23 YEARS AGO
TODAY!
Thank you all for
remembering this Day as it is so weird, 23 years ago seems like only yesterday. For I would have gone like most parents gone to
then ends of the earth to get my child back! What a day this was, a new
beginning of Jessica’s and my new norm: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIYolYfOhIM Sir Richard…
MAN PLEADED FOR
DAUGHTER’S SAFE RETURN!
Published:
Saturday January 07, 2006 in the the Edmonton Journal & Calgary Herald Newspapers.
Edmonton/Calgary
-- Racked by fear and sick with grief over his missing child, Richard
Abbenbroek made a pact with God: If he got Jessica back safely, he would become
a Christian and find a way to help other parents going through the same hell.
It's been 23
years since he got down and prayed for the return of his daughter, who is now 27.
Richard has kept his word -- he attends Centre Street Church in Calgary, he was
a Case Manager volunteer for Child Find Alberta and is currently a Volunteer of
the National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children's Team HOPE (Help
Offering Parents Empowerment). The NCMEC is the U.S.-based centre that was
co-founded by John Walsh of America's Most Wanted after the murder of his son
Adam.
Richard wanted
to make sure no one "would have to go through the horror the hard way,
like I did," after his former wife left their Calgary home, taking his
daughter and step-son with her.
He had been with
Jessica's mother and her young son for five years when she became pregnant.
They married a year after Jessica was born. Until then, their relationship
seemed happy and normal, he says.
Then his wife
became severely depressed and started drinking. His happy relationship
crumbled. She constantly threatened to leave, saying: "When I leave, you
will also never see your daughter again!"
On May 30, 1989,
Richard arrived home to find clothes, bedding, food, and other odd items
missing. Richard’s wife and the kids were gone. Richard felt the whole house
closing in on him.
Trying to
explain his feelings at this point, he says, “I just sat in the kitchen and
cried for myself and the kids, and the family. How could I explain this? Where
have they gone? Is this the end of the relationship? As I sat, tears fell like
rain, sobs loud, my head hurt. I couldn’t think; I only could cry. . .
I feel so
ashamed. Not for any-thing I did, but more for what I could not prevent.”
He searched the
house frantically for a note or some clue as to where they may have gone —
nothing. Richard’s wife had even taken the phone books, which listed the
numbers of friends and family. Once the initial shock had worn off, Richard was
able to recall a few of the numbers from memory. He discovered through mutual
friends that his wife and the kids were still in Calgary but were staying with
relatives.
Knowing it
wouldn’t do any good to try to convince her to come home, and not wanting to
cause further harm to the children, Richard applied for and received an interim
custody order for Jessica. He was devastated to learn that his wife had then,
taken the children to British Columbia. This rendered the order useless.
Richard’s wife must first be served before the order could be in effect.
How do you serve
someone you can’t find? The relatives were un-cooperative when Richard inquired
as to his wife’s whereabouts. He feared she would go to the United States,
making his search even more difficult. He had to act fast. Child Find B.C.
helped him file an interim custody order with the Supreme Court of British
Columbia.
Doing much of
the legwork himself, Richard constantly badgered the Calgary Police or any
Police, RCMP, county sheriffs and lawyers. The stress was so great, his weight
plunged from 240lbs to 150lbs. It was at that point he made his pact with God.
Richard said he
was appalled at the lack of aid and information available to parents in
abduction cases. Many of the agencies he dealt with were less than helpful;
some were totally unresponsive. One police officer even told him with a
straight face that he should be happy. "Since the old lady and kid were
gone, why not go have a beer?"
His case was
further complicated because he was a father looking for his daughter while
battling a common -- and sometimes misguided -- perception that children are
better off with their mother.
To get the
system to take action, Richard was forced to get police to lay child-abduction
charges against his wife. Even this charge was difficult to enforce
Canada-wide. It required an order be filed with the BC Supreme Court to make
all law enforcement agencies act on the warrant for his wife’s arrest.
Legal
technicalities and financial difficulties hindered Richard’s search. His wife
had left him thousands of dollars in debt. With no funds, no credit, and bills
to be paid, Richard was left with virtually no money to use to locate his
daughter.
On Aug. 10,
1989, 72 days after she disappeared with Jessica, Richard's wife was tracked
down and arrested. She was charged with parental child abduction, but never
showed up in court.
Richard obtained
a divorce the following June, along with full custody of Jessica. His step-son
returned to his biological father.
Even though he
had his daughter back, Richard said he lived in fear for years afterwards,
always looking over his shoulder in case someone again tried to take Jessica.
Before the 1983
abduction of six-year-old Tania Murrell of Edmonton, there were no
organizations in Canada that helped parents like Richard and other families of
missing children. The forerunner to Child Find Alberta was established shortly
after Murrell's disappearance. It wasn't until 1987 that the RCMP began keeping
statistics on the country's missing children. That year, there were 57,233
reports of missing children. In 2004, there were 67,266 children reported
missing in Canada.
The majority of
missing children in Canada are runaways. Of the 67,266 missing-children reports
in 2004, 52,280 were runaways and 76 per cent of those were habitual runners
who generated a report each time they took off (thus inflating the numbers).
The majority of these runaways were located within a week of leaving home.
The next highest
number of missing-children reports in 2004 -- 11,373 -- fell into the unknown
category. Another 671 young children wandered off, 27 were reported missing as
the result of an accident such as drowning, 31 were kidnapped, 332 were
abducted by parents and the remaining 2,552 went missing for "other"
reasons.
Marlene Dalley,
a researcher with the RCMP's National Missing Children Services based in
Ottawa, says runaway children should be a societal concern because they are
vulnerable on the streets.
"They
become victims of pimps who are searching for girls to work in prostitution.
Many of these children have been living on the streets for some time, and are
involved in criminal activities and the drug trade," she says. "I
must caution not all runaways are involved in prostitution and drugs, but the
influence of the street life is very compelling.
The federal
government spends about $700,000 a year on the RCMP's missing children's
registry. The small group of RCMP and civilian staff work out of Ottawa
collating information, and linking national and international law-enforcement
and child-find groups.
The registry
works closely with the Immigration, National Revenue and Foreign Affairs
departments, but it does not actually search for missing children. That is left
to the local police forces, parents and groups like Child Find and the Missing
Children Society of Canada.
Calgarian Kathy
Morgenstern and a small group of volunteers founded Canada's first non-profit
missing children's organization, Alberta Friends of Child Find (later shortened
to Child Find Alberta), about nine months after Tania Murrell disappeared.
Today, there are more than 60 Child Find organizations across the country.
Since it was
incorporated, Child Find Alberta volunteers have registered 883 families
looking for 1,068 missing children, who include runaways and abductees. They
have located or closed the files on 833 families involving 1,001 children. At
the end of 2004, the agency was working on 50 files involving 67 missing
children.
In addition to
providing fingerprinting services, education and prevention awareness, the
agency is responsible for the poster campaigns seen on the sides of trucks and
in public places. Child Find Alberta distributes 4,500 posters for every
missing child registered with its group. The organization depends entirely on
corporate and public donations for its funding.
Another group,
Missing Children Society of Canada was founded in 1986 in Calgary by a woman
who was moved to take action after watching a television show profiling missing
children. She volunteered with Child Find Alberta for two years before founding
MCSC in 1986.
MCSC's mandate
is slightly different from Child Find's, says spokeswoman Liz Ballendine.
"We
actually have a team of investigators who travel around the country helping the
police and searching families looking for missing children, whether that means
doing interviews, helping in a ground search, taking a dive team to search a
body of water, or working with embassies to get a child back."
(In 1989 Child
Find Alberta also has investigators who search for missing children, but they
do not travel across the country, or do so now.)
Although parents
fear their child will be grabbed off the street by a stranger, such abductions
are rare in Canada -- about three a year, according to RCMP statistics. Most
times, the predator is known to the child as a relative, friend of the family
or someone who lives in the neighbourhood.
But it's the
so-called stranger abductions that get media attention, because the child is
almost always found sexually assaulted and murdered, which only heightens the
public's hysteria, says Ballendine.
"As far as
we are concerned, parental abductions are much more serious and problematic,
partly because it's not always done in the best interest of the children. I
know people think, 'Oh it's all right. They are with a parent. ...' Well, there
have been cases where the abducting parent has killed their children or hurt
them, so it is not always all right. And it certainly isn't all right for the
other parent."
Abducted
children often live like fugitives, and are taught not to trust anyone or talk
about their past. Their appearances may be altered. Their names may be changed
and they may be stripped of their true identity and roots. Their health may be
medically neglected for fear of discovery. Their education may be unstable and
they often have no friends because of frequent moves. Some are lied to by the
abducting parent, who poisons them against the left-behind parent.
"We need
the general public to realize it is not OK for one parent to take a child and
leave. When you try and reunite the children with the family or the other
parent, they often have a slew of emotional and psychological problems,"
Ballendine says.
Even if a parent
is lucky enough to be reunited with a missing child, life is never the same for
the family. They must start over, undergo counselling and live with the fear
the child could be abducted again.
Richard says
after he was granted full custody of Jessica, he thought he noticed people
watching his house and the day care Jessica attended. He worried constantly
that his ex-wife would exact revenge by taking his daughter again. This is
after she told Jessica that she was going to steal her back from Daddy.
A Sir Richard
Quote; "For the parents like myself who have lived through this hell, they
know what I am talking about. We are all members of an exclusive club (family)
that has the highest entrance dues imaginable: the temporary or permanent loss
of your own child!"
The above
Newspapaer Article was Posted by Sir Richard
