fridays, so I could go with Aaron. I also hungered for that time.
Aaron would distribute the snacks and treats to the other kids when we got back to the house, and there was never a disappointed word.
All was good under the sun, dependably good, every Friday afternoon, without fail. I still have the grocery receipts.
When I recovered Aaron from the abduction in 2003, he was too ill to go shopping, and then he was ordered to return to Utah for deployment to Iraq, and then he became more ill there in Payson, and then came his Last Days.
To this day, I never enter a grocery store without thinking of Aaron, without feeling his absence, without remembering that last day that my family was safe, together and at home.
And then the Mormons entered the picture, and with them an abduction and a program….
Portland, Oregon—
Anyone with a large family would know how difficult it is to have quality time alone with each of your children separately, times when it is just the two of you and the time and experience together is genuinely “quality” time for everyone.
As a divorced single parent with two boys and two girls and an order for joint custody, time with my children was always at a premium, and how to satisfy each of their differing interests, wants and needs simultaneously always a balancing act as the months and years went by.
Aaron created a way for him and me to share some regular quality time together, and he made it happen on his own initiative during the year before he and my other children disappeared into Utah.
During the school year, the joint custody order stated that the children would reside with me immediately after school on Fridays and through the weekends at varying lengths.
Every Friday, after picking up my children, we would stop at a grocery store on the way home, so each of the kids could have input into what foods we would have for meals and snacks during our time together. The kids and I would negotiate our preferences as we walked through the store so that everyone left happy about something.
This is how grocery shopping became part of our quality time together as a family, except for my mom, who was housebound from her chronic illnesses. I was my mother’s sole caregiver in those days.
Aaron hungered for something more than food, however. He hungered for more time with me, just the two of us, and he developed a plan to carve that time out every Friday. I was skeptical at first, but he worked his plan to perfection.
He found out what each of his sisters and his brother wanted from the store, and he asked them for backups if their first choices weren’t available. Aaron put a lot of effort into his interviews with his siblings, because he wanted to eliminate each of their desires to go shopping with us, this week and every week.
These could be very complex arrangements, fascinating to listen to their negotiations, how they planned their snacks, with much bartering and swapping and sharing after the grocery run.
Under his system, Aaron and I would drop the other kids at home with my mother, where Natalia and Tyler would generally make a beeline for the video games and Allie would play with my mom’s dachshund Sox, and all of the kids together would provide love and companionship for their grandmother, and he and I would make our grocery run for my family, for our family. Everyone was content at the very same time.
Our last grocery run together was Saturday, February 10, 1996. Aaron, Natalia, Tyler and Allie disappeared two days later, on their way to the home of Mormon zealots Chris and Kory Wright in a remote area in the mountains east of Ogden, Utah, I would later learn. This was the first place that my children were concealed.
I think about Aaron every time I set foot in a grocery store, ever since those days we were together as a family.
I miss his companionship and how he would explain to me in exquisite detail what item was for which child as he placed things into our shopping cart.
I could enjoy this time with Aaron free of anxiety for the other kids and for my mom, because they were home together and they were all safe. I would hold off shopping for myself until Fridays, so I could go with Aaron. I also hungered for that time.
Aaron would distribute the snacks and treats to the other kids when we got back to the house, and there was never a disappointed word.
All was good under the sun, dependably good, every Friday afternoon, without fail. I still have the grocery receipts.
When I recovered Aaron from the abduction in 2003, he was too ill to go shopping, and then he was ordered to return to Utah for deployment to Iraq, and then he became more ill there in Payson, and then came his Last Days.
To this day, I never enter a grocery store without thinking of Aaron, without feeling his absence, without remembering that last day that my family was safe, together and at home.
And then the Mormons entered the picture, and with them an abduction and a program….
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