Australian parents whose Japanese former spouses have abducted their children are demanding urgent action from both governments as years pass without any contact
can reveal that this is just the start of a system of parental abduction that has driven dozens of parents to breaking point, pushed children into psychiatric wards and torn families apart. Their pleas have fallen on deaf ears, as Japanese police repeatedly ignore Interpol missing person notices and the justice system refuses to enforce court orders guaranteeing parents access to their children.
Potocki has not seen his children Emilia and Lukasz in five years after they were taken by their mother in Gunma, north of Tokyo. Young Australians move to Japan, often to teach English or study, and fall in love. They have children but after a few years, some of those relationships sour. In Potocki’s case, he says the relationship fell apart after a business dispute. Like each of the dozen parents spoken to byfor this series, when Potocki’s relationship ended, the 46-year-old did not know that would mean he would never be able to hold his kids again.
“I went out for a long day, and she just took the kids and that was it. She won everything. That’s all they have to do: take the kids and they win. Their children are now adults, and very few, if any, have reconnected with their Australian father or mother after years of being told by the abducting parent that they had died or had abandoned them.attempted to contact each of the parents accused of abducting Australian-Japanese children. All declined to comment.The parents who have been left behind denied any allegations of violence or abuse and no charges have ever been laid.
The UN’s convention on the rights of the child calls for children to have the right to see both parents. Distraught, Saori went to the police to tell them her son had been kidnapped. “They said it’s a family issue.”Nearly 18 months later she still does not know where her son is. Despite submitting evidence of domestic violence, including bruises, intimidation, doctor reports and surveillance cameras to Japan’s High Court, her appeal for custody was rejected in January.
“Not only do I not know where they are, but I also don’t know who they are. I don’t know what they’re doing. I don’t know if they’re in school. I don’t know if they died of COVID. I don’t know if they had an accident,” he says. After four years of campaigning, McIntyre is now losing hope that he will ever see his children again.
“I went through a divorce to a Japanese spouse and have had my son removed from me,” he said. “I know that the pain never goes away.” Kavanagh has built a reconciliation centre for parents and children in the town in the hope that he will one day be able to reconnect with Anna. There are bottle brushes growing in the Australian-themed garden, next to eucalyptus and banksias. Inside, the walls are plastered with Indigenous landscapes. On a cold day in January with Nagano’s snow-capped mountains on the horizon, a dozen local kids sit at his feet playing with possum puppets and mimicking Randy in his thick Queensland accent.
McIntyre asks: “Why do we hear from repeated ministers that they’ve raised the issue quietly? It’s not good enough.” “We have been calling out their behaviours. But it’s got to be done privately. Why? Because our engagement with Japan over many years nowWong, Australia’s Foreign Minister, declined multiple requests for an interview.
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