Without Their Daughters

OVER the past six and a half years, Tom Sylvester has come to regret that he rejected his older brother’s advice. On October 30, 1995, Sylvester’s wife abducted their baby daughter Carina to Austria. “My brother Paul told me to ‘go get her,”’ Sylvester explains. Instead, Sylvester put his trust in international law, and within hours of the abduction filed an application under the Hague Convention. Today, despite an order from Austria’s highest court that Carina be reunited with her father in the U.S., Sylvester’s only child remains in Austria—where her father is only able to visit her at the whim of his former wife.

The Hague Convention obliges signatory countries to ensure that children in dispute are returned to the country of their “habitual residence” for a custody determination. But in practice, this international treaty cruelly punishes American parents and rewards foreign abductors. The U.S. returns virtually all children to their foreign habitual residence so quickly that their little heads spin, but American children are returned to the U.S. in fewer than 20 percent of the thousand cases a year reported to the State Department.

About the Author

Kate O'Beirne

Featured Tags

OVER the past six and a half years, Tom Sylvester has come to regret that he rejected his older brother’s advice. On October 30, 1995, Sylvester’s wife abducted their baby daughter Carina to Austria. “My brother Paul told me to ‘go get her,”’ Sylvester explains. Instead, Sylvester put his trust in international law, and within hours of the abduction filed an application under the Hague Convention. Today, despite an order from Austria’s highest court that Carina be reunited with her father in the U.S., Sylvester’s only child remains in Austria—where her father is only able to visit her at the whim of his former wife.

The Hague Convention obliges signatory countries to ensure that children in dispute are returned to the country of their “habitual residence” for a custody determination. But in practice, this international treaty cruelly punishes American parents and rewards foreign abductors. The U.S. returns virtually all children to their foreign habitual residence so quickly that their little heads spin, but American children are returned to the U.S. in fewer than 20 percent of the thousand cases a year reported to the State Department.