This story is told from the perspective of Constanza (last name withheld for legal reasons) who is currently stranded in Argentina, waiting to learn whether she is going to lose her two young children. Despite being played out internationally, this is, at heart, the story of a mother attempting to escape with her children from an abusive relationship. What has complicated a seemingly obvious custody decision regarding the best interests of the children, is the Hague Convention, which is often applied indiscriminately, especially in countries that are quick to comply with the International Court of Justice for fear of damaging foreign relations.
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction was drafted in 1980 to prevent noncustodial parents (at that time, predominantly fathers) from kidnapping their children and taking them to a foreign country. However, increasingly, the Convention has been weaponized by abusive partners to force mothers fleeing with their children to return to the father and to the likelihood of further violence. (See “No Exception – How the Hague Convention fails women fleeing domestic violence” previously published by Culturico).
You are an Argentinian single mother with a two-year-old daughter. In 2016 while visiting a friend in Bolivia, you meet and fall in love with a German man who’s managing an agricultural project there. You decide to stay on and in 2017 become pregnant with his child. You are concerned about his volatility with his co-workers and one day you discover a bottle of pills that the man says are very low dosage psychiatric drugs for panic attacks. You push this to the back of your mind, hoping that his stress is work-related and that his mood will improve with the birth of his child. During a short visit to Argentina for prenatal care, you find out the man has decided to move the family back to Germany, and has disposed of all your belongings.
You stay in Argentina for the birth of your son and, shortly afterwards, the man visits briefly from Germany so that you can marry and start the visa process for you to join him. In mid-2018, you arrive in Germany with your five-month-old baby and three-year-old daughter to find the man has rented a fourth-floor walkup apartment with no furniture, not even a bed.
This is when the man turns into a monster. On one occasion, he grabs your daughter’s arm and yanks her away from the baby, slamming her against a wall, screaming at her not to touch his son. Your daughter rushes sobbing to her bedroom. The man apologizes, saying he didn’t realize how rough he was being when he got angry.
The man buries himself at work, barely spending any time with the family. He has no patience with the children. Even when you ask him to look after them while you take a shower, he ends up bringing them into the bathroom and depositing them there. You are emotionally and linguistically isolated, and since you also shoulder the full-time care and responsibility for the children, you are unable to study or work.
When your brother dies, the man claims there is not enough money for you to travel back to Argentina for his funeral. Concerned about your welfare, your mother comes to visit. One day, the baby starts crying and your mother cradles him, trying to comfort him. Suddenly, the man snatches the child from her arms, shakes the baby, and then moves out onto the balcony, closing the door behind him. Your heart is in your mouth, not knowing what he is capable of when he is enraged. Your mother is so scared of him she spends the rest of her visit staying with a friend in a nearby village.
At the beginning of 2020, it looks as if things may get better. The man moves you all back to Bolivia, buys a house and then returns to Germany to finish tying up loose ends. While he is away, the COVID pandemic hits and, with the ensuing travel restrictions, he becomes stranded in Germany while you are stranded at your mother’s house in Argentina. After six months, you are able to get a flight to Germany with the children. Meanwhile, the long separation has made it clear to both of you that the marriage is no longer viable. During your stay in Germany, he makes a trip to France where he has an affair with an old friend. When he returns he says that he no longer loves you. The plan is for all of you to return to Bolivia after the pandemic and he will move out of the family house.
This is exactly what happens in January of 2021. The man arranges for the family belongings to be shipped back to Bolivia and purchases materials to build a house close to the agricultural project where he is once more employed. Despite the long years of psychological abuse, you are still concerned when the man comes down with a virus. You go to visit him at his apartment. He screams at you and pursues you back into the street. As you jump on your motorbike you start filming him on your phone to document how out of control he is. He punches you in the arm and face in an attempt to get the phone.
In October of that year, the agricultural project is canceled. With no other income and needing to settle outstanding debts in Germany, the man returns to his home country. He gives you parental authority so that you can take care of schooling, medical care, and other matters concerning the children, as well as permission to travel with them so you can visit Argentina.
A year later, he says he wants to see the children. In December 2022, he arrives in Bolivia. You stay with a friend so that he can spend time with the children and collect his belongings from the family house. You don’t want to see him, but he tracks you down at your workplace, trying to convince you to return to Germany with the children. You refuse. Bolivia is where you had both decided you wanted to raise the children and in Bolivia you will stay.
Sadly, in 2022 your mother grew sick and died. In April 2023, you return to Argentina to take care of some paperwork related to the death. You and the children have your suitcases packed, ready to return to Bolivia, when the police show up at with a petition under the Hague Child Abduction Convention ordering you to send both children to live with the man in Germany. You are not allowed to return to Bolivia. The man will not make an exception and allow you to travel to see his mother, who lives in Paraguay and is dying from cancer.
Your daughter becomes sick with fear, vomiting and crying. She is so scared of the man that she doesn’t dare tell him on the phone that she doesn’t want to go to Germany “in case he gets mad.” She is frightened of his anger.
You then learn the complications of mounting a legal defense against a Hague petition. Every mother who has fought a case in Argentina has lost. The man knew this and waited until you were in Argentina to make his petition. It doesn’t seem to matter that Argentina is not even your country of residence, that the claim of “child abduction” seems bizarre (since the man pre-approved travel with the children, and you had no intention of removing the children from their habitual residence), that your daughter is not his biological child, that it is two years since the man decided to leave his children and return to Germany, and that he appeared to have little time for them even before that.
The family court officials are not sympathetic. They say, “Why don’t you want to go to Germany? He says he will give you an apartment.” You try to explain that Germany is not the land of milk and honey they imagine and that you very much doubt the man would make good on any of his promises.
During the year you have been in limbo, you have made some sort of life for yourself. The children are continuing their education and take part in afterschool activities. You begin to hope that no one would rip the children away from everything they know, their mother’s care, their native language, the stability that has been so hard won, and put them in the hands of an abusive man, who seems to care less about the children’s welfare than his “rights” as a father.
Then to your horror, the family court decides in the man’s favor. Your lawyer immediately lodges an appeal with the national court. Now you must await their judgement.
It is too easy to believe that the Hague Convention on child abduction will never affect us, that it is some rarely-invoked and esoteric complexity of international law that will never apply to us or those we love. This is Constanza’s story but it could also be yours. It is already the reality for hundreds of Hague Mothers and their children around the world.
Louise Godbold
