Mother of two to be extradited to U.K. to face abduction charges

A B.C. judge has ordered a mother of two to be committed for extradition to the United Kingdom to face charges she abducted her children and brought them to Canada.

The mom, who cannot be identified due to a publication ban, wept after B.C. Supreme Court Supreme Court Justice Heather Holmes delivered her ruling in the case Thursday.

A dual citizen of Canada and the U.K., she had been divorced from her husband in July 2014 after being married and living in England for 14 years.

After the divorce, the couple’s two boys, who are now 16 and 14, lived with their mom in Southport, England, with the dad sharing parental responsibilities.

In July 2015, the mom applied to a family court in Liverpool to have the boys move with her to Canada but was denied permission to do so.

The court also ordered that the boys were not to be removed from the U.K. without their dad’s permission unless it was for a period of less than a month.

On Oct. 18, 2015, the mom and her two sons flew from Manchester to Calgary without the dad’s prior knowledge or consent and have remained in Canada since then.

The dad successfully applied to a court in Alberta to have the boys returned immediately, with an appeal of that decision by the mother being dismissed.

Meanwhile the boys travelled to Duncan on Vancouver Island to be with their aunt.

The B.C. Supreme Court ordered that the Alberta court order be upheld, and the dad travelled to Duncan to enforce the order.

The boys, however, refused to go back to England with their dad, and the order was not enforced.

The dad consented to the boys remaining in Canada on the basis that he’d have continued access to them, and the Alberta court order was stayed.

But when negotiations broke down, the stay was lifted, the dad went to court in the U.K. and a warrant was issued for the arrest of the mom.

At the extradition hearing, the mom sought to have evidence that the boys wished to stay in Canada admitted and argued that she had not intended to permanently remove the boys.

She claimed that she was only planning to bring the boys to Canada for holiday purposes and was planning to have them return to the U.K. within a month, a move that would have complied with the U.K. custody order.

But the judge ruled that the concerns of the boys were irrelevant to the issues before her and noted that there was another inference that could be drawn from the evidence, namely that the mom had intended to remove the kids.

Holmes found that there was sufficient evidence upon which a reasonable jury properly instructed could find the mom guilty of abduction and ordered that she be committed for extradition.