When a couple decides on a divorce, the court will help to mediate the future residency of the children that are a product of the marriage. Many times one parent will receive custody, and the other will be permitted visitations and special time with the child on holidays, weekends, or vacations. Yet there are times when a jealous parent wants more time than the court allotted, and in his or her anger he or she may decide to take drastic measures. When a parent steals the children from the other spouse who has been given legal custody, it is considered kidnapping, and this is dealt with seriously. Parents who steal their children can face years in jail, and be restrained from seeing their children in the future.
To use an example, Trena Slinkard is one of the FBI's most wanted parental kidnappers. She left the state of Indiana with her three children in 1995, during the middle of divorce proceedings. Allegedly, when she realized that she may not receive full custody of her children, she fled with them, hoping to have them all to herself. According to the terms of the divorce, Mr. Slinkard had full custody of the three children, though he has not seen them since they were stolen away in 1995. In 1996, the Hancock Circuit Court issued a search warrant for Trena Slinkard, saying that she had violated her custody order.
Later on, the Indiana issued another warrant that declared Slinkard had committed unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. This fugitive has never been found, but the FBI is still on the lookout for her and her new husband, who is also a fugitive. Unlike Slinkard, other mothers and fathers have fled with their children in order to avoid deportation, or to avoid prosecution about family issues such as parental abuse. Many parental kidnappers will take their children to a different country, where they are hard to locate.
Parental kidnapping is defined as the concealment, taking of, or retention of a child by his or her parent. This action must be in violation of the rights of the child's other parent or another family member who also had custody of or guardianship over the child. In many cases, the kidnapping is a violation of the parent's custody or visitation rights, which were set by the court following a divorce with the child's other parent. This crime is not simply a violation of custody. In fact, courts consider parental kidnapping to be a serious criminal act.
Parents who kidnapped their children are almost always on the run, living their lives as fugitives. Most often the children are given new names, haircuts, and other alterations to their appearances in order to keep them from being recognized by authorities. If the children are young when they are kidnapped, chances are that the kidnapping parent will never admit that he or she stole the child. Instead, the child will grow up believing that he or she has always been in a single-parent family. Children are very impressionable at a young age. When their parent commands them not to reveal their address, home state, birth date, or other identifying information, they naturally comply.
Child kidnapping has serious implications on the children, because they are often traumatized emotionally and psychologically. Many times abducted children suffer from a reactive attachment disorder, a generalized anxiety disorder, or a post-traumatic stress disorder that will affect their ability to socialize and learn. Parents who kidnap their children sometimes believe that they are taking their only option. Sometimes parents may flee with their children to avoid an abusive situation, or a custody statute that would put the children in harm's way. In these cases it is much better to contact authorities and report the abusive parent. The law is set up to help parents and children from being harmed, and authorities may be able to remove the parent and child from a volatile environment without the need to flee.
