Nowhere in the World To Run: The International Law Ripping Children From Their Mothers
June 20, 2025 at 01:02AMThe Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction was designed to quickly remove kidnapped children from dangerous circumstances and return them, across international borders, to their caretaker. What happens when abusers wield the convention as a weapon? Olivia Gentle tethers her investigation to the devastating story of Jewel Lazaro, one of many “Hague mothers” who have seen their alleged abusers wield this decades-old treaty to file punishing lawsuits that, in some cases, remove their children from their care. Lazaro’s resolve is admirable, impossible to imagine. To see the outcome of her efforts—to imagine that outcome multiplied many times over, with the help of a convention designed to help mothers secure their families—is crushing.
Contrary to what the drafters anticipated, only a minority of petitions are filed by mothers, according to data from the Hague Conference on Private International Law, which administers the treaty. In 2021, fathers filed about 73 percent of cases in the United States and about 75 percent worldwide.
Often, their wives and children had good reason to run, The 19th and Type found in a 16-month investigation.
We interviewed Jewel and 25 other “Hague mothers,” most of them Americans who fled Europe and Latin America. We also analyzed all the rulings published in U.S. Hague cases from July 1, 2022, to June 30, 2024. In each case, a parent who lived overseas was petitioning for the return of at least one child brought to the United States.
This analysis suggests that, in many ways, Jewel’s situation is typical. Out of 114 published cases, 77 percent were filed by fathers against mothers, at least 79 percent of whom accused the petitioning father of spousal abuse, child abuse or both. We did not attempt to independently verify the abuse claims, but scholars have found that neither children nor mothers are likely to fabricate abuse claims during custody disputes.
Often, mothers who claim abuse cite the treaty’s “grave risk” exception, which allows judges to deny a petition if return could expose the children to physical or psychological harm or an otherwise “intolerable situation.” But in our study sample, judges rarely accepted the grave risk defense, even when it was supported by evidence such as text messages, photographs, medical records, domestic violence restraining orders and police reports. Overall, fathers accused of abuse stood a 55 percent chance of winning their children’s return, either through an order or a settlement, compared to 58 percent of petitioners in general.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/06/19/hague-convention-child-abduction-investigation/
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