1/ As divorce rates soared in the late 1970s, there was a consensus, supported by limited data, that fathers who had lost custody of their children were kidnapping them and hiding them abroad, leaving mothers with no means of redress.
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4/ A 16-month investigation by The 19th and @typeinvestigations.org found that the treaty often forces fleeing American mothers to return their kids to allegedly abusive fathers overseas.
5/ We interviewed 26 “Hague mothers,” most of them Americans who returned home with their children from Europe and Latin America. We also analyzed all the rulings published in U.S. Hague cases from July 1, 2022 to June 30, 2024.
6/ In our analysis of 114 recent cases, 79 percent of mothers sued under the treaty characterized the petitioning father as abusive, and 55 percent of petitioning fathers accused of abuse won their children's return.
7/ Fleeing mothers commonly said in court papers that their exes had raped, strangled, or threatened to kill them abroad, often in front of the children.
Some mothers accused fathers of molesting or beating the children.
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Countries in the convention — today, there are more than 100 — must return one another’s children when a parent asks, subject to various exceptions.
But contrary to what the drafters anticipated, only a minority of petitions are filed by mothers. https://bit.ly/45LmDB1
Some mothers accused fathers of molesting or beating the children.