 Yeah, welcome to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. This is Community Matters. We're going to talk about children today, our children who are abducted and missing. And this is a particularly poignant subject given the fact that Russia has kidnapped, abducted thousands of children from Ukraine, which have not been returned, which are being retrained and reprogrammed in Russia. And of course, because of the hostages in Israel, in Hamas, Gaza, which have been abducted, and which are still being held hostage, including very small children. It's so painful for their parents and such a tragedy. And the tragedy is not yet over. These tragedies don't go away quickly. So we have two people on the show, Sharon Young, who experienced an abduction back what, 30-some-odd years ago. It's just very interesting to hear about, as the mother of how many children, two or three children? Three. Three. And Amanda Leonard, who is with the Missing Child Center here in Hawaii, which is connected with the Attorney General's Office. But as she mentioned before the show, she doesn't practice as a Deputy Attorney General. She practices with the Missing Children Center to find missing children. You know, and actually it's enviable to think of the good work that you do in bringing children back to their parents. Anyway, so let's start. Welcome to the show, Sharon. Welcome, Amanda. Thank you. Thank you, Jay, for having us. Start with you, Sharon. Talk about your experience in 1990 or so with your three children. How did that work? August 1st, 1991, my ex-husband came to our home, and while I was at work, he abducted our three children. They didn't really know what was going to happen to them, but he enticed them with gifts and got them. He said, oh, we're going on a secret adventure. And my son actually thought, wow, this is like, you know, really neat stuff until they were taken into Mexico and everything changed dramatically. He was a very abusive man. And my son was able to escape about three years after he was abducted. How old were they when they were abducted? 13, 11, and 9. And your son escaped? He was the one who was 13 at the time? No, he was the middle one. He was 11. And when he came back to Hawaii, he turned 14 a couple months later, but he was 13 years old when he escaped. And the other two? They're now in the United States. Both of them are on the East Coast. I continue to try to reach out to them and see if I can connect, but I can't always find them. And a couple years ago, my oldest daughter reached out to me out of the blue and said, oh, I want to do a counseling session, has to be on this particular day at this time. And I was not going to be in Hawaii. I was going to be off island. And I asked if we could change it to a couple of days before or later. I never heard from her again. These kids are now at least in their 40s. 40s. Yeah. They're emancipated. 40, wow, wow, wow. 46, 43, and one will be 42 December 31st. So they've been brainwashed. I mean, even my son was afraid to come home. Their father told him I was a practicing witch and I could cast spells on him. I mean, I was just appalled at the stories I heard, plus all the abuse that was going on. This is psychological abuse or physical abuse? Physical and psychological. So what about your husband? Did he have to account for this? The only way I was able to get him to account for it was to take him back to court. The state of Hawaii dismissed the felony warrants against him after about 10 years. They didn't believe he'd leave Mexico, but he was just waiting for them to get rid of the felony warrants. And then he immediately came back into the United States. He hates Mexico, actually. And so anyway, I was searching for my youngest daughter. I found out she was living with her father. I called the missing child center and they said they couldn't find any felony warrants. So the only thing I had left was the back child support, which he never paid. He told me if I ever left him, he would never pay any child support. And on top of that, he would abduct the kids and take them into Mexico. And I'd never see them again. So I was, I stayed with him much longer than I should have because I knew what kind of person he was. And I didn't take his threats lightly. Sounds like our relationships, your relationships, each one of these kids has been adversely affected by what your husband did. Am I right? Oh, yeah. And that's why even 30, 25 plus years after the abduction, I took him back to court. In Virginia, I moved the case from Hawaii to Virginia because Hawaii's child support enforcement agency is actually pretty horrible. And the Virginia child support enforcement agency is much better. And I beat him in court in 2013. So finally, after 20, 30 years, he's finally paying back child support. And I'm using that to pay down my son's student loans. If my ex-husband lives long enough to pay off the debt, then I'll be able to help my younger daughter who I know has substantial student loans. But I don't know if that'll happen. Yeah, 30 years. It seems to me this has, in many ways, defined your life. It has. I mean, good things obviously have come out of this, the missing child center. And I was, I would call myself crazy with anger, but that anger I knew had to be channeled into something positive. And the outcome of that was the missing child center, Hawaii. Can you talk about your efforts, the reasons and your efforts to found it? Well, my efforts were because I was so angry. We had nothing in Hawaii to recover children. The police department was, I mean, they should have gotten the FBI involved shortly afterwards because they knew that he had taken them out of the state, but they didn't follow protocol. One of the police officers told me, this is what should have been done, but they didn't do it. And I knew he was going to take them into Mexico. So we weren't able to stop them. And, you know, ironically, my next door neighbor, who my kids played with, spotted them in the San Francisco Hertz rent a car facility the next morning. And they called me and the police didn't want to do anything. They said, Oh, this is a domestic. I said, it's not we're divorced. This is what's in the divorce decree. You know, I need you people to get involved to help. Um, I ended up having to call my client Douglas Gibb, who ex chief of police who was retired at the time, and he actually got the police to help me. I mean, I've had all these possibilities of stopping my ex, but, you know, the system within the police department was just not well suited to recovery of children. So that's why I did this. I met a woman, Pam Ferguson Bray, an attorney, and we worked together to lobby their legislature and, you know, do studies on what the missing child centers were effective. And January 1, 1995, the missing child center Hawaii was came into being. And since then, it actually, they actually found my two daughters. I mean, at the time I had spent so much money on legal fees, I just didn't have any more money. And I stopped hiring. I stopped paying all these attorneys in Mexico. I had a civil and criminal attorney there. You get nowhere. And I lived in Mexico with my ex husband earlier. And, you know, the way to do things is to pay people off, but I didn't know who to pay off. And plus I didn't have, I wasn't rolling in dough. So basically the missing child center found my kids. You mentioned Douglas Gibbs was your client. What kind of business are you in? I'm a financial advisor and I know my company doesn't want me to give. Okay, that's fine. I just wanted to know in general. So Amanda, you know, you got involved with the missing child center, when and why? Hi, Jay. Thank you so much for having me on. Thank you. Thank you. First, I want to commend Sharon for her courage to come forward and share her experience as a survivor of an international parental adoption so that other parents and children won't have to suffer like she and her kids did. I came on board as the coordinator of the missing child center, known as MCCH in 2018. Prior to that, I was a family law attorney in private practice for about six years. And so thanks to Sharon, there was an office that I could work for and serve families and children without having to charge them anything for our services. And it's just been an incredible honor and privilege to do so. So are you the only one working with the missing child center or you have a staff of 200? Well, you have the right number two. Our staff is two people, no zero zero after it. We are a staff of two people, myself and the assistant coordinator. And we actually cover the entire state of Hawaii. And we serve as the state's official missing children clearinghouse. And I am also the Miley Amber Alert coordinator for the state. And as you mentioned, we are the state department of the attorney general. So we talked before the show about, you know, the demographics on this sort of thing. And I get the idea that most of the cases where children are missing and come to your attention are, I hate to use this term, because Sharon was trying to avoid using this term when she was talking to the authorities. But they're domestic cases. They're one parent steals the children away from the other. Am I right about that? Most of the cases are domestic type abductions, right? Well, most of the cases at our office are endangered renaways because that is one of the categories of missing children that we respond to. But when you're talking about abductions or kidnappings, it will mostly be a parental abduction. Stranger abductions are extremely rare in Hawaii and also rare nationally. So I mentioned Miley Amber Alert, that is a tool that we use for the stranger abductions. They can also be used for dangerous parental abductions. And so when we are responding to abductions here at Missing Child Center, most of the times are going to be parental or family abductions. And sometimes it's, you know, they will hop islands. Sometimes they will leave the state and sometimes they will leave the country. But I would imagine most of them really don't leave. They stay around and try to hide maybe on a neighbor island or something. Sharon is shaking her head. Maybe not. Where do they go? What's the, what are the numbers on that? Well, it's definitely difficult to hide a child on one of our islands because the good thing about living in Hawaii is it's so small. We have county police on each island. We also have federal law enforcement partners. Usually if the child is being concealed in state, we are able to find that child pretty quickly. It becomes a whole other matter when the child leaves the state or the country. We do see a lot of, you know, out of state abductions and international abductions. And that also is because where we're situated globally, it is actually pretty easy to get out of the state and go to another country, whether it's, you know, Mexico, whether it's Asia, whether it's Europe. I handle all of those cases. And don't forget the Middle East. From a cultural point of view, I am personally familiar with parents, mostly men, who have abducted their children back into the Middle East. Anyway, so, you know, what's the, how do these cases reported to you? Do they come directly? Do they come from the police? Do they, you know, they come from family? How do you, how do you open a file, so to speak? Excellent question Jay. So usually the parents will report the incident to the county or local police department and they will get assigned an investigator and that investigator will either refer the parent directly to us or they'll call us and ask for assistance. So our primary obligation under the state law is to assist the law enforcement agencies to locate the children and the police departments are well aware of that. That is our responsibility to provide that assistance. So it'll either be the police department or the parents will reach out to us directly to assist. I'll open up a case and then we will also refer them to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children for additional resources from case assistance to family support services. They provide all of that to families of missing children for free. Yeah, you and your number two are quote, coordinators, but you know, the scenario that Sharon was talking about involved another country far away. It's a federal jurisdiction thing, of course, if that's the case. And I wonder if you are getting the cooperation you want from federal agencies who would have jurisdiction in destinations like East Coast or other countries. Yes, we have excellent partnerships with our law enforcement agencies in the state as well as on the mainland. So the Justice Department connects all of the clearinghouse managers together. So if there is an incident where a child is taken, let's say to Idaho, I'm able to pull up the information very quickly of who is my counterpart in that state and then make immediate contact and request assistance from that state. So our federal partners have made that very, very wrong in terms of how to leverage our resources. We have a lot of agencies here in Hawaii on the federal side that help us, the FBI, Homeland Security, the U.S. Marshals, the U.S. Secret Service. And then of course we have our state partners travel for services, the judiciary. As the clearinghouse, it's my responsibility to coordinate all of these different agencies so that we are leveraging all resources possible to get that child recovered. And time is of the essence. And that's why everything needs to be done as quickly as possible. Why is time of the essence, Amanda? Time is of the essence because the parent may relocate to another state with the children, but they could also go to another state or another country. They can be on the move. If they are really motivated to conceal the whereabouts of these children or child, they will be on the move. And we see these parents going through multiple states back and forth, which makes it extremely hard for us to track them. Luckily, the information on the missing child is in the national database called NCIC. So they should be flagged at the airports. They should be able to be identified by different state law enforcement agencies. And it is absolutely critical that we prevent that child from being taken into more different states or out of the country. Once they're out of the country, it becomes extremely difficult to get them back as Sharon has personally experienced. Well, here's an awful question for you. What's your rate of recovery? Are there children that are off the grid completely? Are there children who may not have survived? So most missing children are recovered safely. And that's a great thing. That's here locally and of course across the country. But there are incidents where the children have not been located. The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children has posters of some of our local kids who were abducted in a parental abduction who have not been found and that their parent is still waiting for answers. And the thing about missing child center and NICMIC is we will never close a case until that child's found. It doesn't matter if that child turns 18 or not, that case will not be closed until that child is found. Whether it's 20, 30, 40, 50 years later, we will keep it open. Because if there's even one percent chance that we can get that child located and reunited, we will do everything in our power to make that happen. So do you prosecute? I don't personally prosecute. As you mentioned, I'm an attorney, but I'm not a practicing attorney. But these cases can be prosecuted. In Hawaii, the crime is called a custodial interference. And if the child is taken out of the state or out of the country, it could be a felony crime. So on the one hand, on the civil side, there's the family court and that parent is going to be attempting to enforce their custodial rights in family court. On the criminal side, there could be a police investigation of custodial interference where charges could be brought and the prosecutors could pursue and bring justice upon that perpetrator. So there's two things going on. It's a very, very difficult legal process. It's an extremely difficult, painful, emotional process. These are the most intricate, complex, difficult cases that you could possibly imagine. And I, as an attorney, I used to have cases where the kids, my client's children were abducted. So I know how difficult it is. But the main thing is that the parents are acting quickly, that they are doing everything that they can to start that process. Filing the police report, registering court orders in the state that they believe the children may be. There's many different things that they should be doing. But it's absolutely imperative that they seek out those resources so that we can respond quicker. You know, if you do have any prosecutions of people who steal away children, I appreciate you calling me up because I would like to volunteer to be on the jury. I have a few. I appreciate your passion, Jay. It's an absolutely horrible thing to happen to a parent. And that is why Sharon coming forward to share her experience is so commendable. And we just want to make sure that we're putting that information out there because a lot of the times it can be preventable. Some of the times it can't be. By therapy, by intervention, how do you prevent this? Well, it's definitely important for parents to look at the risk factors. So, you know, Sharon mentioned earlier that her ex-husband threatened to abduct the children. That is a huge red flag. Now, most people wouldn't think that someone's capable of carrying out that threat mostly because it's a crime. And we don't think that people would threaten to commit a crime, something of this nature. But definitely be aware of the threats. If there's a history of domestic violence, child abuse, you know, fighting over the child, that parent has a criminal record or ties to another state or country, you know, be mindful, do what you can. The State Department does have a program to flag passports. And that's definitely something that if you've been threatened with this, that you may want to look up. Who do they call? So the U.S. Department of State has an Office of Children issues. And these are the folks that come into play if there is an attempted or a successful international parental abduction. They do have a program where you can request that a child's passport be flagged or try to prevent that child from getting a passport. It's a lot harder now because I guess the good thing about the Patriot Act and because so much is required in order to get a passport to begin with, that if you have an agency, the passport agency that will not issue a passport or will flag it so that if someone's using the passport to leave the country, they can stop them there. So that is a good thing because once a child is taken out of the country, then you're dealing with international laws. They may not be helpful. There's something called the Hague Convention. It's a reciprocal agreement between countries. But even if they've signed on to the Hague, it doesn't mean it's going to be easy to get the child back. Sharon, I want to ask you a question about the defenses. The justification or arguable justifications that people have in wrongfully removing children. I mean, for example, if it's a shared custody and this guy, this hypothetical spouse, takes off with the children and says, I'm just exercising my shared custody rights. Is that the same thing as kidnapping a child? Well, to be honest with you, the most frequent time children are abducted, parental abductions, are during summer and Christmas vacation. And that's why we wanted to talk about this prior to Christmas because there are things that parents can do if they suspect they're having a difficulty with their spouse. And the spouse may or the parent, they may not even be married, may want to take the child out of the country or out of the state. If they're in Hawaii, I would say call Amanda, call the Missing Child Center. And they can give a number of things that the parents can do to thwart that. There's no good reason for doing this. I mean, to be honest with you, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children states that in most cases, if it's a parental abduction, it's an attempt to punish the other parents. In cases, parents will murder children to punish the other parent. They will torture their children. My son was tortured. They will beat, they will do all sorts of horrible things to the children because they know that's the most effective way to punish the parent, the other parent. And they're not doing it for the benefit of the children. No, but a third party may be listening through this spouse who takes the children away. And maybe the spouse has a shared custody arrangement. Maybe they're not married and there's no law, no document governing exactly who has custody. He just takes them away. Now, is that something where the Missing Child Center can do something? You're assuming that if he takes them away, it's not okay. But it could be okay, right? He could argue that it's okay. Well, that's where if a parent believes that their child may be subject to a parental abduction by contacting somebody, Amanda or Calais, they can start the process. That parent is going to have to get an attorney and it's going to have to start some sort of legal action to make it so that they can't just take the child anytime they want willy-nilly. Even if they're not married, they may have some type of shared custody, but there are rules within that. And I would say if they believe that their child may be abducted, start the process of reaching out to somebody like Amanda to help guide them on what they can do to protect their child. Because if they are abducted, then it becomes much more difficult. A footnote on that, Amanda. What is your website address so that people can find you? Well, it's a very, very long website. So I'm just going to say Google Missing Child Center, Hawaii, because it's a very long Attorney General type state. But our phone number is 808-586-1449. In writing my book, one of the things that I did in the appendix is to give resources where people could find help if they think something like this might happen to them. And then other tools to be aware of, keeping pictures of your children on a regular basis, even of the parent. Because if a child is abducted, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children can age-enhanced pictures of the child. What's helpful, they want pictures of both parents at different ages to help them age-enhanced pictures of the children. So I have a number of different things that people can do if they think something like this may happen to their children to better protect them. But it's good to be proactive with, you know, that's really important to be proactive. Let's talk about your book. You wrote a book, Sharon. Can you talk about the book? Yes, it took me 15 years. And I know this is like 32 years after my children were abducted. But you know, in my attempt, the first thing that I would say was my attempt to reach out to my daughters because I know they've been brainwashed. And since I don't have the facility to speak with them or communicate with them, how can I undo any of that? I can't. And so I decided, well, you know, if I can't, you know, reconnect with my daughters, then maybe what I can do is find a way to give other people caught in this ugly dilemma and give them ideas on how they can protect themselves and their children. And so it took a long time because I did write the book by myself. I had to take all these writing classes. You were really determined. Yes, I was very determined. And like I said, I took my S when I found he came back and designed United States. I included that too. And I learned lots of legal things that parents can do that I wasn't even aware of until, you know, we went back to court to get him to pay back child support. And so it's so complicated. And all these different states are literally competing with each other, you know, for child support. I mean, that's something I was not aware of. They all want to collect from the same individual. Interesting. Well, because they're given benefits. That was one of the things Texas told me I should close the case in Hawaii. I was at the point of starting to get money from my ex. And they wanted me to close the case in Hawaii. I needed to get copies of our divorce decrees in order to initiate the payment. And they said, oh, you should close it. And then move it to Texas. And I said, and then they said, oh, I'd have to pay to come and go to Texas for any kind of filings. And I'm like, I said, does Texas make more money if they can say that they recovered the money from my ex? And they said, oh, yeah, the federal government gives us more money. And so I'm like, oh, okay. Leave it to Texas. Actually, Texas has a pretty good system, which Amanda told me that they have actually more protections in Texas than most states. But, you know, I wasn't going to wait another five years. And then if he moved, that's the other thing. It's like, I'd have to find where he's moving to. And I, you know, it's not simple. And justice is the name of your book. Where can I find your book? Well, actually, it won't be available until the end of November. And you can go to www.bookswiths.hawaii.net. It's through Legacy Watermark Publishing here in Hawaii. I got so tired of having to edit, edit, edit with these different literary agents, I said, don't forget it. I'm just going to self publish it because otherwise I'll be doing this for the next 15 years. And I don't want to do that. So, Amanda, let me, you know, you're going to consult with Sharon. She's kind of, she's been around the block on this. She's written a book on it. She's had personal difficult experience on it. Is Sharon somebody you talk to? Does she talk to you? Is she close to your organization? Sharon is one of the first people, when I started in 2018, that fully embraced me coming into the position, one of the first people I met, and to learn that she, one, is a survivor parent. And two, is the person who pushed for the establishment of Missing Child Center so that Hawaii can have a clearinghouse to serve these families is incredible. I have the utmost respect for Sharon. She and I are always been in contact over the past five years. Sometimes we'll get coffee. We'll talk about, you know, just in general, you know, what we think is needed to improve our system response for missing and abducted children. I consult with her. And having that survivor perspective is absolutely crucial to me in my work. And so I've just been so grateful to have her mentorship, her friendship, her partnership. And actually, if I can make any profit from this book, I'm trying to figure out a way to get it to the Missing Child Center. But the difficulty I have is there with the Attorney General's Office, though it's a state agency. And I'm currently looking for a small nonprofit that might be willing to work in conjunction with us to help support the endeavors of the Missing Child Center. But it has to be done in such a way where, you know, they would know that I might be able to give them would be used to support your determination will prevail. And I would say we all owe you a debt of gratitude, Sharon, for having taken a tragedy and making it into public service. It's really commendable what you've done. Well, that saved me because otherwise I'd be a very bitter messed up human being. I don't think you are that today. And Amanda, thank you for your service. It's very important that you do what you do. And somehow I believe that not only do you recover children who have been abducted, but in doing so, in maintaining this effort, you reduce the number of children who are abducted in the first place. So thank you. Thank you for raising awareness of this issue, which nobody talks about this. Nobody wants to talk about divorce or parental abductions. But we can help so many people by making sure that they know that you can do something. There are resources available. We are here to help you. Okay. And I really feel that it is a very painful experience to have a child abducted and Lord knows what happens to that child away from the family. It's an attack on the family is what it is, not only the spouse. So what you're doing is really the really difficult situation is that child. Because even though my son has done very well for himself, we spent years in counseling. It's very difficult when a child comes back. It's very hard. I'm sure it is. I'm sure it is. Thank you, Sharon Young. Thank you, Amanda. Keep up the good work and make our community secure. Thank you so much.