My wife unexpectedly kidnapped our children on January 4, 1999. Destination: the house of her Wicca witchcraft teacher in the Netherlands. My younger daughter escaped after ten days. The official Dutch policy is that separated parents who continue to love their spouses must never see their children again.

Within eight months, we had moved back to our own country, the USA. Planning to live in Idaho, we scheduled a custody hearing, inviting my wife to attend. So far, there had been no custody hearing.

She forged a Dutch custody order, and obtained a Hague Convention order by convincing the central authority that the children were Dutch (they aren’t; neither is she). While we drove to Idaho, she duped the Maryland Courts (a corrupt judge secretly domesticated her blatantly phony papers), the NCMEC (with malicious intent, they fueled one of the most frenzied media manhunts in history), and the FBI (who wasted a fortune tracking us). No one asked her for proof she was the children’s mother, or that we were married, or that she had connection with my family (our last names are different). She had no documents!

On October 21, 1999, a SWAT team surrounded my family. In a heart-wrenching standoff, my daughters, native-born US citizens who’d spent more than half their lives in America, shielded me pleading, "We are American citizens. We want to stay in America!" The FBI hesitated because she had claimed the kids were 4 and 6 when they were really 10 and 13. They realized she’d tricked them and dropped all charges immediately. Nonetheless, they incarcerated me for 8 days while a crooked Maryland prosecutor tried (unsuccessfully) to find some way to charge me.

To avoid the Hague Convention hearing, and in defiance of a Maryland court order requiring her to stay in America, she again kidnapped the children, fleeing to the Netherlands the next day. This time, she violated the International Parental Kidnapping Act, which makes it a crime to remove American children from the USA with the intent to obstruct parental access. Earlier that month, in another secret hearing, the Dutch had stripped all my parental rights, at her request.

By hiring armed thugs to illegally seize my passport, she delayed my return to the Netherlands until August 2000. I spent several years defying Dutch authorities by meeting my daughters daily, next to canals, in alleys, behind buildings, and in hallways.

My wife, who would be committed to an asylum in our country or hers (Switzerland), aided by the cults she belongs to (Wicca, Anthroposophy, Long Minh Dang), continues to hold my daughters hostage while brainwashing them against me and against the USA. Fourteen court hearings later, my children, one of whom now has her own legal representation, are still being held hostage in a terrible foreign country.

Ironically, six of our paternal grandparents escaped from that same country, embarking on July 22 (my daughter’s birthday) in 1620 on the Mayflower to establish the USA.

See http://www.StolenChildren.net for more information.