My daughters, Thanit and Athena (ages 9 and 7) were kidnapped the day after arriving in Spain to visit their grandmother.
I hope people can spread this story of Thanit and Athena and finding their father for them, until the story finally reaches them and they will know that their father has never stopped loving them.
The year before my daughters’ abduction I filed for divorce in the U.S. (2009)
The U.S. Court took years to decide the case. The U.S. Court allowed my wife to testify via skype and heard her testimony, read through the 83 motions her lawyers filed and sorted through the thousands of pages of evidence they submitted.
In 2012, the Court awarded me sole (full) physical custody of both my daughters, Thanit and Athena. The primary justification for awarding me custody was that the mother had nothing bad to show to use against me. The lawyer for my ex-wife had no negative points to use against me.
The Court also pointed out that there was no evidence of any other legal processes (like in Spain for example) involving either me or my ex wife. I have never been served nor been part of any other legal case.
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| Contempt of Court - Guilty Verdict |
The Court found indisputable proof that my wife intentionally lied to the Court on numerous occasions. She was convicted of contempt of Court (2012).
The lawyers in Spain did have a restraining order waiting for me when they kidnapped Thanit & Athena. I presented the restraining order in the case because it included the transcript of what the judge said when issuing the restraining order “you have nothing to indicate you need this request, but I will issue it because you seem very earnest.”
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| Court's Final Ruling |
As soon as the case closed, I was free to publicly discuss the case and search for my daughters. My children are the most important thing in my life. Throughout those six years I have continued sending letters, emails and making phone calls. Thus far, every phone call, email and letter has been unsuccessful.
I pray for the day I am able to contact my daughters and let Thanit & Athena I love them. Their grandparents hope to see them soon. I look forward to the day they meet their little sister, Althea, and brother, Gideon.
Three years ago, a family friend, Kate, and I got together and started a family and have been blessed with Althea & Gideon. Kate and I grew up in the same small town and our mothers are friends.
Althea and Gideon have been magical. But, I worry about them, and what will happen to them if I’m unable to resolve the situation with their sisters.
Time is of the essence and it is urgent both children be found, brought safely home and reconnected with their father, brother, sister, cousins and grandparents.
I love my daughters and want what's best for them. No one would ever suggest taking Thanit & Athena "away" from their maternal family.
Forensics data shows that the maternal family hired lawyers in Spain and the U.S. to plan the abduction and orchestrate the cover-up.
There is no excuse for what the lawyers did to Thanit & Athena. They know the law. They knew full well they were kidnapping children. Abducting children is one of the worst forms of child abuse. In addition to the kidnapping, the firm assisted the family in destroying US documents and fabricating Spanish documents.
There are solid moral and legal basis for filing charges against the Spanish firm.
The lawyers ignored a big red flag. Why was a mother hiring them to kidnap her children instead of litigating the divorce case?
Massachusetts Courts favor women in divorce, awarding primary custody to the mother in almost every case (91%), and generous child support.
Who would waste $100,000 to kidnap (and traumatize) their own children - when a fraction of the cost would seem to guarantee them 'full custody' and $2,000/mo in U.S. Court?
The only reason someone would be willing to waste $200,000 and give up $2,000 a month on top of all the hassle, is there is something to cover something up.
It doesn't make sense - unless they have something they are trying to hide.
In June 2009, after I filed for divorce, my daughters' pediatrician discovered indications of physical abuse due to repeated neglect by my wife.
The pediatrician informed us the particular issue was not exceptionally serious. But, the law still required she report the abuse, once tests ruled out other possible causes, scheduled for February 2010. The tests did come back negative, ruling out all other possible causes.
Two days after the pediatrician spoke to her, the mother sent an email to a Spanish law firm, Roca y Junyent, introducing herself, and requesting their services.
In February, 2010, a Spanish-born lawyer working in Boston, a former doctoral student of Miquel Roca i Junyent, began representing the mother in U.S. Court.
Before Thanit and Athena had been kidnapped, I was ignorant of how truly serious the issue of alienation is. New studies have discovered that alienating children from a parent causes deep and lasting scars.
The trauma of alienation reminded me of how Thanit & Athena’s mother spoke about her childhood, after her father abandoned the family. Thanit & Athena’s mother claimed her tragic childhood circumstances inspired her writing. A neighbor later told me about my wife describing her childhood trauma as being molested. My mother-in-law insisted none of it was true and it was all spun out of her imagination.
I had met their mother on a trip to Spain, back when I was a medical student. She was very charismatic and seemed entirely sincere. We exchanged emails, chats and sent letters for six years. In her letters, the way she described herself and her family they all sounded amazing.
After six years, I had an opportunity to go back to Spain and I visited her. That’s when I learned about her life’s passion, to become a serious author. At that moment, she was a blogger - a digital story-teller.
She wrote ‘real-life’ stories, and created personalities that she tried to craft using pseudo-non-fiction ‘diaries’. To enhance the ‘virtual reality’ of the diaries, she would add ‘realistic’ audio-visual props that fit the character’s personality and made the ‘diary’ more realistic. She spent days photo-shopping images, edited video and her digital voice recorder. She didn’t like for me to look at her stories while she was working, but she shared snippets.
At first I was impressed. About that time we decided to get married. The way she acted while writing was such a different person than the one I knew from her letters. Less than a year after we got married, and the person I was living with seemed less and less like the quiet, bookish, old-fashioned person I knew from her letters. By the end of the first year I’d met people from her home town in Spain and felt a serious uneasiness.
Many details she told me and had written were correct. But, others weren’t and there didn’t seem to be any reason for the things she said and wrote that weren’t true.
After we’d been married for over a year she started going to author meet-ups around Juarez and El Paso. The other authors inspired her to enter a literary competition at the University of Juarez. She submitted her work and we went together to the competition where the works were read aloud to be judged. That was when I met her character, ’Tina Marie'I did not appreciate Tina Marie. I found it bizarre, to the point of disturbing. A big part of why it seemed disturbing was that she was pregnant at the time. Her behavior was bizarre and not unlike her writing. For a couple months she was rarely home, until very late. I was confused. I thought maybe she was bored with me. She seemed to be cheating on me. She would tease me by confessing she had cheated and then deny it. I thought it was too bizarre for me and around when Thanit was born I had to ask her for a divorce.
From then on, I was trying to get her to work with me and figure out a custody settlement we could both live with. During those years all manner of things ‘popped’ up that we needed to go to Spain to take care of.
The U.S. legal system has been used as a tool for injustice.
In retrospect it makes much more sense. Despite all her super-sincere assurances, she never had any desire to get a divorce, nor figure out a way to share custody. No divorce would go smoothly with older versions of her stories clashing with whatever she was working on now.
The only things I care about are my children. They need healthy contact with both parents and both families. Please help locate Thanit & Athena - and reunite them with their Father, Brother, Sister, Cousins and Grandparents - who love them unconditionally.
My daughters need their mother and her family. No one would ever try to take them away from them. My family and I are entirely committed to getting the maternal family whatever help they may need, whatever it takes to ensure the girls can have unrestricted access to both parents' families.
I am one of a handful of fathers that was awarded primary custody by Barnstable Court. The Court justified its reasoning in awarding me custody. The Court's exhaustive deliberation investigated my life in great detail and revealed absolutely no evidence of any substantive negative traits about me or my personality worth mentioning. The other side was unable to find anybody with any evidence of relevant flaws that could be used against me.
On top of the legal actions, I have dealt with constant cyber-bullying/harassment. People report seeing malicious lies spread about me online. People should know better or at least take the time to look. My wife’s lawyers told the US Court that no cases had been filed in Spain and among the thousands of documents they submitted there were no court documents from Spain.
As for anyone who participated by harassing me or spreading lies, I can forgive anyone who takes responsibility for their actions, having spread rumors online in good faith, now takes the time to see the facts and does whatever it takes to make amends to the children. My daughters have been harmed and continue to be harmed. Nothing else really matters. It’s not hard to imagine many of the people who have been harassing me were acting out of the goodness of their heart, to help. At the very least share what you were sent with the FBI or my attorney.
Many people still believe those lies used to make parents feel better, like ‘children are resilient. as long as they are with someone who loves them they’ll be fine.’ Therapists recently learned that abduction harms children far more than had been assumed and the harm matters little whether the kidnappers are strangers or family members. Subsequent alienation causes harm that can be even more severe and permanent.
My family has lived in the United States for generations.
I went to Bates College and Duke University Medical School.
I am at present an aspiring biomedical researcher and part-time professor in Boston.
Two years after my daughters' were kidnapped, I crossed paths with Kate. Her family and mine have been friends for decades.
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