A Survival of Parental Abduction

Do parents realize at all what they are putting their child through when they decide to abduct a child from a custodial parent? I think not because if they did, if they are any kind of a parent, I don't believe they would subject a young one to the trauma that is caused.

Reports show that the majority of children that are abducted, kidnapped, by a parent are the product of divorced parents. Many times parents will do this thinking they are doing what is best for the child, with good intentions. Other times they are merely trying to hurt or get back at the other parent.

I could set here and give you a long list of statistic and hope you may walk away from this with some knowledge but I'm not going to. What I am about to do is tell you my true story, my experience, and let you decide is parental abduction the best thing for a child.

It was the early 60s after my parents being divorced for several years. I don't remember seeing my father much except for maybe Christmas and my birthday when he would bring a present by my mother's house. He was basically a stranger to me and although I did recognize him as my father I didn't know him.

When my mother was unable to care for me the court decided that I should live with an aunt who lived in the same town as most of my family; sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. People I had been around all my life on a regular basis. I was only 7 or so at the time so my facts and memories are a bit vague but I do remember some.

I remember being at my paternal grandmother's house and my entire father's family being there. I remember being in the back seat of an uncle's car with his wife, my father, and my step-mother I don't remember ever meeting. I remember one of the adults saying, "We have to hurry up and get across the line." I was being abducted by my father and it was the Michigan state line that they needed to cross.

I remember huge smoke stacks and enormous boats. I remember tall buildings and an airport with planes bigger than I had ever seen. We were in Chicago and before I knew it we were on one of those airplanes. I had the cloths on my back and my raggedy Ann doll I'd gotten for Christmas the year before. When the plane landed there were the strangest looking trees I'd ever seen lining the roads, there wasn't anything like that in Michigan. We were in California.

I remember sleepless nights in a strange bed, a strange house, with strange people. They ate food I'd never seen before and bought me new cloths that were very nice but they weren't mine. I remember asking when I could go home and see me cousins and I was told, "This is your home now". I cried, I cried a lot. My step-mother, who I called 'Mommy', was very nice to me but she was still a stranger and I wanted to go home.

I was a sickly child, I guess my natural mother wasn't a very good mother but I loved spending time with my cousins and my grandparents. 'Mommy' was there for me, healing my skinned knees, teaching me good manners, and all the wonderful things a mother should do. My father was NOT a good person. He drank, yelled, beat, and abused for the next 10 years of my life.

I didn't see any of my 'family' for many years. We moved a lot and I didn't bother making friends much because we would just move again. I had some good times during those years but the truth is underneath, in the back of my mind, I always felt I didn't belong. Almost nightly I had dreams of smoke stacks and airplanes, of my cousins playing on the farm of my grandmother letting me play beauty shop with her curlers and make-up.

Even now, 40 some years later, there are still nights I wake up crying after hearing voices in my sleep, "we have to get across the line". Yes, I survived parental abduction but there are still scares on my heart from the experience. I couldn't bring myself to title this story "Survivor of Parental Abduction" because I don't feel that I have survived it - it is a continuing experience of survival.