FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SETEMBER 25, 2000

CONTACT:
Christopher Yavelow
+31-650-853-863
Christopher@yavelow.com
http://www.StolenChildren.net

SWISS KIDNAPPER OF US KIDS FINDS SAFE HAVEN IN HOLLAND

Amsterdam -- September 25, 2000 -- Christopher Yavelow's children, Celina (14) and Stephanie (11) were abducted to the Netherlands by his Swiss wife Monique Fasel at the end of October, 1999, in defiance of a Maryland court order and to avoid a required Hague Convention hearing.

The two native-born American teenagers had lived most of their lives in the United States. When the Elian-Gonzales-style SWAT team, duped by Fasel, came to pick them up they protested, "We are here of our own freewill. We are American citizens, and we want to stay in America!"

The children had technically been on holiday to the UK and US but when their father brought them to the airport on the day of their scheduled return, they strongly asserted their wish to stay home in America; that it was a "dream come true," and that they finally felt as though they "fit in" after having endured several years as "outsiders" in the Netherlands.

Yavelow informed his wife within hours, and proposed a custody hearing in the US. At that point the couple had been separated for 9 months and there had been no custody hearing. Over the succeeding eight weeks, Yavelow brought his children to the airport three more times to confirm their decision. By their own admission, they had "never been happier."

Surely, they are not happy now, a fact confirmed by the Dutch Child Protection Agency (the Raad voor de Kinderbescherming).

In the ensuing ten months since Fasel abducted Celina and Stephanie to the Netherlands, she has done everything in her power to de-Americanize the children and to keep Yavelow out of Holland.

First, although she herself is guilty of parental child abduction according to the International Parental Kidnapping Act (18 USC 1204), she brazenly lied to American judges and law enforcement agencies to have Yavelow himself charged with kidnapping. This created a mountain of legal red tape that kept Yavelow, his passport confiscated, in the US for the 5 months when his terrified children needed him the most.

In March, 2000, just days after Yavelow's passport was returned to him, he was informed of a strong possibility that Fasel had filed similar bogus abduction charges against him in the Netherlands. These turned out to be "secret" charges, meaning that Yavelow's Dutch lawyer could not verify their existence.

Besides violating human rights, such charges are usually part of a plot to lure parents back to Holland for imprisonment. Their existence is only discernible at high government levels. And it took the US Department of State until July 14 to receive confirmation of the charges from the Dutch Ministry of Justice. This came with a promise that the charges would be dropped by July 28.

Thus assured, Yavelow boarded the QE2 for Europe on July 31, headed for a custody hearing scheduled for August 16 (2000) in Amsterdam. This was to be the first hearing involving custody that either he or his wife would attend. An earlier October 28, 1999, custody hearing, the November decision of which has since been thrown out, had the Dutch determining custody without either of the parents present at the hearing or the children's views being considered.

On August 3, halfway across the Atlantic, Yavelow received a telephone call from the US Department of State warning him of their discovery that Fasel had filed more bogus charges against him and that he should not get off the boat.

Within a 16-hour window, Yavelow decided it would be better to resolve this issue immediately. Using ship-to-shore communications with his Dutch lawyer, he was able to have all Fasel's phony charges against him dropped.

He arrived in the Netherlands only to discover that Fasel had spread a mountain of lies intended to thwart his every effort to rescue his two American teenage daughters. He discovered that not only was Fasel holding his children hostage and incommunicado, she was also holding his house, office, and all his possessions hostage, similarly with the unwitting cooperation of the Dutch government.

Expecting the custody hearing to be within a week of his arrival, Yavelow stayed with the brother of another left behind parent because Fasel had changed the locks on his house. Fasel hasn't inhabited in the house in almost two years, since January 4, 1999, precisely, when she abducted the children the first time-- for ten weeks to the home of her Wicca high priestess (Stephanie managed to escape after two weeks of that ordeal).

During the Spring of 1999 Fasel had signed off on 26 deliveries of her remaining belongings from the house, so Yavelow hired a moving company to have his own possessions removed on September 9, 1999. But, Fasel rushed to the scene claiming to have an injunction that prevented him from doing so. This turned out to be yet another lie, but one that the police believed enough to stop the movers from completing their job.

The custody hearing was postponed until December so Yavelow decided to move back into his abandoned house. However, Fasel continued her ruse and Yavelow was forced to sleep in his car for most of the month it took his lawyer to resolve this effects of Fasel's lies that had the local police convinced that they were authorized to use deadly force to keep him out of his house.

Yavelow's children reported to him in one of the four telephone calls they completed in nearly a year, that they are not allowed even to walk by the family home because Fasel is afraid that it will remind them of their father and all the happy times in their lives.

Now that Yavelow has been able to take legal possession of his house, Yavelow discovered a mountain of mail that Fasel hidden from him for the past 10 months. Among this were a series of letters warning him of an $1,800 bill (unfortunately bogus) that had been given to a collection company, taken to court, with the resulting judgement being that his house and possessions were due to be auctioned off within days. This latest maliciousness of Fasel required another 6 weeks of legal hassles to resolve.

Back in the house, it is very revealing to see what Fasel forced the children to leave behind in the house during the year she held it hostage.

For the children, the house was a little chunk of America in the Netherlands. Not only had the two American children spent more than half their lives in the United States before Fasel abducted them, but their 5 years at the family home in the Netherlands had been completely American-- nothing but American food, American holidays, American friends, American books, American toys, American videos, American cassettes, American CDs, American CD-ROMs, American magazines, American computers, American appliances, everything American. Most of the house was on US 120-volt American electrical current.

However, in accordance with Fasel's plan to de-Americanize the children and destroy their heritage (which has included two unsuccessful attempts to surreptitiously change their citizenship) the children have not been permitted to have any of their American or English language things. Fasel has refused to allow them any item that had a memory of their father or American heritage attached to it.

This behavior is called Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS) or Divorce-related Malicious Mother Syndrome (in Dutch: Ouderverstotingssyndroom), and Fasel has it bad. A textbook example of these two common psychological disorders, she hasn't allowed Yavelow to contact his children in almost a year.

The 400+ emails he sent his children during this period sit unopened in their email boxes which they are not allowed to check. Their 50 AOL pony chat buddies haven't heard from them in a year either. Their phone is unlisted, and the children are forbidden to telephone anyone American (including their father).

Although Celina and Stephanie are devout Christians, Fasel does not allow them to go to their church because it is an American church. She forces them to attend a fiercely anti-Christian Anthroposophical school. In a true cult-like "circling of the wagons" no one at that school will allow any information to pass between the children and their father or any other fellow Americans, this, at Fasel's request. The children's American friends, who they used to see once or twice a week, are also off limits according to Fasel.

Now that Yavelow has finally managed to speak with his daughters, he has learned that Fasel has spent the year brainwashing them to believe that it is illegal for them to have contact with him. This is a complete lie, but it represents standard PAS tactics. Naturally, in such a situation the children are confused and depressed, and even more desperate to return to the United States.

He learns more and more of the abuse his children have been subjected to every day in meetings with Celina and Stephanie in allies, corridors, wooded paths, next to canals -- wherever the three Americans can grab a precious 20 or 40 minutes to try to make up for the 10 months that Fasel held the children incommunicado.

But, the Dutch government still supports Fasel's activities wholeheartedly. In 1999, the United Nations gave the Netherlands the distinction of being the developed nation with the most child abuse in the world. Thus, it is a popular destination for people like Fasel.

According to Amy Worden of Apbnews in and article about a recent US Congressional study completed by the General Accounting Office at the request of the Senate Foreign Relations committee on September 13, 2000, "The State Department estimates 1,000 children are abducted in the United States and taken abroad each year, though it said the number may be higher..."

Yavelow has set up several websites to help rescue his children: http://www.StolenChildren.net provides in depth coverage of the problem and http://www.ChildrenHelpingChildren.com lets kids write a letter to Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands protesting Holland's participation in the abduction of Celina and Stephanie.

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