A Child Survivor of Child Abduction, incl. re: Parental Alienation
Someone commented on my post:
Arresting Moms, at Least for Felony Child-Stealing
Which asks why California Penal Code 278.5 isn’t (it seems) gender-neutral, and common “reasons” for abducting a child, two of which fall under (at least according to the data base referenced) either “Family Violence” or “Child Trafficking,” both of them very uncomfortable topics, obviously, and both of them pulling immense funding and many agencies to handle. YET, they continue, and continue, wrecking lives, for sure.
Regarding the “Parental Alienation” argument, many oppose it because of it being junk science, and I oppose that argument because I oppose psychologizing what is probably a normal reaction from a child — again, it could be Stockholm Syndrome, or self-preservation, too. It is a simple derailing of the conversation from CAUSE to EFFECT.
SO, here is a page from an adult survivor of one of the earliest (1980-1983) prosecuted interstate abduction cases. I don’t yet know HOW he and siblings were retrieved, but the site speaks about the impact — and not just during childhood — this had on him.
I do not know that “abuse” (other than the child-abduction, which IS abuse per se, let alone any others) enters into his case. I have not read his entire site or the book yet.
This talks about the impact of the experience, far into adulthood.
Reader feedback solicited — not namecalling, but feedback. I believe this is within copyright limits, and have linked to the site…
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Ken Connelly is the author of “Throwing Stones; Parental Child Abduction through the Eyes of a Child”, and the first book in the “Finding Home” series. Mr. Connelly was kidnapped on October 10, 1980 in Orange, California, and recovered on December 5, 1983 in the small town of Bastrop, Texas.
Ken began writing in 1985, while attending middle school. He continued writing poetry, music and short stories through his adult life. Ken wrote his first unpublished book, “The Seven Keys of Aráganoth” in high school. Ken continued to write short stories and poems through his life as a way to relate his emotions and creativity to the outside world. Writing has been one of two grounding forces through the years for him. Ken has written as a freelance photojournalist and for his university paper.
Ken tried for years to bury his childhood past. Finally in 2006, on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of his childhood abduction he began asking questions and openly challenging his family’s view to just leave it alone. Shocked with the fact that nothing significant had changed since his recovery, he decided to act.
Understanding the importance of his case, Ken started speaking, and soon found his love of writing to be his greatest tool for making change. Ken opened up to the world his long cherished spiral notebook, “Lyrics from the Edge”. This collection of poems, songs and intimate thoughts span the past twenty eight years of his life. His goal was to write about his years stolen, and have it published by the symbolic twenty-fifth anniversary of his recovery.
Ken’ decision to put into print the first Child Stealing/Parental Child Abduction case to result in a felony conviction across interstate jurisdictions has come with a cost. Ken has had anonymous threats and nearly a complete loss of family relationships due to his efforts to take this dirty and often quiet crime to the public forum. Speaking and writing was not easy, but after two decades of having thousands of innocent voices silenced, Ken knew he needed to be that voice.Long hours awake trying to relive the dark memories he spent a lifetime burying came back to him like the tides of an ocean. During the research phase of his book, Ken discovered that if he could accurately tell his story, not as the adult, but as the child, he could draw the reader in. Using the first person point of view, Ken has found a unique voice seldom discovered in nonfiction. Ken carries the reader through a dark journey all the while letting the reader feel as though they are reading a twisted fictional childhood story.
Often as parents and professionals we overlook the child’s feelings while making our case as an adult and parent over pre and post abduction. Unlike stranger abduction, parental kidnapping destroys a child’s basic trust foundation, the family. Ken successfully shows how Parental Child Abduction/Kidnapping leads to Parental Alienation. Many parents who have abducted their children rely on misleading arguments against Parental Alienation and Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), or that the child is unaware, and settled in their new environment. This argument is absolutely false and is only a red herring to make their action legal and legitimate. For the first time a victim of this crime has come forward to speak.
Mr. Connelly was kidnapped at the age of seven and recovered three years later at the age of eleven. Throwing Stones is the first book written from the unique child’s point of view. Regardless of domestic, or international parental child abduction cases, this video will help the viewer understand the confusion and mistrust a child experiences during this type of crime.
Ken Connelly was born in Orange County, California. He currently lives in Dallas, Texas.
ANY EMPHASES ABOVE ARE MINE…
Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History 
First of all I would like to emphasize, that the way a child perceives an event in his/her live is determined most definitely from the age he/she is in, the stage of his/her development, the personal character and most surely the previous experience he/she has gone through. Mr. Connelly says he was 7 years old when this event occurred. Well, in psychology science it is said that exactly in the border of age 7-8 a sensitive crisis phase in human life occurres. Parents should be very careful in this period of life of their children and minimize any stressful events. Furthermore, we all know that the Psychology is not an exact science, it is not like 1+1=2 and that is IT. It is a matter of personal-professional interpretation. Human’s mind is so incredibly complex. Whatever is your case it is not necessary mine, although we passed through quite simmilar experiences. Everyone of us is different, two people can look at one thing and see it and perceive it differently. Psychology professionals can have different concepts and argue about “diagnosis”, the same is happening with the “PAS” problem. I would like to ask the author: What of both evil is worse: to be so called “alienated” from one of the parents or as a child to be witnessing abuse, conflicts, despise and hate – even if not exercised directly at you but among the parents? If we need to choose the less evil, what could it be???
Nadia
April 7, 2010 at 1:28 am
I would like to first thank you for the review of my book, Throwing Stones.
I wish to address a couple questions you raised in your review and also respond to the above comment, since the writer has asked me, the author, to answer:
First, you emailed me a comment about the spelling of my last name. I could find no place on there where the spelling was not “Ken Connelly”. If you have found a place where ‘Connelly’ is not spelled that way, please point it out and I will have it remedied.
Second, as to how I was recovered, well that was an interesting and very frightening experience- My father had managed to remarry at the end of our abduction. My siblings and I were ordered not to tell anyone, especially his new wife and children our true past as abducted children. My father had a way about him that you did not cross. You have to remember, this person feeds you, clothes you, and gives you shelter. I often use the example that if you take a puppy and give it food, then while feeding it you hit it, the dog will grow up believing that pain is love. This can be seen in women who grow up with a violent father and then seek a relationship with an abuser. They may not go consciously looking for that personality type, but they end up with it.
My father was pulled over on a traffic stop with his wife. The officer took him in once his alias popped up on the NCIC. I was for the first time going to a public school in Smithville, Texas. Upon leaving for the day, I seen my sister crawling out the back of the bus and running away. Unknown to me, my mother and grandfather were walking about the school after they were flown from California upon hearing we had been located. Of all the buses, mine managed to leave the school without being stopped.
Within a few hours my dad was let go from the Bastrop County jail on a technicality. No court had ever held up the recent law, forcing out of state agencies to enforce kidnapping of one’s child as a felony/crime. After dad got out of jail he then attempted to remove us to Australia (a plan he attempted a year earlier). A sting was setup to have him come into court and believe he could win full custody once there. After coming into court, he was taken down to the floor and arrested by law enforcement. At the same time we we were taken out the back and then flown from Austin, Texas to California.
My father was later extradited to California where he pleaded guilty to Child Stealing. This became the first time in United States History an interstate felony/recovery was successfully prosecuted. Oddly enough, only 70 miles away, Glen Schulz was arrested for kidnapping his children from out of state but was let go and later granted full custody. My father’s arrest and conviction set a new precedence in the apprehension of child stealing.
Three, as for abuse. I often had to endure hours of my father screaming and calling my mother everything from a witch to a lesbian on a daily basis. I began to sleep walk, have severe night terrors, developed turrets syndrome and tics that effect me to this day (although I mask them very well). I also have never been able to trust. My sister was raped by a stranger and although we disagree that she was taken to the hospital, she has had to deal with that her whole life. ( I say disagree because she believes she was taken to the hospital that night, I know she was taken earlier in the month over another issue requiring stitches. As any law enforcement officer, medical professional or mental health professional knows, when you bring in a 14 year old girl to the ER who claims she has been raped, the police do a background on them and the parent who brings them in to the hospital, of which I verified with the local agency that we lived under in Texas. Had a there been a police check, the false ID that later got him arrested would have popped up on her or him after the rape.)
When I was found I was covered in chiggers (body parasite) and scabies. Just months before we were recovered, we were living in Burcher State Park, Texas and then in a house where we had an out house and when the water did run, it was reddish in color because of the rust. We also had to boil the bath water on the stove so that all of us could use the water to bathe. Again, everyone used the same bath water.
I also had to get saved, learn to speak in tongues and when ever I was bad, I was reminded that I could grow up and become the anti-christ.
Four, yes psychology is a new science but there are basic truths that are universal. Although I attend to school (working on a degree that can be used in parental child abduction), I have been certified in Colorado, New Mexico and federally to work with juveniles that have been incarcerated. I have seen the effects of abuse, neglect and abandonment and I see a lot of similarities with parental child abduction.
As to the writer of the above. Yes, without a doubt ( and I have experienced BOTH), parental child abduction is worse! To put it another way, when a stranger abducts a child, the child always knows that mommy and daddy are waiting for them when they come home. granted, it may be and will be a long haul to heal, but the trust in their parents is intact. So my question is, when a parent steals their child, tells them the other parent is dead, hates them, evil, abandoned them and so on, who does the child trust? If mommy or daddy lied and kidnapped you, who do you trust? The entire structure of what trust and family is is forever broken.
As for seeing abuse, conflicts and hate, well upon return I found that my mother had been being assaulted by her new husband. See, professionals have found that many parents after their children have been taken tend to seek punishment for having their children ripped from them. My mother’s then husband hated that she was always sad and grief ridden over having her children stolen.
Over the next two years I watched him beat her, knock her unconscious and steal her purse while driving down the alley way of our home pulling my mom and me, as my mom would not let go of the purse- which held our only money, he held out the window. Or the times he beat me down and mom had to jump on his back and break his black Ovation guitar over him to get him off me while I called the police. Finally on my 13th birthday I was forced to not go to school but get a job and pay rent to live in his home. My mother was finally beat unconscious in 1985 when her husband beat her so bad that he broke the toilet bowl with her face and left a blood trail on the hallway wall, all because I split his beer.
Yes, I have seen both and I can tell you that the effects from the abduction were like wakes & ripples that have effects to this very day. I never doubted my mom’s love or felt abused while with mom and her husband, and have talked to many other children who felt that they were able to overcome those abusive home environments. Now I am in no way down playing the abuse that went on upon return. in fact, I believe that both are relevant and need to be addressed. However, the abduction was worse.
I started researching and building up all my documentation for book II, Wakes & Ripples, which covers this subject from the age of 11 to 17. I have had to pull together many interviews, police and school records. I have had to verify addresses and places of employment. This research is still underway as I have tried to avoid the pop culture idea of sensationalizing my story but trying to keep it pure and accurate as possible. I believe that by providing a case study, we can find ways to prevent, educate and inform others on how to stop this terrible crime. I can not tell you if life would have been different had I not been kidnapped. What I can tell you is that once you throw that rock in to the waters of childhood there is no going back, we must live with the change in the water’s course and the ripples that follow.
To sum it up; kidnapping one’s child, and kidnapping is all it is, is the worst thing you can do to your child. If you are in a bad relationship there are outlets you can use to get help. Children are not our property in the sense of chattel. We have to think about what they need first and I have yet to have fond a parent who kidnapped their child who did not have some vindictive motive behind it. This is why children are often used as weapons in court during a divorce.
Domestic violence is horrific! The years I lived with it, I was always frightened but, they did not have the impact as the years abducted. It was not because of the domestic violence years that ended my relationship with all my family. It was the abduction years. The actions my father made that tore a part our family in ways that I cannot begin to explain in this comment box.
I hope I have answered your questions.
Kindest Regards,
Ken Connelly
http://www.ken-connelly.com
ken@ken-connelly.com
Ken Connely
April 16, 2010 at 9:05 pm
Dear Family Matters,
I just re-read your post on my guest book page. I would love to talk with you at some point int he future and answer your questions in greater detail. Please feel free to contact me.
Sincerely,
Ken Connelly
Ken Connely
April 16, 2010 at 9:15 pm
I previously posted an answer to the above questions. I will answer quickly here. If anyone wishes to have an answer in greater detail, feel free to contact me.
Although domestic violence is terrible, parental child abduction is worse. I have experienced both and have heard many others who have also experienced both like me, at different points in their life and we all agree; parental child abduction is by far the greater of two the evils. ~ Ken Connelly (Throwing Stones; Parental Child Abduction through the Eyes of a Child.)
{{In-line reply from blog author}}
Thanks for telling me the HOW of your case. I have not read your book, but responded to the website after you commented on this one.
As a mother, it pains me to know all the secrets my kids were told to keep, both before and after they were taken.
One part I emphasized with on your site was that you have lost family members once you decided to speak up about this. I lost my family of origin (in effect) for speaking up about and leaving the abusers, after which the children were taken. This rift is not about to be mended, that I can see, and has escalated. They were involved in the felony-child-stealing and are still continually reframing the discussion into something it isn’t.
I’m going to post your comment as a post today; hope that’s OK.
Please send up some prayers for my family, too. We need them, all 3 generations…
I can’t say a whole lot more, hope SOME anonynymity remains in this blog.
kenconnelly
April 16, 2010 at 9:51 pm
You should check out Take Root, the first ever organization started by and for former abducted children. Their Executive Director, Liss Haviv, is a prior Fulbright Scholar and a true expert in the impact of abduction on children (she was also abducted as child, and has helped author several Department of Justice publications on the subject).
{{LetsGetHonest in-line reply:}}
Dear openMic promoting TakeRoot.org ..
Naturally, I looked up TakeRoot.org, found out that it’s funded by several DOJ grants, and that one of its primary staff, Janet Brodsky, a long-term social worker specializing in dealing with PTSD & trauma issues, has on her website a promotion of “collaborative divorce” and a link to collaborative divorce website. I then went to zoominfo and Pipl, as time allowed, and recommend readers do the same. I hope to do a follow-up post (I’m always “hoping” to do posts, and unlike Takeroot, mothers in my position, who have had law enforcement turn their heads, catering to family law judges who are paying more attention to the BUSINESS of family law, than the facts of our individual cases {or due process}, I don’t have immediate hopes of getting grants from either the DOJ or the HHS, whom we are reporting on as to mis-use of these grants in the courts. . . .}}.
*** TAKEROOT talks about these grants:
“From January 2003 – January 2007 Take Root’s development was funded by the Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, under grants # 2002-MC-CX-K001 and 2005-MC-CX-K035.
Additional funding was provided by the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and the Polly Klaas Foundation”
During that timeframe, I lost custody of my kids to an abuser, AT a law enforcement exchange location, a place I’d had to resort to because I was unaware of alternatives, as also funded (extensively!) through HHS, ostensibly to help prevent this kind of travesty. Those grants are the Access/Visitation grants. I also tried to renew a restraining order, without success, resulting in financial devastation BEFORE abduction. I then attempted to work with the local child support agency (as the father was apparently stockpiling money, while falsely reporting his residence, another “task” I attempted, again, to sort out through the very “collaborative” types of courts claiming they are not “into” adversarial stuff.
Without diluting the impact of child abduction — I note that on the gray papers in TakeRoot, the concepts that a parent might be either :
(1) abducting to protect a child from molestation or beatings AFTER such has already happened, and the courts & police have failed to protect, OR . . . .
(2) abducting as the abuser to prevent the former partner from moving on in life, or to punish (her, typically) for showing signs of independence — are pretty far down on the list of “why parents abduct” and in diluted terms.
or in addition, simply because of child support issues — I think we have to ask questions of those posing the questions.
AGAIN, here’s the order of questions posed as to WHY parents abduct (on Takeroot website):
OpenMic
June 4, 2010 at 12:30 pm