Mother to be sent to US in kidnap case

Woman ‘fled with her children’

A WOMAN is set to be extradited from Ireland to the US, after allegedly kidnapping her own children.

High Court judge Paul Burns noted she had been arrested in Co. Carlow, under the Road Traffic Acts, following her involvement in a single-vehicle road traffic accident.

The owner of property damaged in that accident in September 2019 had reported her to her ex-husband, after carrying out an online search and seeing a Facebook alert concerning the missing children. She was arrested again the following month pursuant to a provisional arrest request from the US.

Judge Burns said the woman, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, was wanted for prosecution in the state of Mississippi in respect of a single count of international parental kidnapping. He said the alleged background to the case was that the woman had separated from her husband in 2017.

A court in Lafayette County had granted her uninterrupted summer visitation rights to their two children, who were born in 2008 and 2013, along with permission to travel to her native Denmark from July 6 to August 6, 2018.

She was ordered to return the young children to the US by August 6. However, while there, she told her ex-husband she would not be bringing them back. The couple’s divorce was made final in September of that year, awarding custody of the children to their father. The following month, a Danish court ordered that the children be returned to him.

Judge Burns said an arrangement was made between the couple for the children to be handed over to their father on February 6, 2019.

However, the mother did not stick to that arrangement, but rather fled Denmark with the children.

A criminal investigation was commenced in Denmark, but she could not be found. She had apparently travelled into Germany and then could not be traced further – until the car accident in Ireland.

The woman had objected to her extradition. In sworn statements, she stated that she decided not to return the children to the US as she felt such a return was not in their best interests. She said that following her arrest in Ireland, she had agreed to return the children to their father in America.

Judge Burns said he had been told that the US courts would look favourably on the fact that the children had now been returned, but that if convicted, the woman could face a custodial sentence of ten to 16 months. He ordered that she be committed to prison, to await her extradition to the US.

Objected to her extradition