Thursday, April 11, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.
It was the custody dispute from hell, a two-month nightmare that spanned the Atlantic Ocean and opened a Green Valley couple's eyes to the tragedy of international child abduction.
On Valentine's Day 1993, Barbara Spierer's ex-husband, Mladen Kale, took her son Mikey to his native Croatia, immersed in a civil war after the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. There, Spierer learned later, he began official custody proceedings in a Croatian court.
But Spierer and her current husband, Fred, determined and aggressive, called lawmakers, the State Department, and finally hired a Croatian attorney who helped Barbara Spierer make history: In April 1993, a Croatian court returned custody of Mikey to Barbara Spierer.
The story could have ended there, but Fred and Barbara Spierer have turned their determination to the larger problem that devastated their lives three years ago.
"Ever since Barbara and Mikey got back, we've been on a quest," Fred Spierer said.
That quest has been for stronger laws against child abductions, especially international cases. Next week, the couple will travel to Washington, D.C., to see legislation introduced that would ban a noncustodial parent from getting a passport for their child. The State Department's computer would alert passport-writing officials in divorce and custody-dispute cases if the parent applying is not the one given custody of the child.
Mladen Kale was able to get a passport for Mikey, now 9, two weeks after his divorce was final in November 1991, despite the fact that Mikey already had a passport. He waited for a year and a half before taking Mikey out of the country, but Barbara Spierer never knew about the duplicate passport and was never told by any court that Mladen Kale could apply for one, no questions asked. Since then, she's been determined to change the law.
"It's something we've been wanting to do since it happened," Barbara Spierer said. "It's just something you don't think about."
The Spierers last year convinced the Nevada Legislature to pass a joint resolution urging Congress to adopt the passport restriction law, set to be introduced Tuesday by Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev. Passage in the Senate is expected quickly, Fred Spierer said, so it's not likely they will have to testify.
"We always believe there is some good that comes out of every evil," Barbara Spierer said.
In this case, the evil touches more than 600 families each year. Statistics the couple obtained from the State Department show 426 children were taken from the United States to foreign countries that have signed the Hague Convention, a 1988 treaty that allows foreign courts to return abducted children in custody disputes with no questions asked. An additional 194 were taken from the United States to countries that have not signed the treaty.
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