For the Lost Blog

Police Say Woman Wore Disguises After Fleeing With Children

A nationwide search for a New Hampshire mother wanted on a custody offense has come to an end.

Erika Ahearn was arrested in Florida. Police said she has gone by different names and changed her look to keep her children hidden.

Investigators said her cell phone and debit card use allowed police to track her down.

This article which I just recently found about the Rowe children indicates that their mother was also wanted on gun charges and was apparently considered armed and dangerous. I didn’t know this before posting the case, but am glad it was resolved without incident. That information alone is another indication of family abduction not being a harmless crime.

Link here

ST. LOUIS – An Alaska woman suspected of kidnapping her daughter two years ago was arrested in Missouri during a routine traffic stop after police noticed she and her young passenger appeared far too nervous for only missing a license plate, authorities said Tuesday.

Mary Joe Burgener, 44, of Wasilla, Alaska, was being held in Lincoln County while she awaits extradition, Troy Police Chief Jeff Taylor said. Her 13-year-old daughter, Noel Tara Burgener, has been reunited with her father in Alaska.

This article about Noel Burgener states that they were in fact in Missouri, which a commentator on this blog stated they were. Whether or not this person did in fact see them, it is good Noel is back home and I wish her and her father the best in reuniting.

Link here

SHIPPENSBURG, Pa. — A man wanted for allegedly abducting his two children seven years ago in Texas has been arrested in Pennsylvania.

State police say 41-year-old Froylan Ocampo Nava was arrested Sunday night in Orrstown, about 30 miles southwest of Harrisburg. Authorities say he had been living in Shippensburg.

I found this article about Felipe and Jose Nava Jaimes on a web search. It is short on details but gives the surprising news they were in Pennsylvania, rather than Mexico as originally thought. This reinforces the fact that an abducted child can literally be anywhere. I wish them and their mother the best in reuniting.

Story here

A father is behind bars, arrested for allegedly kidnapped his own children from California 14 years ago, and bringing them to Central Florida to live.

For years, investigators have been searching for him, but it was the social networking website Facebook that delivered the break it took more than a decade to get, MyFoxOrlando reports.

Faustino Utrera is now charged with two counts of kidnapping, and two counts of violating child custody orders.

The story indicates that the mother first found her daughter on facebook, and they conversed a few times before her daughter said she wanted nothing to do with her. The father might have used the “mom died” excuse to take them, but he clearly was engaging in some form of parental alienation. For those who think that is because of the arrest, I’ll note that mom tried to reconnect with her daughter before the father was arrested. The mother as far as I know has not been accused of anything by the father, so that can be ruled out as an alternate explanation of why her own children don’t want anything to do with her. It’s an all too common outcome of a parental kidnapping case.

Child Find of America offers a series of yearly PDF files on their site that summarize some of the cases they have dealt with that year. I just recently found them, and one, although from 2006, shows a very good example of what can and should be done in a family abduction recovery.

Bijanjon Kavoossi was abducted by his mother from Ohio in 1996. Ten years later he was found in Greece. Child Find and NCMEC were working together to help with Bijanjon’s reunion with his father in the United States. They asked his mother not be arrested in front of him, and mentioned that a “domestic violence” situation in Greece may complicate matters. (The file is not more explicit about that and I am not sure the precise complications that may have resulted.) He was flown into JFK airport, where individuals with both organizations met with him and took him to the hotel where his father awaited him. The father had been told to bring pictures and familiar toys to make the reunion easier. Bijanjon reacted in a typical manner for most family abduction situations. He felt bad his mother had abducted him, but he was also concerned about whether he would see her again. He also wondered where his father had been, whether he loved him, and whether he had been looking for him. He met with his father again in an emotional reunion, and they began to build a relationship again both on what was in the past and what they might share in the future.

The whole situation was well thought out and gave attention to what would be a difficult situation. If not all family abduction recoveries have these circumstances, many should. It should stand as an excellent example.

I was doing some web research for the case file of Gabriel Johnson, who I’ve posted about several times before and plan to add to the site in June. I learned that Elizabeth Johnson’s mother was Rosslyn Puckett. And her aunt (Rosslyn’s sister) was… Jane Puckett. Who went missing in 1977, believed to have been abducted, and was found safe last year.

Does it mean anything? Well, no, probably. But this is even weirder than the Shannon Dedrick/Paul Baker connection.

Article here

A boy missing and endangered for six years after his mother fled the county with him has been found safely in Tennessee.

Madison County Sheriff’s Detective Mike Boone said Bryan Braswell was recovered Saturday by officers of the Hancock County Sheriff’s Department after an anonymous caller told dispatchers that the boy and his mother were in the town of Sneedville.

The article states that Bryan Braswell’s father had custody of all their other children, but not Bryan when his mother fled with him. I’m not sure why that was. I am at least somewhat relieved that they were not hiding in the mountains of North Carolina, as that would have been very rough living in the wilderness. I wish him and his father the best in reuniting.

Article here

Phoenix FBI agents along with Mexican authorities have recovered a 10-year-old Phoenix boy after he was apparently missing in Mexico for more than two years, officials said.

In 2007, the boy’s father, J. Arturo Ramirez-Garcia, 37, told the boy’s mother he was taking the child to visit his grandparents for two weeks in Guanajuato, Mexico, according to a statement by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The father left Phoenix with the child on Aug. 8. When the two had not returned by Sept. 23, the mother called police.

The story doesn’t mention who the child is, but the last name makes it obvious that it is Thomas Ramirez-Garcia. Another article also says the police were reluctant to investigate even after his sister said (a year after he vanished) the father had abused her. If that doesn’t illustrate how family abduction is not taken seriously, I don’t know what does. I am happy Thomas is now at home safe, but like his mother I wish it was far sooner.

Dalton Lucas and Jessica Click-Hill are both parentally abducted children that were found many years later. Both were abducted by their mothers, both at nearly identical ages (Jessica was eight and Dalton was seven), both who have fathers who were looking for them.

The biggest difference in the cases, however, is that of the outcome. By the outcome I do not mean legally, as in both cases the mothers have been arrested. The outcome in these cases I am referring to is that of the relationship with the left-behind parent. News stories about Dalton’s case say that his father drove straight from Virginia to Texas to retrieve his son, and the comments on the stories indicate that Dalton introduced his friends and others to his dad before going back with him. It will not be easy for him to readjust under any circumstances, but he seems pleased to see his dad again. Jessica, on the other hand, is indicated by news stories to have no wish to have contact with her father. She was abducted for five years more than Dalton, but since four of those years she was over eighteen it’s possible that she did not live with her mother for all of those.

So what accounts for the difference? Perhaps Dalton’s mother did not try to alienate her son from his father, although this is unlikely. Alienation is almost universal in parental kidnapping cases. Richard Warshak, an expert on parental alienation, has stated that some children are just more resilient to alienation. There are documented cases of parentally abducted children where the child later reports attempted alienation but does not succumb to its influence. Dalton’s mother could have used the classic “your father died” excuse which seems to produce less hostility towards the left-behind parent. Even that is not set in stone, of course: in the well known case of Steven Fagan he told his daughters their mother was dead and when he was arrested he admitted to the lie but then claimed she was an alcoholic. The mother had never been arrested or even accused of wrongdoing on the part of the children, but they still refused to see her or try to maintain any sort of relationship. (I mention the last to try to silence the “if the kid refuses to see a father parent they must have a good reason” crowd, but I doubt it will.) It could have something to do with the level of alienation involved – telling the child their other parent is a drug addict or alcoholic is one level, but telling them the other parent is a sadistic phyical and sexual abuser is quite another.

There’s no way to find out directly what is responsible, of course. But perhaps in both cases there is something to be learned about the detrimental effects of parental kidnapping on a child.

Father reunited with daughter after mother leaves country with her

SAN ANTONIO — A Christmas miracle for a father who has been searching for his daughter for nearly two years. Nine-year-old Camille Kaufman, taken by her mother in 2008 in Boerne, has been found. She is finally back home with her father in their new home in Houston.

The search for her was a very long, grueling and emotional one. It took Galen and investigators all the way down to the jungles of Costa Rica. After months of investigating, Galen and detectives found Camille and her mother, Lynanne Foster, hiding out with her boyfriend, Lance Brauer, and his family.

This link was provided in a previous post about Camille. Both this and some articles written before Camille was found indicate that her mother was behaving strangely before her abduction and was worried about such things as “chips implanted in children.” That is a typical psychotic delusion, and while psychosis is not always present in abductors, some could very well have that affliction. I suspected from the first write-up I did of the case there was more to it than I knew; most parents who have a joint custody agreement that allows for essentially equal time and has gone on for several years, as Camille’s mother and father had, do not suddenly abduct their children. (And of course a lot of the comments seem to imply Mom did it for a good reason, despite the fact that her mother’s complaints were about the United States and not her ex-husband.) Apparently her mother remains in Costa Rica; she will be arrested if she leaves the country. I do hope that she does that, and not merely out of a desire for punishment; children need both parents in their lives if they are fit.