Abducted!
Such an emotive word, abducted. It plucks at childhood memories of the dark Grimm’s fables; a world quite unlike Disney’s Hollywood version where Dad manages to jump back onto the speeding runaway train and with less than a minute to save the world, squanders 59 seconds of that time hugging you tightly and kissing Momma. In Grimm’s dire world you disappear forever to a land of trolls and talking trees.
Legally, ‘abducted’ implies that you have been ‘removed without permission’ from he or she with ‘parental responsibility’; invariably – for stranger abduction is stil a rarity despite the best attempts by scaremongering empire builders to imply otherwise – by that parent who wasn’t awarded ‘parental responsibility’. This all makes perfect sense to the legal world. A judge has spoken and his word must be obeyed.
How much sense does it make to a child, though?
Judges work to a model that believes that women are natural nurturers, and that unless there is some ‘compelling reason’ to think otherwise, it will always be in a child’s ‘best interests’ to be with their Mother. Straight away we have two immutable ‘givens’. One, that it is an ‘either/or’ situation – that does not take into account the wider family network. Two, that best interests can be decided by who has the better lawyer. There is a third too, that the decision taken in 2012 will still be the right decision in 2015.
This has all been thrown into stark relief for me by the joy with which the ‘return of abducted Atiya’ has been greeted by the media.
How much sense does it make to Atiya?
Atiya was three years old when she was ‘abducted’ by her Father. She is now six years old. You can wax lyrical about bonding in the womb and babies recognising the smell of their Mother – no doubt all true; however, for most of us, memories and awareness usually start at around three. For the past three years, disregarding entirely the legal situation, which matters not one jot to Atiya, she has been cared for and nurtured by her wider family in Pakistan. It is aunts, grand-mothers, cousins who have fed her, cuddled her, and to whom she turns when she falls and hurts herself.
She has had to be told who ‘is’ her Mother. She is ‘trying to communicate’ with this woman she has been told is ‘Mother’. Who speaks a different language from the one she has learned. Who cooks different food to the food she has learned to enjoy. Who tucks her up in a different bed. Who gives her different toys to play with.
If, at six years old, Atiya had been abducted by strangers, the media would have gone into emotive overdrive, explaining how affected she will be psychologically by the change in environment, food, language, toys, recognisable faces.
Instead, we have unbridled joy that British justice has been obeyed; a child ‘rescued’ from foreign lands; the omnipotence of the ‘Mother’ label reinforced.
How much sense does it make to Atiya?
I’m willing to stick my neck out and opine that this morning she feels more ‘abducted’ than ever – for now she is old enough to appreciate being dragged out of her ‘safe zone’. That, apparently, is in her ‘best interests’.
Is it? Or is it in the best interests of the British legal system, that which must be obeyed?
January 1, 2013 at 13:59
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Phew and that is is telling it straight SF mingster! I agree with Woman on
a raft. Definately not in the childs interest to leave her with strangers in a
completely strange land, with some social and religious customs relating to
women that are so different…stoning being the nastiest one. If the mother had
converted to Islam, even then it is sickening. Some of these relationships are
more convenience ones than a proper marriages. He then he returns to UK, lives
apart from her, and leaves his girl child back in a country that he has
deserted for the ‘goodies in UK. In the east of London mixed sham/convenience
marriages are very frequent, so friends tell us. It is very upsetting for
officials to suspect that these are convenience/sham marriages. When advice
giving in the past. I interviewed persons of both sexes caught up in scary
cases of abduction. The worst was an African marriage between lawyers that
went sour. A violent strangle that put him in prison, her in ITU for a near
killer assault (paper proof shown). On recovery she took their tiny baby to
relatives in Canada. After nearly being killed, she was told she had abducted
her own child (to safety). The near killer row was about him not being a
father to the child and threatening to kill it. She had run out of money, was
alone in a strange land, not able to go back to Zimbabwe. I have never seen
anyone so distressed and distraught. After a lot of research I found a probono
lawyer for her to consult later that day. So the abduction law is an ass
sometimes. She was told her near murderer husband had a right to a say in the
matter of where the child, he thought was not his, should be domiciled.
Arghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!
- December 30, 2012 at 21:42
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Two things: I’ve a pain in my arse hearing these bloody stories of these,
usually English white girls, shacking up with Tunisians or Iranians or
Pakistanis or from whatever bloody Islamic country, and yes it always seems to
be an Islamic country. Then they have kids with this Muslim man, then he skips
off back to his homeland “kidnapping” the child. How many of these stories
have to be aired before these loser, sink-estate hussies figure out that if
they chose a local lad, an English/Scottish/Welsh lad to have their child, and
daddy then does a runner with the kid, the furthest he can go is bloody the
Orkney Islands or Cornwall or Holyhead.
As for the article above, this line caught my attention:”For the past three
years, disregarding entirely the legal situation, which matters not one jot to
Atiya, she has been cared for and nurtured by her wider family in Pakistan. It
is aunts, grand-mothers, cousins who have fed her, cuddled her, and to whom
she turns when she falls and hurts herself.”
This wider family, if the stories emanating from the likes of Afghanistan,
Pakistan, Turkey etc are to believed, are also the ones that would stone her
to death were she to make the fatal error of “dishonouring” her family by
going out with a Christian, Jew or any other infidel. As bad as Old Blighty
is, this doesn’t happen in England outside of the Islamic populace.
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December 30, 2012 at 17:44
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She stands a better chance of not having her face burned off by acid,
because she “chooses the wrong boy friend” though, doesn’t she?
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December 30, 2012 at 11:28
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Single Acts of Tyranny
I accept that the social position of women and the attitude to them in
places like Pakistan and India are seriously in need of change. But I do not,
like you, feel the issue of where to reside is so clear cut… for reasons I
will not debate here.
I also do not know enough details about either of the parents and their
lives. It is not unusual for Asian parents to be concerned at bringing up
their girls in western culture, but of course wrong for one parent to abduct a
child living with the other.
But as with children wrongly removed from their birth parents and placed
for adoption I cannot see that the judiciary can apply a unique argument in
this child’s case, after so long a separation, with arguments that it does not
apply to parents who seek return of wrongly removed / adopted children.
I
think that best interests decisions therefore are far from what they should be
if made with rational and consistent judgements which take into account the
wishes and feelings of the person who is central to the case whenever
possible.
But your point about immigration from Pakistan to the UK is valid because
it is a poor country with political and social problems. This makes economic/
political migration to the UK attractive for many.
- December 29, 2012 at 22:52
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Keep prodding and carry on Anna. I admire the thoughtful and honest
responses to your provocations that make this blog so important for genuine
debate and consideration. Such a refreshing alternative to the b@!!0cks from
politicians, pardon my French.
- December 29, 2012 at 21:28
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Lots of wrongs in such cases and quite right the interests of the child
should come before ‘justice’ for either parent, however unfair it
seems.
But who is to determine what is in the best interest of the child,
and how?
Sure there are experts out there with studies of past cases to aid
their opinions, but humans are not as individuals very good at behaving as
expected.
On a personal basis, as a child in a so called broken family in
the late ’40s, I coped far better than my little sister. I do remember some
issues that could have been better handled, by all involved.
Having been in
a failed marriage many years ago, I can well understand the overwhelming
desire to take ones child. No excuses but its easy for the uninvolved to
preach about reasonable behaviour by the parents for the sake of the children,
but my memory of the passions involved are of a different reality.
Children
are, I think sometimes a lot better at getting on with their lives than some
of us self wounded parents.
Tin hat firmly on.
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December 29, 2012 at 23:19
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“But who is to determine what is in the best interest of the child,
and how?”
It’s pretty simple. Atiya Wilkinson is a British citizen (confirmed by
her mother’s MEP when he raised it with the Pakistani Foreign Minister) and
her habitual place of residence was in Britain under the care of her mother.
Nobody had suggested that the mother’s care was in any way a risk, but
even it if had been, it was by no means automatically assumed that the
father could remove the child from this jurisdiction. This would depend on
whether he was able to care for the child and if the local authority was
able to check his precise relationship to the child, and his relationship to
the mother.
It was always open to him to do this through the courts; instead, he
chose to abduct the child while taking advantage of the mother’s willingness
to allow him unsupervised access to the child. (It is interesting how he
managed to do that, considering the tightness of security now).
It was not in Atiya’s interests to be abducted. It was not in her
interests to be removed from her rightful national jurisdiction. It was not
in her interests to be kept away for three years and keeping her away for
longer will not make it become more right because it remains wrong for her
and not in her interests. Pakistan is not a substitute for England, and for
the proof of that I give you the millions hammering on the door to get in
and the persistence of Yasmin Alibhai Brown, who still doesn’t like the
place enough to actually go back there.
No doubt Atiya has become attached to some people but all of those were
also acting wrongly and not in her interests when they colluded in the
abduction. As Sajjad Karim made clear, this could have been cleared up three
years ago immediately after the abduction. Unfortunately, this is something
she will have to come to terms with and would have been spared that if her
father had not acted wrongly in the first place. It is comparable to other
victims of long-term abductions where the victims may become confused as to
the status of their jailers. The longer that situation is allowed to
persist, the worse difficulty the victims have in separating themselves from
the source of the abuse, which is often the purpose of the abuser.
There is nothing either morally or pragmatically ambiguous in this case.
A British child has been disadvantaged by abduction. It will not profit her
to allow that disadvantage to continue.
- December 30, 2012 at 10:02
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Exactly!
- December 30, 2012 at 10:24
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I think there is also the problem of precedent. If we say that a child
who has been kept away from any contact with the other parent (or the
other parent’s culture) for a certain length of time should be left with
the abductor’s family because to remove her would be disruptive to her
emotional health, doesn’t that tell potential future abductors that if
they can keep their child hidden for long enough they will ‘win’? Might
not doing the best thing for this particular child (if leaving her in
Pakistan would really be the best) be doing harm to other potential
abductees? How should we balance the welfare of one actual child against
the welfare of many other hypothetical children whose parents may be
encouraged or discouraged from taking them?
I don’t know enough about this particular case to comment on it. I
don’t know what conditions were like for her in Pakistan, whether she was
being brought up by loving, caring family or was being treateed as a
burden dumped on them by the father. I don’t know whether the father’s
main motivation was to remove her from a mother he thought would not look
after her properly or from a culture he thought would be a bad influence
on her, or whether it was (solely or mainly) to get back at the mother.
What it does not seem to have been was a wish for closer contact with his
daughter, as he apparently had good access to her here but much less once
he had sent her to another continent while (I think) continuing to live
mainly in the UK himself..
- December 29, 2012 at 21:06
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I’m not sure that we have enough data to make an informed comment. Was the
little girl’s birth the result of a stable relationship, or of a fling of some
sort? If the relationship broke down, for what reason? What reason did the
father have for taking his daughter to Pakistan? What conditions was the girl
living in in Pakistan? Are ‘cultural differences’ involved, or are the reasons
just those of human relationships souring? Whilst those discharging the
requirements of the justice system will wish to act for the best, are the laws
in their current form inadequate or inappropriate to the particular
circumstances of this case?
- December 29, 2012 at 20:51
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This is a sad case, and the landlady rightly points out that the interests
of the child have been subordinated to the interests of everybody else but
especially the courts representing as they do the “state”.
It should be no surprise then that the “state” that decides how much (if
any) health care you receive, what foods are good for you, how much alcohol
and nicotine you should consume, how many of your taxes should be donated
overseas, how you may protect yourself from attack (not at all), where you may
park, how much of your taxes will be wasted on ridiculous schemes for
renewable energy, how full your garbage can may be, etc. etc. believe they are
the one-and-true arbiters of a persons future happiness. Given the mess they
have made with what a marriage is, who may enter into marriage, how raising
children within a marriage puts a familty at a severe disadvantage to single
mothers one wonders why the judiciary and the state are consulted at all.
Except of course this is a jolly good wheeze where single mothers are funded
by the said “state” to employ lawyers who keep a multitude of court employees,
social “workers” and judges (all paid for by the state) busy in expensive
government buildings. Obviously yUK is not broke enough yet.
If this case represnts “justice” then I conclude that yUK could do with a
whole lot less “justice” or busybodying as it used to be termed in saner
times..
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December 29, 2012 at 19:43
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I don’t know enough about the case to offer any meaningful insight… except,
it appears this girl has/is being treated as nothing more than a thing or
chattel. The father clearly had no interest in what is best for his daughter,
merely removing her from his ex-(partner/wife) in an act of spite. And now we
have the UK courts returning that procession back to its rightful owner.
What’s sad is that the father, mother, courts and media forget that we’re
talking about a real life, walking, talking, human being.
- December 29, 2012 at 17:04
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Basically this case just boils down to a relationship failure, where one or
both of the parental parties inflict actions on a child as a proxy for their
own inabilities to resolve their split amicably.
There is a parallel in the recent case where a mother fought through the
senior courts to prevent her innocent, brain-tumour-suffering, young son from
being given the best treatment currently known to medical science, claiming
that all manner of eye-of-newt & wing-of-bat treatments should be tried
first. That case was nothing to do with the relative efficacies of treatment
options, it was just another method of public skirmish in the proxy war
between separated parents.
And then it’s left to the Justice system to try to devise some resolution,
often visibly failing on grounds of either basic fairness or child-benefit
balance, but generously lining the pockets of many wiggies on the way. Maybe
if the warring parents, just for once, took time out of their self-indulgent
sparring, they may be then able to arrive at resolutions which are genuinely
about the benefit of their child(ren) – a naive hope, I know – their own
personal post-split battle’s much too important for that.
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December 29, 2012 at 16:35
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Just saw this with some interesting statistics of children living with
parents in the UK
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/29/two-thirds-british-children-live-parents
The result of all the discord between couples with children, perhaps? Or
the result of state interventions?
- December 29, 2012 at 15:29
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It’s clear to me, but possibly not to everyone, that Anna has not ventured
an opinion.
She has merely pointed out that there are questions which ought
be asked.
Anna, is it me, or you delighting in provoking people these days?
Keep it up!
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December 29, 2012 at 15:01
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It seems to me that the usual extreme positions taken by the judiciary-
rights of parents versus rights of children has one missing ingredient that
seems to nearly always be missing- the feelings / emotions of the child with
regards to the ‘movement of child from one setting to another.
In real life the rights of parents and children might not necessarily to be
seen in opposition for those non abusing parents with children. Unwarranted
physical separation, not abduction necessarily by one loving parent, can lead
to life long emotional issues. Recent research has suggested that nearly 80%
of ‘adoption reunions’ with birth parent last many years, showing the
importance of ‘family roots’ to adopted children.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/dec/29/adoption-reunions-road-gets-bumpy
Those who become estranged from their parents still mostly have the choice
of this ‘knowing’ their roots.
Abductions are not to be sanctioned. But is this so different from the not
so uncommon ongoing discord between co-habiting couples where the children may
be ‘forced’ to take sides when one parent manipulates the situation to this
effect. Quite often children will develop a greater attachment to one parent
than another. It would be ridiculous, but no doubt in current Britain entirely
possible, for such couples to be unearthed and their children removed in the
children’s ‘best interests’, because these manipulations could escalate to one
parent spreading serious fabrications about the other partner to ‘all and
sundry’ and we have seen how the family courts deal with this.
In countries where the state does not interfere in family life unless a
crime is committed has anyone noted more or less psychologically damaged
children? I doubt there is less discord- human being being what they are.
- December 29, 2012 at 14:59
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I can relate somewhat to this situation as I have a young daughter born to
a foreign born wife…
If, for some reason my wife had decided, on her many trips back to her
native country, to leave our daughter there with her relatives, I would feel
exactly like the mother in this case… Helpless.
As I understand the facts of this case (and remain to be corrected, the
father took the girl out, stating he was taking her to Southport, but, in
fact, took her on an international flight to another country, then had the
unmitigated gall and cheek to come back to the UK and tell the child’s mother
what he had done and that she would never see her daughter again.
I have no idea what sort of mother this young woman is, much less what she
was doing engaging in a relationship with the father or what her relationship
consisted of, but the fact remains that whatever the legalities of this (and I
have hurt my brain enough this week, dredging up the in’s and out’s of
Contract law to apply it to child abduction) this was a nasty, spiteful and
morally wrong thing to do.
The father has compounded the misery he has subjected the mother to by
preferring to go to prison for several years rather than disclose where the
child is. He may have had parental responsibility for the child, acquiring it
at the birth of the child – as the rules on PR have changed but this does not
give him the absolute right to just remove the child from its home and
parachute it into a foreign country.
We are not advised if the little girl spoke the local language but now,as a
direct result of the actions of this most unreasonable man, she is ‘neither
fish nor fowl’, speaking a non-native tongue, living back with her mother, not
speaking English and probably thoroughly mixed up. If the man had wanted to
stay with the child I could have some sympathy but what he has done is,
basically, a c@*£$ trick.
I have no sympathy whatsoever with the father in this case. What right,
what motive did he have to take his daughter out of the country of her birth
and maroon her with complete strangers? I am sure they did their best to look
after the child but… what on earth did they think about the situation? Their
relative turns up with a young girl and asks them to look after her and they
don’t question the rights and wrongs of this? I just cannot see that any child
would be better off, educationally, intellectually, financially or any other
‘ally’ in Pakistan, so the father can hardly have thought that this was the
case. If it is such a great place, what is he doing here in the first place?
From what I have read and seen, it appears that girls are very much classed as
second class citizens in such countries, denied education, denied many of the
things that we take for granted here.
I cannot see that the father wished to place his daughter in an
advantageous position by his actions.
I had never thought that I would spend the last day or so of 2012
disagreeing with our learned host, but in this individual instance (and
perhaps because when my wife goes back to her native country for a couple of
months I always get a sickening feeling in my stomach, just in case, for some
inexplicable reason she had privately decided to do something similar) that I
cannot empathise with Ms. Racoon’s point of view, which is a great shame.
May I take the opportunity, however, to wish our host a Happy 2013 and wish
her and all the contributors to this establishment the best compliments of the
season.
- December 29, 2012 at
15:11
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Frankie,
Please don’t doubt my condemnation of the Father, nor my empathy with the
Mother’s loss.
I am merely looking at the situation now, from the point of view of the
child, not the rights or wrongs of the original act. It is a simple ‘Is it,
today, in this child’s best interests to be taken from everything that is
familiar and known to her, and plonk her down in unfamiliar surroundings’.
I quite agree that if, at the starting point, you said ‘would the child
be better off in Pakistan or the UK – you could make an argument for being
in the UK, on material grounds although you might lose out on the grounds of
being apart of a cohesive society.
Losing a child is a dreadful thing, a pain that never leaves you – but I
couldn’t give a monkey’s **** for the adult’s pain in this case…I’m asking
how it looks fromt he child’s point of view…
- December 30, 2012 at 18:56
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‘you could make an argument for being in the UK, on material grounds
although you might lose out on the grounds of being a part of a cohesive
society’. Unfortunately Pakistan is anything but a cohesive society. Its a
mess of a country, just waiting for the next outrageous assassination and
blighted by constant attacks on any notion of female equality. And if a
decision were to be taken to leave her in Pakistan then it would send out
a message to hundreds of other parents who might consider an international
parental abduction – ‘hide them for a few years and then it’s done, they
won’t have to go back’. I’m sure the courts are aware of the potential
risk in that regard and that’s why they jailed the father in the first
place.
- December 29, 2012 at 13:52
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If the child had been returned immediately after abduction, would that have
been alright? If the answer is yes, then is it the duration of the abduction
that matters. Take a child, keep it long enough so as to alienate it from the
other party and you can keep it? Does ‘right’ deteriorate with time?
- December 29, 2012 at
14:03
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Yes, it would have been ‘alright’. You are focussing on the rights of the
parents – ‘does right deteriorate with time’ – I am saying that a fresh
decision should have been made in line with the child’s rights, because the
child’s ‘best interests’ had changed with time.
- December 29, 2012 at 17:15
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Whilst I understand your views, I have to wonder if a six year old
girl’s rights are best protected in a village in East Pakistan?
- December 29, 2012 at
18:18
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A lot of children are no doubt raised in East Pakistan, whether their
rights are better protected there than in the UK is debatable no doubt.
The issue is whether she is happy, healthy and loved- wherever she
lives.
- December 29, 2012 at
22:04
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I was suggesting it is NOT in fact debatable, it is entirely clear.
A girl and latterly a woman’s rights are clearly, far and away better
protected in the UK than in Pakistan. To suggest otherwise is a very
difficult case to sustain.
So whilst there are serious and significant issues regarding
parental familiarity, the difficulty adjusting etc (all caused by the
criminal father), I suggest that by the time the child is say 21, her
probable life outcome and chance for freedom and self-determination is
significantly better in the UK than in Pakistan.
Out host makes a fair point about the coverage which is as ever,
tabloid, but considering all circumstances, I suspect she maybe better
off in the UK. Significant net Pakistani migration to the UK seems to
support this point.
Mrs SAoT is a muslim migrant to the UK from a neighbouring country
and pleasant though it is to visit, you wouldn’t want your child
brought up there.
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December 29, 2012 at 12:54
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Bang on the nail perceptive views Anna .
The lie and deceit of the judiciary remains that they make decisions in any
ones best interests. The are the ‘kings’ in a system of control and power.
The family courts readily agree adoption following removal from suspected
‘abusing’ parents. When said parents are later found to be innocent, the same
courts use the best interests notion, (indeed a moveable feast in the hands of
the most almighty powerful ones), to say the children cannot be returned to
birth mothers/father’s because they are settled into their new families and it
would be psychologically harmful / disruptive to return them.
The jobsworth
social services staff do not protest as might be expected if they had any real
knowledge / understanding of anything.
Yet in this case, where removing the child would be obviously harmful, we
hear no social services outcries about the psychological impact of this young
child’s removal not just from her birth father and relatives, but indeed from
another culture and country where she has grown to be ‘at home’
psychologically.
What the hell is going on in modern Britain that such duplicitous actions
are condoned?
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December 29, 2012 at 11:30
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Ignoring the emotive headlines of the newspapers, the courts multiple
sentences on the father tell the true story here. As far as the courts are
concerned it was not the abduction that was the ‘crime’ it was the contempt of
court by not revealing the whereabouts of the missing child. For this Atiya’s
father Razwan Ali Anjum has so far received four sentences (12-months,
2-years, 12-months and 12-months) and would have continued to be held
indefinitely until he had satisfied the court that he was not holding them in
contempt.
As far as the judiciary were concerned the welfare of the child was
irrelevant, they had passed judgement and that judgement would be enforced
should Mr. Anjum die in prison or the heavens fall. The arrogance of the
judiciary has to been seen to be believed.
- December 29, 2012 at
12:21
- December 29, 2012 at 17:13
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I was struck by that, it made me wonder why fraudsters can’t be held in
jail until all of the money they stole has been returned.
- December 29, 2012 at 11:23
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Well said. There is a problem here, but the media don’t need to address
it.
Good triumphs over Evil!
English person triumphs over
foreigner!
Mother, (vulnerable) triumphs over Father, (Men!)
The Law
triumphs over the disobedient!
Er, the child is uprooted. And her photograph published widely.
She’ll
be closely followed by the media, hoping that she turns out to be
dysfunctional in later life.
I dunno what’s right here. But neither the state nor the media cares.
Zaphod
- December 29, 2012 at
12:20
{ 30 comments }