Englishmum

What a difficult situation ensues when a relationship breaks down and a parent flees back to the home country with their child/children:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...ition-U-S.html

Unfortunately the mother was in the wrong if she took a child overseas without the father's permission or permission of the Courts. Both the UK and US are signatories to the Hague Convention which means that a child must be returned to their usual place of abode.

JAJ

So-called Hague Convention concerns civil matters, not criminal.
http://www.hcch.net/index_en.php?act...display&tid=21

And there is something wrong with a convention that can insist that a child be returned to Country X without an obligation on Country X to grant residence/citizenship to the child's parent.

Octang Frye

Damn right she was in the wrong.

And I have no sympathy for that Asperger's clown McKinnon.

The_English_Bride

What does a mother do in that situation? You come to America legally, have a baby, but then cannot stay in the country legally, so you have to leave your baby in the US? There should be some way for mothers to stay with the child or take the child with them (depending on the situation with the father).

Zonie

It used to be called taking responsibility for your actions.

What she didn't do was think very carefully before having a baby in a foreign country whilst on a temporay visa. She was 41 at the time not some innocent teenager. Also there is a second charge of obtaining money by deception.

Madelina

wow, i'm afraid my heart rules my head here... if that was me i'd have taken my child too - the alternative was to be forced to leave without her? noooooooo, fraid not. Not without one helluva fight.

Poor lady, its a shame she didnt have a sharp legal team back when she really needed one

Octang Frye

Doesn't the father have a right not to have his child abducted from him?

robin1234

According to the article in the Guardian, "Prosser moved to the US to work in 1990 and had a daughter, Tamara, with her then partner. Her visa was not renewed in 1995, and she was told she would have to return to the UK leaving her daughter behind with her former partner."

It's not clear (from the article in the Daily Mail & the one in the Guardian) what kind of visa she had at that time. It seems to me, though, that a parent should have a right to live in the same country as their young child, even if the parents have separated.

robin1234

I know you like to be provocative (& act the court jester) but you could try to show a bit of humanity.

Giantaxe

Then everyone would have a child in order to circumvent the expiration of temporary visas.

What she should have done is take the legal route back in '95 and petitioned a court to allow her to return to the UK legally with the child. Remember, the father has just as many rights as the mother, and simply disappearing with the child is unacceptable both morally and legally. According to the article, the child is now living in the US with the father, btw.

The actual extradition troubles me though. The UK/US treaty was amended by Blair to make it very one-sided to the US, which I think is outrageous.

Octang Frye

I am semi-serious. It's bullshiat that women think they can do whatever they want with regards to children. Men have equal rights.

I lost my job during the last recession in 2001. I nearly had to leave and faced the prospect of my son having to petition me in when he becomes 21.
I didn't think about abducting my kid. I just took a job halfway across the country - relocating in three days.

Bluegrass Lass

You got lucky then, that you found other employment. Without more info, it's very hard for us to understand what her immigration situation was; she may not have had that option. Also, we don't know the intricacies of her relationship with the child's father - perhaps she felt he was not good father material. I don't understand why the mother, especially if she is the child's primary care giver, does not have the right to bring her child back to her home country? Why should the US be given the top preference over the UK?

Anyways, I don't feel we have enough info from this article about why she did what she did.

Giantaxe

It wasn't. Because she abducted the child, she presumably never legally tested who should have custody. The Hague Convention would have then required that the child be returned to the correct jurisdiction (i.e. the US) and she was sol from that point on.

Of course, you are also assuming that the mother was the "primary care giver" and ignoring the fact that fathers have as many rights as mothers.

If that was the case, she should have produced evidence in court to that effect to bolster her case for getting custody.

JAJ

Have you actually read the Hague Convention? I often find that many people who pronounce confidently about this piece of law have never read it. It's not all that long or complicated.

There are a number of circumstances where a country is entitled under the Convention to refuse to return a child to another signatory. Notably Article 13:


Notwithstanding the provisions of the preceding Article, the judicial or administrative authority of the requested State is not bound to order the return of the child if the person, institution or other body which opposes its return establishes that -

a) the person, institution or other body having the care of the person of the child was not actually exercising the custody rights at the time of removal or retention, or had consented to or subsequently acquiesced in the removal or retention; or
b) there is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.

The judicial or administrative authority may also refuse to order the return of the child if it finds that the child objects to being returned and has attained an age and degree of maturity at which it is appropriate to take account of its views.

Would a situation where a parent was unable to get resident status in the other country qualify?

Giantaxe

I'm not a lawyer, but I'm hard pressed to think of a rationale for any of those clauses to form much of an argument. I guess you could construct a "psychological harm to child" argument, but even that seems a little stretched to me.

What we do know is that the child was returned to the US. Given the mother abducted the child, I somehow doubt that she willingly let the child go back (although, of course, it's possible). So most likely the Hague Convention did come into play, and the child ordered to be returned to the US.