Getting Married!  Whooooo!!!

American woman kidnaps her three children and became the only Americans grated asylum in Netherlands?

True story
Do you think she did the right thing.
http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm?aid=3662
http://www.stopfamilyviolence.org/ocean/host.php?folder=3&page=520&keywords=Jennifer%20Collins&T=
by Jennifer Collins
To Whom It May Concern:

My mother is a formerly battered woman who is the first American to receive asylum in Europe. My brother and I were abused children who were failed by the American Justice System, but fortunately we received asylum in the Netherlands.

Click Here to View Full SizeWe are from Minneapolis Minnesota. In 1992 custody of my brother (9) and I (7) was reversed to my abusive father because my mother denied visitation. In 1994 she ‘kidnapped’ us back and went underground. We fled the United States and were apprehended in The Netherlands for having inadequate traveling documentation. After living in refugee camps for 3 years, we were finally granted asylum in 1997. We have been living (in secrecy) in Europe for 13 years. In May 2007 we were discovered by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are trying to get the charges dismissed so we can return home safely to the United States of America.

Our mother lived a horrible life as a victim of terrible violence: from severe beatings as a child, sexual abuse as a teenage girl and the systematic physical and emotional abuse of being a young, battered wife. After two decades of being beaten, raped, tortured, demoralized, criticized and even blamed for accepting the violence, she finally got up the courage to leave her abusive life when my father fractured my brother’s skull. (He was only 4 years old!) Child Protection threatened my mother that we would be removed from her care and she could face charges of “failure to protect” if she didn’t leave my father. Yet once she left, the case was remanded to the Family Court and our young mother (22) was thrown into an outrageous legal battle of ’he said / she said.’

The family court case dragged on for years and during this time, my father continued to beat my mother (in front of us) when he picked us up for court ordered visitation. During the visitation… he beat, punched, kicked, tortured and tormented me (7) and my brother (9.) We would cry and beg our mother not to send us. My father would call the police to enforce visitation and we would be physically dragged out from underneath our beds and given to this man who was hurting us. Rather than accept that our mother was advocating on behalf of her abused children, she was accused of “Parental Alienation” and interfering with our father’s "Rights of Access.”

There was an abundance of evidence regarding the abuse: visible injuries, medical records, psychological evaluations, police reports, child abuse investigations, witness statements, etc… My father testified on several occasions that he hurt my mother (admittedly in the presence of us children) which required emergency medical care, but that every single incident and injury was an “accident.” The judge even found that domestic violence occurred, but personally decided that our mother was too traumatized from the abuse to care for her own children. On the record the judge admitted that he personally couldn’t understand my mother’s fear of my father: “I’ve seen them and I’ve seen her in Court. I thought they had just separated and that he had just beat her with a belt and put her in the hospital because she was shaking like a little bird, and then I find out that they had been separated for a number of years, and it wasn’t the behavior of a person that had been separated from a man for a number of years.” He concluded that she must be suffering from a mental illness, although he wasn’t sure what ‘psychiatric affliction’ she had. Every single medical and psychological professional involved in our case denied this! The judge decided that it was easier to monitor my father’s physical abuse than the potential physiological harm from having a “broken” mother and he awarded the known abuser custody of two young children!

The court officers literally ripped me out of my mother’s arms as I was kicking and screaming “MOMMY HELP ME! HE HURTS ME AND HE HURTS MY BROTHER! MOMMY…. I WANT MY MOMMY!” The memories of that dreadful day still bring tears to my eyes. I will be haunted by that moment for the rest of my life!

Click Here to View Full SizeMy mother kept fighting for our return and stressed that children should have rights too! The right to be safe! However the judge tried to silence her and a “Gag Order” was issued. My mother was warned that she would not be allowed to see her children as long as she continued to speak out against the court. A family court worker told us kids that we would not be able to see our mom until we stopped saying that our father was still beating us (which he was.) When we were finally allowed to have (supervised) visitation with our mother, I showed the visitation supervisors the bruises on my back and bottom. I told them “He’s s

I couldn’t read the article because I jumped right into your letter.
Of course she did the right thing.
I’m a file clerk in a juvenile probation department; all the staff I work with and around are advocates for the youth they represent or whose rights they support. The methods used (in court and in the community’s support agencies) are pro-peace and pro-family. My heart is deeply pained to learn what your father got away with, and that judge is whack, he’s not helping anybody, he should be made to step down.

I haven’t finished reading your posting…