Abducted to a foreign land

By Timothy Pratt

Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2003 | 11:09 a.m.

In a picture taken in a Henderson parking lot, Jessica Harrison's hair is loose and shoulder-length; she's wearing overalls and a short-sleeved purple and pink shirt. She's smiling at her dad.

"I knew that was the last time I would see her for a long time ... but there was nothing I could do," Mark Harrison said of the July 11, 2000, picture.

Harrison was about to turn over his daughter, then 4, to her mother, Martha. He was following a Clark County Family Court order that would have Jessica alternate between Las Vegas and Puebla, Mexico, every two months until she reached school age.

Eighteen days after the picture was taken, Martha, a native of Mexico, left with Jessica from McCarran International Airport. Harrison hasn't seen his daughter since.

In the months that followed, the family court reversed its decision, giving Harrison full custody of Jessica, and the Nevada attorney general's office charged Jessica's mother with violation of custody rights, a felony.

But until several weeks ago, Harrison and his mother, Lydia, had little hope of seeing the girl, now 7. As a last-ditch attempt at resolving the case, Lydia wrote 25 letters to Mexico President Vicente Fox during a week in June. She finally got a mid-August reply saying that the governor of Puebla was looking into the case.

This came after dozens of letters to federal, state and local agencies and the Mexican government as well as tens of thousands of dollars spent on a series of scam artists who promised to bring Jessica back.

A late 2000 phone call in which his daughter stuttered the words, "I love you, Daddy," was followed by a click. It was the last time Harrison heard his daughter's voice. The phone in Mexico was disconnected shortly thereafter.

In the past three years, the Harrisons have become another case study of what experts on international child abduction call a growing trend -- foreign-born spouses of U.S. citizens who take their children to another country when the marriage breaks up.

During a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on the issue in June, several senators said that the problem was not being adequately addressed by U.S. diplomatic representatives or the State Department.

Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev, was not at the meeting, but he was briefed on the discussions later because it is a topic that he takes a special interest in, one of his staff members said. Reid had sponsored legislation that became law in 1999, strengthening passport restrictions aimed at reducing abductions and he helped three Nevada parents of abducted children in the last year.

A spokeswoman for Reid said the senator is working on further legislation because the problem continues unabated.

"Sen. Reid feels we must do more to help Nevada families who are stuck in these situations," said Sharyn Stein, spokeswoman for the senator.

The country to which the highest number of U.S. children are abducted is Mexico -- about 15 percent of the total, according to the State Department, which sees about 1,100 each year.

"There's a growing body of cases (of international child abduction) ... and lots of cases out there aren't even being reported (to the government)," said Las Vegas attorney Greta Muirhead, who has worked with a Virginia-based clearinghouse called the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, or NCMEC, on the issue. She is not working on the Harrison case.

The parent on U.S. soil in these cases faces a maze of false leads, rip-off artists, federal officials limited in their powers and the need to get good contacts in a foreign country. Experts say part of the problem is no one in international circles takes the issue seriously enough.

"Very often, these cases are viewed as private family matters -- and it clearly goes beyond that," said Stuart Patt, spokesman for the consular affairs bureau of the State Department.

Patt said that "parents can contact us for orientation ... (but) unfortunately their options are not as clear and successful as we would like."

The official said the State Department contracts the NCMEC, a nonprofit, to help parents register their cases under the Hague Convention, an international treaty meant to increase cooperation between countries when it comes to child abduction. The nonprofit also will distribute posters with photos of abducted children to border officials and the country where the children are found.

The Harrisons turned to the NCMEC for help when they realized that Jessica's mother had no intention of sending her back to the United States.

But Guillermo Galarza, international case coordinator for Latin America at the center, was frank with them from the start.

Though Mexico is one of about 50 countries that has signed the Hague Convention, one thing is what's on paper and another thing is reality, he told them.

"As with all parents, (the Harrisons) wanted a quick end to their case," Galarza said.

"Unfortunately, in Mexico, things don't always work out that way," he said.

Patt said Mexico is one of the countries that "doesn't get a good grade" when it comes to compliance with the treaty. Part of the problem, he said, is that judges at a local level often make decisions on such cases, and they are unfamiliar with one of the treaty's basic terms -- the country where the child has resided most should decide which parent has custody.

In Jessica's case, that's the United States. But she remains in Puebla, where Jessica's father finally decided to go in March -- "to see for myself," he said.

Harrison took the trip because he and his mother had grown tired of throwing money at the problem. During two and a half years, they had hired a Mexican lawyer who sent them a bill advising them not to mention a $5,000 bribe he needed them to pay.

They hired a district court judge in Nevada who told them, "I shouldn't do this but for you I will -- I can help with a friend who's really well-connected in Puerta Vallarta." Because the judge is now being investigated by the Nevada Judicial Commission and the state bar, Harrison would not discuss the identity of the judge.

Harrison and his mother also hired a bail bondsman who said he was a private eye.

"He called to say he had lost two agents in a small town surrounded by federales -- then I came to my senses and realized how vulnerable I was," Harrison's mother said.

"We got screwed a number of times but each we time learned to recognize it quicker," Harrison said.

Harrison also got the attorney general to file a criminal complaint against Jessica's mother late last year -- but U.S. authorities can only arrest her if she steps on U.S. soil again, said Brian T. Kunzi, senior deputy attorney general. The official said Harrison's case is one of about five cases involving Mexico he currently has on file.

Working on international abduction cases from the criminal side is no easier than the civil side, he said.

"It's very difficult to get international cooperation on these cases," Kunzi said. "For starters, we can't get extradition from Mexico -- it just doesn't happen in criminal abduction cases. It's frustrating ... we can't just go to the country and grab that person back," he said.

So Mark decided to go to Puebla with his current girlfriend and her brother; a few months after that, in the same do-it-yourself vein, Lydia wrote President Fox.

In Puebla, he found himself hiding in front of his ex-wife's house, hoping for a glimpse of his daughter. Instead, he saw her brother, whom he had met before.

He decided not to reveal himself, however, fearing he would jeopardize his daughter's safety.

"I never wanted to tip them off ... because the family could claim anything and then the police could dump me in jail.

"But it was incredible, breathing the same air as Jessica was breathing ... I wanted to snatch my daughter and run," Harrison said.

As it was, when they went to lunch in town, Harrison and his two companions found themselves surrounded by about 12 policemen pointing their automatic rifles at them. Harrison's girlfriend talked their way out of the cafe patio by claiming they were just tourists.

The next day, they filed a deposition of sorts on Jessica's case for four hours at the district attorney's office.

Now, the Harrisons are hoping that the paperwork filed in Puebla, together with the letters sent by President Fox's office, will lead to some sort of resolution.

Dario Lopez Cartagena, an official within the Puebla government, said that it was unclear where the case currently sat, and that it would take several weeks to find out.

"Viva Mexico," he said, adding, "Unfortunately, that's the way things work here."

Muirhead said that part of the problem for children caught in the middle of marriages broken across borders is that authorities don't see the cases as they would any other child abduction.

"Nobody makes enough noise about these cases ... they don't see a mother or father taking their child as a kidnapping since it's not a stranger," she said.

The attorney also said fathers get worse treatment than mothers when they're the ones left without the child or children.

"If dad had made off with kid, they'd probably be all over him," she said.