Friday, June 27, 2003 | 11:25 a.m.
WASHINGTON -- George Uhl sat in the audience at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee meeting on Thursday, quietly nodding during a hearing on children abducted by a parent to a foreign country.
Uhl has seen his son David, now 6, just once since the boy was taken to Europe in 1998 by his ex-wife, who Uhl said is in Germany. She has "stashed" the boy in other countries, he said. The woman had persuaded a U.S. judge to allow her to take the boy to visit relatives against Uhl's wishes, and they never came back, Uhl said.
Uhl has spent frustrating years exhausting his options to track the boy and bring him home -- beseeching the State Department for help, trekking Europe himself, spending $100,000 in private investigator fees.
He managed to arrange a painfully brief visit in November 1999. Uhl, 51, of Baltimore, then left his son not knowing if the child would ever live in the United States again.
"It was the worst thing that I've ever been through," Uhl said of leaving that visit. He has no idea where David is now.
The issue of international parental abductions for years has had the attention of Congress and the State Department. It's been the subject of hearings and of a General Accounting Office report that criticized the Justice Department for not doing enough to help parents and bring children home.
But the problem never abates, said Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., who grilled a top State Department officer during the Senate hearing Thursday. He goaded Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Maura Harty to be more aggressive in getting children back.
"People continue to believe we aren't advocating adequately," Brownback said. "(Parents) don't feel like we're giving it our best effort."
Congress has made a number of attempts to prevent abductions and make U.S. diplomats more aggressive in seeking returns.
There are six Nevada cases pending involving nine children abducted by parents to foreign countries, according to the State Department, although officials acknowledge not all cases are reported to the department.
In the last year Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., has acted on behalf of three parents of abducted children from the state, including one father whose child was returned, Reid spokeswoman Sharyn Stein said.
Reid and Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev., sponsored legislation to implement new passport restrictions aimed at reducing abductions, and the measure became law in 1999. The legislation was inspired by the 1993 case of Mikey Kale, of Henderson, whose biological father abducted the then-6-year-old boy to Croatia. He was eventually returned, but many abducted children are not.
Just how many is unknown. Brownback also said he was frustrated the State Department could not even pin down the number of annual abductions. Harty said it was roughly 1,000 every year, with an unknown number recovered. She said 15 were returned in May, and the same number in April, with about 100 returned since November. She promised to find more accurate statistics.
Harty pledged to continue a relentless pursuit, and in the meantime continue to at least broker visits and try to get parents information. She said the department was limited by court rulings of foreign countries.
But many "left behind" parents are fed up with Congress, the State Department and the Hague Convention, an international treaty signed by only 50 nations that requires the immediate return of abducted children but rarely accomplishes the goal.
The parents have testified and told the media that they consider the FBI unwilling to help and the State Department reluctant to upset delicate economic, political and, increasingly, security arrangements with foreign nations.
Saudi Arabia is a prime example of a nation that refuses to cooperate, said Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who has been active on the issue and who testified on Thursday.
She said the United States has an "inexcusable" policy that allows Saudi Arabia to hold U.S. citizens against their will, including women, who cannot leave without the permission of a male relative. A few grown U.S. women in the kingdom were abducted as children years ago and still cannot leave, Lincoln said.
Lincoln recounted the story of Margaret McClain, an Arkansas constituent, whose 10-year-old daughter Heidi was abducted to Saudi Arabia by her father in 1997. McClain, the legal guardian of the child, has had only two visits with her daughter. McClain is frustrated that U.S. policy is to attempt to negotiate with the abductor parents, if they can be found, rather than to pressure the nation. The mother is worried the girl could be married off in a few years, Lincoln said.
"After studying the history of Heidi's case and others, I have sadly concluded that our own government has failed to stand up for Heidi and others like her," Lincoln said. "If we don't continue to press this issue at every opportunity, I fear Heidi and others like her may be lost forever."
Uhl said he lives with the pain of his brief visit with his son, and holds onto hope. His faith left in Congress and the State Department has faded. The department won't even help relay messages of love from the father to the boy, and there is no consequence for Germany to harbor abducted children, Uhl said.
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