Secret network ‘helping mums take kids’

A SECRET network helping women abduct their children and hide after bitter Family Court disputes is being targeted by Australian Federal Police.

The underground network, which helps mothers and their children “disappear”, has a number of prominent individuals, including a doctor, whose names have been provided to federal agents by a private detective who was once inside the secret circle.

Federal agents have launched a nationwide operation to dismantle the network after a series of high-profile cases.

They involve the arrest of a 46-year-old Townsville mother caught in May hiding in the farming community outside Taree four years after snatching her twin girls from school.

The woman stayed under the radar moving to Perth, Grafton and Bega by not accessing her own bank account, giving her daughters new names and birth dates and using store gift cards to provide for them, a court was told.

She told police two people, including a prominent doctor, helped her flee with her daughters in 2014 but police believe there are many more involved.

She is on bail facing two charges of child stealing which each carry up to seven years jail.

The networks are becoming more sophisticated as women access them through social media or “support groups” which offer accommodation as well as the use of other people’s bank accounts.

The AFP confirmed it had successfully found five children in three long-term cases of parental abduction in December 2017, May and August 2018 who are believed to have used the underground networks.