Welcome to the first installment of Hague Mother Mondays.
Every other week, we will be bringing you the stories of mothers who have been impacted by the Hague Convention on Child Abduction law. These stories aim to educate Hague families and non-Hague families alike by sharing the circumstances surrounding their ordeals.
The following tells the story of Fiona*, an Irish-born mother living in the Bay Area. She considers herself one of the “lucky ones”.
All names in this story have been changed to protect the Hague family.
Fiona
When Fiona first met Michael, he completely swept her off her feet. Fiona, a native to Ireland, was backpacking around the United States and found herself in San Francisco to visit a friend. It was through this friend, she met Michael. Michael, who was also an Irishman, was worldly, wealthy, and older than Fiona. During our interview, Fiona described him as someone that was mature, could look after her.
She fell in love. By the first anniversary of their first meeting, Fiona found out she was pregnant with a girl. They got married soon after. Fiona became the primary caregiver while Michael worked.
When I asked Fiona if she saw any red flags early in her relationship, right away she said, “he was controlling.” Fiona would tell my colleague and I that Michael would slowly try to control many aspects of her life, including telling her that she wasn’t allowed to go out, and if she decided she wanted to drink, she couldn’t have more than two. At one point during their relationship, Michael suddenly uprooted Fiona from her familiar Bay Area Irish community and had them move to Oakland, an area where she knew no one. To Fiona, it was always little things, small nuisances, but within a few years, the controlling behavior really began to take its toll on her.
In 2008, Fiona and Michael decided to take their two-year-old daughter, Emily, to visit family in Ireland. The plan was that Fiona and Emily would fly to Ireland and Michael would follow them at a later date. Prior to the trip, Fiona described Michael as angrier than normal, but didn’t (at the time) understand why. That building fury followed them to Ireland.
When Michael landed in Ireland, he was already furious. He demanded Fiona to drive the three hours from her parents house to Dublin to pick him up at the airport (even though he had a rental car waiting for him at the airport). And he demanded that she bring Emily with her. She refused.
Michael didn’t calm down by the time he arrived at his in-laws. He was yelling at Fiona and her family. In retaliation for her lack of compliance, Michael took Emily and left for his own family’s house several hours away. When he left, Fiona knew the relationship was over, but worried about Emily being with Michael. Fiona called Michael’s sister to discuss the situation, who agreed with Fiona about Michael’s intolerable behavior and promised to look after Emily.
Fiona’s parents were horrified by Michael and wondered why she would ever go back with him. Michael returned Emily to Fiona a few days later and informed Fiona that he believed she and Emily should remain in Ireland.
Fiona was relieved. She felt the weight off her shoulders– she and her daughter were safe in Ireland with her family and Michael was gone.
A week later, Fiona received Hague papers. Michael had accused her of kidnapping Emily.
In hindsight, Fiona thinks the moments that led her to be served Hague papers converged in “a perfect storm.” She would find out that Michael had been audited by the IRS upon his return from Ireland. Fiona believes now that he claimed she abducted Emily in order to take the attention away from him.
The Hague court date was to take place October 2008 in Oakland. Fearing for her safety, and not having any place to return to in the Bay Area, Fiona ended up missing her court date. When asked about it, Fiona admitted she felt stuck. She told us that when she and Michael moved to the new Oakland apartment, it was an apartment that belonged to one of Michael’s friends, so there was no lease or any papers signed. She had no bills, licenses, or records in her name to prove she even lived in California. Additionally, because she was unable to prove her residence, she ended up losing all her valuables that were in that apartment to Michael.
However, the decision to stay in Ireland led the Oakland courts to grant Michael automatic full custody over Emily.
She was now legally required to return Emily to her father in the United States.
Eventually, Fiona was able to find a young lawyer through a family friend. He was new, just out of law school and didn’t really understand the Hague Convention on Child Abduction Law. However, through discovery, the lawyer learned that Michael had a gambling problem. It was also learned that the majority of Michael’s properties were listed under family and friend’s names.
The Irish Courts also stepped in to grant Fiona some protection. Unlike places like the United States and Italy, where a new judge might oversee each Hague trial, all Irish Hague cases are sent to the supreme court. There, the case is overseen by the same judge. This judge has experience in the handling of these often very sensitive ordeals.
The Irish Supreme court granted Fiona undertaking– Michael and authorities could not legally take Emily off of Fiona as soon as she stepped on American soil. Not only that, they would need to grant her a transition period with Emily, and Michael would need to find Fiona a place to stay. Michael accepted, as he wasn’t interested in having Fiona arrested. “He wanted to drag me to court and teach me a lesson,” Fiona said. It was all part of trying to re-establish control over Fiona and her life. The court date for custody reset.
Fiona finally returned to the Bay Area in March 2009.
What I didn’t realize when interviewing Fiona was that Hague only sends you back to your residence. It ends as soon as your child returns to their habitual residence. When Fiona returned to the United States, Hague was over, but she was also fortunate that she wasn’t arrested for kidnapping. She was viewed as a “child abductor”, but for her case, her court proceedings reverted back to a “regular divorce case”. Emily was able to stay with her mother until court was settled.
Between her return to the Bay Area and her divorce wrapping up in 2012, Fiona had to try to build a new life for herself and Emily. She considers herself lucky that she was able to. During the process, Michael would try to sabotage her chances of finding work. “He tried to say I was a drug addict and alcoholic.” Michael changed lawyers, forced her to pay his legal fees for missing the original court date, and looked for other ways to control her. Prior to her divorce with Michael, she was a flight attendant. He took that job away from her, too. Fiona had to surrender her passport for seven years.
In the end, the Oakland Courts granted 50/50 custody over Emily. Fiona wasn’t thrilled with the joint custody, but she was willing to take it since she had already lost custody once.
Today, Fiona has remarried and has grown her family. Emily still spends time with her father, but Fiona tries to limit all interaction with him.
During my research prior to starting this writing project, I noticed that there was very little out there about what the child feels or knows about the ordeal their families went through. It must have left some sort of impression on them, right?
“She doesn’t know,” Fiona responded when I asked her my question. “She was so young, so she just thinks her parents got divorced.” Fiona wondered at some point if she should tell her now-teenaged daughter the truth about Michael and their divorce. Her therapist advised against it. “Maybe she doesn’t ask because she knows something bad happened.”
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