At war over stolen kids 21.04.2008 By Ray Moseley BERLIN - Seven years ago, Joseph Cooke of New York lost his two children because of a German court ruling that has led to a legal tug of war between the U.S. and German governments involving 59 American parents. Cooke's German wife took the children, Danny, now 10, and Michelle, 9, with her on a visit to her hometown of Konstanz in southwest Germany in 1992. Without her husband's knowledge, she turned the children over to the German Youth Authority and then had herself admitted to a clinic for treatment of mental illness. Cooke spent nearly a year frantically trying to find out what had happened to his children, finally learning from his wife, Christiane, that a German court had turned them over to foster parents in 1993 without notifying him. All his efforts since then to get them back have been in vain, and he cannot return to Germany to see them because he would risk going to jail; he has refused a German court order to pay child support to the foster parents. Recently the Youth Authority, angry that his case has been widely publicized, retaliated against Cooke's mother, Patricia, telling her that her right to visit the children for six hours at a time had been reduced to two hours. Future visits, the authority hinted, would depend on her behavior. A State Department spokesman said the German position was "absolutely horrible ... completely inappropriate." At a time when Americans have been captivated by the story of Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old whose father fought for months to regain custody and return him to Cuba, the Cooke case is the most striking example of how American parents whose children have been abducted to Germany have run into a brick wall in their efforts to get the children back and to see them while cases are pending. These rights are supposed to be guaranteed by a 1980 international convention on cases of abducted children that has been signed by the U.S., Germany and 52 other countries. The Hague convention requires that abducted children be returned promptly to their country of habitual residence. It also requires courts in the country to which an abducted child has been taken to abide by custody decisions in the country of habitual residence. But in Germany it can take years to bring such cases to court, and German courts have held that the children involved have by then become so accustomed to German life and language that it would not be in their best interest to return them to the U.S. This loophole is contained in the Hague convention. But, in the view of angry American parents, it is being used by German courts to reward parents for their crimes. The Hague convention also is supposed to guarantee to parents left behind the right to visit their children while cases are pending. But German judges say German law gives them no power to enforce visitation orders, so an abducting parent can refuse with impunity to allow a spouse to see the children. Under American law, such a parent can be held in contempt of court, and fined or jailed. Contempt in civil cases does not exist in Germany and many other European countries, and Germany has not adopted legislation to ensure visitation rights since it signed the convention. According to the U.S. government, American courts return 90 percent of children who are illegally abducted to the United States. In the past three years, German courts heard 44 Hague convention cases involving Americans. They ordered the return of 18 children to the U.S. and refused to return 26. For years hundreds of American parents have lost children to foreign spouses who abscond with them, particularly to Arab countries. No Arab country has signed the Hague convention, so American parents have little hope of regaining children in those cases. European governments have signed the Hague convention; in theory, the rights of Americans should be protected. But Congress, in resolutions passed unanimously by both houses this year, condemned Germany, Austria and Sweden for "consistently violating" the Hague convention, a charge the three nations deny. The largest number of such cases in Europe involves Germany, and many of the parental victims of child abduction are former U.S. soldiers who married Germans while stationed there. American parents are not alone in feeling victimized by German courts. A group of more than 30 French parents has become militant in defense of their rights and recently threatened a hunger strike in Berlin to publicize their plight. Likewise, many German parents who are divorced or separated say their country's laws have victimized them by failing to ensure visitation rights. For a long time, American parents involved in international abduction cases got scant media or other public attention, but two developments in the past two years changed that. Catherine Meyer, a British-French citizen who lost her two children to her German husband in 1994, married Christopher Meyer, the British ambassador to Washington, in 1998 and began using the platform her new position gave her to arouse congressional and public indignation over the treatment of her and American parents. "This was the best thing that ever happened," said Kirsten Niethammer-Juergens, a Berlin lawyer who has fought in the German courts for the rights of American parents. The other development was the publication in Washington of a newspaper article about the Cooke case while German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer was visiting. The German government had long ignored American parents' protests about abduction cases, but Fischer promised to look into them when he got home. Shortly afterward President Clinton, on a visit to Germany, appealed to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to help get American children back home. Mary Ryan, assistant secretary of state for consular affairs, met with German officials in Berlin in late June to push for action on six cases, including Cooke's, and to seek a solution to the overall problem. In the Cooke case, she complained that the U.S. government wasn't notified when Cooke's children were placed in foster care, argued that they shouldn't have been given to foster parents when a competent parent wanted them, and protested the role of the Youth Authority in denying access to the Cookes. German Justice Ministry officials said they had "motivated" the Youth Authority "to do everything possible to solve this case." More talks are scheduled in Washington later this month and in Berlin in September. Meantime Cooke, Catherine Meyer and other parents sit and wait, increasingly frustrated and angry. Some have spent more than $200,000 each in savings to fight their so-far losing cases. They have had to fly to Germany for court hearings or hoped-for meetings with children that frequently never take place. Careers have suffered as a result, they say. At least one parent can't even get German authorities to tell him where his children are living. And in some cases, parents who do get to see their children find they cannot communicate because the children now speak only German. Cooke, 31, a former GI who met his wife when he was based in Germany, eventually traced his missing children to the home of Franz and Else Weh in the town of Konstanz. The Wehs have five children of their own and three other foster children besides Danny and Michelle. Cooke first telephoned the Wehs in 1993; he said they denied having his children. Then they rushed to a German court and got an order prohibiting him from taking them. Court records noted that he was not informed of the decision. Cooke went to the New York State Supreme Court and won custody of his children. His wife, who had by then left the mental clinic in Germany and moved to California, agreed he should have custody. The New York court issued an order requesting German authorities to help Cooke return his children to the U.S. under terms of the Hague convention. He flew to Germany to retrieve them in 1994, but it took almost three weeks just to get permission from authorities to visit them for one hour in their foster home, in the presence of a court-appointed psychologist. As the psychologist noted in a report, "Mr. Cooke held the children in his arms and wept." That was the last time he saw them. His mother has visited them several times, always bringing presents. Everything went fine, she said, until she flew to Konstanz for a scheduled meeting on June 23, more than a month after the Cooke case had been widely publicized in the American press. "The children rejected me completely," Patricia Cooke said. "That has never happened before. They wouldn't let me touch them, and they wouldn't accept the presents I brought. They are in a bad way." She said Youth Authority officials put the blame on her, saying the children were aware of the publicity she has given to the case and were traumatized by it. Like other Americans involved in such cases, she is aware that young children can be easily manipulated in such situations to adopt attitudes that will accord with the wishes of the abducting parent. It is a recognized psychological condition called parental alienation syndrome. Patricia Cooke told German authorities that they were mistaken if they thought that public attention to her son's case would simply disappear. "I told them it's not in my hands," she said. "It has gone to the top levels of government. The German court system is causing harm, and it has got to be changed." Meyer, although British, has strong U.S. backing for her fight to be reunited with her sons, Alexander, now 12, and Constantin, 10. She was separated in 1992 from Hans-Peter Volkmann, a doctor who lives in Verden, near Bremen. When they parted, he agreed she should have custody and the children would spend their holidays with him. But in 1994, four days before the boys were to be returned to her, she received a 21-page letter from Volkmann declaring that he had no intention of sending them back to Britain. She filed suit in Verden, and the court there ordered Volkmann to return the children to her. Volkmann asked for a half-hour in which to say goodbye to his sons, then spirited them away to an unknown destination. He appealed the Verden ruling to a court in nearby Celle. That court temporarily suspended the Verden decision without even informing Meyer the case was to be heard. Ultimately the court ruled Volkmann was entitled to keep the children, after a hearing in which the court declined to take testimony from Meyer or witnesses on her behalf. . Since then Meyer has managed to see her children rarely. The Celle court required her to meet with them in Volkmann's home with his girlfriend in the room with them or in the Youth Authority office. Meyer obtained a divorce in September 1997 and married the British ambassador a month later. Her German lawyer advised her not to continue fighting for custody but to push for better access rights. As a result, she and her new husband met with the children on two days in January and February 1999 at the British consulate in Hamburg. "The first time was all right, but the second time the children were extremely hostile—also toward Christopher," she said. "The German courts are using the fact that children have been manipulated as an excuse not to let us see our children," she said. In testimony to the U.S. Senate, she said, "I am denied the right that even women in prison are allowed." Many American parents have had similar experiences. Glenn Gebhard, 49, a professor at Loyola Marymount College in Los Angeles, has not seen his twin children, Shannon and Glenn, now 7 years old, since 1994, the year his Mexican wife abducted them from Los Angeles to Frankfurt. Six months ago, a German judge took away his visitation rights, which had never been enforced. The judge said the children were alienated from him so it was in their best interests not to see him again. In another case, James Rinaman III, a Jacksonville attorney, had been married for three years to his German wife, Sylvia, when she went back to Dusseldorf with their 15-month-old daughter, Julia, in June 1996 and then sent him a fax saying their marriage was over. He won a German court case for return of his child, but that ruling was overturned on appeal, and he has seen Julia only once since she was abducted. "My former wife told Julia that her new husband was her father," he said. Germany isn't the only offender. Tom Sylvester, 46, of Cincinnati, whose 13-month-old daughter was abducted to Austria in 1995, and Tom Johnson, a State Department attorney whose 5-year-old daughter was taken to Sweden in 1993, say their problems are identical to those in Germany. Each has won court cases against their abducting ex-spouses, but authorities wouldn't enforce rulings Sylvester won, and Johnson's court victories against his Swedish diplomat ex-wife were voided by Sweden's Supreme Court.